One of the best interviews in this splendid series - Peter Porter visited my alma mater (Amsterdam University) in the late 1980s, and his erudition (always carried lightly and wittily) was very inspiring.
Wagner was a genius composer but a failed dramatist -- not a single sympathetic character in any of his works, his texts are dreadful, his plots are basically buffo opera slowed to funeral march tempos, and the 'philosophical' content just a tutti frutti of odds ands ends bunged in and unresolved.
One of the best interviews in this splendid series - Peter Porter visited my alma mater (Amsterdam University) in the late 1980s, and his erudition (always carried lightly and wittily) was very inspiring.
Wagner was a genius composer but a failed dramatist -- not a single sympathetic character in any of his works, his texts are dreadful, his plots are basically buffo opera slowed to funeral march tempos, and the 'philosophical' content just a tutti frutti of odds ands ends bunged in and unresolved.