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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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"
