Wagner's Valhalla

[DavidRoss]

Well, I'm neither.

Wrong again.

What did she like about it? And you enjoyed it, too?

She said

it was like the ORIGINAL Lord of the Rings Trilogy for classical music buffs. I completely bought the ludicrous storyline when I thought of it as a fantasy/science fiction story. The sets were magic and the close-ups of the singers made me really buy the emotional content of what they were singing about. I cared. I was completely engaged in a magical story that had music so expressively woven into it (and performed so fabulously) that the music was the setting, the music WAS the story. Wagner made something more than music + costumes + sets + story. The sum of these parts was in a new dimension for me. It was jaw-dropping and utterly absorbing.

Yes, I thought it was terrific and wrote about it elsewhere on the forum.

[Scarpia]

She saidYes, I thought it was terrific and wrote about it elsewhere on the forum.

And I missed it.     What do I have to look forward to, Die Walkure?  How much special effects can they deploy to distract from a cranky old man leaning on his spear and complaining for 45 minutes?   

[jlaurson]

Ah, thank God for the "ignore user" button. And CLICK!

In unrelated news: Just watched the Highlights of the "La Fura dels Baus" Ring from Valencia... promising on paper, with their penchant for innovative use of video/graphics/stages... and I suppose something great could have come out of it... but from what I've seen so far, it's rather a disappointment.

La Fura dels Baus is great at doing human pyramids, preferably with naked people... and they have a fine first scene in Rheingold (with a sympathetic Alberich and water-bucket retained Rheinmaidens), but later one one can't shake the feeling that they use the very latest in technology... but because it's so new, it's still very primitive. Sort of like early graphics in computer games were... (Larry Leisure Suite in Green & Black on an IMB 086!) Cutting edge and horrible at the same time.

The non-photographic imagery used looks cheap and cheesy... the mustard-golden baby looks like as unnatural Koons' balloon dog and stolen from 2001 Space Odyssey, to boot. The costumes are hokey in the case of the Gods; all realism in the acting abandoned (Loge's only real strong point being his Segway, which zirrrrrrwheeees around on stage with the kind of electric fizziness that Loge's music exudes. Very droll, in a good way. But little of the rest. Wotan looks ridiculous; the ideas for costumes/design seemingly half-heartedly inspired from the Star Wars prequels.  The singers are mostly fat, ugly, and ungainly voiced... Siegmund's wobble whenever he holds a note longer than half a bar becomes an un-rhythmic nightmare... The acting and stage direction (personenregie) is appalling, in places. I know we're spoiled from the theater-perfection and psychological depth of the P.Chereau Ring... but even if we weren't, this could hardly be excusable. Freia & Wotan just standing there, immobile, with their backs to the audience while allegedly moving toward Walhall while Loge does his thing. Argh! Small item, but effectively annoying for its incredible carelessness and unloving treatment.

Well, what's the point of continuing. (Not before I've not seen a bit of Siegfried & G'Daemmerung, at least.) So far it looks like a hugely wasted great opportunity.

[DavidRoss]

And I missed it.     What do I have to look forward to, Die Walkure?  How much special effects can they deploy to distract from a cranky old man leaning on his spear and complaining for 45 minutes?   

Odds are that LePage and Levine will make it as compelling as possible.  For more info re. the production, see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/arts/music/19ring.html and visit the Met site at http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/season/production.aspx?id=11120

[jlaurson]

What do I have to look forward to, Die Walkure?  How much special effects can they deploy to distract from a cranky old man leaning on his spear and complaining for 45 minutes?   

  That's a risk you'll take with Levine, who (at least in the 80s) was/is prone to celebrate every bloody moment in Wagner. What I love about Thielemann in Wagner is that he just zips by all the secondary stuff and indulges only the highlights... but in a away that makes you a.) feel that everything is a highlight and b.) without ever noticing the often radical shifts in tempo. The "invisible Fast-Forward button", I call it. It's a gift.

[karlhenning]

Levine really digs his Ring, and I imagine that his powers with Wagner benefit from the breadth of his musical interests. Certainly I do enjoy the Levine-led Parsifal in The Bayreuth Cube. (Holy Toledo, The Cube is now selling for $177 new . . . .)

[A.C. Douglas]

[Changing his online name from DavidRoss to "Sherman Peabody", and responding to A.C. Douglas's challenge] Wrong again.

Ah! I take it then, DavidRoss, that means you decline to accept my challenge.

Gee. What a surprise.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

And I missed it.     What do I have to look forward to, Die Walkure?  How much special effects can they deploy to distract from a cranky old man leaning on his spear and complaining for 45 minutes?   

Musically, you didn't miss much with the Met's new Rheingold, and the Lepage staging got pretty much of a drubbing from the more knowledgeable and discriminating MSM critics (Alex Ross, Martin Bernheimer, and Anne Midgette). As for Die Walküre, I'm afraid it's a crap shoot as is the rest of the cycle vis-à-vis the staging unless Lepage gets his act together, and musically, well, I guess that's a crap shoot as well.

Damn shame.

ACD

[bigshot]

Sherman, why did you quote my post when you didn't intend to understand and reply to it?

[knight66]

Going back to something that has been repeated several times: Wager = tunelessness. When Tannhauser was first given some critic or other claimed the same. I do find Wagner overlong, I do get annoyed when he slowly tells me something three times...but tuneless? That accusation puzzles me.

By the way ACD....would I be correct in assuming that you have not seen any of the performances you so neatly trash?

Knight

[Jaakko Keskinen]

And I missed it.     What do I have to look forward to, Die Walkure?  How much special effects can they deploy to distract from a cranky old man leaning on his spear and complaining for 45 minutes?   

I can't wait for Tosca. Invincible chief of police is beaten by a chick.

And to Sherman: I would also like to hear how the hell Wagner's operas are "ridiculously long, self-indulgent, turgid, and tuneless."

4-5 hours with such divine music and story is actually way too short if you ask me. And Wagner has almost infinite amount of immortal tunes and they (unlike with, say, Rossini) serve the whole purpose both musically and dramatically.

Quote: "it was like the ORIGINAL Lord of the Rings Trilogy for classical music buffs. I completely bought the ludicrous storyline when I thought of it as a fantasy/science fiction story. The sets were magic and the close-ups of the singers made me really buy the emotional content of what they were singing about. I cared. I was completely engaged in a magical story that had music so expressively woven into it (and performed so fabulously) that the music was the setting, the music WAS the story. Wagner made something more than music + costumes + sets + story. The sum of these parts was in a new dimension for me. It was jaw-dropping and utterly absorbing."

One of the differences being: Tolkien used almost every possible cliché that already existed and mostly black and white characters (with some exceptions such as Saruman, Grima Wormtongue, protagonists thinking that orcs are irredeemable because they are orcs etc.). Btw, I apologize for the terrible fail with quote.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

She saidYes, I thought it was terrific and wrote about it elsewhere on the forum.

I am glad to read you and your wife, for this time at least, fell under Wagner's spell. It should make it a bit more understandable why people should be so fascinated by his work.

[A.C. Douglas]

By the way ACD....would I be correct in assuming that you have not seen any of the performances you so neatly trash?

If by "so neatly trash" you're referring to my comments on the stagings of specific Eurotrash productions, and if by "seen" you mean in the opera house, then, no, I've seen none and have no intention of ever seeing any of them in the opera house unless I'm paid serious money — up front and in cash — to do so. I have, of course, seen DVDs of some of them, but by no means all.

Rightly or wrongly, I get the impression from your question that you think my not seeing the stagings in the flesh, so to speak, disqualifies me from commenting on them. Is that in fact your thinking?

ACD

[greg]

You know, there are plenty of people who would say that ALL opera is "ridiculously long, self-indulgent, turgid, and tuneless."

Personally, I find that in the case of Wagner, the same things that might be called substantial flaws could also be listed among his chief virtues. Long or epic? Self-indulgent or intensely personal on a deep emotional level? Turgid or broad structural architecture? Tuneless or the unique musical expressiveness of the leitmotif? It's all a matter of the criteria you select to judge by.

Yes, exactly. 
And those are all good qualities if written by a master!

[DavidRoss]

Going back to something that has been repeated several times: Wager = tunelessness. When Tannhauser was first given some critic or other claimed the same. I do find Wagner overlong, I do get annoyed when he slowly tells me something three times...but tuneless? That accusation puzzles me.

Thanks for asking, Mike.  The claim isn't that his music is unmelodic, but tuneless (an artificial distinction made to press the point). Wagner's music dramas lack those catchy phrases and four-bar melodies that stick in the audience's heads like advertising jingles and which they hum repeatedly while leaving the theatre.  Think of the ride of the Valkyries motif, which may be the most widely recognized tune in the Ring. 

Most popular music lovers and probably most opera lovers enjoy relatively simple three-verse songs built on such tunes.  Wagner's Ring isn't about that, isn't structured that way, and doesn't have any Ach, ich fühl's to woo the mainstream.

[DavidRoss]

Sherman, why did you quote my post when you didn't intend to understand and reply to it?

bigshot, there must be something wrong with your browser for I responded at some length in the same post where I quoted you.

[MishaK]

Wagner's music dramas lack those catchy phrases and four-bar melodies that stick in the audience's heads like advertising jingles and which they hum repeatedly while leaving the theatre.

Huh?! What if anything else are the leitmotifs? Wagner practically invented the concept of catchy tunes. I must think that you never went to an actual performance of a Wagner opera and listened to the crowd afterwards. Apart from Parsifal, which lacks memorable tunes aside from the "Dresden Amen", and Tristan, which is too chromatic for most people to reproduce even in their heads, let alone by whistling or singing, the rest are full of catchy tunes. I just went to Logengrin on Friday and I can't imagine anyone there doesn't remember the "Nie sollst du mich befragen" or the "Mein lieber Schwan" themes after that performance. You can't go to a performance of Holländer and not remember the main horn theme. etc. etc. Your biases are blocking your view of reality here a bit.

Most popular music lovers and probably most opera lovers enjoy relatively simple three-verse songs built on such tunes.  Wagner's Ring isn't about that, isn't structured that way, and doesn't have any Ach, ich fühl's to woo the mainstream.

This is a really bizarre statement. Ach ich fühl's is a very complex aria, not strophic at all. No two lines follow the same tune. Most casual operagoers won't remember that tune when they leave a performance of Magic flute. They'll remember the birdcatcher's songs and the Queen and Sarastro's In diesen heil'gen Hallen, maybe Monostatos' aria. All truly memorable opera tunes, are simple motives that are repeated throughout. Wagner has lots of them, while Ach ich fühl's is exactly the one aria from the Magic Flute that doesn't have any repetition at all and isn't simple either. What bizarre comparisons you make!

[DavidRoss]

And to Sherman: I would also like to hear how the hell Wagner's operas are "ridiculously long, self-indulgent, turgid, and tuneless."

For tuneless, see my response to Mike, above.  For turgid, see Scarpia's point about the dramatic flaccidity of "45 minutes of Wotan recapping everything while leaning on his spear."  Yes, I know it's not really 45 minutes...it just seems like it!  Ridiculously long:  50% longer than the average opera, largely because of all the notoriously "dull quarter hours."  Self-indulgent:  Unwillingness to edit himself conscientiously enough to eliminate those dull quarter hours that quash dramatic momentum, or to enlist the aid of a skilled dramatist to write the libretto instead of doing it himself.

But surely you already know all that.  You, personally, might respond differently.  You're in love with the works and can't get enough.  If the Ring went on for another 10 or 20 hours you'd still feel that you can't get enough of it.

That's great.  I just ask that you bear in mind that "Art" is something that takes place among the artist, the artifact, and the audience.  That you and others respond ecstatically to the Ring has as much to do with you as with the Ring itself.  No one is saying that you are wrong for loving it.

If you wish to proselytize for the Ring, I suggest that appreciation of its weaknesses as well as its strengths may help you to understand why not everyone shares your unbridled appreciation.  Discussing what you love about it may encourage others to open their minds to it.  On the other hand, denying its obvious flaws weakens your credibility.  It's one thing to say, "It's not too long and you're an ass for thinking so!" and quite another to say, "Yes, I recognize that it's awfully long but if you are able to surrender yourself to the imaginary world and be carried along by the music like a dreamer floating on a raft in the sea, then you may get so caught up in the moment that time vanishes and you're unaware of its passing."

And note that castigating others who don't share your blind love tends to slam their minds closed.  Following that up by claiming that your enjoyment of the Ring makes you superior and them inferior makes them bolt the door and reinforces the stereotypes about Wagner and delusions of Aryan supremacy.

[DavidRoss]

I am glad to read you and your wife, for this time at least, fell under Wagner's spell. It should make it a bit more understandable why people should be so fascinated by his work.

There's nothing new about that for me, but it was a first for my wife.  It will be interesting to see how she responds to Die Walküre.  And there's no trouble understanding why people are so fascinated by his work.  Anything so complex, ambitious, and revolutionary--not to mention influential--will naturally attract impassioned admirers, especially if it's regarded as "difficult" or "controversial."  The Ring is the closest thing I know in the musical world to Joyce's Ulysses in terms of the critical industry it spawned!

[DavidRoss]

Huh?! What if anything else are the leitmotifs? Wagner practically invented the concept of catchy tunes.

If you read on you would have seen that I specifically mentioned the Valkyrie leitmotif as a notable exception.  You may find Wagner a great crafter of catchy tunes.  I submit that most do not.  Perhaps I am wrong.

Do you really mean to claim that composers before Wagner did not write catchy tunes?

So, which aria from the Ring is as well known and beloved as Ach, ich fühl's?