WAGNER'S OPERAS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 121, 17 October 1941, Unnumbered Page

WAGNER'S OPERAS

Sir,-The arrangers of our classical recitals are in the habit of neglecting the greatest of dramatic composers, Richard Wagner, regardless of the fact that their programmes cannot get on without him; and it occurred to me, could this neglect be deliberate? Was the solution to be found in Wagner’s nationality? Since I should hate to accuse persons I have never met of stupidity, I hope I may be mistaken. To music-lovers Wagner is just Wagner-that is, the best thing that ever came out of Germany (much the same as Gilbert and Sullivan — Shakespeare excepted-is the best that ever came out of England). And it never occurred to me to put him anywhere but where he belongs-in the common Heaven of music, along with Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Verdi, Rossini, and the rest. Richard Wagner, except in his relation to the national music, had and has no more to do with Germany than I in New Zealand have had with the Gold Coast or the Yukon, He is less connectable with Adolf’s peregrinations than the Man in the Moon. Then, if my suspicions are ungrounded, let us have more of him; not merely the Tannhauser Overture, and the Act 3 Prelude from Lohengrin (usually murdered on the Wurlitzer). Let us have Parsifal, the Ring, Tristan, and especially let us have the Meistersingers. As to the question of detailed recitals, undetailed ones are useless to all but experienced critics.

DAVID

ALTON

(Mount Albert).