J.P.E. Harper-Scott, Wagner, Sex and Capitalism: An Ideological Critique to Supplement Laurence Dreyfus’s ‘Wagner and the Erotic Impulse’

July 2011, Volume 5, Number 2, 46–62.

When it wanted to conduct an inquiry into the erotic qualities of Tristan und Isolde, the New York City public radio station WNYC invited the vintner and opera fan Natalie Oliveros onto its ‘Evening Music’ programme. After listeners had been presented with virtually all of the second-act love duet the presenter asked his guest what she thought about the sexual content of the music. ‘It’s what we call tantric sex,’ she answered with a giggle, ‘and I wonder if Richard Wagner himself could last like that. I think that every woman just once in their life would like to have that kind of passion and emotion and experience that kind of love that you hear in the music. I think he was probably a very giving lover.’ And what are her qualifications for saying this? Well, in addition to being a vintner, Oliveros, who is addressed on the show by her professional name Savanna Samson, is a hard-core pornographic actress with Vivid Entertainment, the world’s largest producer of pornographic videos.