O Namenlose Freude!

The florists of New York City are overflowing with bouquets of all sizes and, it seems, every imaginable shading of aesthetictaste or lack thereof. German and Swiss chocolates are excitingly prominent in drugstores. Couples wander shamelessly embracing. Young men and maidens can be overheard anxiously or eagerly speculating on how various gestures will be received by the object of their affections. On this Valentine's Day, I have been sitting in my apartment doing work for the coming weeks (le sigh), and thinking about love in opera. First love, fading love, impetuous love, love of slow growth, unrequited or instantly reciprocated, touchingly innocent or sexually obsessive... que nul ne sait apprivoiser.

Dich grüsste mein Herz mit heiligem Grau'n

If opera tends to be a love-it-or-hate-it art form, surely it has no more polarizing practitioner than that prickly, erratic, quite possibly insane man, Richard Wagner. A musical critic and priest once delivered a lecture series on Wagner tellingly subtitled "The Terrible Man and his Truthful Art." (Available for purchase here.) The man himself was famously inspired by Nietzsche, and the movements of anarchism and nihilism. In turn, Wagner's music inspired Ludwig II of Bavaria to build what is arguably Europe's most recognizable castle (complete with Wagnerian murals and an awesome grotto). It inspired George Eliot, and Marcel Proust, not to mention countless writers of movie and TV music. And yes, it also was embraced by the man whom the inimitable Charlie Chaplin is spoofing here, accompanied by the Lohengrin overture.