Psychoanalysts Steven H. Goldberg, M.D., and Lee Rather, Ph.D., have edited an enjoyable collection of essays under the title “Opera on the Couch: Music, Emotional Life, and Unconscious Aspects of Mind” (Routledge 2022). Three of the essays address Wagner characters: Senta, Walther and Tristan. L. Eileen Keller, Ph.D., a psychoanalyst in private practice in California, authored...
Axel Englund, Professor of Literature at Stockholm University, suggests that the core of our fascination with opera is its deviance. In his book Deviant Opera: Sex, Power & Perversion on Stage (Univ. Cal. Press 2020), Englund posits that this form of theatre is distinguishable by its deviance from expected norms: Its characters are overblown, its costumes and setting are extravagant, its...
The late philosopher Roger Scruton wrote two valuable studies of Wagner’s mature works: Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (2004) and The Ring of Truth: The Wisdom of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung (2016). At the time of his death on January 12, 2020, Scruton had completed but not published his third and final Wagner study, Wagner’s...
Most students of Wagner are aware of the work of Alfred Lorenz, who studiously (some might say tediously) argued that Wagner’s compositional techniques were recognizably in bar (AAB) or bogen (ABA) form, albeit on a mammoth scale. Many contemporary scholars consider Lorenz’ conclusions to be tortured. This conclusion is sometimes placed in context with Lorenz’ participation...
In his thin and challenging book, The Trouble with Wagner, Prof. Michael Steinberg of Brown University shares a dramaturge's perspective on the Ring Cycle -- both from his academic scrutiny and from the experience of acting in the position of dramaturge in the production of the work recently staged at La Scala and Berlin State Opera and directed by Guy Cassiers...
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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