While visiting a used book store in Chapel Hill, NC, a while ago I came across a slim biography and musical introduction titled Wagner, by Robert L. Jacobs. The copyright dates are 1935 and 1965, and it was published as part of a “Master Musicians” series by J.M. Dent in London and Farrar, Straus and […]
The worst thing a writer on the arts can do is to discuss a work he has not seen. I once lambasted the excellent critic for the New Yorker, Alex Ross, for writing about the staging of the Metropolitan Opera’s Ring Cycle when he had seen each of the works but not the Cycle itself. […]
Evan Baker’s book From the Score to the Stage: An Illustrated History of Continental Opera Production and Staging (Univ. Chicago Press 2013) is the best study of its kind: scholarly, entertaining, and comprehensive in its grasp of this wonderful subject. Baker seems infused with enthusiasm for the topic, lingering deliciously on such topics as early […]
A subscriber writes: The good news is that the Budapest Ring was a staged performance over four consecutive days with (some) outstanding singers and a fine orchestra, performed in a modern, comfortable and acoustically fine venue, the Bela Bartok National Concert Hall. This format does not lend itself to any significant interpretative direction: no updating […]
Comes the news this morning that the Metropolitan Opera has cancelled its HD simulcast of John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer on the ground that it may offend some viewers, or be used by anti-Semites to do so. Peter Gelb, the Met’s General Manager, is quoted: “I’m convinced that the opera is not anti-semitic, but […]
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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