The Vargas Blog

The official blog of Vincent's Casablanca HomePage and Wagner Operas. Click the links below to explore my sites.

Sunday, March 22, 2026

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE at the MET

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Tristan und Isolde might be Richard Wagner 's greatest work for the stage. A work inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer an...
Sunday, September 28, 2025

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER - “¡Viva la revolución!”

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  Mikhail Bakhtin , the great Russian literary critic, wrote that the novel as a literary genre is a series of carnivalesque episodes; essen...
Tuesday, August 05, 2025

Twenty-two Wagner Years Ago

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I can't believe that WagnerOperas.com is twenty-two years old. Not to sound cliché about it, but it only seems like yesterday when I dec...
Monday, August 04, 2025

A New and Improved Wagnerians Page

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 I spent this weekend updating the Wagnerians page of the Wagneroperas site. Click here to go to the page, and take a listen to the new a...
Sunday, August 03, 2025

Bayreuth: The New Meistersinger Misses the Mark

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  I imagine that after a notorious Meistersinger production by Katharina Wagner that brought to mind the dark days of National Socialism; ...
Saturday, June 21, 2025

Sunset Blvd. The Musical on Broadway

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 In Jamie Lloyd' s minimal staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber 's Sunset Blvd ., based on Billy Wilder 's film noir, so much is left ...
Sunday, January 05, 2025

A New AIDA at the MET

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 At a time when the popular sentiment seems to be to return plundered antiquities to the country from which they came; and as more and more ...
Sunday, March 17, 2024

Verdi's La Forza del Destino at the MET

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    The last time the Metropolitan Opera presented Giuseppe Verdi 's titanic opera La Forza del Destino it was the 1970's: a decad...
Sunday, October 22, 2023

Killers of the Flower Moon: a new Scorsese film

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When the Osage people find oil in their newly acquired land, hungry, greedy wolves come prowling in the guise of white cattle barons: white ...
Saturday, November 12, 2022

A Mahler Fall

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My Mahler fall continues. Let me explain. No sooner did autumn start turning leaves a myriad of seasonal colors, and the weather bid goodbye...
Monday, July 25, 2022

NOPE - Don't Look Up!

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 On the 19th of June, 1877 British pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge made a series of photographs of the race horse Sallie Gardner...
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Thursday, April 21, 2022

FUNNY GIRL back on Broadway

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For Sarah Bernhardt , the great actress of the turn of the century, playwright Victorien Sardou wrote the melodrama La Tosca in 1887.  Fro...
Sunday, April 10, 2022

ELEKTRA at the MET

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  When the 2021-2022 MET season was announced, this revival of Patrice Chéreau 's production of Richard Strauss 's Elektra immediat...
Saturday, March 05, 2022

THE BATMAN - Robert Pattinson in the suit

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In the new film The Batman , Gotham City is an amalgamation of 1970's urban blight New York City with surreal touches of London and Chic...
Thursday, February 24, 2022

Broadway is Back: THE MUSIC MAN

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 Yes, Broadway has been back for a while, stumbling out of the COVID-19 nightmare in spurts. But this afternoon was MY first time back insid...
Sunday, January 16, 2022

A new RIGOLETTO at the MET

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The problem with Bartlett Sher is that he is a gifted theater director, but those same creative gifts don't materialize when he dons hi...
Sunday, November 28, 2021

Licorice Pizza by Paul Thomas Anderson

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I was there. Well, not exactly there, because Licorice Pizza , Paul Thomas Anderson 's latest film is so SoCal that even its title, the ...
Friday, November 26, 2021

Stephen Sondheim is Dead

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I knew one day we would all have to go through this. The once young, vibrant enfant terrible of the Broadway stage, the one who dazzled us w...
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Vincent Vargas
Vincent Vargas is a retired foreign language and film history teacher from New York City. He runs websites dedicated to Casablanca (www.vincasa.com) and Richard Wagner (www.wagneroperas.com).
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