I heartily agree with all the positive reviews written so far. This book gives a good background to Wagner's long-cherished dream of a festival of German music-dramas (his own), the struggle to get the festival going, and the very checkered legacy it has left. The author is especially good in his treatment of the Nazi era in Germany and the partnership between Hitler and Bayreuth. But what I would like to single out is the author's writing: clear, colorful, and trenchant. Here is an excerpt to give you an idea of his style. He is describing the situation after WWII, when Wagner's grandson Wieland had departed from the old Bayreuth style of production in favor of more modern, an evolution that has the old guard up in arms, especially Wagner's daughter-in-law Winifred:
"But there was always plenty of opposition and some of it was as fanatical as it can be only in Bayreuth. The opponents made the same embittered complaints--indeed were some of the same people--as in the Parsifal fracas of 1934, the only novelty being that epithets like 'Jewish-influenced' and 'cultural Bolshevism' were no longer used, at least publicly. The hostility also demonstrated that even now no less than in prewar Germanuy every artistic act was a political act and that artistic conservatism and political conservatism still went together, indeed remained different sides of the same coin. It was symptomatic that when Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau--in Bayreuth to sing Wolfram in the 1954 Tannhauser--was invited to tea with Winifred Wagner, he listened in appalled silence as she condemned her son [Wieland] and Picasso, while praising Adolf Hitler. For the Bayreuth old guard a portrait should have an eye, a nose and a mouth as God created them, just as a production of Die Meistersinger should have a Nuremberg as Wagner conceived it--and just as Hitler should be properly appreciated. In the mechanics of their little grey cells, art and ideology were inseparable. Here at least they were right."
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他の国からのトップレビュー
Dennis Webb
Exceptional Writing
2013年7月24日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Miguel Angel
Very interesting.
2013年3月3日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Roselovr
A monumental trilogy
2016年9月2日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
"Happy Explorer"
Good exposure to Wagner
2013年4月1日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Quantrill
Analysis of the composer's last years
2013年9月14日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
