It has been many months since I had the pleasure of writing this column, and a great deal has happened in the interim. You may remember we ended last season with performances from Wagner’s opera Götterdämmerung. This is the stuff conductors’ dreams are made of, so my summer began in tremendously high spirits. After a week unwinding in one of my favourite cities, Tel Aviv, I flew to Australia for two weeks with the Australian Youth Orchestra. Since it was to be my time visiting Australia, I arrived in Sydney a week before rehearsals began to spend time seeing the sights. Sydney Harbour is breath-taking, crowned by the iconic opera house. The British and Irish influence on Australian culture made everything strangely familiar, and I

Continue readingAustralia, London, Belfast, Vienna and Bratislava

It’s hard to believe, but the end of the Jacksonville Symphony season is nearly upon us. We’re closing it next weekend with concerts of Debussy and Wagner, which include ninety minutes of one of Wagner’s greatest operas, Götterdämmerung, or The Twilight of the Gods. Of all classical composers, it’s fair to say that none creates in the listener such strong feelings of either passion or revulsion as Richard Wagner. As someone who loves his music, I’m always a little suspicious of people who don’t; in my experience the dismissal is usually a convenient front for not knowing the music especially well, or an attempt to dodge a political bullet rather than taking the time to navigate the treacherous waters of Wagner’s music and writings. So

Continue readingAn Introduction to Wagner and “The Ring of the Nibelung”