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 returning years later to seek revenge. Ensuing chaos as the avenger named “H” (for Hollander) and his men unleash violence on town folks, leading to a shocking conclusion as Senta’s mother shoots “H”[...]
Wagner Notes
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, […]
In 1967, the French composer Pierre Boulez crowned his early career as a modernist provocateur by publishing an essay entitled “Blow up the Opera Houses.” Eleven years later, he conducted […]
The announcement of a new production of the Ring cycle at Opéra National de Paris was greeted with much excitement in early 2019. Tickets went on sale shortly afterwards, and Wagnerians […]
This is a remarkable book. Alex Ross has written what is arguably the most wide-ranging, intellectually comprehensive, entertaining, and thoroughly useful volumes ever produced on Wagner. Let us dispense at […]