Van Beethoven wrote a lot of uncommonly exciting music, but he also made many mistakes. By far his worst mistake was to write an opera about "The Triumph of Married Love". Over what exactly is "Married Love" supposed to be triumphing? And what sort of "love" can "married love" possibly be anyway?
Wilhelm Furtwängler told us, did he not, that "the conjugal love of Leonore appears, to the modern individual armed with realism and psychology, irremediably abstract and theoretical." He also said that "for us Europeans, as for all men, this music will always represent an appeal to our conscience."
Well! We enlightened twenty-first century men of conscience, who devote, and rightly so, so much energy to ridding the world of the hideous mediæval practice of "wedlock", are unwilling to see our efforts undermined by this almost obscene opera from a nineteenth-century misfit. Let all performances of this travesty of "love" be banned henceforth and for ever!
As the editor of the Spectator reminded us in 1902, the only appropriate and valid kind of "marriage" must be a cohabitational arrangement made by the respective parents of a couple, and its only proper purpose the generation of offspring. "Love" has nothing whatever to do with the matter.
Wilhelm Furtwängler told us, did he not, that "the conjugal love of Leonore appears, to the modern individual armed with realism and psychology, irremediably abstract and theoretical." He also said that "for us Europeans, as for all men, this music will always represent an appeal to our conscience."
Well! We enlightened twenty-first century men of conscience, who devote, and rightly so, so much energy to ridding the world of the hideous mediæval practice of "wedlock", are unwilling to see our efforts undermined by this almost obscene opera from a nineteenth-century misfit. Let all performances of this travesty of "love" be banned henceforth and for ever!
As the editor of the Spectator reminded us in 1902, the only appropriate and valid kind of "marriage" must be a cohabitational arrangement made by the respective parents of a couple, and its only proper purpose the generation of offspring. "Love" has nothing whatever to do with the matter.
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