On 12 November 1880, Cosima Wagner noted in her diaries what Richard had said about the Hermann Levi: “as a Jew—all he has to do is to learn how to die.” Having repeatedly praised the “goodness” of the conductor who had been a champion of his music and would lead the 1882 Bayreuth premiere of Parsifal, the composer appears to have been speaking about death metaphorically. Less so, however, a year later,[...]
The Met’s last new staging before 2020’s pandemic shutdown–François Girard’s Der fliegende Holländer–disappointingly staged and cast and poorly conducted by Valery Gergiev–returned to port more enjoyably for four end-of-season shows. Girard […]
A gloomy town center surrounded by orderly but claustrophobic buildings. Violence seething under the surface of respectability. A boy whose mother committed suicide after being abused by a town’s businessman […]
Forty years after reporting on my first visit to Bayreuth (see Wagner Notes Vol. IV No. 5, November 1981), this city in the time of Covid is, in many respects, […]
Despite the Covid-19 crisis, which caused the cancellation of the last two months of the Met’s 2019-2020 season, the company did manage to pull off three of eight scheduled performances […]