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David M. Wagner Profile picture
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30 Apr, 4 tweets, 2 min read
1/ This⬇️ plus, the tendency of Evangelicals to think there's something "ex opere operato" about demonstrations and rallies. It's why their services look so much like - demonstrations and rallies. 1/6 was plenty serious enough, but I suspect the % of those intending violence
2/ was actually low, and most of those who illegally entered (a minority of those who rallied outside the Capitol, which in turn was a minority of those who attended the rally on the Ellipse) really thought that just by being there - applying some dasein, you know - they wd cause
3/ some sort of divine illumination to descend upon legislators and they'd all be like "Oh man, I'm suddenly convicted Trump won" or something. #InsurrectionByDasein #DaseinerFlags
4/ I mean there's a reason @Valeurs called them pignoufs ("PEEN-yoof"), which I had to look up and which means fools, yokels, with a definite class connotation (French synonyms: goujats, rustres). The op here just gives them more credit for Theater of the Absurd than I do.

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More from @david_m_wagner

David M. Wagner Profile picture
29 Apr
1/ Ok since this is Massenet’s most popular opera, I’ve now got to clarify why I don’t like Massenet.
2/ I’ve seen MANON once in the house (+ this perf last time it was webcast). I also used to have a 78 of Bidù Sayão singing “Voyons Manon.” That perf “in the house” was NYCO touring in L.A., and the cast was perfect: Beverly Sills & John Alexander. We went backstage afterwards
3/ and Bev greeted us young’uns with “So how did you like the French GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG?” I take her point: joking about MANON’s length relative to the longest work in the standard rep. Also GTD ends w Brünnhilde’s Immolation, and MANON also ends w a death-scene for the heroine.
Read 8 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
28 Apr
1/ Let Pav & Jimmy give you a verismo treat. Srs q: have any operas about French Rev gone mainstream other than this and DIALOGUES? And neither is particularly sympathetic to it, tho CHENIER, like Dickens’s “Tof2C,” acknowledges the problematic framework out of which it arose.
2/ Safe bet that Pav will rule. Maria Guleghina will be an edgier Maddalena than the classics, Tebaldi & Milanov. (Many ruffled feathers recently on Opera-L over Tebaldi’s vs Callas’s history w this role.)
3/ Baritone Juan Pons, our Carlo Gerard, was always reliable, but maybe two sandwiches short of a mellifluous voice. Beloved bass Paul Plishka takes Fernando Corena’a old role as “le Sans-Culottes Matthieu.” (Sans-culottes did not mean “no pants,” despite what you may have
Read 4 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
27 Apr
1/ The Met has 2 MWs in the can. This is not the good one, and it matters. There’s some raunch in Viennese operetta, perhaps more when it’s set in Paris. Heck there’s even some in G&S. The q lies in what you do with it. I don’t have specifics near to hand but the one with Domingo
2/ and VonStade got it right, whereas this one leans into it. Still, any MW will have great moments such as:

Danilo: Eavesdropping, Baron? That’s not done in the best diplomatic circles.
Baron Zeta: Ours aren’t the best.
3/ And so on. It’s a matter of translation, direction, sets, and costumes: in all of these the new production marginally turns the knob up on vulgarity. Also, I have no objection to Fleming and Gunn, but, much as I admire Sir Thomas Allen, he’s not a basso buffo
Read 5 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
25 Mar
1/ R. Strauss's 90-min 1-acter of obsession and fulfilment has been putting the fun in dysfunctional and leaving audiences plastered to the backs of their seats since 1909. If you have any sympathy for Klytemnestra, this is not the show for you. This prodn makes her
2/ less of a wreck than we usually see, but c'mon man, her entrance music - maybe the best in opera - depicts a collapsing harridan, sacrificing bulls every night in vain effort to keep nightmares away, and leaning on two mysterious aides, the Confidante and the Train-Bearer. ...
3/ These, a/w/a the general Freudian reworking of the material from Aeschylus's Choephori and Sophocles's Electra, are the work of Hugo von Hofmannstahl, Viennese high-modern playwright and frequent Strauss librettist. Likewise, stay away if you're an Aegisthus fan, but I can't
Read 14 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
24 Mar
1/ 1st of 2 Oresteia-related operas, tonight's by mid-18thc Gluck, tmrw night's by early 20thc R. Strauss. Tauris=Crimea. Scythians were steppe ppl, of interest to Greeks primarily as warnings, but Euripides narrated them into the Greek cultural & religious world, so here we are.
2/ Gluck had earlier written IPHIGENIE EN AULIDE, i.e. in Aulis, where she was sacrificed, but later followed "Rip" in having her whisked away at the last second and transferred to Tauris, where it's nice being alive, but the downside is, she has to do priestessing for.
3/ the Scythians. She also really misses her brother Orestes. Suddenly the Scythian king orders up sacrifices of non-Scythians in Tauris for curbside pick-up, and, then, who but Orestes (w his bestie Pylades) shd then show up in Tauris. Fidge can't bring herself to do it, and
Read 12 tweets
David M. Wagner Profile picture
24 Mar
1/ Myths & Legends Week continues w that most operagenic of legends, Faust. I mentioned some time ago, re TROYENS, that I do not find myself on Berlioz’s musical wavelength. If that’s to be overcome, it’ll be thru a Faust story - but the dramaturgy of this one is odd. Supposedly
2/ based on Goethe, yet it not only leaves out Pt II (as does Gounod as well) - it also dramatically changes the ending, as the title proclaims. Berlioz’s Faust does a lot of apostraphizing nature. In fact at the beginning IIRC he has a big ol’ apostrophize-nature number b4 he
3/ even realizes he needs to get back to his study and ring up the Devil. Later he seduces and abandons Marguerite, then is once again found apostrophizing Nature. Then Mephistopheles hits him w “Marguerite is about to be executed, no time to lose, sign here,” which Faust does,
Read 10 tweets

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