I come not to praise Wagner but to bury him. A few weeks before the start of The MET season, an "illustrious" critic for an "illustrious" publication wrote that a new opera he had just seen and heard needed to have cuts to be more effective but he wanted to assure his readers that some operas, even some long ones, are perfect at their actual length. He sighted Wagner's Parsifal as a perfect opera that needs all five hours to make its point(s). He actually said six hours, but he seems to be counting the famously long intermissions at The MET as opera time. He went on to say perhaps the most cliché "accepted truth" in all opera: that works like Der Rosenkavalier (a perenial choice for this "truth") need their (usual) cuts to keep from being "boring"--intimating their composers (for some reason, invariably it's Strauss) are lesser beings than opera "gods" like Mozart or Wagner. Anyway, he made me think (more than he has poor taste) that many "accepted truths" hide actuality. (At least as I hear it.) I don't care how many people claim Wagner as a genius that must be heard in full--he wrote more than one "dud". And Parsifal is the dudest of the duds. A 20 minutes or so here and there in each act of "good" music that is meant to be profound does not a masterpiece make. In fact, I don't trust anyone who thinks Parsifal is a "perfect" five hours. At five hours, it's perfectly dreadful. As is Siegfried. Maybe an hour and a half of truly great music is hidden in an atrocious five hour monstrosity. And, yes, the other operas of The Ring Cycle are much better and the events depicted in Siegfried need to be told. So get someone to play a highlights disc while a narrator explains everything you need to know. There. Three and a half hours saved. I could go on. In fact, other than a few operas by Wagner (and I love much of his music so don't think "I just don't understand him") most of his works would be more effective with cuts. Even Gotterdammerung, my vote for his greatest "masterpiece", could do without a few minutes here and there that seem superfluous. (The Norns really add little and their music is merely "good." Cut 'em, I say.)
So, any other suggestions for "repertory" works you think are duds? (Or at least, not worth the time to get to the end.) A rule first: they have to be works heard around the world and recorded at least once. And please, no "atonal" works. We know, you just don't understand what everyone hears. Got it.
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