Category Archives: The Wagner Blog

Wagner’s Boundaries (The Null Set)

The London Review of Books features in its 11 April 2013 issue a musing by Nicholas Spice titled “Is Wagner bad for us?”  The breadth of Spice’s inquiries prohibits useful capsulization here, but an early passage of the article is so trenchant that I hoped readers would find it stimulating.  The question posed was “about …

April 13, 2013 – 11:38 am | By peterp | Posted in The Wagner Blog | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

“Hee for God onely, shee for God in him”

One of the several Wagnerian whimsies that I have collected on my bookshelf is a 1931 translation by Hannah Waller of a 1912 book by Julius Kapp originally titled Richard Wagner Und Die Frauen: Eine Erotische Biographie (tempered in the American translation to The Women in Wagner’s Life).  It’s one of those confident admixtures of myth, devotion, scholarship and popular literature that …

March 25, 2013 – 6:38 pm | By peterp | Posted in The Wagner Blog | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Works of Music Made Visible

It is only by the most indirect link to the Meister that I can possibly justify this post, but those who follow its link will not regret it, I am sure. We are of course aware of Wagner’s self-imposed challenge to make visible on the stage the action of music.  Many have remarked that it was …

March 19, 2013 – 7:24 pm | By peterp | Posted in The Wagner Blog | Tagged | Comments (0)

Francois Girard’s Parsifal at the Met

Readers of this blog will know that the broad condemnations of Peter Gelb’s leadership at the Metropolitan Opera seem to me like warnings of falling asteroids — they simply don’t conform to my personal experience.  And the just-closed run of Parsifal is in keeping with this record.  It was impeccably cast, ravishingly played, movingly conducted, thrillingly …

March 12, 2013 – 6:41 pm | By peterp | Posted in The Wagner Blog | Tagged , | Comments (0)