36 Years Ago

36 Years Ago, Vienna 1971—A Student Journal

Day 148: Fly Dutchman, Fly

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Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing & friends.



Day 148 — Fly Dutchman, Fly
28-December-1971 (Tue.)

Richard Wagner PD

TRANSCRIPT

Another really good day. Electronic music, horn, and piano.

Went to the opera with Pavel’s friends. Saw
The Flying Dutchman. Wagner. First Wagner opera I saw. It was fantastic, not just the normally enjoyable, but fantastic. The singers were all (well almost) excellent and the lighting effects, etc., really good.


REFLECTIONS

Normal school day. I have been and will continue to be in electronic music class, the electronic lab, horn lessons, and practicing horn and piano on many days to come. Unless there is something special going on, I will not continue to comment on it or tag it. It gets a bit boring. The original journal will still note these events.

Wagner’s Dutchman. Pavel, his sister and her friend, and I went to the Staatsoper tonight. This is my first Wagnerian opera. Richard Wagner was a late-Romantic German composer primarily known for his operas. His musical style includes chromatic writing and shifting tonal harmonies, use of musical leitmotifs, heavy orchestration, and the use of mythological themes and the redemption of love theme. His operas tend to be long, including the four operas in the cyclic Der Ring des Nibelungen. We would be sitting in "standing room" for a Wagnerian opera. I hope that this wasn’t Pavel’s sister’s first opera. Happy

Wagner’s operas (
Der Fliegende Holländer, Lohengrin, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmergung, Die Meistersinger, Tristan und Isolde, Tannhaüser, Parsifal and others) are among the most well-known operas of all time, and are a staple of the opera world. They take some effort to listen to because of their length, complexity, and subject matter. The Flying Dutchman is one of his earlier operas and is based on the theme of the legend of the Flying Dutchman and probably a bit lighter than his later works. I am enthused by the opera. Fantastic.

This photo of Wagner, taken from Wikipedia, is in the public domain.

John

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