# Bellini to replace Wagner at "the opera composer you wouldn't like to meet" podium



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

*Bellini to replace Wagner at "the opera composer you wouldn't like to meet" podium*

Everybody talks stuff about how Wagner was the bad guy. But it seems that he's no match for Bellini in category of nasty fellows. I was reading biographies of Italian composers recently, all by Wiarosław Sandelewski - he's major expert on the subject and wrote books about Rossini, Donizetti and Puccini. Why, I was wondering, didn't he write about Bellini too? But soon I got the idea - he could be not-too-fine character to describe. In book about Donizetti there is much place devoted to their relation and Bellini comes out first as jealous. When Donizetti was appointed as professor in Neapol conservatory he wrote some bitter words (though without plain insults). Then he turned out to be obsessive and claimed that Rossini invited Donizetti to Paris in order to destroy him and he smelles intrigues everywhere around while Donizetti always felt positive about him.

Here is quote from Tchaikovsky expressing his impression after reading first biography of Bellini written by the close friend of the latter:

_In the hours that I have been free from my work and not going for walks I have managed to read a very interesting book about Bellini, which has been recently published. This book was written by his friend Florimo, who is now an old man of eighty! I have always felt great sympathy towards Bellini. When I was still a child the emotions which his graceful melodies, always tinged with melancholy, awakened in me were so strong that they made me cry. And to this day, in spite of his many shortcomings-that is his vapid accompaniments, the vulgar and trivial strettas of his ensembles, the coarseness and banality of his recitatives-I have nonetheless retained my sympathy for his music. As for his life, apart from the fact that he died young and was a sensitive and kind person, I knew nothing about him. Florimo's book, apart from a biography of Bellini, also includes his quite extensive correspondence. And so it was with great pleasure that I opened this book to read about the life of a composer, who for a long time had been surrounded in my imagination by an especially poetic aureole. I had always thought that Bellini in life must have been just as childlike and good-natured a being as Mozart was. Alas! I had to suffer a disillusionment in this respect. For it seems that, in spite of all his talent, Bellini's was a very ordinary character. In this book you see him all engrossed in self-adoration; you see how he admires every single bar he has written, how he cannot tolerate any criticisms of his music whatsoever and sees jealous and intriguing enemies everywhere, even though success never (or almost never) deserted him from the very beginning of his career to the very end. Judging from his letters, he did not love anyone, he never cared about anybody else, and indeed nothing that lay outside the sphere of his interests seemed to exist for him. It is remarkable that the author of this book evidently failed to notice the unfavourable impression of Bellini which his letters cause-otherwise he would surely not have published them_

I was huge disappointment for me too and I don't really want to belive it as he is my strong favourite of the bel canto three.

Don't want to belive that such beautiful music would come from absolutely corrupted person:


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Fascinating quote. Thanks, but I'm not surprised. I have read many biographies and contemporary accounts of composers. Often, what is more telling is not what these long dead folks might have been in real life, but rather our modern, overtly romanticised perceptions of these folks. You know, people often assume that just because composer X wrote sublime music that lift our emotion and senses to a higher plane every time we listen to their music implies that the composer must surely have been gifted and compassionate humanist etc. Well more often, this simply untrue, broadly speaking. They were humans as much as the next fellow. It is reassuring that Tchaikovsky himself admitted perceptions, as incorrect as they might have been when he wrote above "_I had always thought that Bellini in life must have been just as childlike and good-natured a being as Mozart was. Alas! I had to suffer a disillusionment in this respect_". Everyone, well almost everyone, suffers this by some mythical implication made from listening to the brilliant music and then to its author.

Another important point I find is that when we read historic accounts by their contemporaries, in this case by Tchaikovsky, we need to read and understand it from the point of view of them, in their social context, and not ours in the 21st century. Reading and interpreting these notes in 2011 can at times lead to misleading senses of some composers, especially the older ones further back in time.

As for Bellini, it sounded like he was an ambitious fellow but with a fragile ego. Having a fragile ego in the arts (or anywhere) is not a good thing. Still, I love his operas.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Being self-absorbed and resentful of criticism is probably not too uncommon as far as classical music composers go. I'd reserve judgment a bit.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

> You know, people often assume that just because composer X wrote sublime music that lift our emotion and senses to a higher plane every time we listen to their music implies that the composer must surely have been gifted and compassionate humanist etc.


I still belive in it to some extent. Like in case of Wagner, you can say plenty of bad things about him but for me it's not as much result of his evil character or anything like that as of him being great idealist - great idealists are often most naive people on the world whose thoughts may easily go wrong way if corrupted by false and wrong stuff which often takes shape of splendid and high ideas. As much as I often suffer from such disapointments as in case of Bellini I can't stop beliving that despite their flaws they had this divine spark in their souls.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Unless Bellini was a rabid anti-semite who regularly swindled men out of their money and stole their wives, I think the prize still safely rests with Wagner.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Why do people assume Wagner would be such a bad person to meet?

- Charmed two wives away from their husbands, inspiring fanatical lifelong devotion in the 2nd
- Couldn't pay his debts, but neither can the governments of the US and most of Europe, and millions of people in them. His credit standards were just, ahem, "ahead-of-his-time", like everything else about him.
- Inspired the King of Bavaria to fall in love with him and give him copious amounts of money
- Maintained lifelong friendships with Jews despite public anti-semitic rantings
- His music been championed by some of the most famous _Jewish_ conductors of their eras: Mahler, Solti, Barenboim.
- Was friends with some of the coolest people of the day (Liszt, Nietzsche)
- Even people who didn't like him, such as Berlioz, wrote about how engaging, eloquent, and friendly he was in person.

This is a person I would want to meet!


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Couchie said:


> This is a person I would want to meet!


Absolutely. But if you lend him money, don't expect it back.

As for your wife . . .


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

Couchie said:


> - Maintained lifelong friendships with Jews despite public anti-semitic rantings


I don't think this excuses him; it more just indicates that he was a hypocrite and/or coward.
Though, undeniably, an interesting person.


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## AmericanGesamtkunstwerk (May 9, 2011)

Couchie said:


> Why do people assume Wagner would be such a bad person to meet?
> 
> - Charmed two wives away from their husbands, inspiring fanatical lifelong devotion in the 2nd
> - Couldn't pay his debts, but neither can the governments of the US and most of Europe, and millions of people in them. His credit standards were just, ahem, "ahead-of-his-time", like everything else about him.
> ...


here here!

Have you guys seen the movie with Richard Burton? its about 7 or 8 hours i've gotten through about half of it. Richard Burton's performance is nothing short of phenomenal. i consider the movie on the whole to be wasted potential. a LOT more could've been done with these characters, but if is ever attempted again, the casting and the acting will be cripplingly inferior.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

As much as I don't like Wagner, his personality, politics, etc. or his music, I have to admit that a lot of this comes out of a number of things not strictly related to his character/ego, whatever. I had a teacher who was a huge Wagnerite, went to Bayreuth, had all the recordings, etc. but he admitted to us once that despite him adoring Wagner, he admitted that this guy's music was the perfect soundtrack to the invasion of Poland. I'm not being flippant here or making this up, targeting Aramis' nationality or anything of the sort. The fact is that his music at it's "best" or whatever has this "gut" feeling of some kind of overbearing or even aggression. I'm not sure how to describe it accurately, it's just that feeling you get hearing some of his more strident things, eg. the_ Meistersinger_ prelude, the _Ride of the Valkyries_, the _Pilgrim's Chorus _from_ Tannhauser _(but not _Siegfried Idyll_, my favourite work by him). Of course, these things can attract some people to his music as well as deter others. It's all bound up in politics, of course, but there is something of that inherent quality in his music that is like that.

As for Wagner or Bellini being the worst, there are many others, eg. Gesualdo who "snapped" and murdered his wife and her lover, to less serious things but still quite objectionable, like Beethoven being such a control freak as to driving his nephew to attempt suicide, to the political opportunism of guys like R. Strauss & others during the Nazi years, to a number of other things (eg. my parents always told me, they read somewhere, that Chopin and Tchaikovsky were quite anti-Semitic as well). Composers all seem to have their foibles and quirks - they are human just like us. But somehow in the case of Wagner some of the emotions his music brings out in us seem to match up with his "dark" side, politically or otherwise...


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## AmericanGesamtkunstwerk (May 9, 2011)

Sid James said:


> ... he admitted to us once that despite him adoring Wagner, he admitted that this guy's music was the perfect soundtrack to the invasion of Poland. ... The fact is that his music at it's "best" or whatever has this "gut" feeling of some kind of overbearing or even aggression. I'm not sure how to describe it accurately, it's just that feeling you get hearing some of his more strident things, eg. the_ Meistersinger_ prelude, the _Ride of the Valkyries_, the _Pilgrim's Chorus _from_ Tannhauser _(but not _Siegfried Idyll_, my favourite work by him). Of course, these things can attract some people to his music as well as deter others. It's all bound up in politics, of course, but there is something of that inherent quality in his music that is like that.


That is due to the fundamental nature of Romantic Nationalism. (not only that, it is rare for a leader to be over-bearingly infected by that ideal such as Hitler was with romantic nationalism). I actually liken it to the work of Eisenstein, Prokofiev, and Vertov and their relation to stalin/communism, which saw political leader and artist in DIRECT correspondence within the same era. different dynamics, but on some level very similar.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^Adding to what you're saying with my own musings/ramblings, I think I read a German poet, it could have been Goethe, who said that the German people individually could be good but as a collective they often left much to be desired, they could be easily led astray. On the "good" side of the ledger, they produced eg. Beethoven, Heine, Schumann, Goethe himself, Schiller, Erasmus, Thomas Mann, etc. & on the "bad" side they produced warmongers like Kaiser Wilhelm II & Hitler. Bismark was also into wars, but his aim was German unification, not just domination in itself. So there's two sides to the coin in German history, the Humanistic side & the militaristic/warring side. I think Wagner's music reflects this dichotomy in a way, being bound up in history/literature but also about (as you say) expressing national identity & a kind of strong political aspect...


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Sid James said:


> he admitted that this guy's music was the perfect soundtrack to the invasion of Poland


Yes, especially this work of his:


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Well, whatever, it's not necessarily the issue of Poland I was talking about, that was only an example of what that person I knew said, & I've read a critic saying a similar thing. I was generally talking of the war-mongering aspect of the German psyche. They did give us a lot of good things throughout history, but let's face it, face the facts, they also gave us two world wars. My two posts go into this split betwen German humanism and obsession with war in some detail. Of course, nobody will address my core points, as it seems that people are a bit thin skinned around here when it comes to questioning of their sacred cows...

[EDIT - Keep in mind that my mother quite likes Wagner's music, but even she admits that there's the aspect there that I'm trying to describe, a kind of supremacy, triumph, hubris, it does have a link to the composer's character, which I think the music of guys like Bellini doesn't really]...


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## GoneBaroque (Jun 16, 2011)

I remember reading somewhere that Wagner claimed that the greatest influence is his music was Bellini.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

I have read about Bellini on wikipedia very early as I started exploring his music. So I imagine him to be a jerk like Pollione, or maybe also Gualtiero and even Elvino (not very likeable to me, sorry). It was Felice Romani, the librettist, who wrote the roles, but I believe, Bellini had a say in it. I am speaking here only about his relationships to women. I did not get to know the letters and his paranoid nature. I still love him. If I lived at his times, I would have liked to be something like Nadezhda von Meck was for Tchaikowsky - send him money, receive thank you letters and reports about his ideas and progresses, and... never meet him in person !


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BBSVK said:


> I have read about Bellini on wikipedia very early as I started exploring his music. So I imagine him to be a jerk like Pollione, or maybe also Gualtiero and even Elvino (not very likeable to me, sorry). It was Felice Romani, the librettist, who wrote the roles, but I believe, Bellini had a say in it. I am speaking here only about his relationships to women. I did not get to know the letters and his paranoid nature. I still love him. If I lived at his times, I would have liked to be something like Nadezhda von Meck was for Tchaikowsky - send him money, receive thank you letters and reports about his ideas and progresses, and... never meet him in person !


What on earth would bring you to that conclusion? Everything I've ever read about him suggests that he was a Romantic dreamer and a very quiet and mild-mannered man.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Tsaraslondon said:


> What on earth would bring you to that conclusion?


Wikipedia :-D


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Kind of ironic that even though the focus of this thread was supposed to be on Bellini at least half of it consists of the kind of stuff one can reads about Wagner virtually anywhere. I'm assuming that's because what we know about Bellini's character is comparatively little due to few surviving contemporary sources or because the negative aspects of Wagner's personality and outlook would win out in a match-up anyway.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BBSVK said:


> Wikipedia :-D


I had a quick browse. He apparently was a bit of a womaniser, but he died at the age of 34. How different was that from many of the young men of his age? You could probably say the same of many a Romantic period composer.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

I'd rather meet up with any of those ne'er do wells than be bored out of my skin by Philip Glass, thank you.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Tsaraslondon said:


> I had a quick browse. He apparently was a bit of a womaniser, but he died at the age of 34. How different was that from many of the young men of his age? You could probably say the same of many a Romantic period composer.


He fell in love with Maddalena Fumaroli, but the parents disaproved. Once he got famous, the parents changed their minds, but he was no longer interested, and refused her even after two letters written by herself. So far so good. Maybe he already had another affair by that time - the married woman Giudita Turina. When Turina's husband discovered Bellini's letters in her possession, he sought separation and wanted her removed from his house. At that point, Bellini lost interest in Giudita Turina... We can excuse him by some arguments, but my point stays - I would prefer to be his Nadezhda von Meck rather than an aquaintance in real life.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

nina foresti said:


> I'd rather meet up with any of those ne'er do wells than be bored out of my skin by Philip Glass, thank you.


Think it over again :-D. He was a plumber as well, and could fix your kitchen sink. That is the aquaintance to cultivate !


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

elgar's ghost said:


> Kind of ironic that even though the focus of this thread was supposed to be on Bellini at least half of it consists of the kind of stuff one can reads about Wagner virtually anywhere. I'm assuming that's because what we know about Bellini's character is comparatively little due to few surviving contemporary sources or because the negative aspects of Wagner's personality and outlook would win out in a match-up anyway.


Wagner is a winner, yes.
I do not agree with the title. 
Still, there is something interesting about it. One egocentric man deeply admiring another egocentric man.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BBSVK said:


> He fell in love with Maddalena Fumaroli, but the parents disaproved. Once he got famous, the parents changed their minds, but he was no longer interested, and refused her even after two letters written by herself. So far so good. Maybe he already had another affair by that time - the married woman Giudita Turina. When Turina's husband discovered Bellini's letters in her possession, he sought separation and wanted her removed from his house. At that point, Bellini lost interest in Giudita Turina... We can excuse him by some arguments, but my point stays - I would prefer to be his Nadezhda von Meck rather than an aquaintance in real life.


There was also a suggestion that he may have been homosexual, which would, I suppose, account for his vacillation. Much easier to hanker after the unattainable. Things are rarely black and white.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Aramis said:


> _I had always thought that Bellini in life must have been just as childlike and good-natured a being as Mozart was. Alas! I had to suffer a disillusionment in this respect. For it seems that, in spite of all his talent, Bellini's was a very ordinary character. In this book you see him all engrossed in self-adoration; you see how he admires every single bar he has written, how he cannot tolerate any criticisms of his music whatsoever and sees jealous and intriguing enemies everywhere, even though success never (or almost never) deserted him from the very beginning of his career to the very end. Judging from his letters, he did not love anyone, he never cared about anybody else, and indeed nothing that lay outside the sphere of his interests seemed to exist for him._


"For God's sake, do read the bulky but very interesting book on Mozart by Otto Jahn. You will see from it what a wonderful, irreproachable, infinitely kind, and angelically pure nature he had. He was the incarnation of the ideal of a great artist who creates because of an unconscious stirring of his genius. He wrote music as the nightingales sing, i.e. without pausing to think, without doing violence to himself. [...] Everyone loved him; he had the most marvellous, cheerful, and equable temperament. There was not a whit of pride in him. Whenever he met Haydn, he would express his love and veneration for him in the most sincere and fervent terms. The purity of his soul was absolute. He knew neither envy nor vengefulness nor spite, and I think that all this can be heard in his music, which has reconciling, clarifying, and caressing properties [...]"


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

hammeredklavier said:


> "For God's sake, do read the bulky but very interesting book on Mozart by Otto Jahn. You will see from it what a wonderful, irreproachable, infinitely kind, and angelically pure nature he had. He was the incarnation of the ideal of a great artist who creates because of an unconscious stirring of his genius. He wrote music as the nightingales sing, i.e. without pausing to think, without doing violence to himself. [...] Everyone loved him; he had the most marvellous, cheerful, and equable temperament. There was not a whit of pride in him. Whenever he met Haydn, he would express his love and veneration for him in the most sincere and fervent terms. The purity of his soul was absolute. He knew neither envy nor vengefulness nor spite, and I think that all this can be heard in his music, which has reconciling, clarifying, and caressing properties [...]"


Is this for real ? I have no idea what Mozart was like.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

BBSVK said:


> Is this for real ? I have no idea what Mozart was like.


"Johann Adolph Hasse, a famous German musician who had lived for long periods in Italy, had become the official composer of the court in Vienna in 1764. After examining Wolfgang, he wrote of him, "I took him through various tests on the harpsichord, on which he let me hear things that are prodigious for his age and would be admirable even for a mature man." Hasse adds, "The boy is moreover handsome, vivacious, graceful, and full of good manners; and knowing him, it is difficult to avoid loving him. I am sure that if his development keeps due pace with his year, he will be a prodigy."
< Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A Biography / Piero Melograni · 2007 / P. 30 >


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Blaming Wagner for Hitler, the Nazis , WW2 and the holocaust makes about as much sense as blaming Jesus for the Spanish Inquisition . Wagner, despite his faults and foibles , was not an evil man . He never advocated genocide. against the Jews or any group of people and I'm convinced that if it had been possible for him to come back and see the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and. the horrendous nightmare world they created he would have been absolutely horrified . 
As a young man, Hitler became infatuated with Wagner and his music , but unfortunately, he read his own insane ideas into the man and his music , ideas which are simply not there .
There is nothing intrinsically "evil " about Wagner's music or the plots of his opera and their characters . If you read the librettos of his operas, you will not find a single anti-semitic statement by any of the characters , and there are no Jewish characters in them , no discussions of Jews and Judaism, and the word "Jew" , Jude in German cannot be found anywhere .
The Ring takes place in an imaginary, mythical pagan Germany . There is nothing even remotely. conventionally religious about it and it is a world in which Jews and Judaism do not exist, despite the way some have characterized Alberich and Mime as Jewish caricatures , and Wagner himself, probably tongue-in-cheek .
Gotterdammering ends with the destruction of the gods and Valhalla ( Walhall ) , which has been caused by. the greed and. avarice of Alberich, the giants and the gods . This is the exact opposite of.Hitler's glorification of. Germanic "Aryans ". And. ironically , Hitler did not even realize this ,


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## marlow (11 mo ago)

Deleted.


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

superhorn said:


> Blaming Wagner for Hitler, the Nazis , WW2 and the holocaust makes about as much sense as blaming Jesus for the Spanish Inquisition . Wagner, despite his faults and foibles , was not an evil man . He never advocated genocide. against the Jews or any group of people and I'm convinced that if it had been possible for him to come back and see the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and. the horrendous nightmare world they created he would have been absolutely horrified .
> As a young man, Hitler became infatuated with Wagner and his music , but unfortunately, he read his own insane ideas into the man and his music , ideas which are simply not there .
> There is nothing intrinsically "evil " about Wagner's music or the plots of his opera and their characters . If you read the librettos of his operas, you will not find a single anti-semitic statement by any of the characters , and there are no Jewish characters in them , no discussions of Jews and Judaism, and the word "Jew" , Jude in German cannot be found anywhere .
> The Ring takes place in an imaginary, mythical pagan Germany . There is nothing even remotely. conventionally religious about it and it is a world in which Jews and Judaism do not exist, despite the way some have characterized Alberich and Mime as Jewish caricatures , and Wagner himself, probably tongue-in-cheek .
> Gotterdammering ends with the destruction of the gods and Valhalla ( Walhall ) , which has been caused by. the greed and. avarice of Alberich, the giants and the gods . This is the exact opposite of.Hitler's glorification of. Germanic "Aryans ". And. ironically , Hitler did not even realize this ,


I don't want to look at wikipedia again. What I remember is, Wagner certainly cultivated _some_ antisemitism. He cannot be blamed for Hitler's genocide. There were smaller things. He was jealous of the success of Mayerbeer and (I guess) Mendelssohn, and he made it a big deal, that "Jewish" music was dominating and spoiling the artistic environment. The fact, that Mayerbeer supported him before, did not stop Wagner. He liked Halevy, but there he said something like "He is a Jew, but honest". He probably alluded to the fact, that Halevy's opera La Juive is perceived as self critical to Jews. (Which fascinates me, because the Christians' side is spectacularly evil there).


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## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

BTW Bellini did not, literally, admire every bar he wrote himself. He was very dissatisfied with the duet between Adalgisa and Pollione. I admit I had a habit of skipping that part myself, without knowing it.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Actually I would like to meet Wagner and see if he was as terrible as many have made him out to be. There's no denying the man's genius.


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