We note the death of Robert Bailey, scholar, teacher, lecturer and mentor to many. His studies of Tristan sketches and his critical score of the Prelude and Liebestod are definitive, and his impact on his students enormous. His teaching positions included Princeton, Yale, Eastman, NYU, Tulane, Berkeley and Juilliard. His lecture a few years ago at the Wagner […]
Tom Artin, of Sparkill, NY, has been kind enough to send me a copy of his book The Wagner Complex: Genesis and Meaning of The Ring (Free Scholar Press 2012). It is an interpretation of the characters and action of the Ring through a Freudian lens, and it has been an interesting though challenging read. I became prejudiced and close-minded […]
Two recent and independent events – Peter Gelb’s misguided and short-lived effort to muzzle bad reviews in the house organ Opera News and the cancellation of an announced concert of Wagner’s music at Tel Aviv – have raised principles that ought to be separate, but are too often conflated. Let’s distinguish “managing an international arts organization” […]
Unlike others, I have waited to form my overall assessment of the new Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera until I actually saw it. The Cycle is an entirely different experience from each separate installment (remember Wagner furiously refusing to cooperate with Ludwig’s premieres of Rheingold and Walküre in Munich?), though that didn’t stop Alex Ross and others from condemning...
In his 2010 book Wagner and the Erotic Impulse, Oxford Professor Laurence Dreyfus discusses a topic dear to many a Wagnerian, but seldom discussed — Wagner’s overt treatment of sexual longing and the sexual act. The book is aimed at those who, in college, played the Act II duet in Tristan to their roommates as a depiction of […]
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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