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Posted by Martin Walker on July 14, 2008, 10:35 am
88.122.181.59
This is a magnificent review, indeed, I cannot remember ever having read a review of a Wagner opera which succeeded so effortlessly in combining attention to performance detail with the grander aspects of total meaning. The reference to Engels was extremely illuminating, for one, and the brilliant characterisation of the prelude to Act1 as giving "the impression of Freischütz-meets-Schoenberg" sums up so much of what I have always felt about this - I am green with envy.
P.S.
May I append a note about a point of English grammar? More and more frequently I encounter the habit of replacing the counter-factual "might" with the open "may" (= possibility), especially in American usage but often on this site as well. I quote: "Had I not recently been treated to Sir John Tomlinson’s towering portrayal at Covent Garden, I may have been more enthusiastic." This is simply impossible; you might have been more enthusiastic, but were not, which is similar to the unfulfilled possibility you mention earlier: "something along such lines for the forest – and perhaps its inhabitants too? – might have made an important contribution on many interpretative levels." - Sorry about this, but it is a point that has come to irritate me a lot.
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