TagLiebesverbot

Wagner approached Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure intending, at the outset, to “take the seriousness out of it.”  This is like adapting Hamlet but skipping the part about the Dad’s murder.  The result is fundamentally flawed unless you forget the Shakespeare entirely and take Das Liebesverbot on its own terms.  Once that adjustment is made, it becomes interesting and, as evidence of Wagner’s...