Retired British family physician Paul Dawson-Bowling has written a splendid second and enlarged edition of his 2013 volume, Wagner: The Complete Experience and Its Meaning to Us. I intend taking it with me to the Wagner 22 festival at the Leipzig Opera later this month. Before extolling its virtues, I owe Dr. Dawson-Bowling a sincere apology. Readers of this blog may be aware that I am a...
Trilogy, An Opera Company is in the midst of building a Ring Cycle in a TV studio located on the fourth floor of Express Network, a converted department store near the campus of Rutgers University in Newark. It’s great! Trilogy is a performing arts company that “focuses on the works of Black composers and subject matter relative to the Black experience.” It is devoted to...
Forty years after reporting on my first visit to Bayreuth, the city in the time of Covid is, in many respects, eerie. Familiar shops and restaurants have gone out of business from the cancellation of last year’s Festival, and the reduction of this year’s visitors by half meant an unsettling lack of queues. From the yellowing paper in the window of the closed wine store Süsse Quelle on the...
In the (excellent) issue of The New Yorker Magazine dated January 18, 2021, music critic Alex Ross reports on an experiential encounter with Wagner that was provided by artist David Hockney. Ross got his hands on an auto route that Hockney had laid out, accompanied by segments from Wagner’s works that Hockney had selected, sequenced, timed and “curated.” The route began at the...
The Wagner Society of New York recently offered a pay-for-view Masterclass conducted by renowned American heldentenor Stephen Gould. Now that film is available for free on the Society’s channel on YouTube and it is unmissable. Perhaps his generation’s Siegfried, Gould works with three young artists (themselves of phenomenal talent and skill) to assist with the interpretation and...
The Wagner Blog is a forum for discussion of contemporary themes arising from the works of Richard Wagner. Discussions relating to Wagner’s musical, literary, theatrical, philosophical, political and theoretic work are all appropriate for this forum.
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