It is difficult to know how to take this book. The title suggests it will be about Wagner’s theatre and the author’s name instantly catches one’s attention, as 18 years ago Yale University Press published his Wagner and the Art of the Theatre, the most comprehensive history of Wagnerian stage production in English. The only flaw of that otherwise excellent volume was its total silence on stage[...]
Wagner Notes
Parsifal: A Good Friday Play. To perform Parsifal on Easter has been and still is a tradition in many an opera house in Germany. Whereas the Bavarian State Opera in […]
How Mahler would have loved the Met Orchestra! It played with such presence, such enormous expressivity, clarity and strength that all the extremes Mahler inserted into his hard-won Fifth Symphony […]
San Francisco Opera recently presented six performances of Lohengrin (Oct. 15 – Nov. 1) that left an indelible mark on its audience. Eun Sun Kim, the company’s Music Director, ventured […]
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 […]