Richard Wagner: The Stage Designs and Productions from the Premieres to the Present by Oswald Georg Bauer (review)

in particular, his distortion of the positions of such critics as Annette Michelson, P. Adams Sitney, and Pauline Kael. His statement on the nature of his biases (causing him to neglect Baillie, Gehr, Landow, Sharits, Frampton ) never takes into account the fact that other people might have similar biases. Rosenbaum attempts to divorce the works discussed from currents in other arts which might be relevant: he treats film as if it were a Platonic idealization of a severely limited consciousness. Rosenbaum believes that every vagrant impression is important, and, as film is such a complex art, this would be fine if he were not so intent on a totally solipsistic viewing of the contemporary cinema. The fact that the independent and the avantgarde currents in contemporary cinema have become even more "invisible" over the past few years makes the failure of Film: The Front Line-1983 even more painful. Books like this are needed, now more than ever, and if this book directs attention to such filmmakers as Leslie Thornton, Manuel De Landa, and Jon Jost, then a service will have been done, yet the price of that service is a book which is more of a confessional than a critique, and a book which never once gives an accurately detailed, precisely rendered, fully thought-out impression (let alone an analysis or a critique) of a single film. Daryl Chin Richard Wagner: The Stage Designs and Productionsfrom the Premieres to the Present Oswald Georg Bauer; Foreword by Wolfgang Wagner Rizzoli, 288 pp., $60 (cloth) This splendid volume is worth the price for its wealth of illustrations alone. But it is much more than a wonderful picture gallery of Wagner productions in the world's major opera house and in Wagner's own festival theatre at Bayreuth. It is unique among the multitude of books on Wagner and his works-only Shakespeare seems to have elicited more volumes-in that the text is devoted to detailed, chronological studies of the individual operas on stage in production. Dr. Bauer's excellent text describes how the operas were produced for their world premieres. His evocations of the visual aspects, such as sets, costumes, lighting, special effects, movement of performers and chorus masses, complement his explanations of the scores, the librettos, and Wagner's own stage-directions, which are after all the inspiration, the points of departure in directing and designing such productions . Subsequent major productions of each opera, up to the most recent , and controversial, are presented, making this book a production record of all Wagner's major works, as well as of such minor ones as Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot. For those who are not familiar with the operas, Dr. Bauer presents concise accounts of the plots and the stage action, emphasizing the ideas and emotions Wagner wished to communicate to audiences. The genesis of the 102 work is the introduction to each section of production-history. Quotes from Wagner and others involved in productions offer valuable documentation. Coupled with large, striking sketches and photographs of productions, the text provides an incisive panorama of the development of modern stagecraft . Some of the Cubistic, Expressionistic, or Constructivist Wagner settings of the 1920s and 1930s still look very advanced-more so than some current American Wagner productions. Dr. Bauer, centrally involved in the administration of the Bayreuth Festival as dramaturg and chief of public relations, is very well qualified to write this landmark study of Wagner productions . Not only has he access to the Wagner archives, but he has made good use of material from other opera archives, which otherwise would never have been made available in published form for directors, designers, performers, scholars, and critics. In fact, the pictures in this volume taken alone in sequence, give one a rapid overview of major developments in twentieth-century design, staging, and lighting. Glenn Loney Ubu Repertory Theater PublicationsSeries $3.00 each volume (paperback) Vol. 1: Swimming Pools at War, Yves Navarre, 156 pp.; Vol. 2: Night Just Before the Forest & Struggle of the Dogs and the Black, Bernard-Marie Koltes, 236 pp.; Vol. 3: The Fetishist,Michel Tournier, 53 pp.; Vol. 4: The Office, Jean-Paul Aron, 131 pp.; Vol. 5: Far From...