jools at the opera

[A Cousin]

For me, Wagner's music is best described by Rossini when he said that "Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour."

I think that binkie has hit the political implications on the head - as usual. (Very well stated!) I think the specific choice to use The Walkyrie is interesting as well. There is a helluva lot going on there. I am dredging this up from many moons ago, but first, some back story.

I like to think that Wagner's most popular operas fall into 3 periods. (There is an earlier period but I'll just conveniently recitative past those. Few bother to produce them - Wagner and his descendants included!)

The first is his Dresden period in which he wrote Der Fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser,and Lohengrin. These three operas (my personal favorites of his) are of a more traditional operatic nature. Wagner himself pretty much disowned them just as he was exiled from Dresden for revolutionary activity with the Socialist wing.

Period two and three I like to call BS (before Schopenhauer) and AS (after Schopenhauer.) (*vague puns intended*) Die Walkyrie lands at the tail end of the BS period and is generally considered that opera the best balances the Composer's own theoretical principles of Drama and Opera. Simply put, music is of secondary importance to the elements of drama. His idea was to hit the spectators in the emotional gut, as it were. He succeeds with Jools. Not so much with Harry.

Then Wagner became aware of Schopenhauer and it all went to hell in a hand basket from there as it all descends into an over blown sense of musical importance. Even Neitzsche turned on him after The Ring because he thought Wagner was pandering politically and religiously to the new government. Jools:Harry::Wagner:Neitzsche, if you will. (Not overall, philosophically speaking, just in the pandering to the government bit.)

And now I am probably spectacularly over-thinking this, too. So, binkie, I'll buy you a drink some day!