See you in New York. This single narrative won't end until you clear Baltimore and hit the open stretch of I-95 north of town. Act 1 will get you to the Delaware line. And then the arches of the Metropolitan Opera come into view, the harps are strumming up a storm, and, exhausted both spiritually and physically, now you have to find parking. Good luck, because it's now almost 7 a.m. and all the delivery trucks in Manhattan are double-parked.
Wagnerian pacing is like nothing else in the opera house.
The same applies to Wagner's operas. It's a staple of aesthetics that great art should have no dispensable parts, no padding or extra material. Wagner's operas are filled with lots of dispensable bits that, paradoxically, can't be dispensed with. At the same time, he made extraordinary demands on the listener's time, insisting on the one hand that his operas never be cut or trimmed, and then extending their length past the four-hour mark. Length became integral to the artistic experience.