Criticultura em Portugal

I am a semiretired physician-educator who at long last has settled near Manhattan to enjoy theater, opera, and music.                                                                                                                                                                 I have substituted reading difficult novels for my science reading. In short, I now can thrive in the humanities largely deferred during a satisfying but busy medical career. I have been a singer, pianist, and conductor, and have strong opinions about artistic quality that I enjoy sharing with others.

After intending to do so for 30 years, I have finally climbed the musical mountain and experienced the Bayreuth Wagner Festival in Bavaria. This is sort of a shrine to operaphiles (and to some unrepentant Nazis) since Richard Wagner built the theater to his specifications in 1876 and it remains nearly unchanged. Only the operas of Wagner are performed here, and only for two months each summer. Why did it take me this long to attend? Well, like many religious rituals, there is no quick payoff. To attend, one needs to apply in writing (no internet, fax) yearly. After an average of 10 years waiting, your lottery number comes up. If you forget to reapply, your name goes to the back of the line. These wonderful Germans! After participating twice in in this masochistic rite, the most recent being 8 consecutive yearly applications, my religious rite was interrupted by a move to Florida which prevented receipt of the annual application. I used my higher salary and advancing years to ...

Part 2 Now, at last, the two operas I saw on consecutive nights. After years of the Festival presenting the operas as faithful re-creations of Wagner's own designs and stage directions, directors with creative vision or poor taste have dominated since the festival reopened in 1951, an attempt to bring new views to Bayreuth and distance it from its German cult-worship and Hitler-worshiping past. Hitler loved Wagnerian opera and was chums with Wagner's daughter, who defended her old pal even after the war, and the first night I sat right in front of what had been Hitler's private box. The two performances I saw both had radical director conceptions. Lohengrin is normally a pretty conventional drama about a shining knight of the Grail who comes to old Germany to save the maid Elsa from calumny, and save the Germans from their rigid conservative tradition (Modestly, Wagner also saw himself as this savior of German culture). In the current production, Lohengrin is here to disr...