Redemption Through Love! An Irreverent Guide to Wagnerian Opera Thrills Without Being a Nut

There is a world of music, beautiful, thrilling, powerful and romantic music, that one composer wrote to express the theme of Redemption Through Love! He wrote this music for "sacred music dramas" he believed could transform the world through art. His stories come from legends and mythology and folk tales, and he meant them to resonate deep within the subconscious mind, long before modern psychology knew this could be done. And they do. His music has inspired observations like "Some people are made to feel by his music that they are in touch with the depths of their own personality for the first time: a feeling of wholeness, yet unboundedness; compared to a mystical or religious experience."Is this what you think of when you think of Wagnerian opera? Or do you think of heavy Germanic arias sung by heavy Germanic divas in horned helmets? Do you imagine yourself surrounded by pedantic Wagner cultists ready to look down their noses at you and test your worthiness to enter the temple, with stuffy conversations about the most arcane and obscure performances about which hoi polloi like you surely must be woefully ignorant?Dear music lover, this author believes you should associate with Wagner a world of beautiful, thrilling, powerful and romantic music that will thrill you, uplift you, caress you, transform you, and leave you in a state of sheer delight!Contrary to popular impression, access to the glory and wonder of Richard Wagner's art can be easy and inexpensive. If you do nothing more than pick up a couple of albums of overtures, preludes, and Ring Cycle highlights (with vocal lines transcribed for orchestra), you're in for a real treat. Wagner proposed art as a transfiguring rite of passage to a higher world. Approaching his art with an irreverent attitude can propel you confidently past any snooty operatic gatekeepers. And this book will summon that irreverent attitude from the depths of your music-loving soul.There is everything one could want in this book in terms of Wagner knowledge and deep insights into the deep themes underlying his music dramas. Presented irreverently.

Beth Elliott is a published novelist, biographer and short fiction writer who has worked as a weekly newspaper columnist and also as a columnist and book and recording reviewer for various feminist magazines. She is also an independent recording artist. Most recently she has published two stories in the anthology Dirty Old Women: Erotica by Women of Experience.Ms. Elliott has done copywriting and business plan writing for dot-coms like the Webby Award-winning HappyPuppy.com and HitComedy.com. She wrote publicity materials, conference papers and a business plan for Applied Space Resources, a start-up ahead of the private space launch curve that envisioned a private lunar sample retrieval mission to be funded by and profit from entertainment and other marketing tie-ins. As part of her work with HitComedy.com, she took on assistant producer tasks for a jingle recording session that created streaming audio equivalents of Top-40 station IDs.A home above beautiful Lake Merritt in Oakland is the base from which Ms. Elliott, a California native with Tidewater Virginia roots, ventures forth on both local and far-flung adventures. She introduced herself to the world of opera completely backwards, by starting with Wagner—after already being a tie-dyed-in-the-wool Deadhead. She wrote Redemption Through Love! to chart a path, through what for many is unfamiliar and perhaps intimidating territory, to musical and dramatic bliss.