3,042 words
Frederic Spotts
Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics
New York: The Overlook Press, 2003
Leaders throughout history have frequently deployed the arts as a means by which to display their power. Hitler is unusual, however, in that art was central to his political vision. He was intensely interested in the arts (painting, sculpture, music, and architecture) and dreamed of forging a state whose artistic and cultural achievements would rival those of ancient Greece and Rome. (more…)
4,188 words / 26:20
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As I have written about previously for Counter-Currents (as well as in a considerably revised and expanded version of this same essay that was included in North American New Right, vol. 2), the English philosopher, novelist, and compiler of eclectic knowledge of all kinds, Colin Wilson (1932-2013), is one of the most unjustly forgotten writers of our time. (more…)
375 words
Richard Wagner was born 205 years ago today in Leipzig in the Kingdom of Saxony. He died on February 13, 1883 in Venice. As an artist, intellectual, author, and cultural force, Wagner has left an immense metapolitical legacy, which is being evaluated and appropriated in the North American New Right. I wish to draw your attention to the following writings which have been published at Counter-Currents/North American New Right. (more…)
Christopher Ventris as Palestrina in the 2009 Bavarian State Opera production of the opera.
Christopher Ventris as Palestrina in the 2009 Bavarian State Opera production of the opera.
1,693 words
Hans Pfitzner
Palestrina
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, conducted by Rafael Kubelík
Deutsche Grammophon, 1989
Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina is one of the unsung masterpieces of twentieth-century opera. (more…)
Giuseppe Verdi in Golden Gate park, San Francisco
Giuseppe Verdi in Golden Gate park, San Francisco
1,651 words
George Martin
Verdi at the Golden Gate: Opera and San Francisco in the Gold Rush Years
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993
George Martin is an independent historian who has written a number of books about the history of opera (including a great biography of Verdi). His account of how opera and in particular Verdi’s operas rose to prominence in San Francisco during the Gold Rush years describes a fascinating but not widely known episode in the history of the American West. (more…)
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On the same day that the combined forces of the Left were doing violence to the rights of free speech and assembly of the Unite the Right marchers in Charlottesville, VA, their cultural Marxist brethren were at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY doing aesthetic violence to the American premiere of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera The Siege of Calais (1836). (more…)
375 words
Richard Wagner was born 204 years ago today in Leipzig in the Kingdom of Saxony. He died on February 13, 1883 in Venice. As an artist, intellectual, author, and cultural force, Wagner has left an immense metapolitical legacy, which is being evaluated and appropriated in the North American New Right. I wish to draw your attention to the following writings which have been published at Counter-Currents/North American New Right. (more…)
2,572 words
Christian Thielemann
My Life With Wagner: Fairies, Rings, and Redemption: Exploring Opera’s Most Enigmatic Composer
New York: Pegasus, 2016
The conductor Christian Thielemann, born in Berlin in 1959, is well-known for his passionate advocacy of German music. What becomes clear in his new book, an intellectual history of his musical development and his relationship with Richard Wagner (more…)
From the San Francisco Opera production of The Makropulos Case, 2016.
From the San Francisco Opera production of The Makropulos Case, 2016.
2,721 words
Leoš Janáček
The Makropulos Case
English National Opera, conducted by Sir Charles MacKerras, Chandos, 2007
(Warning: This review contains spoilers for the plot of this opera.)
Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) was a Czech composer known for his combination of folk music with a strikingly original modernism. There is no other composer who sounds remotely like him. He is as instantly recognizable as Vivaldi, Wagner, or Philip Glass. (more…)
4,508 words
Part 3
Hitler is awake all the 24 hours of the day in perfecting his sadhana [self-transcendence]. He wins because he pays the price. His inventions surprise his enemies. But it is his single-minded devotion to his purpose that should be the object of our admiration and emulation. Although he works all his waking hours, his intellect is unclouded and unerring. Are our intellects unclouded and unerring? — Mahatma Gandhi[1] (more…)
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On Friday, March 11, I saw the Deutsche Oper in Berlin’s production of Rienzi, Richard Wagner’s third opera. Rienzi is a Grand Opera in the Parisian style, an approach Wagner eventually rejected. Although Wagner excluded Rienzi and his first two operas from the canon of the Bayreuth Festival, Rienzi remained his most popular opera throughout his lifetime. Wagner came to find Rienzi “quite repugnant,” but Gustav Mahler characterized it as nothing less than “the greatest musical drama ever composed.” (more…)
