Alexis could be seen offering Krystle $1 million to leave Denver in the 1982-83 season finale episode of the TV series 'Dynasty'. Some 23 million of the nearly 84 million TV households in the U.S. were counted watching Krystle deciding what to do. Alexis' indecent proposal amounted to over 10 times Blake and Krystle's $100,000 premarital agreement. 'Dynasty' finished that April 1983 week the highest rated program on television, compared to the 'CBS News Report: Nuclear Arm Debate' which was ranked at number 72.
Krystle (incredulous): Money – your leitmotif in life. How's that for an ex-stenographer?
Alexis (looking down her nose at Krystle): Charming. Erudite. So Wagnerian. And so surprising.
In the old democracy of art, German composer Richard Wagner (also known as Wagnerian) was a phenomenon of the musical world. In his time (born 1813 in Liepzig; died 1883 in Venice), Donal Henahan of 'Wilmington Morning Star' observed in 1983, "is not so much an artist in the traditional sense as a prophet of a religion whose sole object of veneration is himself. He draws you into his temple with his music and then tries to bind you to him with the chains of a philosophy that is a repellent mixture of hate and love, sensuality and chastity, Christianity and diabolism. At every step of the way, he makes his personal problems stand for universal truths."
Aaron Spelling believed, "Every recession needs an escape. We felt that in times of recession, people liked to get away from their mundane lives." Eileen ("Mike") Pollock added, "Soap opera gives people something to gossip about without hurting anybody." Esther Shapiro expressed, "We're forgetting that television...is (about) the art of storytelling. When you're a writer you're writing your fantasies. You've got your little doll house. But we became producers because we wanted control."
Linda Evans concurred, "I think the main element of our appeal is good writing and continuing drama. They found out that, in the evening, people will loyally follow a drama that goes on from week to week. They want to see you go through your problems. People like to watch people grow. In these shows a lot of problems are solved. Everyone is always interested in seeing how someone else handles a crisis and develops the strength to face the next one. You can learn from it, even though it's escapism."
Aaron acknowledged, "If I could have Emmys or a 38% audience share for my shows – I don't want to be gross, but I'd rather have the 38 share." Esther had told the Associated Press the 'Dynasty' writers "are dramatists constantly looking for conflict in the characters. Unpredictability is the key. (When Krystle married Blake) she moved from nothing to $7000-a-month electric bills. She has to cope with money, a new problem for her. Writing about that takes a fantasy perspective. If you're reality bound, you'll have problems with this kind of writing."
In his article for 'The Wall Street Journal' in 1999, Lawrence Ingrassia made the point, "The world has always been populated by the fabulously rich: from Machmud of Ghazni to the Medicis, from Rhodes to Rockefeller, from Kublai Khan to Carnegie, from Arkwright to Astor, from Henry VIII to Phillip II. They amassed their fortunes in different centuries, in all regions of the world and from an astonishing array of goods and services: gold and silver, of course, but also kingfisher feathers, silk, spices, embezzlement, taxation, slave trading, money lending, cotton spinning, furs, timber, diamonds, railroads, steel, oil, shipping and computer software. It's also remarkable, with the perspective of 1000 years, how fleeting wealth can be. The rich don't always get richer. Some get a lot poorer, while some of the poor get a lot richer."
At the height of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, he was said to have loved the Teutonic mythology of the Rhinegold, a 4-part cycle of operas called 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' or 'The Ring of the Niblungs', described as "an epic involving love and greed and Teutonic gods and goddesses, a tangled tale about the theft of a magic ring and the disasters of all who pursue it."
Richard Wagner's great-grandson, the musicologist Gottfried Wagner told the Associated Press in 1990, "He felt that men have to choose between love and destruction. He hoped that future generations would learn from the mistakes of the past and opt for love, not destruction." Back in 1969, Jean Sharp of 'The Herald Tribune' reported, "Richard Wagner was a dedicated artist who made no concessions to the public taste. His dream was to achieve for opera something of the grandeur of Greek tragedy. He became a fanatic on the subject, a reformer who soon lost the favor of a court that thought of opera as an amusement.
"Actress Minna Planer loved her social life in Dresden (in Germany) and the special position she held as wife of a successful composer. She had no patience with Wagner's radical ideas and his dreams of revolution. At this time (around 1840) he wrote in a Dresden Journal: 'The present order is inimical (hostile) to the destiny and rights of man. The old world is crumbling to ruin. A new world will be born from it!' Wagner was right.
"The revolution broke out in Dresden in 1849 and the king and court fled. As the King of Prussia crushed the insurrection, Wagner fled to his friend Liszt at Weimar and Liszt helped him to get across the border into Switzerland." Richard Wagner was 50 when "Ludwig II ascended the throne of Bavaria. He commissioned Wagner to complete 'The Ring' and a theater was planned to present the 4 operas which eventually became the 'Festspielhaus' in (the Franconian town of) Bayreuth."
Friedrich Nietzsche and Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky did not take kindly to the Germanic opera. Joseph Machlis recounted, "The Wagnerian gospel spread across Europe, a new art-religion, Wagner societies throughout the world gathered funds to raise the temple at Bayreuth. The radical of 1848 found himself, after the Franco-Prussian War, the national artist of Bismarck's German Empire. 'The Ring' cycle was completed 26 years after Wagner had begun it, and the 4 dramas were presented to worshipful audiences at the first Bayreuth Festival in (August) 1876."
In July 1976, Associated Press reported, "After a century of family control, the festival opera house, the composer's archives and his Villa Wahnfried – Illusion's Rest – have been purchased for $4.8 million by a public foundation created in 1973 with local, Bavarian state and federal funds." In its Bayreuth centennial piece, the German news magazine 'Der Spiegel' remarked, "After a century in which Bayreuth has forfeited its central role as Wagnerian auditorium, the firm of Wagner and Co., internally divided as it is, would disappear from management (an outsider would replace Richard Wagner's grandson, composer Wolfgang Wagner when he stepped down). This no longer would be a shame. From the artistic standpoint, 100 years of Bayreuth are quite enough."
Richard Wagner's final opera was 'Parsifal', based on the legend of the Holy Grail.
In his article for 'The Wall Street Journal' in 1999, Lawrence Ingrassia made the point, "The world has always been populated by the fabulously rich: from Machmud of Ghazni to the Medicis, from Rhodes to Rockefeller, from Kublai Khan to Carnegie, from Arkwright to Astor, from Henry VIII to Phillip II. They amassed their fortunes in different centuries, in all regions of the world and from an astonishing array of goods and services: gold and silver, of course, but also kingfisher feathers, silk, spices, embezzlement, taxation, slave trading, money lending, cotton spinning, furs, timber, diamonds, railroads, steel, oil, shipping and computer software. It's also remarkable, with the perspective of 1000 years, how fleeting wealth can be. The rich don't always get richer. Some get a lot poorer, while some of the poor get a lot richer."
At the height of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, he was said to have loved the Teutonic mythology of the Rhinegold, a 4-part cycle of operas called 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' or 'The Ring of the Niblungs', described as "an epic involving love and greed and Teutonic gods and goddesses, a tangled tale about the theft of a magic ring and the disasters of all who pursue it."
Richard Wagner's great-grandson, the musicologist Gottfried Wagner told the Associated Press in 1990, "He felt that men have to choose between love and destruction. He hoped that future generations would learn from the mistakes of the past and opt for love, not destruction." Back in 1969, Jean Sharp of 'The Herald Tribune' reported, "Richard Wagner was a dedicated artist who made no concessions to the public taste. His dream was to achieve for opera something of the grandeur of Greek tragedy. He became a fanatic on the subject, a reformer who soon lost the favor of a court that thought of opera as an amusement.
"Actress Minna Planer loved her social life in Dresden (in Germany) and the special position she held as wife of a successful composer. She had no patience with Wagner's radical ideas and his dreams of revolution. At this time (around 1840) he wrote in a Dresden Journal: 'The present order is inimical (hostile) to the destiny and rights of man. The old world is crumbling to ruin. A new world will be born from it!' Wagner was right.
"The revolution broke out in Dresden in 1849 and the king and court fled. As the King of Prussia crushed the insurrection, Wagner fled to his friend Liszt at Weimar and Liszt helped him to get across the border into Switzerland." Richard Wagner was 50 when "Ludwig II ascended the throne of Bavaria. He commissioned Wagner to complete 'The Ring' and a theater was planned to present the 4 operas which eventually became the 'Festspielhaus' in (the Franconian town of) Bayreuth."
Friedrich Nietzsche and Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky did not take kindly to the Germanic opera. Joseph Machlis recounted, "The Wagnerian gospel spread across Europe, a new art-religion, Wagner societies throughout the world gathered funds to raise the temple at Bayreuth. The radical of 1848 found himself, after the Franco-Prussian War, the national artist of Bismarck's German Empire. 'The Ring' cycle was completed 26 years after Wagner had begun it, and the 4 dramas were presented to worshipful audiences at the first Bayreuth Festival in (August) 1876."
In July 1976, Associated Press reported, "After a century of family control, the festival opera house, the composer's archives and his Villa Wahnfried – Illusion's Rest – have been purchased for $4.8 million by a public foundation created in 1973 with local, Bavarian state and federal funds." In its Bayreuth centennial piece, the German news magazine 'Der Spiegel' remarked, "After a century in which Bayreuth has forfeited its central role as Wagnerian auditorium, the firm of Wagner and Co., internally divided as it is, would disappear from management (an outsider would replace Richard Wagner's grandson, composer Wolfgang Wagner when he stepped down). This no longer would be a shame. From the artistic standpoint, 100 years of Bayreuth are quite enough."
Richard Wagner's final opera was 'Parsifal', based on the legend of the Holy Grail.
