In your life.

Watch Solti's face and movements during the final bars. It is as close as you will see to a mystical experience recorded in real time. As great as Nilsson's bravura is here, the show is one hundred per cent Solti's. It is one of the greatest recordings of the 20th century.

It was made in 1958, in Vienna. Solti, a Hungarian Jew, conducted Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, triumphantly in a city where, twenty years before, Jews had been publicly humiliated before being shipped off to extermination camps. As M. Owen Lee has written, the human need for healing is what most of Wagner is about.

Eeeek! I would have survived better without that. Gadzooks!

I like Opera, but that was hellish.

Try Puccini instead.

Much better for the soul:

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You could suck my cock, if I let diseased alcoholic hags anywhere near it.

Meanwhile, here's another another cock for you to suck on.

A wee bit antsy pantsy aren't you, little man?

My!, but your frustration is showing, bigtime!

Surely you must have a better outlet for that sort of rage than the fray.

But gee, thanks for allowing me to upset you so. Makes me feel, well..kind of all powerful and stuff.

Wishing you peace (kinda sorta maybe)..Fritz.

Lord knows, you certainly need some.

~LAM

By the way what have you got against Puccini and Callas?

So strange you are are, indeed.

It struck me odd you noted Wagner was favorite of Hitler's, even as he killed the Jews, whose masterpieces he admired.

But, then most bots strike me as intensely odd sorts.

See, I would never even deign to credit a monster like Hitler with having the humanity to appreciate an artist like Wagner at all. Some monsters like Hitler should never be humanized lest we all one day skew , excuse ,or minimize what he really was.

A mass murderer of 7 million innocent jews, gypsies , Poles, dissidents ,to the state of nazi Germany and any even most minor disabled child or adult..(not to even touch upon the sadistic medical experiments his minions did for his sick pleasure.

Your Top Post was sick in that it even gave Hitler credit for admiring a fine artist like Wagner.

Hitler never deserves to be remembered as part of humanity.

Because by his massive atrocities he was not humane nor really fit to be considered among the human race. That was what was so sick about your Top Post..you related him to something he in all honesty never really could have appreciated.

It's a dirty sick lie on your part to pre-suppose what or anything Hitler ever claimed to be true or of value.Kind of like you, Fritz Gerlich.(my ,what a german name you have!).

Nazi=Fritz.

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Wagner History and Hitler.

Interesting reaction.

Of course it is.

It came from me.

The content is garbage. It's just interesting that you had a reaction. I don't suspect it's literally true, but your behaviour here is usually "sociopathic" (I'm using the term casually). It's nice to see your feelings can be hurt.

If my feelings can be hurt, moron, I am not a sociopath. Care to re-think that one?

By the way Letterman's over...with Obama............

What a snooze that was like all the rest.

Anyway...look a-z ( and what's up with you dissing every other poster you see these days? Is this your new schtick? Sort of lame. How about being creative like green eggs or lilmacq?

I mean those who stalk people personally, as you do and have doing all over the board to many , for days now, az, are well ,kind of on the lame side.

Anyway, got some business to take care of prosfessionally tomorrow and have to get my son up for school, in the morning.....so...need my sleep.

Wishing you better days, internally.

~LAM

I've seen lots of things greater than that.

Jack

See, I would never even deign to credit a monster like Hitler with having the humanity to appreciate an artist like Wagner at all.

That was the horrific dichtomy of the Nazis. It was said that they murdered Jews during the day and went home to their families to enjoy wine and Wagner at night.

Even demons love good music.

Jack

when folks won't entertain your twisted proclivities. I know how much you love being humored.

Jack

I would definitely agree that Solit's recording is the benchmark and standard. It's absolutely foundational to a modern listener.

If you have never heard it, you may also want to find a copy of Furtwangler's 1953 Ring. It was recorded in Italy, and I think it is an amazingly personal, deep and nuanced recording. Very dark. I can only imagine what emotions must have been crashing in upon him during that process.

Fr. Owen Lee is a delight, and his books are wonderful. I hear that he even still sometimes addresses Ring audiences and it might get me to a Toronto Ring one day.

I always thought Beethoven was Hitler's "favorite" but that Wagner pulled ahead during WWII because of "Jews in Music"... having taken the time to write out all his own personal hatred of the Jews, and laid out so "succinctly" for Hitler to incorporate into his own grand plan. (Not that Wagner did anything "succinctly.") Once a person starts really looking into The Ring and dealing with the music, the story and the libretto there really is none of the Jewish hatred that was so present in his literary output. It has to come in as circumstantial and tangential if you know how Wagner felt based on his writing.

But also knowing Wagner he was not exactly subtle. If he wanted to write an opera about hating the Jews he would have. If he wanted The Ring to be anti-Jew he could have (and probably would have) made it so. I think there is a legal principle that speaks to that kind of thing, where the language itself is a conscious choice and so lack of a particular term (or issue) is construed to be a conscious choice.

It seems to me, in my own uneducated opinion, that Wagner simply didn't incorporate his bigotry into The Ring. It was far more, as you say, focused on the human need for healing. His own as well as that of his listeners.