Dan Wang: preference

Transcript context

…I would have to hear it again. It is these voices encircling and entwining, which I think is one of the most beautiful parts of opera ever. This is something that I sometimes listen to on loop when I’m writing, because there is just a remarkable beauty. Stendhal loved Rossini. Stendhal mentioned the Comte Ory in my favorite book, my favorite novel, The Red and the Black. I reread The Red and the Black when I was living in Copenhagen in the summer, wondering whether it would hold up. It was my fourth time rereading it. This was one of my mother’s favorite novels as well, and she gave it to me to read. I think that The Red and the Black still holds up very well. It is a story of ambition, of an extraordinarily ambitious young man who has to choose between trying to join the army, or trying to join the priesthood. Then, making these ridiculous errors in love, and gets humiliated along the way, attends the performance of the Comte Ory, and ends in a great tragedy. Along the way, there are some just these very voluptuous descriptions of love, and it is all the while very funny to boot. What do you think of Stendhal? I like him very much, but I’ve never loved it. It feels distant to me. That’s a notable difference between us.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.