Harry Davis wrote:

>My travels took me from Rienzi through Meistersinger, excepting only
>Parsifal because I couldn't avoid retching over the plot and characters.

I've never had any problem with Parsifal, the plot is essentially the same
as in all his other operas....

>...  As for the Ring, it's a wandering and inconsistent juvenile fantasy,
>laden (as are other Wagner works) with heavy personal baggage related to
>incest and betrayal.

Don't we all carry some personal baggage? Great artists can use personal
experiences and put these into meaningful context.

>When I read recent scholarly examinations of this chap, his time, and his
>operas, and listened to/learned the music and followed the librettos, I
>reinforced the assessment that he was a complete and irredeemable ass, an
>egotistical nut, a psychological mess, a vile and destructive personality.
>It isn't the case of Wagner having spawned Hitler and he didn't cause the
>holocaust, which comments seem to be common.  Wagner was one of the larger
>and more flaming jerks on the globe.  For me that's quite enough to drop
>him.

There have been many artists/jerks on this planet.  Wagner just happens
to be the most famous.  Wagner was always short of money and he wanted to
be famous.  I guess he detested people who were successful, like Meyerbeer,
and he happened to be a jew.  Maybe he owed money to Jews as well.  As you
say, he was probably a psychlogical mess.  All he cared about was his music
and himself (in that order, I guess).  Such a narrow prespective isn't
healthy, to say the least.  Being a Lisztian, I know how Wagner behaved
against Liszt, and how much Wagner owes to Liszt (artistically and of
course financally).  If I take all that into account, I shouldn't enjoy
Wagner's music.  But as a matter of fact I do.

Wagner was probably almost human in private.  His music reflects part of
his personality.  If you can write such wonderful music, you can't be all
that bad.

Stirling S Newberry wrote:

>One kind of person exists through the stream of art - whether it is
>reading, painting or music.  They experience themselves only in and as
>a reader or listener.  Such people give themselves wholly over to teh
>art they take in, and have the most urgent desire to speak about that
>experience.  This because their self existed while and through reading or
>listening, and hence the more intently they read or listened, the more they
>experienced that word called "I".  TO talk about that experience is to talk
>about themselves.  To attack an artwork they love is to attack their sense
>of self, and is replied to much in the kind of a personal insult.  To love
>an artwork they abhor is to offend their personal sense of aesthetic.  The
>purpose of art is the self, and the expression of self.

I think that this would fit very nicely as a description of Wagner as
well.....just replace "reader or listener" with "artist".

Mikael
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