John Deathridge 
Wagner Beyond Good and Evil 

John Deathridge presents a different and critical view of Richard Wagner based on recent research that does not shy away from some unpalatable truths about this most controversial of composers in the canon of Western music. Deathridge writes authoritatively on what Wagner did, said, and wrote, drawing from abundant material already well known but also from less familiar sources, including hitherto seldom discussed letters and diaries and previously unpublished musical sketches. At the same time, Deathridge suggests that a true estimation of Wagner does not lie in an all too easy condemnation of his many provocative actions and ideas. Rather, it is to be found in the questions about the modern world and our place in it posed by the best of his stage works, among them
Tristan und Isolde and
Der Ring des Nibelungen. Controversy about Wagner is unlikely to go away, but rather than taking the line of least resistance by regarding him blandly as a ‘classic’ in the Western art tradition, Deathridge suggests that we need to confront the debates that have raged about him and reach beyond them, toward a fresh and engaging assessment of what he ultimately achieved.

قائمة المحتويات

Preface


part i. a few beginnings


1. Wagner Lives

Issues in Autobiography


2. ‘Pale’ Senta

Female Sacrifice and the Desire for Heimat


3. Wagner the Progressive

Another Look at Lohengrin


part ii. der ring des nibelungen


4. Fairy Tale, Revolution, Prophecy

Preliminary Evening: Das Rheingold


5. Symphonic Mastery or Moral Anarchy?

First Day: Die Walküre


6. Siegfried Hero

Second Day: Siegfried


7. Finishing the End

Third Day: Götterdämmerung


part iii. the elusiveness of tragedy


8. Don Carlos and Götterdämmerung

Two Operatic Endings and Walter Benjamin’s Trauerspiel


9. Wagner’s Greeks, and Wieland’s Too

Contents


part iv. tristan und isolde


10. Dangerous Fascinations


11. Public and Private Life

Reflections on the Genesis of Tristan and Isolde and the Wesendonck Lieder


12. Postmortem on Isolde

part v. mature polemics


13. Strange Love, Or, How We Learned to Stop

Worrying and Love Parsifal


14. Mendelssohn and the Strange Case of the

(Lost) Symphony in C


15. Unfinished Symphonies


part vi. Operatic Futures


16. Configurations of the New


17. Wagner and Beyond


List of Abbreviations

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

عن المؤلف

John Deathridge is King Edward Professor of Music at King’s College London. He is the author, with Carl Dahlhaus, of The New Grove Wagner, co-editor of the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis (WWV) and editor of, and contributor to, the English language edition of the Wagner Handbook.