It's not every year that we see a complete Wagner opera released so gratitude is in order. This is very much Senta's Holländer, with an outstanding Lisa Davidsen. Gerald Finlay is less the thunderbolt I like to hear in the title role but he compensates for that with a beautiful interpretative skill.

Sailing towards the end of the year with my favorite metal of 2025. Goldstar by Imperial Triumphant (mind bending extreme jazz metal) and Dissonance Theory by Coroner (my favorite put-it-on-repeat album of the year) #metalsky

Enjoy Winter with your #Fafner of the day

After Christmas

10 years ago Lemmy died. The man who tattooed my eardrums. www.wagner-heavymetal.com/blog/lemmy-a...

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn’t Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden or Alice in Chains.

10 years ago Lemmy died. The epitome of a long life of Rock 'n' Roll who knew how to write a ballad. 🔥 youtu.be/ET07vTF_y94?...

My favorite listening experiences in 2025: 100 year ago WOZZECK by Alban Berg premiered. Wozzeck was once the first opera I saw live, it fascinates me ever since. It was therefore a delight (if one can call it that) to see it in a very good production. www.wagner-heavymetal.com/blog/staring...

My favorite listening experiences in 2025: 100 year ago WOZZECK by Alban Berg premiered. Wozzeck was once the first opera I saw live, it fascinates me ever since. It was therefore a delight (if one can call it that) to see it in a very good production. www.wagner-heavymetal.com/blog/staring...

Boxing Day: Mahler Christmas Matinees from the Concertgebouw Amsterdam with Bernard Haitink. Splendid performances that were, for me, genre transgressing events. Big music.

Cosima's diary - 25 December 1870: "I shall just tell you, drily and plainly, what happened. When I woke up I heard a sound, it grew ever louder, I could no longer imagine myself in a dream, music was sounding, and what music!" www.wagner-heavymetal.com/classical-pi...

With the discovery of Richard Wagner, I found something that I had lost in rock music. Something that touches you both emotionally and intellectually. Wagner's music was not only a gateway to opera but to new worlds of sound. Wagner led me to Schoenberg, Ligeti and more. www.wagner-heavymetal.com

Because endings come with new beginnings, and because this a very nice song by someone with the perfect name for the season: Julie Christmas. #metalsky #christmas www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdJZ...

"On Christmas Day, my 31st birthday, this notebook was to have started; [..] You shall know every hour of my life [..] for if I die young, others will be able to tell you very little about me, and if I ive long, I shall probably only wish to remain silent." www.wagner-heavymetal.com/classical-pi...

Not a year goes by without Parsifal being among my most played music. (It is the Wagner opera I return to the most often.) My favourite from Bayreuth is Krauss '53 (followed by Knappertsbusch '64). #opera

Amongst my most played music this year is this album from 2017 by MYRKUR (one-person band project of Amalie Bruun). On the latest Myrkur-albums the black metal has disappeared but on "Mareridt" it cast a delicious atmospheric, hallucinary shadow. Excellent. For every moment of the day. #metalsky

From today the days are getting longer!

My favorite listening experiences in 2025: DIE ERSTEN MENSCHEN. A long forgotten gem of Rudi Stephan who died in the trenches of WO1 before his only opera, in a late-Romantic style aligning with the music of Max Reger and Franz Schreker, saw its premier. www.wagner-heavymetal.com/blog/die-ers...

And on 21-12 this album is inevitable of course

My favorite listening experiences in 2025: DIE ERSTEN MENSCHEN. A long forgotten gem of Rudi Stephan who died in the trenches of WO1 before his only opera, in a late-Romantic style aligning with the music of Max Reger and Franz Schreker, saw its premier. www.wagner-heavymetal.com/blog/die-ers...

Dante Symphony-Franz Liszt Brilliant Classic budget release that is still my favorite. Haenchen plays the journey along Hell and Purgatory with a strong sense of understatement. Letting the music do its work with tantalizing and mysterious effect. The Magnificat, the closener, is of ungodly beauty.

My favorite listening experiences in 2025: Frau Ohne Schatten in a regie by Kate Mitchell opened my ears again for Strauss wonderfull, lush score. And yes, I liked the production with good singers, a superb orchestra and the movie-like thriller staging. www.wagner-heavymetal.com/blog/katie-m...

Coroner and cooking #metalsky #weekend

On the (belated) 255th birthday of LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN: From Furtwängler to Karajan to Chailly; this is an inventory, guaranteed subjective and by no means complete, of Ludwig's symphony cycles. www.wagner-heavymetal.com/blog/on-the-...

Thomas Johannes Mayer hat uns verlassen. Ich kann es nicht fassen. Ein liebenswerter Kollege der für einen Dirigenten ein wunderbarer Partner in der musikalischen Arbeit war. Wir haben unglaubliche 67 Aufführungen zusammen gestaltet. Unvergesslich - und nun nur noch auf den Tonträgern zu hören.

On the day WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART died in 1791: Adagio and Fugue for String Quartet in C Minor, K. 546 (String Orchestra Version) Otto Klemperer · Philharmonia Orchestra Simply irresistibly gorgeous ... youtu.be/fRWCRtW-L6I

This is really good. Orchestral arrangements of Schubert songs with Matthias Goerne as ungodly beautiful and expressive story teller / singer. Music for any time of day. Very gripping when listened to attentively, contributing to a state of pleasant concentration when you're working.

[...] visiting the Vatican again; entering the Sistine Chapel R. says: "This is like my theater, one feels it is no place for jokes." (Cosima’s diary - 21 November 1876)

My top musical find of the year is Imperial Triumphant - a band that doesn’t just blow my mind, it pulls me away from my own expectations. I can’t quite explain why I’m drawn to them, but I’m completely hooked. #metalsky

It's the birthday of Paul Hindemith (b. 1895), and it's Sunday, so time for an opera in the nunnery.

Sancta Susanna (1922), an one-act opera by Paul Hindemith. The opera examines the relationship between celibacy and lust in Christianity, depicting the descent of a nunnery into sexual frenzy. Extraordinarily atmospheric, concentrated and highly imaginative. m.youtube.com/watch?v=NFWL...

Jesus fuck and I thought it was bad when when they used AI to "finish" my 10th symphony.

IMPRINTS OF MAN bridges the gap between the ferocity of death metal and the introspection of a solo piano. Death Metal for piano for those with a taste for jazz, Liszt, Scriabin and Debussy. www.wagner-heavymetal.com/blog/imprint...

How much piano is there hidden in a black/death metal song? A reimagination on piano of the music of New York extreme metal trio Imperial Triumphant by that band's bass player Steve Blanco. Fascinating stuff. #metalsky #pianosky #jazzsky youtu.be/H5so_3mf5P0?...

"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me Man, did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?" (from: John Milton’s Paradise Lost, these lines appear on the title page of FRANKENSTEIN) (Art: Bernie Wrightson)

I almost feel badly for not liking GDT's movies more than I do, probably b/c of his respect for practical make-up &, well, he seems nice. 😄 But I am looking forward to watching the Criterion Nightmare Alley release -- I recall enjoying it in the theater. I may wait on Frankenstein for a bit.

Good to see that the Bayreuther Parsifal from Stefan Herheim is still on YT. A production that is engaging & inventive, with splendid theatrical dynamics. (There's a lot going on in this Parsifal.) Act 1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKKp... Act 2 youtu.be/KYSa1jSpNC4?... Act 3 youtu.be/jsRzlAXYV1w?...

Bad night, bad weather, and no news of the money. (Cosima's diary, 13 November 1872) www.wagner-heavymetal.com/classical-pi...

Time for Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein: Despite his ambition, this Frankenstein looks more like a tv-show than a film in which, as is so often, the action is the least interesting part. But I loved the fact that, like the book, the film allows the monster to elaborate extensively on his fate.

It's Wednesday, another day of Wotan: Richard Wagner directs Franz Betz in the role of Wotan (in Das Rheingold for the premiere of the Ring in Bayreuth in 1876)

This weekend was Bram Stoker's 178th birthday. So movie time. A surprisingly good Dracula adaptation is the one starring Robert Langella as the Count. With a clever rewriting of the original story and as a Dracula movie with a romantic love‑story angle, it works far better than Coppola’s movie.

You don't need to emphasise the heaviness of "I Want You (She's so Heavy)" by The Beatles - it's perfect as it is. But you can bring out the grimmer side of it, as this version of Coroner does, and make it a fitting soundtrack for a vampire. #Nosferatu

They are more contemplative than compelling, but perhaps that is precisely why I return to them. To the piano roll performances of Wagner's orchestral music by Felix Mottl-the man who suffered a fatal heart attack while conducting his 100th performance of Tristan und Isolde youtu.be/J3mKAYkrNfU?...

Happy #GodzillaDay

Q: What opera is this?

DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER by Joachim Herz (1964) testifies of the proto-film that hides in Wagner's opera. A movie to make opera accessible "for people who have a horror of it" (and people who love horror, John Carpenter's The Fog comes to mind). #Halloween

Othmar Schoeck’s "Lebendig Begraben" (1927) is a haunting song cycle where a man buried alive relives his memories as he accepts his fate. This and more in the WAGNER & HEAVY METAL HALLOWEEN TOP 10 >>> #Halloween www.wagner-heavymetal.com/blog/the-hal...

October 31, 2011 saw the release of Lulu, a collaboration between LOU REED and METALLICA. A poetry-slam over a metal jam. It milks out a few good ideas in songs that are in need of a good edit - like something that is stuck in pre-production. #Halloween www.wagner-heavymetal.com/metal-picks/...

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG Hagen (Josef Greindl) kills Siegfried (Wolfgang Windgassen) (Bayreuther Festspiele 1956 / staging: Wieland Wagner)

Max Brückner - Final scene of Götterdämmerung (1894)