Götterdämmerung​! 

 
Kristol Clear will be very short this week, as I’m still recovering from attending the Washington National Opera’s performances last week of Wagner’s The Valkyrie and Siegfried, each over five hours long. Susan, who logged in nineteen hours at all four of the works of the “Ring” cycle, thinks I’m a wimp–though I at least still have my sanity (I think), and am not swooping around the house in a fancy helmet singing “Ho-jo-toho.” (And then she’s offended when I point out that, fine voice though she has, she’s no Nina Stemme!) But I will acknowledge that even half the Cycle was a memorable experience, and Wagner is in his way impressive. I’m even willing to concede that Mark Twain was perhaps unfair when he remarked that Wagner’s music is probably better than it sounds.
 
Still, it’s hard not to conclude that the “progress” from Mozart to Wagner was a pretty big step in the Decline of the West.