I suspect if it wasn't for John Williams Wagner's music would have become taboo.

sorry, no wagner, but my fav excerpt from opera is the sextet from donizetti's lucia di lammermoor, here w/young jose carreras as eduardo, at skippy.

Ok, so since the clip features the conductor Hans Knappertsbusch, this calls for a couple Knappertsbusch stories.

Knappertsbusch was once recording a Strauss waltz disc with the Vienna Philharmonic. Knapps was notorious for his hatred of rehearsals; most of the time, he'd run a piece and try to convince the producers to accept the first take. At this session, he began a waltz without telling the orchestra whether to take any of the numerous repeats. Disaster! At the first repeat, half the orch went back, the other half continued onwards, and chaos resulted. The performance ground to a halt for a moment, then the orchestra regrouped and continued on to the end. Knappertsbusch put down his baton and put a finger to his lips, thinking intensely for a moment. "Shit..." he said, "Do you think anyone will notice?"

At a time when conductors like Furtwangler and Toscanini were conducting scores from memory, Knappertsbusch always used a score in performance. A journalist had the temerity to question him on this: "Maestro, why do you use the score while others conduct without it?" Knappertsbusch scowled. "Because I can READ music."

For a performance of one opera, Knappertsbusch was forced against his will by the director to rehearse (unnecessarily, he felt) a score with the orchestra and singers. The night of the performance arrived, and there was a horrible trainwreck, the orchestra going one way, the singers another. After mighty exertions, Knappertsbusch dragged them all back on track. Leaving the station, Knappertsbusch shouted at the cowering director, "It would have gone perfectly if not for that FUCKING REHEARSAL!"

Listening to beautiful music like this is always a pleasure.

Wagner is the greatest example of the old saw: trust the art, not the artist!

He was by all accounts an evil, nasty, anti-Semitic prick, but good God, his music was as beautiful and exalted as music could possibly be.

Totally off topic, Rick M's wonderful story of orchestral rehearsal reminded me of another:

The great English maestro Sir Thomas Beecham hated rehearsals but marked his scores very exactly making rehearsals all but unnecessary. On one occasion when engaged to conduct Brahms 2nd Symphony, he faced the orchestra at the first rehearsal and told them: "Well, I know it and I am sure you all know it(slamming the score closed)---see you all at the concert!"

A newly engaged horn player immediately shouted "but I have never played it!"

To which Beecham (on his way out the door not to return) told him:"It's a marvelous piece! You'll love it!." :)

OMG, I had to do a harmonic analysis of the first three pages of the piano score of the Prelude to Tristan (what's playing here) for my sophomore music theory final under professor Thomas Howell. Thank God it was a take-home portion of the exam.

I have to say I REVELED IN IT!!! And I totally think I was right in my analysis of the "Tristan Chord." Even unto this day. And I did get an "A."

Frank Lee Speekin @ 6:

My favorite opera!!!!!!!!!!!!
(What's Opera, Doc) The real thing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJAXJWm8G4A

"oh, bwoonhilda, you're so wovely".
"tes, i know it, i can't help it."

whenever i hear this passage in wagner i can't help but think of elmer with "the spear and magic helmet" and bugs in drag as brunhilde on the zaftig horse.
it always sets me giggling even during serious performances.

He was by all accounts an evil, nasty, anti-Semitic prick, but good God, his music was as beautiful and exalted as music could possibly be.

And still, I just cannot bring myself to listen to his music.

Ah, Birgit! She left the world a more beautiful place indeed, and was simply the best to deliver this horny repertoire (often covered by singers with less focused tone and unmanageable wobbles)

Ever since that long ago day whilst browsing (and flaunting my wares) in the record shop, and solely based on that outrageous "Salome" double LP cover art- w/Birgit as vicious harlot!- I picked her up, discovered the voice, and have never looked back.

My eyes keep on processing that headline as "C&L's Late Nite Music Club with Winger".

Ooh yes, Wagner could be considered evil incarnate. His life was one of womanizer, anti-semite. later a nationalist. Yet Wagner's music is incredible. He had the ability to reach into the soul soaring from the heights to the depths of existence. It is his music that is the issue here and the vocal interpretation of it by the greatest Wagnerian diva of all time. Birgit Nilsson.
I have always believed that Wagner felt God as he wrote as Van Gogh saw God in his and Kandinsky and Mozart in their's.
MIB

20 douglas in oklahoma Says: It’s so lovely getting to hear Hilter’s favorite music……but

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVxM5IBLeU4

Karla @ 16:

Wordsmith@work @ 15:

And still, I just cannot bring myself to listen to his music.

I nearly fell out of my chair when I first heard the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, because if that's not sex set to music, I don't know what is....

Very sneaky guy, that Dicky Wagner. ;-) A total prick, but so very talented. And I don't care that the Rienzi Overture was Hitler's favorite Wagner work. It's a soaring 10 minutes of music and I can listen to it over and over.

I thought Hitler's favorite was Lohengrin ? Maybe I'm confusing him with mad King Ludwig of Bavaria who saved Wagner and funded his FestspielHaus in Bayreuth. I know Bayreuth very well and was fortunate enough to have seen the complete RING cycle in the Festspielhaus. Gotterdammerung was tthe best. My favorite overture is from his last opera ..PARSIFAL conducted by Herbert Von Karajan. ( Karajan is acclaimed as the quintessential Wagner interpreter) Parsifal's overture reminds me of Anton Bruckner's symphony no.8,second movement. A lament whose carthatic value is unsurpassed.

By the way, for you Wagnerians out there, the oscar winning movie GLADIATOR soundtrack is an ode to Wagnerian bombast and sublime beauty. It won an oscar for best score by Zimmerman.