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Musical Discussions
Topic: The weekend with Wagner

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 09-27-2008

I always had a strange thing with Wagner – I appreciate and deeply respect his music but I never liked it. It is not that do “not like it” but rather I just do not feel that Wagner’s things are the part of my sonic realization of world. As I wrote before I never was able to grasp the "Whole Rhetoric" of the Wagner’s metaphors. I read two books about Wagner, many articles, watch the operas on tape. I never attended a live production of Wagner. I did appreciate what I see in Wagner but if did not “attach” to me at personal level… I own many Wagner recordings, I was getting them because I knew that they were good (cast, conductor, event. Etc…) but I always enjoyed my Wagner records as the “fragment” – the separate arias of the artists whom a loved. The entire development of Wagner’s drama never made my awareness, even though I was trying (unsuccessfully) to invest a few times into staging the Wagner’s librettos. 

Something was changed a few days ago. I have a local friend stopped by and we were listing my FM recording of MET 2008’s broad of Die Walküre. The friend of mine is hypo-enthusiastic about Wagner, he knows Wagner well, he studied the score, he played it, each summer he spends in Bayreuth – so he know his music, even though he is not German. So, he listening the Die Walküre got “inspired” and in his very typical charismatic way of a French Artist he began to comment the opera with alone with the singer and orchestra.  I have to note that when he does it sometimes it becomes as self-contained form or art. I never saw anybody even dose it like him and I even proposed that his “live commentary” shell be preserved for prosperity and commercialized. He does it very fast and very hypo-emotional, he uses a few languages (he speaks with a very flowery French ascent) and he uses countless amounts of linguistic metaphors and symbols. What however, make him unique that he holds his “live commentary” in marvelously synchronized with the flow of the opera, with the singing, with the flow of music and with the development of drama.  Knowing that I love Bruckner but do not love Wagner he presented to me the Die Walküre’s events from a perspective of the Bruckner’s drama. It was superbly interning and very educational…

Later on before falling asleep at midnight I was thinking about the Wagner’s language and suddenly it hit me.  I suddenly was able to see the Wagner’s expressionism not as a language that is just a brilliantly composed and orchestrated attractiveness but rather as powerful metaphysical force that has own dynamic of building itself up and own way to approach and interact with reality. I never saw Wagner like this before…

I woke up, tune up the system and was listening Wagner up to 3.30AM. It was interesting – it was very different this time. Even though I did not know line-by-line words of the libretto but it had this time a different meaning, put in this way - some kind of meaning that Wagner music did not have before…

 Well, think that new Wagner time might be coming…

The Cat

Posted by Romy the Cat on 12-05-2008
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Tomorrow MET will be broadcasting Barenboim leading MET with Tristan and Isolde. It has been run for 2 weeks I has generally a good reception.

http://www.operainfo.org/

I would certainly love to see James Leven in there but it is what it is.  I like what Barenboim talk, not conducts but despite of it I have a good feeling about tomorrow and I am planning to spend a bid part of the day in my couch listing MET live. Here in Boston we have also something special that you freaks who do not live in the Bean City have no access. (beside the web podcast). After each MET live broadcast WHRB’s David Eliot runs a few hours program with the most interesting performances of the given opera over the last 100 years. In many instance the “post Met” program is more fun than the Met broadcast. 

Anyhow, it is tomorrow and it starts at 11AM in NY. I am kind of laughing seeing Californians who would like to get LIVE to start listing at 8AM. The Wagner at 8AM – it shell be really freaky!

http://www.operainfo.org/stationfinder/

The Cat

Posted by Romy the Cat on 08-07-2009
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http://intermezzo.typepad.com/intermezzo/2009/08/-g%C3%B6tterd%C3%A4mmerung-mariinsky.html

The Cat

Posted by Romy the Cat on 07-27-2019
Kitty and I are attending this weekend a Wagner Weekend event in Tanglewood. It is Die Walküre dedicated 3 days ceremony with TMCO opera rehearsal and performance, numerous meetings, dinners, lectures, talks with good Wagnerians, inching Christine Goerke, Andris Nelsons, Sue Elliott, Jane Eaglen, Jeffrey Swann, Doris Goodwin, Stephen Fry. It is a lot of fun here in Tanglewood Learning Institute…

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