Listening to Wagner's Das Rheingold.

The modern equivalent is the nuclear bomb; the thing that makes inadequate despots think they have total power over humanity if they control it. Their power is limited to ending the human race without anything creative or positive. So was Wagner "a genuis". No. At his best. a good tunesmith.

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helenS · 36-40, F

Richard Wagner – designer and constructor of modernity in music! His work made all older operas museum pieces, even those by Mozart.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@helenS A very good point - though it hasn't stopped the better "museum pieces" still being popular even today. I believe even some of the music from operas that were failures in their own time, is sometimes performed now just as instrumental pieces in their own right.

I wonder if with 19c opera, something like that following J.S. Bach's time happened.

He made the Fugue so popular that "everyone" played them; but after his death "everyone" rapidly moved to these trendy new ideas in the very latest Classical era. Then over time, the Toccatas and Fugues started dipping exploratory quavers back in the choppy "hit parade" seas with new performers and audiences, so the good ones are now performed as often as any other popular Baroque or Classical pieces.

alan20 · M

@helenS I'm not that much into opera but find those of Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Smetana, Offenbach, Massenet, Rimsky-Korsakov, Janacek much more to my liking. Modernity in music started with Debussy and Stravinsky, not with the much- quoted opening chord of Tristan, but then its more instrumental music I'm into. Quite like the Dutchman and bits of the Ring and Tristan.