Robert Lepage’s brilliant production of the Ring was revived at the Metropolitan Opera this Spring and Mr. Lepage has had the last laugh. The run was sold out, the “machine” came to life, the singers were sensational, and it was an almost unadulterated triumph...
Those of us who remember attending performances of Birgit Nilsson sometimes wonder whether we are living in a delusion – falling into our grandfathers’ habitual complaints that, when we were young, the singers were so much better, the cheese more tasty, winters crisper, and walking to school was uphill both ways...
Lyric Opera of Chicago is building a theatrically exciting, musically impressive Ring Cycle. The addition of Siegfried in November 3, 2018, confirms the persistence of creative vision and the assuredness with which the project has been planned and executed, and makes one eager of the full Cycles in April 2020. Without any sense of either comparing or competing, I don’t think there has been, or...
In London last June, walking back from Quaker Meeting at Friends House on Euston Road, a lovely Sunday afternoon was made even lovelier by the discovery of Judd Books, on Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury. There, amid the used and dusty books, I found Wagner: A Case History, by Martin van Amerongen. I not only did not have this 1983 volume in my library; I did not even know of its existence, and at...
In the tradition of Bernard Shaw and other greats, the New York Times has advanced the cutting edge of music criticism by introducing a new form – the unnamed photo-caption review of a performance yet to take place. The critic didn’t like it. In the issue of Sunday, September 16, 2018, the Times included an […]
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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