Word: wagner
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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AUDIENCES have found Richard Wagner's operas everything but enjoyable. Stimulating, yes; emotional, even enlightening at times. But for over a century artists and audiences alike have treated with sacerdotal reverence works that were as revolutionary in their own time as they seem dated today...
Peter Sellars may be indicted with a catalogue of crimes against Der Ring des Nibelungen, Wagner's Ring cycle--indeed, at times he treats it like a woman of the streets, to be used and then discarded at will. But he avoids one crime, the reverential acceptance of performance traditions as gospel. In remolding the Ring to suit his aims and resources, he has played a final trick on Wagner, one even the most wilfully manipulative directors of the past haven't managed--turning these leaden operas into light entertainment...
...mixture of gentle smirks at Wagner's pomposity, jabs at his tortuous plots, and tips of the hat to his skill with musical and visual images gives this Ring a legitimate value of its own, beyond, say, the similarly scaled but more ludicrous parody staged last year in New York by the Ridiculous Theater Company. The Loeb production is a sort of live theatrical touchstone for Wagner's effectiveness--the best scenes in the Ring come off best here, and the worst are cut to ribbons or ridiculed beyond recognition...
...miniseries To Kill a Cop); Claude Akins is a smalltown Southern sheriff in the same network's The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo (a spin-off of B.J. and the Bear). ABC's Hart to Hart stars a jet-set husband-wife sleuthing team (Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers). In CBS's Big Shamus, Little Shamus, father and son (Brian Dennehy and Doug McKeon) become the first TV detectives to police Atlantic City's new casinos. For audiences who take crime lightly, ABC has a sitcom called Detective School. NBC is unveiling a James Bond clone (Robert...
...sheer noise," but his popularity endured long after the demise of swing. He helped introduce Afro-Cuban rhythms to U.S. pop, invented the mellophonium, a trumpet-French horn hybrid, and wed classical music with jazz both in his own dissonant compositions (Artistry in Rhythm) and in unorthodox interpretations of Wagner and Ravel...