Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
The Bayreuth Festival opened last Sunday with a performance of The Flying Dutchman (Der Fliegende Holländer). The first thing that meets the eye is the roster of the artists who created this production. Most of the key names are Eastern…
Another extract from Sergei M. Soloviev’s Notes for My Children and for Others, If Possible concerning the historian’s sojourn in Europe in 1842-44. (Earlier selections: on Belgium, on alternating bald and hairy rulers; on Count Uvarov, the author of the A-O-N triad.)…
After I had quoted A.C.Douglas on the best Ring for the beginner at a Russian music forum, I got this in a comment among others: I’ve just seen Das Rheingold from the mentioned [DVD] set [Boulez–Chéreau 1976 Bayreuth Ring] and…
An announcement as heard by a forum contributor: “October 8, the Mariinsky performs Wagner’s cult opera, Tristan und Isolde.”
Trenchcoats are not a rarity in Russia. On eis therefore left to wonder if Dmitry Chernyakov dressed Wagner’s characters in long raincoats out of respect for some Great Western Stage Director or out of loyalty to reality as depicted in…
Legend has it that shortly after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Sergei Eisenstein staged Die Walküre at the Bolshoi. It’s not really a legend. It’s true. And why shouldn’t it be, narrowly speaking? Long before Eisenstein, Russia’s imperial opera…
“The timbre [Marjorie Lawrence’s] is clear and lustrous, penetrating the orchestral surges and complying with the energetic tempi that the conductor, Bodanzky, preferred.” (Paul Campion on Götterdämmerung.) “Bodanzky was much admired and, at the same time, greatly disliked by some.…