Against the ingrained, elitist tendency to assume that “high culture” belongs to folks with academic or artistic credentials living in urban areas, it’s always useful to be reminded of the contrary.
I bumped into Mr. B*, the local jeweler in our new town – a rural cowboy Texas town of 6000 (where the nearest Starbucks is 30 miles away). Mr. B* was taking trash out to the dumpster in the alley between the back of his shop and the back of my office. “Pardon me, but you’re the new music lady, right?” he asked. He recounted hearing the overture to Wagner’s early opera Rienzi on the radio over the weekend. The announcer had noted that, according to the liner notes, the opera had been pared down significantly to its present length. “That overture has always been one of my favorites,” Mr. B* sighed wistfully. “So where is all that missing music?”
We proceeded, trash bags in hand, to ponder the likelihood of excised measures of Rienzi still existing in manuscript, and what they might sound like. After about ten minutes of discussing Wagner’s early style (right as I was about to propose looking more seriously into the matter), Mr. B*’s cell phone rang. He apologized, excused himself, and went back into his jewelry store.
Back-alley Wagnerism is alive and well, at least here!
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