From the review of "Das Rheingold", Metropolitan Opera, New York:
Martin Bernheimer, Financial Times, Sept. 28 2010;
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1bc2f61e-cb1f-11df-95c0-00144feab49a.html
"Lepage, who was booed at his curtain call, doesn’t really tell the story
of Rheingold."
But then, he was booed by 25 at most. The capacity of the Met is bigger than that. Is there an implicature here?
To analyse:
i. Lepage, who was booed at his curtain call, doesn't realy tell the story of Rheingold. +> but he may tell another story.
ii. Lepage was booed at his curtain call.
iii. (Be as informative as is required):
Lepage was booed at his curtain call by 25 people.
Etc.
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Perhaps the Financial Times thinks being booed by anyone is worth a mention without getting into the quantitative stuff.
ReplyDeleteIn 20th century England, people were very orderly in these matters, applause only, at the right moments.
Now we are getting a bit less orderly, applause between movements, dissent still rare (at least in the places I go).
Roger
I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.
ReplyDelete- Mark Twain
Alas I mostly concur with Mark re Wagner. The few minutes of sublimity do not outweigh the hours of tedium (the Ring in particular--Tritan and Isolde I enjoy, at least the few snazzy chromatic passages. And Parzifal, when it sounds sort of...Led Zeppelinish...:]).
And my reading of Wagner's bio (and dilettantish understanding of classical musick) leads me to believe Wagner generally ripped off Liszt for interesting musical ideas (with the usual Beethovian bombast). He wasn't really an instrumentalist of any sort--
Wagner and Liszt supposedly told Nietzsche to exit the premises one day--he "jerks off" too much or something (or was making eyes at Cosima?). I imagine Franzchen the virtuoso laughed at Nietzsche's quasi-Schubertian piano preludes (mostly schmaltzy, tho' FN did write a few interesting operatic pieces for voice and piano)
Thanks to R. B. Jones and J for their comments. I will reconsider the Financial Times statement. There's lot to consider in that little statement, "booed at his curtain call". For one, it is good, but perhaps otiose, to compare how the booing is reported in OTHER reviews. Most reviews did mention the booing. I must say that it was pointed out to me that the FT was being 'dishonest' and 'misleading' -- and thus thought of bringing the thing to the forum.
ReplyDeleteWagner is quite something. There was a note in the NYT pre-the-opening, a piece by Ross, "Wagner for a song", by the music critic of the New Yorker, Ross, who quotes from the same author as J quotes: Twain. Ross goes on to quote from Shaw, who used "Wagnerite", and the issue is raised whether 'Wagnerite' is pejorative. It isn't.
Lepage has good intentions. The thing is staged again this Thursday, to whatever caused the boo may be corrected by then. It is said that the last scene didn't quite work as planned. Etc. The whole point of the Met is to have by 2013, the complete tetralogy -- and Lepage will be of course in charge of the four installments. The machinery he brought to the stage will do for the four productions.
I am reading quite something about Cosima Wagner. Seeing the standard opposition between Italian and Wagnerian opera one may be surprised that there is so much of an Italian connection in Wagner. Not that Cosima was an Italian-Italian, but hey she was born in Italy. I may do some research into this lady of Bayreuth. Oddly, when the First Ring was staged -- the sets were, by mistake, sent to Beirut, rather than Bayreuth.
Grice of course sort of disliked Wagner. Well, for the record: he did say the "Meistersinger" was "for children" (obit of Grice by Richardson, St. John's College Records). I suppose the implicature there is that Grice was no child _AS HE COMMENTED_ that. It's odd how things which are for children are NOT meant for children and vice versa. Etc.
Thanks to R. B. Jones and J for their comments. I will reconsider the Financial Times statement. There's lot to consider in that little statement, "booed at his curtain call". For one, it is good, but perhaps otiose, to compare how the booing is reported in OTHER reviews. Most reviews did mention the booing. I must say that it was pointed out to me that the FT was being 'dishonest' and 'misleading' -- and thus thought of bringing the thing to the forum.
ReplyDeleteWagner is quite something. There was a note in the NYT pre-the-opening, a piece by Ross, "Wagner for a song", by the music critic of the New Yorker, Ross, who quotes from the same author as J quotes: Twain. Ross goes on to quote from Shaw, who used "Wagnerite", and the issue is raised whether 'Wagnerite' is pejorative. It isn't.
Lepage has good intentions. The thing is staged again this Thursday, to whatever caused the boo may be corrected by then. It is said that the last scene didn't quite work as planned. Etc. The whole point of the Met is to have by 2013, the complete tetralogy -- and Lepage will be of course in charge of the four installments. The machinery he brought to the stage will do for the four productions.
I am reading quite something about Cosima Wagner. Seeing the standard opposition between Italian and Wagnerian opera one may be surprised that there is so much of an Italian connection in Wagner. Not that Cosima was an Italian-Italian, but hey she was born in Italy. I may do some research into this lady of Bayreuth. Oddly, when the First Ring was staged -- the sets were, by mistake, sent to Beirut, rather than Bayreuth.
Grice of course sort of disliked Wagner. Well, for the record: he did say the "Meistersinger" was "for children" (obit of Grice by Richardson, St. John's College Records). I suppose the implicature there is that Grice was no child _AS HE COMMENTED_ that. It's odd how things which are for children are NOT meant for children and vice versa. Etc.
Sent twice -- for some ODD reason. Sorry about that!
ReplyDelete"booed at his curtain call". Yes, Jones is right. I would NEVER boo, I would think. What's the point of going to the opera to boo. I suppose there is a lot of politics behind booing -- and perhaps some politics, but minimal, in the REPORTING of a booing, etc.
ReplyDeleteWagner was supposedly a bit of a linguist, I have read--the Ring for example derives from the Ring of the Nibelung myths, as you are probably aware--in the older hoch deutsch (or is it gothic)--yet ultimately most likely from sanskrit sources. Wagner read Schopenhauer, probably other german philo-men (Kant? Hegel?) and had an interest in hinduism.
ReplyDeleteThe Ring myth itself may be profound and timeless, yet Maestor Wagner enclosed it in Disneyesque sentimentality (IMHO) and sword and sorcery (really, not far from like Tolkein), with only a smattering of intense beauty. Nietzsche said as much.
With Parzifal RW thankfully got rid of most of the sword and sorcery tho' there are knightly elements--and one might say...Being towards Death (Heideggerian moment!). There are christian hints (which might bother some) but rather more enjoyable, musically speaking, and also...what 2-3 hours, instead of 24 or whatever (the real Wagnerite can afford a weeklong Bayreuth festival)
Yes. Wagner was possibly a genius! There is a "Wagner Society", and there is a "Grice Club". Wagner was a genius in ways OTHER than Grice was a genius. I sometimes regret that Grice never wrote a tetralogy.
ReplyDelete