Word: wagnerians
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Metropolitan Opera's Impresario Rudolf Bing, there was no Manhattan crag out of the range of two of grand opera's most massive voices. Wagnerian Tenor Lauritz Melchior, on his way to a singing job in a Las Vegas hotel, updated an old quarrel with Bing (they'had parted company in 1950) by taking him to task for staging opera in English translations. "That is all right for the lesser companies, but the Met should present opera in its greatest form, and that is in the original languages. Besides, you can't understand the words, even...
...trademark. It was put together, according to one board member, "like a jigsaw puzzle." First the big-name singers were collected, then the repertory was fitted together to fill 22 evenings. Basso Rossi-Lemeni's commanding presence made it possible to schedule Mefistofele, Boris Godunov and Don Giovanni. Wagnerian Soprano Gertrude Grob-Prandl and Tenor Ludwig Suthaus were imported from Germany to do Tristan and Isolde and Die Walküre. At week's end, Italian Coloratura Contralto Giulietta Simionato and Tenor Cesare Valletti drew ovations in Massenet's rarely heard Werther. German Soprano Inge Borkh...
...Wagnerian Soprano Helen Traubel, rising to the bait of $7,500, warmed up for a week's work at Chicago's Chez Paree, her debut in any such emporium of liquor and lowbrow music. "There will be no Wagner," she promised. "This will be nothing but fun . . ." Her big number: a take-off on Jimmy Durante and Eddie Jackson mangling that sweet old song Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey...
Died. Friedrich Schorr, 64, famed Wagnerian baritone of the Metropolitan Opera (1923-43); of cancer; in Farmington, Conn. Hungarian-born son of a Jewish cantor, he first studied law in Vienna eventually joined a barnstorming Wagnerian troupe, and after one season in the U.S., was signed up by the Met. Best-known for his memorable Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger and Wotan in Die Walüre, Baritone Schorr shut himself up for hours before singing a new role, to master every histrionic detail...
...sympathetic audience, a French-horn player is often the object of grave solicitude. Even the best of them sometimes lip up confidently for a Wagnerian horn call only to burble or clonk out a sound like a moose cough. One man who rarely burbles or clonks on the most unpredictable of orchestra instruments is England's Dennis Brain. At 32, Brain (no kin to Winston Churchill's physician -see FOREIGN NEWS) is Britain's best horn player, and last week he showed off his skill in one of the rare pieces written for horn...