Word: straussed
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...composer who died last week; and Debussy's fascinating La Mer instead of the new symphony by one Gilere. Toscanini will conclude the Beethoven cycle in New York on Sunday afternoon with the Missa Solemnis, one opus of Beethoven that we do not hear very offen. Also "Pagliacci" and Strauss "Salome" will be broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House at 1.55 P.M. Saturday afternoon...
Elgar's fame as a composer reached London by way of Germany. The Dream of Gerontius had been given in the provinces but no one thought to call it a masterpiece until Conductor Hans Richter presented it in Düsseldorf and Richard Strauss acclaimed it. The Enigma Variations, Elgar's best-known symphonic work, was Richter's piece de resistance when he toured England in 1899. Five years later Elgar was knighted and the new King Edward pronounced Pomp and Circumstance "a very fine...
King Herod's birthday starts all the trouble in the Strauss version of Oscar Wilde's play.' It is at his birthday banquet that Salome suddenly revolts against his slimy glances, goes on to the terrace where John the Baptist (in the Strauss text Jokanaan) is chanting his denunciations from a cistern prison. To see the saint Salome beguiles a young Syrian officer to let him out. John talks about Christ. Salome does not even notice when the Syrian stabs himself. But jittery old Herod steps in the Syrian's blood and Salome must dance...
...critics the greatest part of Strauss's amazing score comes when the orchestra goes as wild as Salome, exults with her, subsides to an eery dissonance while she sings to the head. It was then that Soprano Ljungberg came nearest to realizing the music's grim intensity. She crouched on the floor, reproached the thing gently, sang to it ecstatically. Tenor Max Lorenz was a picture-book Herod instead of the crazy neurasthenic that Wilde and Strauss intended. Dorothee Manski (Herodias) had to pinchhit for Karin Branzell who was taken with gallstones (see col. i). Baritone Friedrich Schorr...
Because critics derided Soprano Ljungberg's dancing, she undertook next day to defend herself: ''Strauss showed me how he wanted the dance done. Salome isn't a character defined exactly in history. There is no description of how she danced. Strauss told me he didn't want it to be hoppy and jumpy. It was a thought dance in his conception. ... I am not a dancer. I have never studied dancing, but for the opera I do not think that is important. I am willing to do the dance in order to be allowed...