'The musicologist Jens Malte Fischer...refers to a well-attested story about Gustav Mahler, who, after a performance of Siegfried, expressed his annoyance with the actor who played the Mime: "It is, after all, indisputable that Mime is disposed by Wagner to be a caricature of a Jew, but surely it is not necessary to exaggerate this trait so shamelessly."' I have to quibble just a bit here. This story is the recollection of a single person, Natalie Bauer-Lechner, whose memoir was published 12 years after Mahler's death. A single-source anecdote doesn't become "well attested" just because it gets passed around a lot. Corroboration would add gravitas, but apparently it doesn't exist.
'The musicologist Jens Malte Fischer...refers to a well-attested story about Gustav Mahler, who, after a performance of Siegfried, expressed his annoyance with the actor who played the Mime: "It is, after all, indisputable that Mime is disposed by Wagner to be a caricature of a Jew, but surely it is not necessary to exaggerate this trait so shamelessly."' I have to quibble just a bit here. This story is the recollection of a single person, Natalie Bauer-Lechner, whose memoir was published 12 years after Mahler's death. A single-source anecdote doesn't become "well attested" just because it gets passed around a lot. Corroboration would add gravitas, but apparently it doesn't exist.