Posted on 03/31/2013 12:58:30 PM PDT by Borges
Wagner and Verdi are destined to be linked forever, however awkwardly, since they were both born in 1813: Wagner in Leipzig, Germany, on May 22; Verdi in little Roncole, Italy, in the Duchy of Parma, on Oct. 9 or 10. (The records are not clear.)
They never met and had little good to say about each other. Wagner tended to be circumspect on the subject of Verdi. But in an 1899 interview with a German newspaper Verdi, then 86, called Wagner “one of the greatest geniuses” who left treasures of “immortal worth.” Verdi added that as an Italian, he could not claim to “understand everything” in Wagner. But before “Tristan und Isolde,” he declared, “I stand in wonder and terror.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Classical Ping
I could never really dig Wagner.
He was kinda the punk rocker of his time.
Not that I don’t dig punk rock occasionally.
Two titans in three-quarters time......
Leni
Thanks for the ping.
Verdi vs Wagner...hmmmm
Both wrote operas, Both used very dramatic music to move the story forward.
Wagner wrote of Gods, Goddesses, heroes and heroines, Knights and master Singers.
Verdi wrote of Courtesans, Hunchbacks, Gypsies, Ethiopian Slave Girls and Egyptian Princesses.
And I LOVE ‘em ALL! LOL!
(I know i left some characters out, but I was trying to keep it brief)
I raise the irony since the first movement of the Op. 131 (as you may know) is Jewish-themed and Wagner was a professional Jew-hater.
Beethoven moved multiple times in Vienna, from flat to flat; one of his apartments was on the same block as a synagogue, or at least he had to pass it on his walk home. He always had his notebooks with him, and some of the chanting tunes that he heard from the temple he jotted down for later use (this was, of course, while he still had his hearing during the 1790s).
The time gap between notebook and composition is not particularly strange for Beethoven: the theme for the "Ode to Joy" from the Ninth also dates to the 1790s. Both the Ninth Symphony and the Op. 131 were written in the 1820s.
Wagner studied the Opus 131 Quartet all his life, “the dance of the whole world itself,” as he called it in his 1870 essay. In its seven movements, played without pause, this pathbreaking, mood-shifting and mystical quartet could be seen as offering him a manual on how to organize a long through-composed opera to make it come across as a musical and dramatic entity.
Rockaria - Electric Light Orchestra
Just got back from the downtown palais
Where the music was so sweet
It knocked me right back in the alley
I’m ready
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m ready
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m ready
And I’m really gonna rock tonight
Sweet little lady sings, like a songbird
And she sings the opera like you ain’t never heard
But she ain’t ready
No, no, no, she ain’t ready
No, no, no, she ain’t ready
And she ain’t gonna rock & roll
She’s sweet on Wagner
I think she’d die for Beethoven
She loves the way Puccini lays down a tune
And Verdi’s always creeping from her room
Come on I’ll show you how to sing the blues
Now baby, come on over over, you got nothin’ to lose
Are you ready
Hey, hey, hey, are you ready
Ooh, ooh, ooh, are you ready
I wanna show you how to rock and roll
Now listen here baby she, said to me
Just meet me at the opera house at quarter to three
Cause I’m ready
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m ready
Woo, hoo, hoo, I’m ready
I’m gonna show you how to sing the blues
She’s sweet on Wagner
I think she’d die for Beethoven
She loves the way Puccini lays down a tune
And Verdi’s always creeping from her room
Oh far far away
The music is...
Playin’
Well we were reelin’ and rockin’ all through the night
Ya we were rockin at the opera house until the break of light
And the orchestra was playin’ all Chuck Berry’s greatest tunes
And the singers in the chorus all got off on them singin’ blues
And as the night grew older everybody was as one
The people on the streets came runnin’ in to join in song
Just to hearing the opera singers singing rock and roll so pure
I thought I saw the mayor there
But I wasn’t really sure
But it’s all right
There was a movie made last year which revolved around this quartet: "A Late Quartet." It was disappointing--too much talking and not enough quartet.
In my early high school days I was just getting familiar with symphonic music but thought that the premise of opera was rather stupid. Not to be too closed minded I read Ernest Newman’s “Stories of the Great Operas” cover to cover and played some of melodies on our old upright piano (single finger). I ended up settling on Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung” as my first opera to listen to via the newly released Decca/Solti recording. I listened to it once a day for weeks.
I still love Wagner (shelves of LPs, CDs and DVDs) plus most of the usual favorites and, especially, the east European works.
LOL..that touched my heart..
I LOVE Classical Music..
But my profession, my job, my livelihood is that I am a
Rock Musician.
Ha Ha Ha
I saw ELO years ago, they had a huge UFO take off from the stage.
As Dennis Prager, himself an amateur symphony conductor, says - The best symphonic composers today do movie scores, not symphonies. Williams, Zimmer, and Horner all could do symphonies, but the money is in movie scores. The modern academic composers are hung-up on the atonal and really strange stuff.
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