By John Conklin
The MERRY WIDOW waltz is...
...played everywhere...in every culture...in every clime:
...here, played by the man himself, Lehár (taken from a piano roll):
...heard here in a dance hall version from 1928...one can imagine Gatsby and Daisy twirling about in a moonlit garden:
...inevitably, conceived as a ballet:
...here, as it might have been heard in a gilded ballroom on the Titanic (the sinking in 1912 of that "latest marvel of Western technology" has, in retrospect, been seen a potent augury for the "sinking" of Western culture itself two years later, in 1914):
...a lush kaleidoscope from the Lubitsch film:
...sung by the Three Tenors:
...yes, everywhere! A huge international success directly following its premiere in 1905 and forever more:
No comments:
Post a Comment