New to Wagner - Just purchased this big box set.

[king ubu]

So would they prefer decaf Wagner? 

[jochanaan]

...Completely agree with the almost super-human orchestral demands. Wagner saves some of the most difficult music for the END of each opera where the orchestra is pretty well burnt out. For example the rather exposed piccolo part in the Magic Fire Music at the end of Die Walkuere.

Piccolo must be really difficult to play because I learned to play the magic fire fairly easily on piano and I am so bad at playing instruments I can't even be described as a beginner.

As orchestral instruments go, piccolo is not particularly difficult, and piccolo players are used to being "exposed," since they are always heard if they play at all. That part is not technically difficult, but it does require precision.  The violin parts there are much more demanding.  And as you say, the orchestra has already been playing for four-plus hours...!  Although not continuously.  While Wagner wrote more on average for the orchestra than most other opera composers, there are in fact many rests for every section of the orchestra.

[Karl Henning]

As orchestral instruments go, piccolo is not particularly difficult, and piccolo players are used to being "exposed," since they are always heard if they play at all.

This composer accepts the challenge! 

[MishaK]

As many times as the Metropolitan Opera has presented this work I don't ever recall it being performed on 4 consecutive nights. It is probably for practical reasons as well - the demand on the audience to sit through 4 consecutive evenings is a bit much.

Not to mention the challenge for busy New Yorkers to find four consecutive nights on which they are free to go to the opera.