'Tristan's Shadow' is an important, highly intelligent, and ambitious study. Rigorously researched, blissfully unencumbered by canonical narratives, and written with Adrian Daub's signature verve, this book provides a new, and entirely compelling, account of German opera after Wagner.
Tristan's shadow : the fate of sexual difference in opera -- Mother Mime : Wagner and the metaphysics of sexual difference -- Mime's revenge : the total work of art and the ugly detail -- Taceat mulier in theatro : Richard Strauss's Guntram, Arthur Schopenhauer, and the exorcism of the voice -- Erotic acoustics : the natural history of the theater and der ferne Klang -- Congenital blindness : visions of marriage in the operas of Eugen d'Albert -- Occult legacies : eroticism and the dynasty in Siegfried Wagner's operas -- The power of the "verfluchte Lohe" : (post- )Wagnerian redheads in das Rheingold, Fredegundis, and Irrelohe -- I'm a stranger here myself.