Wagner's Valhalla

[Madiel]

I think that's my point though: I think it's probably counter-productive to approach the Ring in terms of 'songs' starting and stopping. There are no arias in the normal operatic sense in The Ring; rather, it's an interweaving complex whole - with a structure completely unlike an opera by Handel, say, or Mozart (both of whose operas I love, but in very different ways).

I should stress that I don't want to persuade you one way or the other. I'm just comparing notes; and wanting to explain (as a Ring afficionado trying to be helpful) that I don't myself think in terms of action or singing stopping or starting in the Ring. There's just this continuous, complex intertwining of drama and music that requires an attitude from me, as listener, that has always seemed unique.

Nevertheless, there are times (on the Met broadcast) where things really didn't progress for a good long while so that someone could sing either about how wonderful life was or how terrible life was.

I do basically like the music. In fact, the instrumental introductions to each opera or Act were consistently among my favourite moments.

[knight66]

The Ring is a special case, probably in several respects, but what i am thinking of here is in line with what Alan describes above. Wagner provided musical motifs. These can refer to a character, the river, a sword, gold, love, blood....and so on. Despite tying himself to these motifs, he was able to use them to weave a rich carpet of music where things being referred to, or even thought about by the characters, are layered in front of you. If you learn some of the themes it provides an even richer ride along the Rhine.

Prior to Wagner, opera composers used the orchestra largely as background and opera generally ran along 'numbers' such as.....recit, aria, recit aria, ensemble, recit, duet. Wagner brought the orchestra forward and in a sense sank the voices into it. It is a protagonist and is telling us things about the story, not just providing a decent background. Latterly Verdi also provided through-written scores that to an extent did away with the numbers, though no one took it to the kind of extreme as did Wagner.

I think time spent with the music somehow dissolves the boring patches. You become acclimatised to the pace. I do still occasionally grind my teeth when the same thoughts are expounded on the third occasion; but Wagner Time is not like other time. You learn largely to slow down to his heart rate. That is probably harder for us now when we are so used to fast editing in visual entertainment. But the events in the Ring are deceptive. They are not the main issues Wagner was interested in. He was more looking at how those events affect his characters and the world they live in. So the famous highlights have lured people in and deceived us that the stuff in between the highlights is filler, up market recit, to get us from one exciting moment to the next. No! Rather they are vocal symphonies where Wagner found a way to code it all so that the orchestral writing did not remain largely abstract.

For me the most addictive of Wagner's works is Tristan und Isolde. It can act like a narcotic. You enter a kind of dream. You experience life, not merely a story. He teaches you about life. So does Mozart and Bizet and sometimes Verdi, but with Wagner you have to give yourself to it rather than expecting it to yield all its fruits up front.

Mike

[Elgarian]

I think time spent with the music somehow dissolves the boring patches. You become acclimatised to the pace. I do still occasionally grind my teeth when the same thoughts are expounded on the third occasion; but Wagner Time is not like other time. You learn largely to slow down to his heart rate. That is probably harder for us now when we are so used to fast editing in visual entertainment. But the events in the Ring are deceptive. They are not the main issues Wagner was interested in. He was more looking at how those events affect his characters and the world they live in. So the famous highlights have lured people in and deceived us that the stuff in between the highlights is filler, up market recit, to get us from one exciting moment to the next. No! Rather they are vocal symphonies where Wagner found a way to code it all so that the orchestral writing did not remain largely abstract.

Mike, that's one of the best short pieces of writing about the special character of the Ring that I've read for a long time. Thank you for putting it so clearly. You're right too when you talk about 'giving yourself to it'. Like everyone else, I love ripping out bleeding chunks of brilliance and enjoying them on their own - but over a lifetime of listening, they aren't actually the aspects of the Ring that have been the most significant. The most important influences have been deeper, less obvious, more all-pervasive - the result of periodic total immersions, of allowing myself to float in the Wagnerian musical ocean, as it were. Not worrying about whether this bit is better than that bit, or whether things should be moving faster, but just letting them unfold, and being there as they do. That sort of involvement isn't for everyone; but for me, it's the kind of approach the Ring invites, and (eventually) rewards.

[Madiel]

A couple of people have referred to enjoying it more on CD.

I have a suspicion I would fall into that category.  Of course, it's arguably not really consistent with Wagner's intentions.  Or any other opera composer for a long period.  The whole notion of being able to sit down somewhere and listen to the music without seeing anything would have been bewildering.

[Fafner]

...when characters swing from 'I am the happiest person on earth, my joy is complete' to 'Woe is me, my life is over' in the space of a few minutes...

This, for me, is THE essence of romanticism.

And it is perfectly possible to feel both of these two emotional extremes simultaneously, as anyone who has madly fallen in love can attest.     

[Madiel]

And it is perfectly possible to feel both of these two emotional extremes simultaneously, as anyone who has madly fallen in love can attest.     

Yes. But I don't especially enjoy watching it in others.

[Octave]

Has anyone heard anything about the Boulez/Chereau RING coming out in a Blu-Ray edition?  It's been a while since I checked the grapevine.

[Parsifal]

Has anyone heard anything about the Boulez/Chereau RING coming out in a Blu-Ray edition?  It's been a while since I checked the grapevine.

That's from the late 70's no?  Unless it was captured using film cameras rather than video, they probably don't have a source that is any better that DVD resolution.

[Madiel]

It would appear I can sample an awful lot of the Boulez/Chereau version on Youtube. Including the whole of Goetterdamerung!

[Parsifal]

1980, and captured with state-of-the-art film cameras. The Bavarian Radio Broadcasting company threw everything and the kitchen sink at this one... and it was shown in cinemas, in Germany.

Doh!  Where's the bluray, yo!

An no one bothered to make any record of the Solti Ring (which was the one right after Boulez, if I remember right)?

[Parsifal]

It lasted for an unusually short three runs, Solti conducted only in the first year (during which no recordings would be made, anyway) and then Bayreuthians or BR people or Unitel or whoever probably rightly figured that no one in their right mind would want to spend a lot of money on purchasing a Peter Schneider / Peter Hall Ring. 

The next one - Barenboim / Kupfer - made it on DVD, though... and is among the little competition the Chereau Ring has (partly because of its over-all quality, partly because it's considerably different from the more traditional Chereau)

I would think that Bayreuth would make a video tape of each production, just to have a record of what took place.  I guess not. 

[jlaurson]

I would think that Bayreuth would make a video tape of each production, just to have a record of what took place.  I guess not.

I don't actually know if they do... Now they most definitely do, but then, when it wasn't that easy to do, especially if there was no plan to publish anything?? And any way of unobtrusively filming the performance would certainly have resulted in not-to-be-published quality material.

I know that of the Ring that followed Danny/Kupfer, which was Levine/Kirchner/"Rosalie", only Goetterdaemmerung was put on tape... the rest of this imaginative production has to be, well... imagined.

All this Ring-talk is making me realize that I have several unwatched Wagner DVDs about. In goes the Salzburg Karajan Rheingold!

[Elgarian]

Alright. Time for some Humble Pie.

I was in the mood for some Wagner this evening, after a longish break, and so we decided to blow the dust off the (mainly unplayed) Copenhagen Ring DVD set. Valkyrie, Act 3, we decided. Well, strike me on a matchbox and knock me into fits (as my grandfather used to say): it was phenomenal! Those drunken party-girl valkyries are devastatingly effective, and Wotan and Brunnhilde ... well, have I ever been more transfixed, more moved, more 'how-privileged-am-I-to-witness-this' gobsmacked? No.

Which just goes to show that first impressions can't be relied upon. First time I tried the Copenhagen Ring I switched off in dismay after half an hour. Now, I'm a convert.

[Parsifal]

Alright. Time for some Humble Pie.

I was in the mood for some Wagner this evening, after a longish break, and so we decided to blow the dust off the (mainly unplayed) Copenhagen Ring DVD set. Valkyrie, Act 3, we decided. Well, strike me on a matchbox and knock me into fits (as my grandfather used to say): it was phenomenal! Those drunken party-girl valkyries are devastatingly effective, and Wotan and Brunnhilde ... well, have I ever been more transfixed, more moved, more 'how-privileged-am-I-to-witness-this' gobsmacked? No.

Which just goes to show that first impressions can't be relied upon. First time I tried the Copenhagen Ring I switched off in dismay after half an hour. Now, I'm a convert.

Probably depends on which part you started with.  I wasn't entirely convinced by Rheingold, but I thought Walkure came off beautifully.  The Hunding, Seigfried, Seiglinde interaction in the first act was spot-on, and the whole scene where Wotan's wife lambastes him for sanctioning the unholy union of Seigfried and Seiglinde, followed by breaking the bad news to Brunhilde made sense to me, for the first time.  Seigfried is next.

[knight66]

Alright. Time for some Humble Pie.

I was in the mood for some Wagner this evening, after a longish break, and so we decided to blow the dust off the (mainly unplayed) Copenhagen Ring DVD set. Valkyrie, Act 3, we decided. Well, strike me on a matchbox and knock me into fits (as my grandfather used to say): it was phenomenal! Those drunken party-girl valkyries are devastatingly effective, and Wotan and Brunnhilde ... well, have I ever been more transfixed, more moved, more 'how-privileged-am-I-to-witness-this' gobsmacked? No.

Which just goes to show that first impressions can't be relied upon. First time I tried the Copenhagen Ring I switched off in dismay after half an hour. Now, I'm a convert.

This is my own favourite DVD Ring, the Norns apart, they are trivialised. But the main thrust of the framing of the operas is very convincing and it certainly does dig into the psyche of each main protagonist and is very well played and sung. Good to know you have changed you mind on it.

And thanks for your earlier comments.

Mike

[Elgarian]

[The Copenhagen Ring] is my own favourite DVD Ring, the Norns apart, they are trivialised. But the main thrust of the framing of the operas is very convincing and it certainly does dig into the psyche of each main protagonist and is very well played and sung. Good to know you have changed you mind on it.

Inspired by the thrill of Valkyrie Act 3, we switched to Act 1 (yes I know - a topsy-turvy way of doing things) last night and again were entranced by the performance. I felt an initial resistance to the anachronistic setting, but it didn't last long; the performances were so intense that we were swept up into the musical narrative completely. Siegmund, Sieglinde and Hunding didn't just sing wonderfully - they acted their roles with thoroughly convincing conviction.

This is marvellous. I'd really thought I'd wasted my money on the Copenhagen Ring, but clearly it was just a matter of the right mood and time coming together.

[knight66]

Alan, I have had similar experiences, subjectivity piled onto subjectivity. I did like the idea of the gold being personified by a young man in the first opera. The theft of the gold always looks pathetic and usually constitutes something the size of a fist. It also then strikes me that they must havebeen inneficient to then fashion only one small ring out of that gob of gold......the way the Copenhagen production deals with it, the transgressive theft of the 'gold' is genuinely shocking. Though how a ring is then manufactured is rather less logical.

Mike

[Karl Henning]

Inspired by the thrill of Valkyrie Act 3, we switched to Act 1 (yes I know - a topsy-turvy way of doing things) last night and again were entranced by the performance. I felt an initial resistance to the anachronistic setting, but it didn't last long; the performances were so intense that we were swept up into the musical narrative completely. Siegmund, Sieglinde and Hunding didn't just sing wonderfully - they acted their roles with thoroughly convincing conviction.

This is marvellous. I'd really thought I'd wasted my money on the Copenhagen Ring, but clearly it was just a matter of the right mood and time coming together.

Although I've not reached that place myself, I find it easy to imagine, if one is a Ring enthusiast, plunging in at nearly any point without being disrupted by going apparently against the narrative flow.

Separately, Alan, I recently watched Enchanted April for just the second time (the first was perhaps a decade since), and Mrs Fisher seemed to recollect Ruskin.

[DavidRoss]

All this talk about video productions of the Ring cycle finally pushed me over the edge.

Our third filmed cycle, after the first Levine/Met and Boulez/Bayreuth, and first on Blu-ray:

[Karl Henning]

Love . . . is a burnin' thing,
An' it leaves . . . a fiery ring . . . .