Empfehlungen basierend auf "The Ring of the Nibelung"

Many music lovers find Wagner's operas inexpressibly beautiful and richly satisfying, while others find them revolting, dangerous, self-indulgent, and immoral. The man who W.H. Auden once called "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived" has inspired both greater adulation and greater loathing than any other composer.Bryan Magee presents a penetrating analysis of Wagner's work, concentrating on how his sensational and deeply erotic music uniquely expresses the repressed and highly charged contents of the psyche. He examines not only Wagner's music and detailed stage directions but also the prose works in which he formulated his ideas, as well as shedding new light on his anti-semitism and the way in which the Nazis twisted his theories to suit their own purposes. Outlining the astonishing range and depth of Wagner's influence on our culture, Magee reveals how profoundly he continues to shock and inspire musicians, poets, novelists, painters, philosophers, and politicians today.

SS Officer Juliyus Schlesinger is ordered to remove the statue of the Jewish composer Mendelssohn from the roof of the Prague Academy of Music before an official concert. Unsure which of the statues is Mendelssohn, he tells his men to remove the one with the biggest nose. Unfortunately, this is the statue of Wagner.

Der Maler Basil Hallward ist fasziniert von der bestechenden Sch�nheit des jungen Dorian Gray und fertigt ein Gem�lde seiner Muse an. Als Dorian Gray sich auf dem Gem�lde erblickt, ist er von sich selbst so gefesselt, dass er einen ebenso wahnwitzigen wie folgenschweren Wunsch ausspricht: Er selbst soll immer so jung und makellos sch�n bleiben wie auf diesem Portr�t; das Bild soll an seiner Stelle altern. Sein Wunsch wird erh�ht, der faustische Pakt besiegelt. Dorian f�llt seinen innersten Abgr�nde zum Opfer. Nach au�en hin bleibt er makellos, doch sein Portr�t, das er in einem verstaubten Zimmer auf dem Dachboden versteckt, zeigt ihm die Verfehlungen seiner Seele schonungslos und auf schauerlichste Weise.Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) wurde zu seiner Zeit als Schriftsteller bewundert und galt im pr�den viktorianischen England gleichzeitig als Skandalautor. Er war ber�hmt f�r geschliffene Sprachgewandtheit und extravagantes Auftreten und ging f�r die damalige Zeit offen mit seiner Homosexualit�t um. Seine homosexuellen Partnerschaften f�hrten zu gesellschaftlichen Skandalen, zwei Gerichtsprozessen und seiner Inhaftierung. Gesundheitlich schwer angeschlagen wurde Wilde 1897 aus der Haft entlassen und floh vor der gesellschaftlichen �chtung nach Paris. Die letzten drei Lebensjahre verbrachte er unter dem Namen Sebastian Melmoth (nach dem Roman Melmoth the Wanderer seines Gro�onkels Charles Robert Maturin) auf dem europ�ischen Festland in Armut und Isolation.

Steppenwolf is a poetical self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope. Yet his novel can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of the period. As Hesse himself remarked, "Of all my books Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any of the others".

This revolutionary translation is the only way to experience the novel as Hesse envisioned it nearly one hundred years ago.The quest for self-discovery never ends, especially for Harry Haller―better known as the Steppenwolf. After a life spent in self-imposed isolation, Harry meets the mysterious Hermine and becomes captivated by her intoxicating power. Through their nighttime adventures, the Steppenwolf experiences the decadent underbelly of the bourgeois society he always despised. Harry becomes a man divided―lost in a surreal underground world of pleasure and set on a collision course with his innermost desires.There has never been a translation that fully captures the essence of Hermann Hesse’s own spiritual questioning until now. Kurt Beals restores the original meaning of this hallucinatory German tale in a recognizably modern voice. Beals’s expert introduction traces the impact of The Steppenwolf for readers seeking meaning during the upheaval of world conflicts, the onslaught of new technologies, and life’s uncertainties.

"Steppenwolf" is a poetical self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope. Yet this novel can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of the period. As Hesse himself remarked, 'Of all my books "Steppenwolf" is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any other'.

Goethe's Faust is a classic of European literature. Based on the fable of the man who traded his soul for superhuman powers and knowledge, it became the life's work of Germany's greatest poet. Beginning with an intriguing wager between God and Satan, it charts the life of a deeply flawed individual, his struggle against the nihilism of his diabolical companion Mephistopheles. Part One presents Faust's pact with the Devil and the harrowing tragedy of his love affair with the young Gretchen. Part Two shows Faust's experience in the world of public affairs, including his encounter with Helen of Troy, the emblem of classical beauty and culture. The whole is a symbolic and panoramic commentary on the human condition and on modern European history and civilisation. This new translation of both parts of Faust preserves the poetic character of the original, its tragic pathos and hilarious comedy. In addition, John Williams has translated the Urfaust, a fascinating glimpse into the young Goethe's imagination, and a selection from the draft scenarios for the Walpurgis Night witches' sabbath - material so ribald and blasphemous that Goethe did not dare publish it.

Generally considered Germany's greatest literary figure, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) produced a large body of fine literary work that includes novels, plays, stories, scientific treatises, travel accounts, and much other prose. Perhaps at his greatest as a poet, he was the author of numerous exceptionally fine lyric poems, ballads, and elegies. This convenient dual-language edition, spanning a wide range of styles, forms, and moods, allows readers to savor a rich selection of the poet's verse in the original German — from "An den Sclaf" ("To Sleep"), written when he was 18, to his last great poem, "Vermächtnis" ("Legacy"), written when he was 80. Several poems from the 1819 volume West-östlicher Divan (Occidental-Oriental Divan) are presented. Excellent line-for-line English translations on facing pages accompany such masterworks as "Prometheus, " typical of the Sturm and Drang (storm and stress) period; "Rastlose Liebe" ("Restless Love") and "An den Mond" ("To the Moon"), lyric pieces of intense beauty; and the narrative ballads "Der Fischer" ("The Fisherman") and "Erlkönig" ("Elf King"). Included among the 96 other works are these poems: "Auf dem See" ("On the Lake"); "Zigeunerlied" ("Gypsy Song"); "Jägers Abendlied" ("Huntsman's Evening Song"); "Grenzen der Menschheit" ("Limitations of Humanity"); "Der Zauberiehrling" ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice"); and "An Werther" ("To Werther"). For this edition, translator Stanley Appelbaum has provided an informative introduction and a commentary on each poem, which will prove invaluable to students, teachers, and general readers.

A beguiling exploration of the last Habsburg monarchs' grip on Europe's historical and cultural imagination.In 1919 the last Habsburg rulers, Emperor Karl and Empress Zita, left Austria, going into exile. That same year, the fairy-tale opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow), featuring a mythological emperor and empress, premiered at the Vienna Opera. Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and German composer Richard Strauss created Die Frau ohne Schatten through the bitter years of World War I, imagining it would triumphantly appear after the victory of the German and Habsburg empires. Instead, the premiere came in the aftermath of catastrophic defeat.The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy explores how the changing circumstances of politics and society transformed their opera and its cultural meanings before, during, and after the First World War.Strauss and Hofmannsthal turned emperors and empresses into fantastic fairy-tale characters; meanwhile, following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy after the war, their real-life counterparts, removed from political life in Europe, began to be regarded as anachronistic, semi-mythological figures. Reflecting on the seismic cultural shifts that rocked post-imperial Europe, Larry Wolff follows the story of Karl and Zita after the loss of their thrones. Karl died in 1922, but Zita lived through the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the Cold War. By her death in 1989, she had herself become a fairy-tale figure, a totem of imperial nostalgia.Wolff weaves together the story of the opera's composition and performance; the end of the Habsburg monarchy; and his own family's life in and exile from Central Europe, providing a rich new understanding of Europe's cataclysmic twentieth century, and our contemporary relationship to it.

Mozart's unfinished Requiem has long been shrouded in mystery. Mozart undertook the commission for an Austrian nobleman, little knowing that he was to write a requiem for himself. Inevitably, the secrecy surrounding the anonymous commission, the circumstances of Mozart's death, the unfinished state of the work, and its completion under the direction of Mozart's widow, Constanze, have precipitated two centuries of romantic speculation and scholarly controversy.Christoph Wolff provides a critical introduction to the Requiem in its many facets. Part I of his study focuses on the tangled genesis and completion of the work and its fascinating early reception history until Constanze's death. Wolff summarizes the current state of research on the subject, provides new perspectives on Mozart's conception of the whole work, and surveys his contributions to the movements composed posthumously by his assistant, Süssmayr. Part II provides a musical analysis of Mozart's composition, including contextual, structural, and interpretive aspects. Part III consists of an annotated collection of the principal literary documents (1791-1839) that illuminate the fascinating early history of the Requiem.The book concludes with a complete edition of the work that is at the center of Wolff's study, the authentic score of the Requiem—Mozart's fragment—supplemented by crucial excerpts from Süssmayr's 1792 Requiem completion.