Posted on 03/22/2010 1:56:45 PM PDT by Borges
MUNICH, Germany — Wolfgang Wagner, the grandson of composer Richard Wagner and the leader of the Bayreuth opera festival for more than half a century, has died. He was 90.
Wagner died Sunday, the festival said in a brief statement on its website. It did not give further details.
"Wolfgang Wagner dedicated his whole life to the legacy of his grandfather," the festival said -- adding that his long service as the event's leader means that he "goes into history as the longest-serving director in the world."
(Excerpt) Read more at ctv.ca ...
Classical Music Ping
Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said that Wagner’s music was better than it sounds?
(Personally, I like Wagner and his extravagant orchestral/choral “music dramas”)
LOL
Guess he’s off to Valhalla.
RIP in fernam land.
RIP in fernam land.
Nazi?
“Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said that Wagner’s music was better than it sounds?”
I am of the Twain school, I fear ;-)
But he also looks like Soupy Sales...
RIP, at any rate...
I wish he had left me a couple of tickets.
For eleven years, I’ve been sending in that form in September, and for eleven years, I’ve been getting my ding letter the following January (it used to come in March). I spent hours at the museum. Bayreuth is a lovely town.
The version I recall is that “Wagner’s music is not as bad as it sounds.” Whether the attribution to Twain is genuine, I don’t know...but it sounds like something he might have said.
About twenty years ago, the entire Ring Operas were on PBS, 12 Hours on 4 consecutive nights.
Being a Dramatic Soprano, and this being “The Literature” for my kind of Voice, I figured, I had better bite the bullet and WATCH THE WHOLE THING.
So for four nights I watched. And toward the very end of the last night, there was a huge scene, with fire and brimstone, and lasers, and the orchestra smashing and crashing in a tsunami of roiling sound!
What a GREAT ending!
But it WASN’T over. Suddenly the curtains parted, and a rather rotund woman in Ancient Teutonic Armor holding a spear...SANG!
Then it was over.
Thus proving the Axiom.
RIP.
But I will listen to them if and when I have the opportunity because I'm so awed by the pure genius of the man in putting notes and sounds together into a magnificent whole. And more than a few of his well-known excerpts and arias are certainly brilliant and skillful tours de force hardly equalled.
Leni
I’m thinking in fernem Land would definitely be a better landing than Valhalla...then there’s another possibility, he could sail around the world forever on a ghost ship....
are you serious? do you think it will ever work out?
i have been thinking about starting a Wagner Society. my understanding is that they get thrown a few tickets...perhaps a path of lesser resistance....
I don’t know. If I don’t get the tickets in the next couple of years, I’m going to book a pricey package thru a travel agency that handles this sort of thing.
When I started sending in the forms back in 1998, I read that the wait was 8 years. I’m way over that.
And I don’t want to see the Ring cycle over there. My endurance level is not what it once was. I just want the Dutchman, Lohengren, or Meistersinger.
I’ll try again in September. How long have you been trying?
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