Adophe Appia was a visionary Swiss theatre theorist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His ideas of stage space defined by light rather than by painted sets had a profound influence on Edward Gordon Craig, David Belasco and other early 20th century practitioners. But never have Appia’s theories been so triumphantly vindicated as […]
In the supplemental material to the Opus Arte DVD of Katharina Wagner’s recent Bayreuth production of Die Meistersinger, she relates: When my father asked if I were interested in directing it here, I asked myself as I would with any work anywhere: “Does it have a story I’m interested in telling?” It would appear that […]
In his book, Wagner’s Ring: A Listener’s Companion & Concordance, J.K. Holman attaches an Appendix that stands as tribute to our inexhaustible admiration for Wagner’s storytelling through music. Holman follows a single motif from its first appearance in the first scene of Rheingold through the entire Ring, to its final appearance in the final scene of the […]
In a recent trip to my absolutely favorite second-hand bookstore, I came across a 1948 volume titled Esoteric Music Based on the Musical Seership of Richard Wagner, by Corinne Heline. Reading it has been a delight, and an eye-opener.
Jeongwon Joe and Sander L. Gilman have edited a 475-page tome on Wagner & Cinema, a bushel-basket of essays by a host of contributors on topics so wide-ranging that there’s guaranteed to be something to stimulate (and to something to bore) you. There’s stuff on Fritz Lang but also on Mildred Pierce. Discussions of Nazism […]
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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