Miscellaneous Resources on Nietzsche and Wagner

Wagner Music Videos on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9B8VGLjOj4 Selection from film Aria based on Wagner’s Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde (Not safe for work, contains nudity and simulated sex)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9B8VGLjOj4&p=944114A229470111&playnext=1&index=1 Another recording of the above

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=781JyNwJ1qw&feature=related Jessye Norman sings Liebestod

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv_Xcgate1M An Animated Summary of Parsifal (kind of funny)

Apocalypse Now: Ride of the Valkyries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx7XNb3Q9Ek&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJ4QHq4lCE&feature=related

More Readings

http://www.monsalvat.no/index.htm

An incredibly detailed website focused on Wagner’s Parsifal.

http://www.monsalvat.no/nietzsch.htm

Nietzsche on Wagner and Parsifal

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/04/wagner_tolkien_1.html

Alex Ross, “The Ring and the Rings” (Was Tolkien influenced by Wagner’s The Ring cycle? Even if he wasn’t, clearly Howard Shore was influenced in the movie score by Wagner’s music.), from New Yorker

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/22/ring-cycle-to-debut-at-me_n_735633.html

Ring Cycle to Debut at Metropolitan Opera with High-Tech ‘Das Rheingold’

New York Times, September 22, 2010

NEW YORK — When Robert Lepage signed on to direct the Metropolitan Opera's first new "Ring" cycle in more than 20 years, he saw his challenge as using high-tech wizardry to create a set that would mirror Wagner's unique musical style.

That meant finding a visual equivalent for the "leitmotivs" or thematic strands of melody that Wagner wove in ever-shifting forms to compose the score of his epic music drama.

"All the motivs are like coloring crayons," Lepage said in a recent interview during technical rehearsals. "You take one theme and another and another and you do a braid with them and you create yet another. You always have the impression that the music is new and that the situation is new, but it's sewn or threaded with always the same threads. So we were looking for a set that would be devised in the same way."