Jeannie Williams is a crackerjack thinker, a hardworking writer, and an indefatigable proponent of things operatic and, particularly, Wagnerian. Jeannie kindly allowed me to share her informal report on a recent presentation by New Yorker music critic Alex Ross:
The re-entry of a particular theme at the end of Götterdämmerung — heard only once before, in Act III of Die Walküre — has moved listeners and puzzled analysts since 1876. The entire Ring Cycle closes with this theme, in D-flat (the same key as Wotan’s greeting Vahalla in Das Rheingold). Early commentators labeled it […]
In his book, Wagner’s Ring: A Listener’s Companion & Concordance, J.K. Holman attaches an Appendix that stands as tribute to our inexhaustible admiration for Wagner’s storytelling through music. Holman follows a single motif from its first appearance in the first scene of Rheingold through the entire Ring, to its final appearance in the final scene of the […]
Jeongwon Joe and Sander L. Gilman have edited a 475-page tome on Wagner & Cinema, a bushel-basket of essays by a host of contributors on topics so wide-ranging that there’s guaranteed to be something to stimulate (and to something to bore) you. There’s stuff on Fritz Lang but also on Mildred Pierce. Discussions of Nazism […]
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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