Satoshi Akima writes:
>Next I cannot accept a primarily Rassentheorie ['race-theory'] based
>interpretation of Wagner - especially not of the Ring.
Nor can I. It is only a part of the whole.
>Jfmt: Command not found.
Quite. Amongst other things. We agree again, without any need for
continued argument.
>Any insinuation that Wagner considered the Nibelungs to be in anyway
>Jewish must therefore be considered entirely subordinate to the
Schopenhauerian meaning of the Ring.
At the risk of bringing my head once more into contact with the brick wall
- it's not an "insinuation", it's a fact. The Schopenhauerian thesis is
one of many more or less illuminating theories, but it does not and cannot
define the "meaning" of a complex four-evening opera on this scale.
>Much later (sigh) we are treated to a truly Wagnerian peroration:
>Of course he failed miserably to live up to his own ideals as most
>of us do - but they are inspiring ideals nonetheless. To fail to see
>that is to be a blind cynic who can only dwell in the stench of
>Wagner's excrements.
Hmm. Excrement, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder.
Surely, we do not have to be cynics to be wary of idealism? Things are
rarely so black and white. If it is a "smear" to examine - without
passionate hyperbole - how and to what extent the complexities of a
composer's life, thought and sexuality bear upon his operatic creations,
then most of us must plead guilty.
I'm sorry to have offended Dr Akima's hard-won certitude, in finding the
myth of Wagner the Arch-pragmatist to be much more lifelike than that of
Wagner the Idealist. My experience of these operas in the theatre firmly
points me in that direction. And it's magnificent nonsense to call such a
verbal feast as Parsifal "absolute music", if that expression is to have
any useful meaning at all - which I take leave to doubt.
All of this sets me wondering how often Dr Akima has seen "The Ring" in
the theatre, that gladiatorial arena for which the composer - like it or
not - very firmly intended it? I may be wrong, but I suspect he'd be more
welcoming of its shifting, quicksilver ambiguities if he'd experienced it
often outside the lonely intensity of his study, given by real performers
in real time.
How does he costume Alberich in the theatre of his mind? For dress him
he must - symbol, myth, Jew-dwarf, or whatever.
Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"
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