From the Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (Laird M. Easton, ed., Knopf 2011), pp. 504-05: Berlin, February 7, 1911. Tuesday. Lunch at Frau von Rath’s with Siegfried Wagner, the Hills (the American ambassador and his wife), the painter Zorn, and Fraülein von Olfers. Siegfried brought up The Rosenkavalier, the poverty of its thematic inventiveness. He […]
I was interested in Terry Quinn’s book, Richard Wagner: The Lighter Side because of its title. It was intriguing to think that a biography or study might be assembled using Wagner’s humane, even funny, personality – his quirkiness, his climbing trees or standing on his head, his affection for his dogs and his devotion to […]
A special issue of The Wagner Journal comprises, in its entirety, Emma Warner’s new translation of Wagner’s essay “The Artwork of the Future.” It is eye-opening, even riveting, and as important a piece of writing on topics Wagnerian as I have read since Magee’s Tristan Chord. My own past efforts at reading Wagner’s prose have […]
I have a special relationship to Daniel Barenboim’s music-making. It was Barenboim’s ka-jillion-LP set from which I learned the Beethoven piano sonatas in 1972 or so. It was Barenboim who conducted Tristan in my first visit to Bayreuth in 1981. It was Barenboim who was at the podium for the Harry Kupfer Ring, and who continued […]
The London Review of Books features in its 11 April 2013 issue a musing by Nicholas Spice titled “Is Wagner bad for us?” The breadth of Spice’s inquiries prohibits useful capsulization here, but an early passage of the article is so trenchant that I hoped readers would find it stimulating. The question posed was “about […]
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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