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Richard Wagner Archive

GB Shaw on Wagner, "His music is much better than it sounds."

Actually, I love Wagner terribly. His secret is that he layers his music with one motif, then another, then another, with melodies intertwining, until it almost beomes too much. Often the baseline is all we can hold on to as he takes us deeper and deeper into the music. His operas were ground-breaking for being not only musically but visually complex, leading to an all-over experience that is meant to overwhelm, not deaden.

The opera for February 22, 2003

Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman is a wonderfully powerful opera. Based on the legend of the ship doomed to sail the oceans without rest until Judgment Day, it's a story of love and faithfulness, and pretty much the closest to a happy opera that Wagner can get. The lovers die in the end, but then are sort of resurrected, appearing together in the clouds (unless you're seeing a cheapo version like the one I saw last year, and then you just get a change in the lights and have to let the music guide you).