Day 148: Fly Dutchman, Fly
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day
148 — Fly Dutchman, Fly
28-December-1971
(Tue.)
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. 
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
- - - -
