Dana Gioia: belief

Transcript context

…Was Joseph Kerman correct to suggest the Tristan was Wagner’s greatest most integrated work as a whole? In part because of the synthesis of ideas, music, lyrics, history. In abstract, I agree with him. I do think that there was a problem with Wagner. I’ve always wanted to write an essay. I’ve never written it called Slow Time Versus Fast Time. I would take Verdi’s Rigoletto, where he just rushes through this thing and it puts you in an emotional frenzy. Rigoletto is about as long as one act of Tristan, where Wagner slowed down time to give you a very different almost hypnotic effect of the music. One’s emotional excitation, the other is a kind of hypnotic trance. I feel that that hypnotic trance, it goes too slow in Parsifal. For me I think something like Die Walküre and even these early operas like The Flying Dutchman, Fliegende Holländer, or Lohengrin do it in a timeframe that I find more natural to my own body rhythms. That being said, Tristan und Isolde is a masterpiece. Is it plausible to believe that Verdi’s Otello is a greater work even dramatically than Shakespeare’s Othello?…

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