Buy Wagner Opera

Review by Timothy P. Scanlon:

Scholars and critics say that Herr Wagner’s talent was in synthesis. The negative critics, e.g., specialists in a field from which they feel Wagner has stolen, tend to discredit Wagner for that. The grail was not, alas, the cup used at the last supper, prior to the opera “Parsifal” anyway. What’s more the Grail theme was plagiarized from Mendelssohn. The plot of the Ring was not, alas, the same plot as the German novel “The Nibelungenlied.” Wagnerians like myself, rather, see that synthesis as a symptom of Wagner’s genius. He was able to take a series of sources, stories, novels, epics, songs, and cement them into a supreme art form, Gesamptkunstwerk, better than the sum of all the parts. Newman comments intellegently on all aspects of the operas. He includes musical themes–surely a necessity in the work of that expert user of the leitmotif!–and even the psychological dimensions of the music. (Before I saw “Tristan und Isolde,” I attended a presentation of a musicologist who nearly broke into tears as to the depth of the music in that opera. His comments reminded me of those of Newman regarding the same piece, which reminds me of Jung, one, whom you might say, was a product of some of the same Germanic trends of the late 19th century. But, enough on that…)I read each review before I see the opera to which it applies. I read them again periodically. They are magnificent, allow for reasonable criticism. But they also give the devil his due. I cannot recommend the book more strongly for anyone interested in Wagner, especially if you plan to hear or see the operas. Then leave the volume next to your bed. It’s well worth re-reading, learning all dimensions of the music of perhaps the best composer who ever lived. Is that extreme? Perhaps. Was Wagner’s genius extreme? Off the scale. Read and enjoy it.

Review by Stephen McLeod:

Nobody ever wrote more insighfully, brilliantly and accessibly about the titanic contribution of Richard Wagner to western culture than did E. Newman. This is a classic that should be read by all and anyone interested in what all the fuss is about. It’s an old book but it’s not dated. Take his translations seriously. Even though there are a lot of anachronisms (thou sayest…etc), they were anachronisms that RW intended when he wrote the poem. May I also recommend the Solti Recording of the Ring; the Furtwangler studio recording of Tristan; the Jochum Meistersinger and (gasp) the Levine Parsifal (the Knappertsbusch is sublime in so many special ways you may have to buy both. May I also recommend the Ring Interactive CD Rom. It is a blast.

Review by Dan Sherman:

This book should serve as an excellent and very readable guide for most readers who want information about Wagner’s life, his operas, the staging of the operas, various recordings of the operas, etc. If it is not a deep book that goes into lots of detail about these topics (nor can it be, given its length) but certainly it provides satisfactory coverage. It is particularly useful in its plot summaries, along with a general discussion of the music of the operas. Although it is written in a very chatty and informal manner, it really covers a lot of ground and gives a reader good leads on how to follow up with additional reading and Cd listening. I don’t think it will by itself convert anyone who hates Wagner, but it should help a lot of other people enjoy his operas more. It is a book that is both fun to read but one with a lot of substance too!

Review by Tina Morris:

This book was truely needed. I enjoy Wagner, always have, but I know how difficult it is to initially get into his work without fear or prejudice. Berger’s book is as entertaining as it is highly informative both for the Wagner novice and the seasoned afficionado. Like any good guide, the different chapters are independent and cross-readable, so you can pick up info on the different aspects of Wasgner and his music without having to go through the book chronologically. Berger has a very witty style and parts of the book are definitely written very tongue-in-cheek, which I personally appreciate. Very humorous for exmaple his observations on the different categories of Wagnerians to be observed attending an opera. Try picking them out during an intermission and you will be impressed with the authors perceptiveness! Beyond that, the book offers good, nuts-and-bolts advice (if there is such a thing in the area of music). Recently we had a staging of Parsifal here in Washington, featuring the great Placido Domingo. Parsifal is Wagner’s last and longest opera, considered by many people to be the most complex, slow and boring. After reading Berger’s summary and advice on tackling this piece, I had a thoroughly enjoyable time, and five hours melted down to nothing. With his help, we made the right choices about planning our intermission dinner and getting ready for the different aspects of the plot and the music. The book does not cover all of Wagner’s work, but the omissions are well-chosen

Review by :

If you are looking for a direct translation(as I was) of the entire Ring, look no further. It is excellant and complete. If you are looking for commentary however, this is not the book for you . There is a brief intro that essentially discusses Wagner’s life, philosophy, and musical approach(50 pgs). An 8 page b&w insert is also included. The text is printed side by side with the original German text. Well worth the money to those who have procured a recording of one or all of the operas but need a liberetto.

Review by Konrad Baumeister:

This book would be an excellent addition to anyone interesting in Wagner’s Ring cycle for a number of reasons.

First, the translation, which takes up three quarters of the book, is well done, with German and English directly compared on a line by line basis, complete with alternate or discarded or rejected versions of the libretto included in an appendix. The translation itself seems outstanding; some of Wagner’s phrasing is difficult or impossible to directly translate into English, but even in the most convoluted or confusing cases the result is clear and compelling.

Second, there is a thematic guide to many of the most important leitmotifs Wagner developed (67 in this case), and in the translation of the libretto the authors have noted where these occur on a line by line, or sequential basis. This is of tremendous help as a reference for further study when listening and relistening to the music.

Third, while there is only little commentary on the operas and on Wagner’s compositional journey through the Ring, there are a few photos from past performances, comparing vastly different sets for the same scenes, which are interesting. There could have been quite a bit more of this.

Finally, the glossary of character names could be useful to the student.

Overall, this is an excellent resource and reference to use while listening to the Ring, and for analyzing Wagner’s libretto itself.

Review by Grady Harp:

Despite the fact that this book was first published in 1969, it is so well written in such reasonable language that it still stands as one of the most cogent introductions to the genius of Richard Wagner. The bookstore shelves are full of volumes on the man many consider one of the most important composers ever. But many of those books are biased by quirks of each writer who preach either a love-him-or-hate-him agenda. Magee goes to the source, addressing the writings of the composer during his musical hiatus between Lohengrin and the Ring of the Niebelungen, a period (1848 – 1851) when Wagner withdrew into the works of the great German philosophers and gradually formed his world view of Opera as Drama, or, a religous happening – quite a different stance from the ‘Opera as Entertainment’ that was the popular consensus of the time. Magee offers translations of Wagner’s words that clarify the messages that so often are lost in the verbiage that Wagner labored as he responded to the importance of mythology as a universal language, to Shakespeare as the perfect man of words, to the music of Beethoven as the writer of music that ALMOST didn’t need poetry ( even though he granted that Beethoven’s 9th Symphony which includes poetry was the gold standard of his time and indeed opened all the Bayreuth Festivals with that Beethoven work before presenting his own operas), and to the writings of Karl Marx, et al. Magee’s essays include notes on the claims of AntiSemitism, on the influence of Wagner on the other artists of his time and after his time, and even on performance standards of his works. All this, in a book just over 100 pages in length! An invaluable tool for those who want to better understand why Wagner’s music continues today to cause such profound emotional responses. Beautifully written and informative.

Review by Ian Vance:

More than any other figure in the classical Canon, Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883) has provoked a dichotomy of passion in regards to his music, character and legacy. Bryan Magee’s *Aspects of Wagner*, a series of concise, articulate essays about the composer and theorist, confronts both sides of the polarization, examining the essential components that inspire such adulation, probing with unusual insight the negative connotations ever associated with mere mention of the name.

These aspects, in brief:

THEORY: After the success of Lohengrin, Wagner took a six-year break from composing to recharge the cylinders, theorize and re-examine the operatic form. The result of this sabbatical would shake the foundations of the Canon. For Wagner, no longer would drama be a means to a musical end – window-garnishing syntax to embellish the sonic – instead, music would be the means with which to express the dramatic ~emotion~ of the piece. Music would emphasize, shift and elucidate to the passage of the text, a notion that has proved indescribably influential: the whole of modern film-symphonic owes its debt to this innovation.

JEWS: A virulent anti-Semitist, repelled by the physical aspect of Jews and critical of their compositional abilities – “shallow and artificial” – Wagner espoused these opinions in the public forum and, in reality, reflected the mindset of mainstream German society during his time. Further propagated by Wagner’s widow and offspring, these views influenced Hitler as a youth and were taken verbatim for his totalitarian platform. Wagner’s demand for Judiasm to be eradicated, via renouncement of faith and conversion to Christian theism, was corrupted by the Nazi propagandists as a call for physical annihilation. More fuel for the critical fire! And yet, one of Wagner’s closest companions, Hermann Levi, was a Jew, and conducted the premiere of Parsifal; moreover, Wagner’s worldview of pacifism and assimilation doesn’t jive at all with the Fascist manifesto – the Nazis took what was useful and abandoned the ‘feel good’ vibes. Bryan Magee doesn’t really address any of this, however: rather, he theorizes as to ~why~ Wagner considered Jews inferior artists, especially in regard to the fact that three of the dominant geniuses of our modern culture were Jewish – Marx, Freud and Einstein. Magee points to the cultural repression of Judaism throughout hundreds of years, an isolationist subjugation that was only beginning to disintegrate by the start of 19th century; the flowering of Jewish intellect – and assimilation of Western culture – would take several generations to unfold. The resultant revolutionary thought of the triumvirate above, undeniable in their influence, stemmed from an outward contemplation and subsequent deconstruction of the adopted conventional standards. Indeed, Wagner’s original essays are surprisingly insightful as to the underlying reasons for the artifice of Jewish composers of his day, though the eventual intellectual aptitude they would bring to the table undoubtedly eluded the composer.

IDOLATRY: As much the subject of abject idolatry as venomous refutation, Wagner is a love-or-hate figure, with little ground of compromise between. Magee theorizes that this is because the music, in harmonic construction and theme, gives expression to all that unconscious and repressed in the human mind, including Oedipal sexuality, unleashed eroticism, moral questioning and violence; the tonal qualities stir forth base, animalistic urges to the forefront, taboos further exemplified by the stage-work. The composer’s emphasis on the undercurrents of the psyche predated modern psychology by fifty years: thus the subconscious ~rejection~ of many to his music, and its appeal to the more questing intellect.

INFLUENCE: A short list: Gustav Mahler, Anton Schonberg, Richard Strauss, Dvorak, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Claude Dubussy, Edward Elgar, Dmitry Shostakovich, Anton Bruckner; James Joyce, Bernard Shaw, Marcel Proust, D.H. Lawerence, Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, Thomas Mann, Virginia Wolff; T.S. Elliot, Baudelaire, Lytton, Ezra Pound; Nietzsche and Freud. When one contemplates the authority these people had over their disciples, the position of Wagner, in terms of all aspects of modern thought, truly staggers the mind, and lends credit to Magee’s conclusion that “…Wagner has had greater influence than any other artist on our culture of the age.”

PERFORMANCE: The greatest compositions can never reach true interpretation, according to Magee; each conductor brings something different to the performance, and only reaches an approximation of that on paper – even the creator fails to achieve a definitive performance! Magee also goes into depth about what is needed to properly stage a Wagner spectacle, and uses the model of Bayreuth’s opera house, constructed by the composer himself, as the epitome surroundings. Wagner set the orchestra out-of-sight, so as not to distract the audience from the on-stage drama; he arranged the acoustics of the opera house to give emphasis to the words, with the music hovering beneath as counterpoint and ambient emphasis. Another issue in this essay is the conflict that arises in non-German speakers listening to Wagner. With the text so critical to the overall appreciation, and the differences of semantic inflection taken into account, there are two choices: learn German, or seek out the better translations that, although conforming to the grammar, sometimes lose the power of meaning.

MUSIC: Magee criticizes the (then) contemporary adaptation of Wagner’s sound-cycles to politically-correct allegory. Wagner deliberately utilized myth and archetypes to simplify the narrative and give emphasis on emotional undercurrents; using it as critical commentary on current issues (1960′s) was, to Magee, a debasement of Wagner’s ideal. Magee also notes how difficult it is to write about the music ~itself~: thus the glut of media talking about every aspect of Wagner *except* that which he is most famous for, that which firmly set his place on the Romantic pantheon!

This book serves as an insightful analysis of Wagner, in all his complexities and contradictions. Recommended for the student of the classical Canon.