Andrew Carlan wrote:

>I cannot believe intelligent people can be suckered into Wagner's music,

I'll accept Andrew's comment as rhetorical exaggeration as I deem myself
moderately intelligent and don't consider myself "suckered", to the extent
I like Wagner's music.

If Andrew dislikes it for any reason, including Wagner's character, who's
to argue!  I certainly won't.  I would, however, like to take slight issue
w/ some of his comments:

>Wagner's art is the musical counterpart of Hitler's and Mussolini's and
>(yes) the WPA megalomaniac architecture that weighs the human spirit down.
>It has no lightness, no air.

I'd suggest a few counterexamples:

Siegfried Idyl
Wesendonck Songs (especially the original piano version)
Forest Murmurs from *Siegfried*
The last act of *Siegfried*
The "Liebestod" from *Tristan*

If Andrew doesn't care for these, I suggest it's for reasons other than
absence of lightness or air.

While the above examples might be dismissed as isolated exceptions (as
Andrew does w/ *Meistersinger*), given the size of Wagner's output, the
same could be said of larger lists as well and I wanted to confine myself
to musical works or episodes that could not be faulted for illustrating
some "Wagnerian" cosmic principles which only bore us when they don't annoy
us.  Actually, I might have suggested all of *Tristan*, so long as the
listener can distance himself from its narcissistic self pity and just hear
the music which many of us find sublime.  Other operas, relatively free of
Wagnerian "philosophic" baggage might be

*Lohengrin* and *Tannhaeuser*

Of course, it's all a case of personal taste.  I share Andrew's warm
feelings for Beerhoven, but I find *Fidelio* dreadfully tedious.

>The organized noise on Wagner's stage and the gussied up Neanderthal myths
>which pass for its libretti were borrowed lock, stock and barrel by Leni
>Reifenstahl (sp?) in planning out the Nuremberg rallies.

Ah Leni!  Getting her SCUBA license as an octogenarian by lying about her
age.  Insisting (and it has never been refuted) that whe never joined the
Nazi party, unlike the likes of Karajan, Boehm, Schwarzkopf, and other
titans of the German artistic world.

I've watched *Triumph of the Will*, made in 1934 (*before* the Nuremberg
Laws of 1935), and w/ full knowledge of all that was to follow historically
I was filled w/ repugnance and abhorrence.  However, viewing the film only
from the perspective of 1934, I was struck by the total absence from the
film of any reference to anti-semitism or territorial expansion or
anticipated war.  In fact, there were express statements of hopes for
continued peace.  (German was my first language; if the other references
had been there, I'd have caught them.) It was a glorification of the ruling
party that was leading the country out of the shame of military defeat only
16 years previously, and a call to patriotism and indeed a praise of the
Germans' own ethnic diversity (barring, of course the Jews, who weren't
mentioned), i.e., Frisians, Bavarians, Pommeranians, etc.  Of course, even
in 1934, one had an intimation of what Nazism was all about and I don't
defend Leni's film.  As a propaganda film, however, it promoted no message
that couldn't have been promoted by any democratic country as well.

So far as I'm concerned, her true artistry, was demonstrated in *Olympia*
the 1936 Olympics.  (To keep this post from straying too far from the
topic of music, let me point out that it has a fine musical score by
Herbert Windt.) It depicted German triumphs and debacles (such as their
blowing the women's relay when the baton was dropped at the last exchange,
giving the victory to the Americans), and also Jesse Owens' exploits.
The choreography by camera editing of the diving competition, the bicycle
races and the marathon was simply spectacular.  It makes you embarrassed,
if nothing else has done so, to watch the TV coverage of the Olympics
in recent years.

Possibly because she did *not* get along with the Nazi establishment (she
claimed to have had a personal animosity w/ Goebbels), she never made
another film for the Germans again.  And, after the war, she was deemed
so tainted that she never had the opportunity to make a film then either.

Walter Meyer