GMG Classical Music Forum

Wagner's music is so beautiful and gorgeous that the more I listen to it the more I love it!!  :)

You can choose at most three favourite operas; I've voted for Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung  :)

Wagner didn't consider Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi worthy of being performed at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, but I wanted to include those operas too.

Rather curious to see the results  :)

Oops, I forgot to read that I had up to 3 options.   ;D

So my lone choice went to Siegfried

I chose Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, and Das Rheingold. These are the ones that have made the biggest impression on me. It pained to not be able to choose Gotterdammerung, because this is an amazing work that I like a lot as well.

I voted for Meistersinger, Parsifal and Tristan.  The first two have been my favorites since I first encountered them on LP back in the late 70s.  Tristan is another story.  For years, I couldn't get out of the first act, because I found it boring me to tears when I tried to listen to it on the radio or watch a TV broadcast.  Then--I think it's been about two, possibly three, years ago--I got the Furtwangler EMI recording, made myself listen, and had no problem with any of it.  The Pappano quickly followed when I found that in its current budget format.  The entire opera simply started to click for me in a way it never had before.  And just yesterday the Bohm landed (along with the Bohm Ring, the Knappertsbusch 1951 Parsifal and the Knappertsbusch Meistersinger that first introducted me to Wagner).

I chose Rheingold, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Although Die Walküre is awesome, I think that Siegmund and Sieglinde are the most annoying characters Wagner has ever created.

  I voted for Tristan, Die Walkure and Siegfried (although I firmly believe that the Ring Cycle is one integral piece and should not be treated as 4 separate works).

  marvin

  PS: is it me? or has my avatar picture gotten bigger over the past couple of days?  ;D

Wagner has been my favorite composer for almost fifty years. I love all the operas, even the very early ones. Choosing three is painfully difficult. But I listen to Lohengrin, Walküre and Parsifal the most. They must be my favorites, I suppose.

Sarge

I've always wished to like Richard Wagner more than I do.  I don't know why, but he'd never really struck me in a positive way.  I own a couple of his complete operas, and even listened to the entire Ring over four days.  I own a copy of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and it has some bits that I like a lot; I just can't resist the big tune that ends the overture and comes back at the finale, it's just terrific.  But other than that, I listened and listened and then put Wagner aside.  That's a shame, because I have this feeling that his later operas must be an amazing emotional place to disappear into, if you can fully sink yourself in.  I have a very deep admiration for the monumental artistic achievements that his music represents, but it's one of those "I respect it on paper" things for the most part.

But that's his later work, the stuff that seems to have had some of the largest impact on the development of music throughout history.  It's in his earlier music that I find an immediate connection.  Two of his early piano sonatas survive and have been recorded; the first is quite nice, but the 2nd starts to show flashes of genius.  Then there was his one and a half symphonies...wow.  People react with disbelief when I say it, but Wagner's first (and only completed) symphony is one of my all-time favourites.  I'm completely serious.  Even further, I find myself almost drooling over the thought of what Wagner the Symphonist might have been like... can you imagine?  Anyway, a bit rambling off topic here, but that brings us to...

Die Feen.  YES.  I really do like this a lot.  There are elements in Die Meistersinger that I much prefer, but taken as the whole package, I like Die Feen the most.  For one thing, it doesn't hurt my poor, feeble 18th-century ears with those evil Industrial-age sounds.  There are harmonies that appear in mid/late Wagner that offend my auditory sense all the way to my powdered wig.  Granted, Die Feen sounds at times like it could have been written by Weber, but is that really a bad thing?  That overture is quite Weber-esque, and pretty darn catchy.  I think it's amazing how really good this opera is, especially considering Wagner's young age at the time.

I think it's a shame that some people dismiss Die Feen because of what came later, and it sounds practically nothing like the Wagner of even a couple of years later.  But yeah, I'm the one who will probably remain the the sole vote for Die Feen.  PS: anybody who doesn't like Wagner's operas, but does like Weber, might want to give this one a try.

Parsifal above all.
Next Tristan und Isolde, the Ring, Lohengrin.

I only voted for Die Walkure, easily my favorite. The ending with Wotan and Brunnhilde is IMO one of the most emotional moments in an opera, gets me every time.

Tristan, Götterdämmerung, Parsifal - the intensest, the richest, the profoundest.

......pity Der fliegende Holländer has got no vote till now, it's a marvelous opera.......

Ilaria

Quote from: Lisztianwagner on September 28, 2011, 05:16:08 AM
......pity Der fliegende Holländer has got no vote till now, it's a marvelous opera.......

Ilaria

Unfortunately, it's merely marvelous, and in company with the rest that are, so to speak, marvelously marvelous, it seems rather run of the mill,

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on September 28, 2011, 10:58:34 AM
Unfortunately, it's merely marvelous, and in company with the rest that are, so to speak, marvelously marvelous, it seems rather run of the mill,

Yes, I have to admit that I agree with you; Wagner's mature works are definitely much better.....more passionate, more poetical, more powerful......the peak of beauty; but anyway I'm sorry to see Der fliegende Holländer has been getting no vote, I personally prefer it to Tannhäuser or Lohengrin for example.
If there hadn't been Der Ring and Tristan, I would have voted for Der Holländer.

Ilaria

I voted for the only choice I have no trouble making (Tristan und Isolde), and completed the trio by adding Die Walkure and GodDamnRing. But could have easily been Lohengrin or Hollander.

Gotterdammerung -- there is about an hour and a half of continuously amazing music and drama from Hagen's watch to Siegfried's death.

Siegfried -- because it's funny. I like fairy tales.

Parsifal. I feel a strong urge to genuflect whenever I hear it. It's strange how it is so bewitching that opera -- when it makes no sense at all as far as I cans see.

Quote from: Lisztianwagner on September 28, 2011, 11:31:01 AM
Yes, I have to admit that I agree with you; Wagner's mature works are definitely much better.....more passionate, more poetical, more powerful......the peak of beauty; but anyway I'm sorry to see Der fliegende Holländer has been getting no vote, I personally prefer it to Tannhäuser or Lohengrin for example.
If there hadn't been Der Ring and Tristan, I would have voted for Der Holländer.

Ilaria

Wish granted! I find it to be a very listenable opera compared to the others. I may have stretched it a bit, but I am not a huge fan of Parsifal and Tristan. I recognize that they are great, but don't particularly enjoy them. I like the Ring as a whole, but find picking anything more than Walkure quite difficult. I love Meistersinger and Tannhauser pretty equally (though the edge to Mesitersinger). So not such a stretch now that we get down to it.

Quote from: mc ukrneal on October 02, 2011, 11:10:36 AM
Wish granted! I find it to be a very listenable opera compared to the others.

That's very good!  ;)

Ilaria

I don't quite fit the poll. For me, there's Der Ring ... and then everything else. So really, the only way I could vote was to decide which are my three favourite components of the Ring, and vote for those:

Rheingold We had no money to spare in the 1970s, yet having been overwhelmed by our first exposure to Der Ring via a Classics For Pleasure highlights LP, somehow we scraped together enough to buy the newly-released Bohm Ring. My wife phoned me at work to say the box had arrived: "and I've been listening to Rheingold all morning and it's every bit as good as the highlights record except that it's like it all the way through!" I went home that evening and heard Rheingold for the first time - and something changed forever.

Walkure Well, for Heaven's sake, where could one start? The love duet between Siegmund and Sieglinde! The gathering of the Valkyries. The glorious first appearance of the 'Redemption By Love' theme, which moment alone would justify the existence of the opera. The astounding final act, with Wotan and Brunnhilde. The most gloriously lyrical and passionate of all the four, I suppose.

Gotterdammerung One hot late afternoon in Manchester in the late 70s, we sat high up in the cheapest seats to see Goodall's Gotterdammerung, with Rita Hunter and Alberto Remedios in that sparse, almost abstract, English National Opera production. It was stifling. Sweat dripped from us. But who cared? Rita Hunter was beyond anything in my experience, before or since, and between them all, they took us to heights of musical and dramatic experience that I don't expect to reach again. That first live Gotterdammerung transformed everything, and became (and still is) my most treasured musical memory.

Quote from: Elgarian on October 02, 2011, 11:49:51 AM
I don't quite fit the poll. For me, there's Der Ring ... and then everything else.

Well, I think the Tetralogy of the Ring should be considered a one and only work too, but I decided to split it into its four parts because maybe someone doesn't like all the operas which comprise Der Ring, but just some of them......

Ilaria

Beautiful post, Elgarian!

Currently:

Siegfried
Die Walkure
Parsifal

Quote from: TheGSMoeller on September 28, 2011, 04:22:37 AM
I only voted for Die Walkure, easily my favorite. The ending with Wotan and Brunnhilde is IMO one of the most emotional moments in an opera, gets me every time.

A year later, the same.

I will vote when my Solti set of the complete operas arrives. I have never listened to a complete Wagner's opera so far.  :o

Quote from: Gordon Shumway on September 24, 2012, 05:31:57 PM
I will vote when my Solti set of the complete operas arrives. I have never listened to a complete Wagner's opera so far.  :o

Solti's Ring was my huge breakthrough with Wagner.  What an incredible experience it was!  :)

1. Tristan und Isolde
2. Parsifal
3. Götterdämmerung