Word: wagnerian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Peter Hall's staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen in Bayreuth two summers ago, Wagnerites have been anticipating the San Francisco Opera's new production of the epic four-evening cycle. For although it is common knowledge in the opera world that there are not enough voices of heroic Wagnerian caliber around these days, just put on a Ring and watch the paying customers line...
...Bernhard Goetz" to almost everyone else. Another rule of the language is that euphemisms for "fat" are understood too quickly by the public and are therefore in constant need of replacement. "Jolly," "Rubenesque" and the like have long been abandoned. A Washington writer scored by praising a woman's "Wagnerian good looks," which is far more polite than saying she is not bad looking for a massive Brunnhilde. The disinfecting compliment is particularly deft. As all practitioners know, a corrective lurch toward balance is the hallmark of good journalese. After all, journalism is a crucially important field that attracts high...
...performed by Philip Lasser, is elusive and singularly inappropriate in nature; it runs on incessantly, ubiquitously beneath the speech, providing less of a meaningful subtext than a distraction or, at worst, an embarrassment, as the unfortunate singers actors explode into snatches of unsingable, off-key melody. This post-Wagnerian syndrome is if anything aggravated by the nature of the text: to rhyme or not to rhyme is the crucial question that seems never to have been settled. The effect is unsettling, between intervals of approximately human speech, the characters too often lapse into agonizingly contrived couplets to our dismay...
...AGENT of this conflict, the character of Dolson is scarcely. Credible and even less like cable; with his wide-set eyes and square jaw, lvanek makes him appear almost Wagnerian in his stupidity. Presumably it is Dolson's duty, as the young idealist, the "hotheaded seminarian," to fight ceaselessly and crudely for truth, justice and the American way-sometime after his daily ten-mile run, presumably it is our duty to be charmed by the natural simplicity of his tantrums as when he a onetime bisexual, melodramatically denounces the Monsignor as a "homophobic autocral...
Birgit Nilsson knew at 63 that her time had come; in 1982 the noblest of modern Brunnhildes put away her breastplate and shield, assured of a permanent place in every Wagnerian's vocal Valhalla. Beverly Sills, the ebullient American queen of bel canto, tossed off her last Donizettian roulade in 1980. Last week another of that generation's dominant divas appeared on an opera stage for the last time: Leontyne Price ended a glittering 32-year career with a vocally stunning performance of Verdi's Aida at New York City's Metropolitan Opera that proved she can still capture...