Richard Wagner's women
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Richard Wagner's women
Boydell Press, 2011
- Other Title
-
Leuchtende Liebe, lachender Tod
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  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
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  United Kingdom
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Note
Translation of: Leuchtende Liebe, lachender Tod
Originally published: Artemis Verlag, 2009
Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-224) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A well-researched and exhaustive analysis of the role of women in Wagner's operas.
Richard Wagner's music contains some of the most powerful portrayals of emotions in all opera, particularly love. Eva Rieger presents a new picture of the composer, showing how the women at his side inspired him and how closely his life and art intertwined.
We follow Wagner's restless hunt for the 'ideal woman', her appointed task being to give him shelter, warmth, inspiration, adventure and redemption, all in one. He could hardly have desired anything more contradictory, and this is reflected in the female characters of his operas. They are all in some way torn, faltering between their own desire for self-realization and the societal constraints that impel them to sacrificethemselves for their men.
Rieger bids farewell to essentialist, naturalized notions of femininity and masculinity. Her investigations are both comprehensive and convincing, for she avoids the pitfalls of imposing extraneousinterpretation, instead focussing keenly on the music itself.
EVA RIEGER is Professor Emeritus in Historical Musicology at the University of Bremen and lives in the principality of Liechtenstein.
Table of Contents
Prelude
'...the world as yet has no notion of it': Wagner's Musical Language
From Rienzi to Der fliegende Hollander
'The glitter of a high-class brothel': Tannhauser
'Take all that I am!': Lohengrin
Sexual Promise and the Womanly Redeemer: Tristan und Isolde
Mathilde, the 'dear muse': Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg
The Ring of the Nibelung: Genesis and Prelude - The Ring I
Wotan and the Valkyrie - The Ring II
Siegfried and Women - The Ring III
Goetterdammerung - The Ring IV
Between Eva and Kundry: '...no woman at my side!'
'...the suffering of love's seduction': Kundry and Parsifal
Postlude
by "Nielsen BookData"