I treat myself pretty well when it comes to attending Wagner performances. But in 2011, when I had a ticket to see Gerald Finley perform Hans Sachs at Glyndebourne, I just couldn’t afford the ticket, the flight over, the hotel, the time to do it, or even maybe the bananas and grapes during the interval. So […]
The action of The Rheingold is the reformation of a contract – that is, two parties to a contract agree to reform that contract to provide for terms different from those originally agreed upon, but nevertheless satisfactory to them both. This contract is reformed with the advice of counsel who, in trying circumstances, acts unethically. […]
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 […]
Halfway through the collection of “Legendary Performances” released by the Met this year, several surprises came to the fore. One was how poor the chorus at the Met was in the 1940s and 1950s. It was as if they dragged folks in from the street to have a go at the Pilgrim’s Chorus. Apparently the […]
My first exposure to Mozart’s delightful singspiel, Die Zauberflöte, was in 1976 when I saw the TV film by Ingmar Bergman. I was young in my Mozart appreciation development, and learned an enormous amount by Bergman’s treatment of the overture. He did it as a 7-minute long segment in which the face of a young girl […]
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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