I'm aware that we seem to be grazing off topic, but I find Satoshi Akima's
sustained Wagnerian rhapsodies to be sorry examples of the hieratic
utterance that serves to put so many "ordinary music lovers" off opera, in
Boston or anywhere else!

He writes:

>I am afraid this is to listen to Wagner as though it were 'opera' as
>opposed to 'music drama', to use Wagner's own terms.

Even allowing for some latitude in translation, these never were his
"terms" after those convoluted early Swiss writings.  Very briefly, he
kept mum about theory after he threw over his mistily formulated (and
unoriginal) Gesamtkunstwerk ideal in favour of more conventionally
structured - and musically more subtle - works from "Tristan" onwards.
And he did this because, in the course of that long, dark musical Night
of the Soul following Act 2 of Siegfried, he was practical enough to work
out that his dramatic theory wasn't coming off in musical practise.  That's
why his use of the Leitmotif becomes, shall we say, ever more "flexible" -
the material is put to purely musical use, rather than used as a series of
cheap, referential calling cards.

>The only way to listen to mature Wagner is to listen symphonically.
>Certain sections function like expositions, others are developmental in
>character and others take over the function of a recapitulation.Vocal parts
>are like additional sections of the orchestra.  I should remind you that it
>was Wagner himself who viewed his later works as Absolute Music.

A curious and unsatisfactory conclusion.  What possible evidence is there
for it in practise, whatever the man said? If this was what he wanted, I
wonder why he bothered to build Bayreuth, that most ingeniously practical
of all opera houses?

And ... "the only way"? It looks as if - unlike the composer himself -
you'd prefer Wagner to discard his texts, singers and theatrical clothing
completely, like one of those rarefied and ludicrous 19th Century scholars
(mainly German I fear) who insisted that Shakespeare was best understood in
the study!

>However I cannot imagine anyone who has understood the Ring in its
>totality will ever be able to talk of 'delightful arias' in the work:
>that on the other hand definitely is a grave (and all too common)
>misrepresentation of the composer.

I hadn't realised it was possible to understand "The Ring" in its totality.
More specifically, 'Aria' is just Italian for what the Spanish might call
a 'romanza', the English a 'song', and the Germans a 'lied'.  It has no
special musical connotation.  What else are 'Wintersturme' in Act 1 of
Die Walkure"? the forging songs in "Siegfried"? the Rhinemaidens' song in
"Gotterdammerung"? I'm sorry if you don't find all these delightful!

>I notice Professor Chasan wants to leave coming to grips with the Ring
>to his retirement and I must admit it took me years to understand the
>philosophical (largely Schopenhauerian but also partly Hegelian), as
>well as musical-dramatic aspects of the work.  It makes most of the drama
>written for stage (of the non-musical variety) seem pretty superficial by
>comparison I'm sorry to say.

Why? Wagner's libretti, judged as pseudo-philosophical poesy, are the
laughing stock of the German literary world.  Bernard Chasan was I think
enjoying a little joke in offering to spend his retirement studying them,
and I delicately suggest that you might have been spending your own time
fruitlessly in bothering to disentangle them in depth.  I once heard the
only half-jesting Wolfgang Wagner opine that it was a pity Andrew Porter's
English translation couldn't be translated back into German, so that he
and many others could understand his Grandfather's verbiage!

And does not your intensive, forensic study of the text in isolation
undermine your earlier plea to regard Wagner's scores as "absolute music"?

>Shaw ... took grave offence to the suggestion that Wagner was more
>profound than Shakespeare, whereas in this regard I couldn't possibly agree
>more.

This, like much else in your essay, is to castigate an egg because it isn't
a hunk of cheese.  Shaw's indignation, as so often, led him to mock the
very idea of such solemn pecking orders as you propose (he was equally firm
with the Perfect Shakespearites!)

>That is why it is not enough for the music to be a mere secondary
>accompaniment to the drama, as in film music, or even its equal as
>in Verdi - for Verdi never ever did surpass the Shakespeare from
>whom he borrowed much.

More eggs and cheese.  Who says Verdi was trying to "surpass" anybody? In
the case of "Falstaff", the interesting thing is to see how Boito turned
a rollicking English farce into a sleek Italian comedy ripe for Verdi's
quicksilver music.  That's why Vaughan Williams, in the introduction to his
own surpassingly delightful "Sir John in Love", rather pointedly doesn't
refer to the Verdi at all in his survey of "Merry Wives..." operas, though
he revered it.  It's simply too far away from Shakespeare.  The same may be
said of "Otello" and even "Macbetto", paradoxically Verdi's closest
reworking of the English dramatist.

>Only Wagner achieved the total 'dissolution' of the whole cosmos into
>Absolute Music.

Here, alas, we must part company.  Wagner might have been aiming at such a
grandiose, operatic apotheosis in "Gotterdammerung" - though not as overtly
as Schreker did in "Der Ferne Klang" - or he might not, but he certainly
didn't achieve it.  If he had, we wouldn't still be here and privileged to
listen to his - and Verdi's - most delightful works.

As Shelley put it, "Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight!".
Would that the Spirit of Solemnity were equally sparing in its visits.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"