IDEAS

The College Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Wagner

“Ten, fifteen years ago, I would send them off to Götterdämmerung or Die Meistersinger, and they would come back eager to talk about how the leimotifs recur across the entirety of the piece,” Professor Boltz told me. “And these weren’t just the opera nerds. It was everyone. Now, half the students leave during the second intermission of Parsifal.”