Opera Archives ~ The Imaginative Conservative

The Swan Song of Roger Scruton: “Wagner’s Parsifal: The Music of Redemption”

By Paul Krause|2020-06-16T15:20:42-05:00June 16th, 2020|Categories: Books, Christianity, Culture, Music, Opera, Paul Krause, Richard Wagner, Roger Scruton, Senior Contributors|

In “Wagner’s Parsifal: The Music of Redemption,” Sir Roger Scruton guides us—like Virgil—through the twisty cosmos of Richard Wagner and leaves us at the gates of paradise. Those who desire a treatment of Wagner’s final opera without the pollution of ideological criticism will find a wonderful breath of fresh air in Scruton’s treatment of [...]

Men and Women as They Are: Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro”

The characters in Mozart’s “Figaro” are the furthest thing from mere archetypes. Instead, they are as real and as identifiable as the people around us today, for Mozart was interested in human nature itself, and not the ephemeral and artificial distinctions of class. “In my opinion, each number in Figaro is a miracle,” composer [...]