phantasmagoria (ˌ)fan-ˌtaz-mə-ˈgȯr-ē-ə noun
: a constantly changing medley of real or imagined images (as in a dream)
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The word phantasmagoria has appeared in 11 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Jan. 3 in “Method to the Madness: Peter Mattei on Becoming Wozzeck” by Michael Cooper:
It was a few days before the opening of Berg’s nightmarish “Wozzeck,” and a rehearsal had just ended on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. As the crew began disassembling the set around him, Peter Mattei, the acclaimed baritone singing the title role for the first time, stayed onstage, negotiating his dying gesture with the director, the artist William Kentridge.
…. It is a challenge for any singer to navigate Berg’s modernist score, which requires both lyrical beauty and haunted Sprechstimme, or sung speech. But Mr. Kentridge’s production — essentially a huge immersive art installation as well as a work of theater — needs a star who can hold the stage amid a phantasmagoria of projections evoking the horrors of World War I.
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