There is always something cathartic in Richard Strauss’s “Salome.” Perhaps it’s the portrayal of a woman’s wrath which is not entirely unjustified, given the seething remarks of her ill-fated love interest, in turn not so far off from how men talk to women on the site formerly known as Twitter these days. Perhaps it’s the ultimate comeuppance […]
Author Archives: Kate Wagner
… is the architecture critic at The Nation and the creator of the blog McMansion Hell. Before joining The Nation, Wagner had previously been a critic at The Baffler and The New Republic. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Posted inEssay
Two Siegmunds, Two Wälses
After writing 9,000 words on the “Ring” cycle, I thought that maybe I’d finally be done thinking about it. For a while, I was. Then, after what would be a two-month break in my obsession, I decided to return to something I wanted to write about at the time but never got to. During the […]
Posted inReview
A Life Told in Gestures
It is rare for there to be new developments in “Ring” cycle staging without dipping into the trashy, cynical, or ironic; in other words, without making the saga’s characters worse than they already are. The trend over the last ten years has been to embrace rather than ameliorate the weaknesses in Wagner’s text and, by […]
Posted inEssay
The Götterdämmerung of It All!
I’ve long accepted the fact that I am one of tens of thousands of people who suffer from Wagner derangement syndrome. Many people listen to or watch the works of Wagner, but only an errant few become lifers. Given the sheer baggage of Wagner and the irksome coincidence of our shared surname, this is, of […]
Posted inPlaylist
A McMansion Hell Playlist
If you’re driving along the American suburban frontier, a McMansion is like obscenity: You know it when you see it. Oversized pediments and fiberglass columns, stickered-on quoins and a roofline that appears more like a turtle’s shell or a Braque composition than suitable shelter. Pretentious by definition, cheap by choice. But one may not be […]