Which Hunts I guess they didn’t check their sources adequately. Should the SPLC website be labeled “combustible”? Someday SPLC may appear on its own map, but through no motive of its own. Continue reading “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
And Yet Another List, Alas Another List! Mikado: Another of the Infinite Variations on a Classic Of Your Liszt!! Update August 28, 2917. I apologize that the Kimberly Strassel WSJ article may now require some of you to log in. At the time I read it, it was easily accessible, and you still may be able to access it through a googling to a third-party news aggregator. Suffice it to say that the article raises some very interesting questions about the Southern Policy Law Center (SPLC), a “non-profit” organization. The SPLC research is widely cited by those to the “left … Continue reading Another Little Liszt, Another Little Liszt!
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” Bob Dylan, Subterannean Homesick Blues Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods) There are so many productions of the Ring some of which, post-WWII, were so spare in scenery as to be almost totally concert versions. These mostly occurred at the Bayreuth Festival, a likely result of WWII and all of its implications for things German. Then there are some Ring productions which are tailor made to an ideology, i.e., Boulez/Chereau’s 1980 Bayreuth production which played on the major conflict between the gods and the humans as one between … Continue reading Taking the God’s Name in Vane!
In Wagner’s Ring Cycle he really did create a world, several worlds in fact. Here is a good genealogy about the family tree. Continue reading You Won’t Find This on Ancestry.Com
Erda: “My sleep is dreaming; my dreaming, brooding, my brooding brings all my wisdom.” The third opera in the Ring cycle is Siegfried. In 1856, Wagner prepared concurrently two drafts, a complete draft in pencil and a version in ink in which he worked out details of instrumentation and vocal line. The composition of Acts 1 and 2 was completed by August 1857. But Wagner had reached an “artistic” roadblock and left off work on Siegfried to write the operas Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger. Wagner did not resume work on Siegfried until 1869, twelve years later, when he … Continue reading Forest Murmurs & Wotan’s Desperation
The Fat Lady Sleeps There are few YouTube recordings of this final scene with English subtitles. This one, a concert version, done at the BBC Proms (Albert Hall) by Italian Wagnerian Antonio Pappano and Bryn Terfel as Wotan (Brunnhilde is on stage) captures the beauty of the music and the wonder of the lyrics (written by Wagner himself. Most operas had a duo teaming up to write music and libretto. Wagner was unique in that he did ALL of his libretti. While many may not think his lyrics are as poetic as many poets who were called into such service, they are nonetheless … Continue reading Wotan’s Farewell Die Walküre Act III
“Nicht sehre dich Sorge um mich” Die Walküre, Act III, involving Brünnhilde and Sieglinde, with the Valkyries in support. Sieglinde no longer wishes to live, knowing that Siegmund has died at the hands of her husband Hunding in a duel. But Sieglinde has also just learned from Brünnhilde that she bears the child of this very Siegmund, her brother, with whom she has slept. This child, Siegfried, is reason enough for her to go on living (although she dies in childbirth between this opera and Siegfried) as Siegfried is the last hope of saving the gods and redeeming the world (As it will turn out, is … Continue reading The Redemption of Love
