I’ve recently read two older Wagner books that lend insight not only into their subject topics, but into the times in which they were written. These are Wagner’s Parsifal, by Maurice Kufferath (Henry Holt 1904), and The Racial Thinking of Richard Wagner, by Leon Stein (Philosophical Library 1950). Maurice Kufferath was a Belgian music critic and later director of Théâtre de la Monnaie. In his...
If, to the playwright, all the world’s a stage, and if, to a hammer, all the world’s a nail, then to a political prisoner, all the world’s a jail. Or so it may seem from the current production of Parsifal, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, at the Vienna State Opera. The production, which was first presented in April 2021 and which I saw in April 2023, was prepared while the...
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. John 13:34 The July 14, 2022 performance of Parsifal marked not only the end of the mammoth Oper Leipzig Wagner 22 Festival, during which every stage work written by Wagner was performed in chronological order of composition; it also marked the end of Ulf Shirmer’s tenure as General...
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...
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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