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Most popular opera is very simple, expressive music. You might notice unexpected obligato melody in Verdi, but it’s rare to find unexpected harmony. We live in a world all about these sorts of unexpected shadings and nuances that Wagner represents with chromatic harmony. 2/
My experience is that people struggle with Wagner for a few reasons. Much as it pains me to start with the extramusical, the most obvious of these is the politics. Yes, Wagner was a terrible human. This wasn’t just (or even mostly) to the Jews, but to literally everyone. 3/
Wagner was an asshole. To patrons, to friends, to colleagues, to his wife. Also to the Jews! Personally, as a Jew, the fact that Wagner has brought me so much joy feels like catharsis. If he would have been unhappy to see me singing his music, that brings me joy. 4/
I think there is beauty in the fact that despicable people can create music like this. I have more to say about the politics, but fundamentally this is where it starts and ends, for me. 5/
The second area where I think people struggle is the libretti, which are frequently awkward or embarrassing. My experience, though, is that there’s a kind of associative genius to these libretti, especially when taken less literally. 6/
It’s tempting to get caught in the problems of the libretti, but they also open up unique opportunities. I’ve been stunned by this in working on them, and the amount of care taken with even secondary material is striking. 7/
When working on Marke from Tristan (not exactly the focal point of the plot...), I’ve been amazed by the almost Jungian way Wagner breaks down Marke’s pain: 8/
In finding his wife in bed with his friend, it’s as though Wagner were breaking betrayal up into component parts: he’s more ashamed of his suspicion than he is of his rejection, and he’s more hurt in losing the friend than wife. I find this to be an amazingly deep reflection. 9/
That same nuance is given in even greater detail to bigger moments: when Brünnhilde lights the world on fire (prescient at the moment...), she uses the same substance her father imprisoned her in two operas earlier, etc. And this doesn’t touch the use of Leitmotif to express. 10/
Even the use of Leitmotif to express nuance is inherently a deep thought: Leitmotif, by definition, represents a single thought, and could be reductive. If one motif represents the gold, it runs the risk of being simplistic, such that characters speak one-dimensionally. 11/
But the way Wagner uses it, all the Leitmotifs intersect: the Gold becomes the Rhein, which becomes Hagen’s call at the end of act 2 of Götterdammerung. Even the simplistic building-blocks are multifactorial. 12/
This thread is getting long AF, so I’ll just say that I find this nuance and depth to be astonishing, and it has made working on Wagner a totally different experience than anything else I’ve sung. In an hour working on a Verdi opera, you might notice a couple new things. 13/
An hour of Wagner becomes a constant search for treasure in the score. The music just has so much buried in it that you can spend dozens of hours (I have) and feel like you’ve not scratched the surface (I have not). This is the thing that makes people obsessed. /end
