Ah, Wagner, yes, a genius and doubtless one of the chief oars, or even ores, of the Progress of Music.
I love certain arias and certain orchestral preludes … I like the idea of Wagner, and as a man, he is exceptionally fascinating.
My feelings about exposure to an entire Wagnerian opera were so well captured by Mr. Clemons that I cannot do better than quote him here: I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.
With Clemons, I do concede, Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.
I am not quite honest, though. My real annoyance was that first moment of perception when I realized that if Wagner, the social theorist, had his way, my sexual style would suffer real crimping.
That disenchanting pamphlet was entitled Against Vivisection, by the way. (Do you know it?)
No, the Danube is no longer Beautiful Blue. Was it ever, even in the 1860s, when Stwowce composed it?
But we can’t be blue on that account, becominghorse.
(I suspect you are a little green, yourself … but never mind temporary impediments. With tutelage, the Shetland Pony shall yet become a Percheron.)