Last month, browsing the book stalls located outside the BFI under the Waterloo Bridge on London’s South Bank, I found a volume I had never seen before – The Ring: Anatomy of an Opera, by Stephen Fay and Roger Wood. Fay chronicles the preparation of the 1983 Bayreuth Ring production, directed by Peter Hall, conducted […]
“LEITMOTIVE” is an iPhone app by Klaus Brink. It was designed in cooperation with dajool (engineering and design), Volker Kolmetz (pianist) and Digitalspices (design elements), and is available at the App Store. Leitmotive is a digital rendition of the motifs identified by Julius Burghold in his 1910 volume, “Richard Wagner – Der Ring des Nibelingen […]
One of the many rewards of attending Francesca Zambello’s production of the “American Ring” for the second time recently in Washington, DC, is the chance to admire, and chew on, the insights that she offers. It is one thing to set the action of the Ring in the American mythological past – for example, to […]
Some music-making of a very high caliber took place at New York’s Carnegie Hall on the evening of May 26, 2016, when James Levine closed out a three-concert series by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra with selections from the Ring Cycle. The Met Orchestra has, for years, been by far the best band in New York, […]
Tomorrow I drive down to Washington to attend the Ring. It will be my 17th. My first, at age 25, was the Goodall English-language production at the Coliseum in London, in December 1975, just after I graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. I find myself as excited to hear that E-flat as I […]
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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