Sacre du Printemps (Solution No. 3,273)

Look below the fold for the solution and annotation to this week's puzzle.

The weekend's entertainment included a Philadelphia Orchestra concert featuring works premiered in America under Leopold Stokowski.  The concert begin with one of Stokie's own works: the orchestration of Bach's Passacaglia and Fuge in C minor: a huge organ work Stokowski made even bigger.  Despite it being the introductory work on the program, the playing (and conducting) was excellent, with the kind of precision that makes Bach so attractive to those of us of a puzzling bent.  In the program notes, I learned that a passacaglia could be analogized to an anagram, for your obligatory crossword content.  Work two was Ravel's G major piano concerto, featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet.  It's a jazzy work, freer and airier in feel than most concertos.  Together the two works foreshadow where American music would go in the middle of the 20th century: film scores and other bold yet accessible works.

Stravinsky might have been thinking the same way when he composed his third ballet, The Rite of Spring.  Definitely bold and avant-garde, it caused a good deal of controversy when it was premiered in Paris a century ago.  As I was listening (and watching, as the Ridge Theater Company performed a dance/film mashup with the orchestra's accompaniment), I pondered the question of whether the controversies over Super Bowl halftime shows are today's equivalent to the 1913 outrage over Nijinksy's staging and the earthy sentiments it was supposed to evoke.  I'd be more sympathetic to the Beyoncés of the world if they could articulate an artistic motivation other than just making making older people cringe.

The orchestra and its artists found a way to capture some of the atmosphere of that premiere without alienating three-fourths of the audience.  Act I, The Adoration of The Earth, was accompanied by circus artist Anna Kichtchenko (see picture above) performing on an "aerial tissu loop."  The performance required awesome physical strength and an equal amount of nerve, to hang from a fabric trapeze 20 feet above the stage.  More than a few in the audience including Inquirer critic David Patrick Stearns, were distracted by the seeming danger, but I saw pretty quickly how Kichtchenko secured herself with loops of the fabric and could appreciate the athleticism.  It took Daniel Matzukawa's bassoon solo to get our attention back on the music.  Act II, The Sacrifice (meaning human sacrifice), may have been the part that stirred things most in 1913, but here it was more conventional modern dance, accompanied by visual images of flowers and plants contrasting to the snowy scenes of Act I.

No controversy in this week's The Nation cryptic, unless you think inverted clues like 29a are unfair.  I got through the top of the puzzle very easily, and then ran into difficulty at the bottom.  But I eventually got it, so your solution and annotation is below the fold.

Legend: "*" anagram; "~" sounds like; "<" letters reversed; "( )" letters inserted; "_" or lower case: letters deleted; "†" explicit in the clue, “^” first or last letter or letters, “{“ relocated letter or letters, “¶“ letter bank

Across

1a	REV | ITALIZATION	REV (“accelerate”) + ITALIZATION (“translation into a Romance language”)
10a	*NOODLES	*OLD ONES  (anagram indicated by “upsetting”)
11a	ANTONY | M	ANTONY (“Roman general”) + M (“Roman numeral)
12a	~HOMUNCULI	~HO MONK YOU LIE  (homonym indicated by “exclaimed”)
13a	*LEAPT	*PLATE (anagram indicated by “broken”)
14a	~SARI	~SORRY (homonym indicated by “express”)
15a	<AT< | TEMPTING	<TA< (“thanks,” reversal indicated by “return”) + TEMPTING (“seductive”)
18a	PRECARIOUS	Pun on “caries” (cavities)
21a	W N B A	^W^ill ^N^ot ^B^e ^A^llowing (initials indicated by “starters”)
24a	*PAEAN	*APNEA (anagram indicated by “cure”)
26a	*RETRIEVER	*RIVER TREE  (anagram indicated by “confused”)
27a	I | *NV(I)TEE	I (“first”) + *EVENT  (anagram indicated by “organized”) containing (“featuring”) I (“me as subject”)
28a	IM(PET)US	I’M US (“I’m American”) containing (“having internalized”) PET (“animal”)
29a	SWITCHING GEARS	Inverted clue: GEARS is an anagram (“is changing”) of SARGE

Down

2d	*E COM | MERCE	*COME  (anagram indicated by “apart”) + MERCE (“Cunningham”, choreographer)
3d	IS | L | AND	IS (“lives”) + ^L^anai (first letter indicated by “tip”) + AND (†)
4d	~ASSAULT	~A SALT (“a sailor”, homonym indicated by “in the ear”)
5d	*IMAGINE	*ENIGMA (anagram indicated by “devious”)
6d	ANT | ELOPE	ANT (“insect”) + ELOPE (“run off together”)
7d	_ION I A_	reg_ION I  A_ssume (hidden word indicated by “part of”)
8d	<NAME TAG<	<GATE MAN<  (doorkeeper, reversal indicated by “brought up”)
9d	_INCHES	f_INCHES (birds, omission of first letter indicated by “cut the head off”)
16d	INN | OVA | <TOR<	EGGS (“ova”) + <ROT< (“go bad,” reversal indicated by “flipped”), following (“under”) INN (“hotel”)
17d	MAG(NET)IC	MAGIC (“Orlando team”) containing (“surrounding”) NET (“goal”)
18d	POP | PIES	POP (†) + PIES (“tarts”) Poppies are a source of opiate drugs
19d	*ISRA | ELI	*SARI (cross reference to 14a, anagram indicated by “redesign”) + ELI (“Yale student”) Thinking of the Sondheim project, in 1968, you could assume that most readers who were educated well enough to appreciate and solve cryptics would know nicknames like “Eli” and “the Little Three” (Amherst, Wesleyan, Williams)
20d	UNTY}I} | NG	UN}I}TY (“agreement”, relocation of I indicated by “with inventor’s initial at the end”) + NG (“no good”) Good clue
22d	A | CROSS	A (†) + CROSS (“hybrid”)
23d	WIMP | L | E	WIMP (“weakling”) + L (“large”) + E (“ecstacy”) A wimple is the traditional head covering worn by Catholic nuns.
25d	_ENVOI_	outspok_EN VOI_ce  (hidden word indicated by “in”)