>In Paris in 1858, Wagner listened to Berlioz reading the libretto of Les Troyens with a mounting anxiety, so that "I really found myself wishing that I might never see him again since, in the end, to be so utterly unable to help a friend can only become unbearably painful. The text is clearly the pinnacle of his misfortune, which nothing now can surpass."

>Six years earlier, in a letter to Liszt (Wagner considered Berlioz, Liszt and himself the three most important composers of the day), he had written: "If ever a musician needed a poet, it is Berlioz, and it is his misfortune that he always adapts his poet to his own musical whim, arranging now Shakespeare, now Goethe, to suit his own purpose. He needs a poet to fill him through and through, a poet who is driven by ecstasy to violate him, and who is to him what man is to woman." But the poet Wagner had in mind for this job of violating Berlioz was Wagner himself. He thought that Berlioz ought to set the story of Wieland the Smith, a German legend of which he, Wagner, had written the prose outline.

>>126763931
Dogma should be defensible
Ritual should be repeatable
Liturgy should be legible
Belief should be beautiful
What fulfils these conditions in the decadent modern world in which "God is Dead"? Answer: the holy poetry of Richard Wagner and his "Sacred Festival Stage Play" which transforms and supersedes religion.
https://youtu.be/yF0pwSC7qWg?list=PL_Cf5Xxn5OZY1gE9zsWHAjXz6MVz9IZYS