I believe a good number of us came to Wagner via bleeding chunks. The George Szell Ring highlights disc was the entree into Wagner World for me and my college friends.

Regarding the pacing and Verdi versus Wagner issue, I think a bit of the problem is that Wagner is considered to be high culture, whereas Verdi is considered pop culture. So the inability to countenance Wagner’s deadspots and general tediousness gets framed as “immaturity” and “inexperience.” I.e., it’s the audiences’ fault. Whereas Verdi’s conciseness and accessibility get perversely framed as signs of his lack of seriousness. (Puccini suffers from this even more.) There might also be some “Austrian/German music is high art” logic at play too. Wagner is considered “serious” like Mahler and Bruckner. My judgment is that Wagner was a genius who seriously needed an editor.

Just returned from this year Bayreuth Festival. Lol. I thought about you and was laughing inside as I was sitting in the dark hot auditorium with other Wagner cultists. Gotterdammerung started at 4pm and ended after all the applause 10:20pm.

That’s the least intimidating discussion of Wagner I’ve ever heard. Thanks!!

I remember very well the very first Wagner record that I got.....it must be said that I had an uncle of British origin who had made me listen to it before....I had find it grandiose.....in fact the very first disc was the ''wagner album'' by eugene ormandy and the philadelphia orchestra on columbia masterwork....it was a revelation for me....! as much the opening of Tannhauser as the magic fire music.....and the path has continued over all these years.....and I still love Wagner's music.

Yes! Das Rheingold is a great introduction, partly because the leitmotif system appeals to a modern audience's sensibility for programmatic music. I would add the first Act of Die Walküre as the next step, because it works so well as a stand-alone, and because it's musically much more representative of what the rest of the Ring will be like. I remember as a teen being disappointed that the bright outlines and special effects (Anvils! Thunder! Screaming Nibelungen!) were left behind. But there are greater rewards to follow.

Excellent video! I quite like the Siegfried Idyll as a beginning point for Wagner. It’s a relatively short time commitment, and gives you some beautiful music.

Thanks so much for this series, Dave. I’ve loved and engaged in Classical music most of my life, but my tastes in regular listening have always been relatively confined to my very favorite composers. More recently, sometimes thanks to you (!), I’ve been branching out and revisiting. This series gives me a chance to revisit the ones that just haven’t “clicked” yet. With Wagner, as really with just about all other opera composers as well, I just CAN’T seem to be convinced to CARE about the characters and the plots.They all seem so ridiculous, uninteresting, and based on silly or outlandish situations. But as you always say, it’s good to keep trying, and keep on listening. I love the Tristan Prelude and Liebestod, but it’s so difficult to get through the whole of any of the operas. I will keep trying . . . Maybe a talk someday on “operas for those who hate opera”?

I was intrigued but not taken into the Ring Cycle back when PBS aired the 1990 Met production. But my mom gave me a CD of overtures and preludes (Ozawa/BPO) and later a Ring highlights CD (Mehta/NYPO) and I do have to agree that the overture to Flying Dutchman will grab anyone immediately. It took a lot longer to get into the operas in part because I wasn't into the form at all, not for another 10-15 years. But eventually I got there, and the Ring Cycle was the first full Wagner I got through. I think it helps to watch a video first, with the subtitles on, as the visuals will give your mind something to hang on during the dead spots. Hopefully the singers are good enough actors for their roles too. I think it's too hard to just listen to his operas if you haven't seen them first, but that's just me.

I totally love Wagner's overtures & preludes, Wagner's influence on later composers is paramount.

I got into Wagner by listening to highlights. I think it was highlights from the Decca Rheingold on one side of the lp and Walkure on the other side. That worked for me

Haven't yet watched a second, but off the bat - hands down great list. Pretty much my introduction to the Wagner craze I had a decade ago (chirst it's been that long), minus Meistersinger.

I also started with Das Rheingold (the Solti recording of course) and got hooked.

My first Wagner LP was the Fritz Reiner / CSO with Siegfried's Rhine Journey and the Meistersinger Preludes to Act 1 and 3. Prelude to Act 3 never gets played enough.

Excellent selection - almost exactly the route I took into Wagner.

Very very informativ. As David himself often says - what's not to love (about this talk). The episode is certainly the essensiel thing in Wagner, where the Leitmotifs can shine. My favourite is In the Walkure, when Brunnhilde approches Siegmund, Sieglinde sleeping by his side, to announce that he is going to die and can look forward to a wonderful afterlife with sweet girls in Valhalla. Die Todesverkundigung! Well, Siegmund refuses. He will stay with his sister/wife and is not attracted by heaven. This is a moment of wonderful humanity, Brunnhilde is convinced and takes his side, and has to pay for it. In my view this is Wagner at his best. The music in this episode! About Parsifal. I think the essensiel point is a pure psychological one. Kundry, the cursed women is the one to watch. Parsifal has a mother complex. As a boy he leaves his mother just like that and she spends the rest of her life in sorrow. Parsifal is deeply insensitive, he kills a swan for fun, no compassion at all. Kundry knows all this. The evil Klingsor uses her for all this knowledge is worth. This, I think, is the center of Parsifal. It is the story of how a mother complex is resolved.

you really love Wagner, I see, wonderfull

I got relatively recently into Wagner. Oddly enough, it was Tannhauser (thanks to What's Opera Doc? By Chuck Jones), oddly because I hear it isn't one of the "loved" ones by him. The fault in the delayed appreciation, also, was that my introduction was Tristan und Isolde... Which I found completely alien musicaly... I have no idea why, as I was into hard edged modernism, without any discomfort at the time. But Tristan... I'm still not over it I think...

Re: Das Rheingold as an intro to the recorded Ring........ it worked for Culshaw/Solti. TBH the opening with the deep bass and Rhine theme was my intro to the Ring.....

This is an absolutely perfect talk on the subject. And yet it makes me wonder whether Wagnerian cultism may be due to the fact that one has to make so many concessions to the man and his music that one ends up abandoning one's critical faculties, as it were, and reverentially throwing oneself at him?

Yes of course Das Rheingold . The music is wonderful and the story is very interesting. For me, the most interesting of all his operas. In addition, it looks a lot like that of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which many people know thanks to Peter Jackson's films. On the other hand, I didn't understand what Wotan's monologue is that you find boring in Die Walkure. If it's the one at the end of Act III, it's magnificent. Besides, the whole of Act III is magnificent. I would even recommend it to a beginner.

9 minutes before the first recommendation. How Wagnerian! 😂 (please don’t ban me. I’m just teasing 😊)

"Afflatus" - a apposite word to apply to Wagner.

"It's not a woke stuff", I liked that. 😀

Poor Lohengrin... Never a look in. Even with sumptuous duets and trios... Sigh...