"Painted through the music" early Wagner stagecraft - "Turning the virtue of fidelity into the fossilization" said Wieland Wagner of Cosima's control freakery. Wagner himself didn't seem to have that same obsession. For him, the main thing was to get his operas across in the best possible way. "Next year we'll do everything differently" he said in thge 1877 revival of the Ring. http://classical-iconoclast.blogspot.com/2009/09/painted-through-music-early-wagner.html