Search Results for: wagner
Wagner and Buddhism
Scholars have long known that Wagner had a deep and lasting interest in Buddhism; less known are the specific insights garnered from Buddhism that are manifested in Parsifal. The key to understanding this connection is the enigmatic figure of Kundry. … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Opera
Richard Wagner, animal lover
In 1879 Richard Wagner joined the growing movement in Germany opposing the cruel medical practices of animal experimentation with an open letter published in the Bayreuther Blätter. His arguments for the pointlessness of these experiments were original; they followed from … Continue reading
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Filed under Animals, Curiosities, Opera
Wagner and Eros
Wagner’s obsession with sexuality prefigured the composition of operas such as Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal. Daring to represent erotic stimulation, passionate ecstasy, and the torment of sexual desire, Wagner sparked intense reactions from figures like Baudelaire, … Continue reading
Filed under Opera, Romantic era
Wagner and Darwin
Darwin’s On the origin of species and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, both completed in 1859, share an articulation of the shift from one worldview to another: from change as a repetitive circular movement to development as a cyclic process. Darwin’s … Continue reading
The opera house as architectural space
While the term “opera house”, as a designation of a specific architecturally and institutionally consolidated venue for musical theater works, differs in content rather strictly from the genre-oriented term “opera”–both terms, at least in the European and American language areas, … Continue reading
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Filed under Architecture, Opera
Grace Bumbry at Bayreuth Festspielhaus
Grace Bumbry’s appearance as the first African American singer in the role of Venus in Wagner’s Tannhäuser from 1961 through 1963 sparked fierce reactions. By the age of 23, Bumbry had created such a stir in the opera world that … Continue reading
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Filed under Black studies, Europe, Opera, Women's studies
Instant Classics: RILM’s Top 8 Reviewed Texts, 2020–21
Once again, the reviews are in! Another installment has arrived of RILM’s Instant Classics series, which chronicles and collects the books indexed in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature that have received the most reviews in academic literature. This most recent … Continue reading
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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Analysis, Classic era, Ethnomusicology, Jazz and blues, Mass media, Musicology, Opera, Opera, Politics, Popular music, Religious music, Romantic era, World music
Esoteric orchestration
Aligned with the Symbolists, Camille Mauclair considered the orchestra a transposed symbol of the emotions in nature and cited Wagner’s music as an outstanding realization of this concept. Although he was a staunch Positivist who attacked the Symbolists, Ange-Marie Auzende … Continue reading
Filed under Curiosities, Romantic era
Szymanowski and Eros
The desire to voice the artistic revelation of the truth of a precarious, multifaceted, yet integrated self lies behind much of Karol Szymanowski’s work. This self is projected through the voices of deities who speak languages of love. The unifying figure … Continue reading
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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Opera
