Strange Bedfellows. The Hebrew Bible and Wagner, in 'Saul and David'

Carl Nielsen’s first opera, Saul og David, turns on the pairing of two seemingly contradictory foundations: the book of 1 Samuel in the Hebrew Bible, and the musico-dramatic influence of Richard Wagner. It is well-known that Nielsen firmly rejected Wagner and Wagnerism in the opera, and it is generally acknowledged that he succeeded: Saul og David sounds not at all like Wagner, and it overtly lacks the web of leitmotivs that so characterizes the Wagner music dramas from Das Rheingold on. Nevertheless, it is clear that Nielsen, along with his librettist Einar Christiansen, learned much from Wagner. Most importantly, the creation of a modern musical drama out of an ancient text was a task that both Wagner and his Danish successors faced. Like the best of Wagner’s music dramas, Saul og David is a model of clarity and intensity – a drama that focuses an abundance of narrative detail in the original source into a taut, psychologically penetrating story, a story masterful in its condensation of action and in its large-scale dramatic and musical form. That the opera appropriates a number of dramatic and musical techniques of the anti-Semitic Wagner in its portrayal of a foundational story from the Hebrew Bible is an irony well worth contemplating

Faecal avoidance and selective foraging: do wild mice have the luxury to avoid faeces?

Host–parasite interactions are a key determinant of the population dynamics of wild animals, and behaviours that reduce parasite transmission and infection may be important for improving host fitness. While antiparasite behaviours have been demonstrated in laboratory animals and domesticated ungulates, whether these behaviours operate in the wild is poorly understood. Therefore, examining antiparasite behaviours in natural populations is crucial for understanding their ecological significance. In this study, we examined whether two wild rodents (white-footed mice, Peromyscus leucopus, and deer mice, Peromyscus maniculatus), selectively foraged away from conspecific faeces or avoided faeces altogether, and whether faecal gastrointestinal parasite status affected their behaviour. We also tested whether wild mice, when nesting, avoided using material that had previously been used by healthy or parasite-infected conspecifics. Our results, in contrast to laboratory mouse studies, suggest that wild mice do not demonstrate faecal avoidance, selective foraging or selective use of nesting material; they preferred being near faeces and did not differentiate between faeces from parasitized and uninfected conspecifics. Behavioural avoidance to reduce parasite infection may still represent an important strategy; however, mice in our study population appeared to favour the opportunity to feed and nest over the risks of coming into contact with faecal-transmitted parasites. Furthermore, the presence of conspecific faeces may actually provide a positive cue of a good foraging or nesting location. Ultimately, balancing the trade-off of performing antiparasite behaviours to reduce infection with missing an important feeding or nesting opportunity may be very different for animals in the wild facing complex and stochastic environments