It's kinda Wagner's fault...

As Nancy has mentioned, the big production this weekend is Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner (pronounced: "very long and very loud"). Being from southern Indiana protestant stock, I'm less worried about being able to sit through a tortuous five hours than Nancy is. It'll remind me of my childhood.
I do have some prejudice against Wagner, though.

Basically, I blame him for the dissolution of music and a lot of really bad composition over the last one hundred and sixty years. AND for the complete hijacking of the opera form.

And just so you don't think I'm way off base, go ask your favorite musicologist (amateur or professional) about the importance of Tristan und Isolde. The musicologist will begin talking, possibly bring out some musical scores, various time lines of German principalities in the mid-1800's and a copy of the complete works of Schopenhauer. My suggestion is to draw eyeballs on the back of your eyelids after the first mention of the half-diminished 7th chord, nap, and then wake when they say "that's why the Liebestod is the most important piece of music in the history of mankind."

If you don't know any musicologists, you'll just have to take my word for it.

You see, Germans in Wagner's time were like the Baby Boomers. They were convinced that they were the culmination of all time. And they had to prove it to the rest of the world (mainly France) and themselves.
Wagner was the prototype. He was an artiste, a philandering womanizer, a great composer, a political radical and a legend both in his own time and his own mind.

You have to be all of these things to compose operas that are five hours long. Take a moment and think about it. Have you ever done anything (other than perhaps giving birth or being born) that made other people sit quietly and pay attention to you or something you did for five hours?

Without Wagner, however, some of the really stunningly beautiful and important music since 1848 doesn't exist. He, in essence, allows us (yes, you and me and the rest of the world) the opportunity to have the wonderfully accessible movie scores that have shaped our lives. What is Star Wars without it's heroic opening music, Schindler's List without it's heartbreaking theme, or Dances with Wolves without its sweeping landscapes of sound (I'm getting poetical...sheesh)? Wagner's style of long-term, thematic composition is the basis for these works. Damn him!

So, think of Nancy and me this Saturday (if you aren't going yourselves). Our butts are going to be sore. This one's for you, Kevin Costner, Steven Spielberg and R2D2.