I think I might have the Parzifal by Chretien de Troyes but not Wolfram von Eschenbach's and I feel a need to at least glance at both and maybe a scholarly discussion of the opera.
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I was impressed by the wall of Wagneriana at the UCB music library …. I’m confident there is every shade of scholarship.
aug 29, 2025, 10:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Oh hahaha YES. Aren't Napoleon, Wagner, and Lincoln the most-written-about figures, oh and Jesus Christ? 1/
aug 29, 2025, 10:34 pm • 1 0 • view
Must add that via musical studies and choral singing I know a fair amount about Catholic ritual, and I've read the Gospels, though not recently. Even though I am Jewish I can tell Catholicism and mainstream Christianity from whatever the heck it is that Wagner dreamed up. 2/2
aug 29, 2025, 10:35 pm • 1 0 • view
Wagnerism. I have this theory, BTW and not exclusively mine, that Wagner is the biggest Mary Sue in the history of human endeavor, and nobody else projected as much of his own ideals, desires, envies, and just plain wishful thinking into his art. Each character is some bit of him.
aug 29, 2025, 10:57 pm • 3 0 • view
Hell yes.
aug 30, 2025, 12:42 am • 0 0 • view
So true!
aug 30, 2025, 9:11 am • 0 0 • view
I have some of that (grew up Episcopalian, sang choir) but no historical perspective on the varieties of Christianity and creative rewritings. (Dante is not exactly orthodox, for example.)
aug 29, 2025, 10:43 pm • 1 0 • view