Current issue

The July 2008 issue (vol.2, no.2), now available, includes:

• 'Of Bridge-builders, Arch-critics and Miniaturists' by Roger Allen. In this mould-breaking essay Allen discusses the theory and practice of Wagner conducting over more than a century and a quarter. Taking issue with conventional notions of the 'arch' and the 'long line', Allen shows how great conductors such as Furtwängler and Goodall understood them not as 'the result of a grand philosophic overview' but in terms of the 'accumulated dramatic expressivity of each moment right down to the smallest detail'. Bringing his survey right up to date with a consideration of the recent Ring cycles conducted by Antonio Pappano, Allen establishes an invaluable framework for future discussion of Wagner conducting.

• 'The Positive Influence of Wagner and Nietzsche' by Mark Berry attempts to recalibrate the relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche by identifying the areas in which Wagner's ideas remained of positive importance to the mature Nietzsche. Examining also the ideas of other influential thinkers such as Feuerbach, Hegel and Stirner, Berry concludes that Wagner was 'a figure of crucial, positive importance in the development and formulation of Nietzsche's mature philosophy'.

• Joachim Köhler's 'The Ring and the Romantic Tradition' grapples with the philosophical fundamentals of the tetralogy, tracing the influences on Wagner back to Schelling and Hegel. For Schelling, all existence consisted of the clash between light and darkness, 'an opposition that could be found in God himself'. Examining ideas about the Creation, the origins of evil, nature, matter, paradise lost and regained, Köhler penetrates to the philosophical and ideological core of Wagner's cycle.

• In 'Redeeming the Rhinemaidens: A Reconsideration of their Dionysian and Apollonian Attributes', Kimberly Fairbrother Canton asks why the three water-maidens are consistently underestimated by the men in the Ring, and indeed by most commentators on the work – arguably by Wagner himself. Discussing the Rhinemaidens in the Apollonian–Dionysian terms formulated by Nietzsche, she argues that a close analysis of their musical and and narrative functions demands a rethinking of their role and purpose.

• Katherine Syer's 'Echoes of the Green Hill' subjects three key productions of Tristan – by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Nikolaus Lehnhoff and Patrice Chéreau – to detailed study and detects the influence of Bayreuth in all three.

• Reviews of :

The Stockholm Ring and Harry Kupfer's Berlin Meistersinger

John Louis DiGaetani: Inside the 'Ring': Essays on Wagner's Opera Cycle

Paul Schofield: The Redeemer Reborn: 'Parsifal' as the Fifth Opera of Wagner's 'Ring'

CDs of Knappertsbusch's final Parsifal and a new solo disc by the Finnish bass-baritone Juha Uusitalo

The issue also features two little-known portraits of Furtwängler: an oil painting by Johanna Trunkwalter-Kubelik and a pencil drawing by Colleen Margetson.

The well-populated ship in Act I of Patrice Chéreau's La Scala production of Tristan und Isolde

Isolde (Johanna Meier) contemplates vengeance in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's production of Tristan at Bayreuth.

An audience in summer whites enjoys a theatrical spectacle in Act II of the Stockholm Siegfried.

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