Into the Woods: Heath Lees savours a perceptive study of dark undercurrents in Wagner’s early works

Review of Katherine R. Syer, Wagner’s Visions: Poetry, Politics, and the Psyche in the Operas through ‘Die Walküre’ (University of Rochester Press and Boydell & Brewer, 2014).

March 2015, Volume 9, Number 1, 68–71.

Just when you think that scholarship has covered every angle of Wagner’s work, along comes an author with yet another way of looking at it. In this wide-ranging study of Wagner’s Visions, Katherine R. Syer formulates a vision of her own that realigns a number of the accepted views on the Wagnerian canon, and points to wider horizons.

The key to Syer’s large-boned, five-chapter approach lies in the trio of faux-Stabreim elements in her subtitle: ‘Poetry, Politics, and the Psyche’. Bringing these together to mix lyric art with aspiring national history and emerging psychological discovery, she comes up with an original compound that she calls a ‘synergistic constellation’. It’s a constellation that is complex and densely populated, frequently challenging her
authorial control.