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,[...]
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 […]