Wagner's Valhalla

[DavidRoss]

Both are essential ingredients of the "Do It Yourself Avant Gardiste Kit," along with a short loop of magnetic recording tape, a boxful of assorted nuts and bolts, and one or two Sikorsky choppers.   

[Elgarian]

a boxful of assorted nuts and bolts

Hey, I've got one of those! There's hope for me yet!

[Madiel]

I recall lots of shrieking. But it wasn't tuneless.

Histrionic, on the other hand...

I saw the Met production at the cinema.  It's my only full-length exposure to Wagner. I honestly can't decide whether I want more or not. Some of it was wonderful and some of it was wince-inducing, and I honestly don't think the wincing was caused by the particular performance. It was caused by the plot. Especially the behaviour of some female characters.

(But then, I could say the same about most of the relatively few operas I've encountered. Janacek came close to giving me what I was after with Katia Kabanova but it still ended up descending into unconvincing melodrama. Maybe I'm just not an opera person. Sigh.)

[DavidRoss]

I recall lots of shrieking. But it wasn't tuneless.

Histrionic, on the other hand...

I saw the Met production at the cinema.  It's my only full-length exposure to Wagner. I honestly can't decide whether I want more or not. Some of it was wonderful and some of it was wince-inducing, and I honestly don't think the wincing was caused by the particular performance. It was caused by the plot. Especially the behaviour of some female characters.

(But then, I could say the same about most of the relatively few operas I've encountered. Janacek came close to giving me what I was after with Katia Kabanova but it still ended up descending into unconvincing melodrama. Maybe I'm just not an opera person. Sigh.)

Well, there you go. Aside from being a crappy songwriter (though, to be fair, he wasn't aiming at Mozartean arias), Wagner was a bloody awful dramatist, turning an intrinsically compelling story into hours of turgid, pretentious tedium. But to be fair to opera, Wagner wasn't trying to write traditional operas, either, and it would be a mistake to judge the art form by his work.

Try the well established classics before deciding opera's not for you: The Marriage of Figaro, Cosi fan tutte, Don Giovanni, The Barber of Seville, Carmen, etc.  There's a reason such works are perennially beloved.

[Parsifal]

Well, there you go. Aside from being a crappy songwriter (though, to be fair, he wasn't aiming at Mozartean arias), Wagner was a bloody awful dramatist, turning an intrinsically compelling story into hours of turgid, pretentious tedium. But to be fair to opera, Wagner wasn't trying to write traditional operas, either, and it would be a mistake to judge the art form by his work.

Recently I have been watching the "Copenhagen Ring" on DVD, and the turgidity seems to be somewhat diluted by skillful staging and a recasting of the story into something compatible with Wagner's idea but less "mythical." 


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[Elgarian]

Recently I have been watching the "Copenhagen Ring" on DVD, and the turgidity seems to be somewhat diluted by skillful staging and a recasting of the story into something compatible with Wagner's idea but less "mythical." 

But then again, I've never been able to watch more than about half an hour of the Copenhagen Ring without eventually squirming so much that I have to turn it off. I live in hope, and watch bits of it occasionally, but for me, it never really seems 'compatible with Wagner's idea'. I want my Ring to be more, not less, 'mythical'. (A less 'mythical' Ring would be a contradiction in terms, wouldn't it?) And while I'd admit that there are sections where time seems to pass a little more slowly than elsewhere, and like anyone else I have my favourite chunks, I'm not sure I've ever experienced this 'turgidity' that's being spoken of, here - except perhaps on occasions where I've misjudged my frame of mind and should have chosen something else instead.

I think it was CS Lewis who said that the Ring was capable of becoming the most important thing in one's life for a year or more; certainly I'd go along with that. From the start there was something about the Ring that I found endlessly fascinating - my point being that almost anything seems turgid if it isn't, basically, one's cup of tea.

[Karl Henning]

My Ring time hasn't come yet. But I am sure it will.

[kishnevi]

My limited experience indicates that for me  Wagner on CD is much more enjoyable than Wagner on DVD.
I have the following on DVD:
Ring:  Metropolitan Opera/Levine
Tristan: La Scala/Barenboim
Parsifal:  Bayreuth production with Jerusalem in the title role
Lohengrin:  the DVD with Jonas Kauffman and I forget who else
The DVD pile is in another room, and I'm not in the mood to look for more specific credits.  They've been sitting in that pile for three or four years now, in some cases.

Of this stash,  I've viewed Rheingold and the first act of Parsifal. 

Part of the problem is that it's harder for me to carve out time to actually sit and watch a DVD, even one act at a time.  But part of the problem is that I'd rather just listen and not be bothered by the visual element.

For those wishing a "literal" presentation of the myth,  I might add,  the Met/Levine production is probably just what you want, at least in terms of the visual staging.

[Elgarian]

My limited experience indicates that for me  Wagner on CD is much more enjoyable than Wagner on DVD.

That's my experience too, after 35 years acquaintance, and having sampled a lot of the available recordings on CD and DVD. If I had to choose only one Ring for my desert island, it could be any one of the CD sets, really; none of the DVD sets would get any serious consideration, except the Chereau/Boulez (and even there the panto giants almost ruin the Rheingold).

For those wishing a "literal" presentation of the myth,  I might add,  the Met/Levine production is probably just what you want, at least in terms of the visual staging.

I said above that I hadn't experienced the 'turgidity' that some folk talk about, but I'm now reminded that I have - just once - while watching the Levine Ring. It does indeed attempt to be a literal mythicised staging, but suffers from (a) an appalling Brunnhilde in Hildegard Berens, who strains my endurance far beyond its limit, and the memory of which makes me suddenly far more sympathetic towards David Ross's comments a few posts above; and (b) an overall stolid woodenness of performance that makes each half an hour seems curiously longer than it ought.

I suppose I was spoiled by seeing the glorious Goodall/English National Opera production very early on (1980-ish), in Gotterdammerung, with Rita Hunter as Brunnhilde and and Alberto Remedios as Siegfried.  The staging was minimal - set in a timeless mythical zone that allowed free range to the imagination, and the singing was so astounding that the hot summer evening seemed far too short; one wanted it to go on for ever. Nothing I've seen on DVD has ever come close to matching that, except the Chereau, at its greatest moments. So on the whole I prefer to dispense with the unsatisfactory visual stagings, and I've spent far more time listening to the Ring on CD, than watching my DVDs.

[DavidRoss]

My Ring time hasn't come yet. But I am sure it will.

Get a move on, dude! Several recordings available for listening via Mog, including the new Levine/Luisi/Met.

Whoops --- correction: not the complete new Met Ring, just selections. But they do have the complete Böhm Bayreuth Ring with Birgit Nilsson's Brünnhilde (I bet she looked the part, too!).

[Karl Henning]

I've got The Cube, too. I am more awaiting the time when I can let it be its own thing : )

[Madiel]

Try the well established classics before deciding opera's not for you: The Marriage of Figaro, Cosi fan tutte, Don Giovanni, The Barber of Seville, Carmen, etc.  There's a reason such works are perennially beloved.

I've seen (on TV or film) both The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. They were moderately entertaining. But still not things I would get wildly enthused about on a first listen.

I'm fairly sure I saw a filmed version of Carmen as well, but that was not in my adult years.

[Parsifal]

I've seen (on TV or film) both The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. They were moderately entertaining. But still not things I would get wildly enthused about on a first listen.

I'm fairly sure I saw a filmed version of Carmen as well, but that was not in my adult years.

Before the Mozart, I'd recommend trying Tosca (Puccini) and Otello  (Verdi).

[david-jw]

But then again, I've never been able to watch more than about half an hour of the Copenhagen Ring without eventually squirming so much that I have to turn it off. I live in hope, and watch bits of it occasionally, but for me, it never really seems 'compatible with Wagner's idea'. I want my Ring to be more, not less, 'mythical'. (A less 'mythical' Ring would be a contradiction in terms, wouldn't it?)

I think it was CS Lewis who said that the Ring was capable of becoming the most important thing in one's life for a year or more; certainly I'd go along with that. From the start there was something about the Ring that I found endlessly fascinating - my point being that almost anything seems turgid if it isn't, basically, one's cup of tea.

I agree.

For me The Ring is should be mysterious and timeless.

Productions which lose sight of the mythic in The Ring are missing the point imo- allegory is central to The Ring.

This does not mean that staging should be slavish to an atrified convention- for example I thought that the Kupfer/Barenboim Ring was quite succesful in this regard (up until the terrible last 5 mins).

Its good to watch DVD's of The Ring when one is first experiencing it, in order to get an understanding of what is going on and hopefully to experience some of the frisson that music drama (as opposed to only music alone) can create.

However after a while though I also found I prefered just to listen to great recordings of the cycle and run my own production of the Ring in my imagination, because it is essentially an unstageable work.

Indeed, imo there is a credible argument for the medium of film with CGI as being a better medium for The Ring than the stage. I'm not in any sense suggesting a Lord of the Rings/Star Wars type approach- but imagine what Richard Wagner would have been able to create with the technology and budget of a hollywood blockbuster + the greatest singers available.

[Madiel]

Before the Mozart, I'd recommend trying Tosca (Puccini) and Otello  (Verdi).

I am definitely interested in both Verdi and Puccini. I think Rigoletto is the only complete opera by either that I've seen so far. And while I didn't love all of it, the quartet in Act 3 was stunning.

I have a tendency with opera to want to shout 'get on with it!'  as the plot gets slowed down by the music.

[Karl Henning]

I have a tendency with opera to want to shout 'get on with it!'  as the plot gets slowed down by the music.

That happens a lot in Wagner, where there's not much plot, but ample slowdown.

[Elgarian]

I have a tendency with opera to want to shout 'get on with it!'  as the plot gets slowed down by the music.

That sounds like a mindset issue: doesn't it arise by approaching opera as if it were 'a play, with music added'? But it isn't that - or at least, at its best it isn't. It's not even accurate to say that the music is 'as important as' the plot. Rather, in the ideal opera the two are integrated to form a coherent and inseparable whole; and this is the region where The Ring, surely, is operating. It seems to go slowly only if we think of it as 'a play, with music added'; but plot, language, music (and ideally, staging) are interwoven and inseparable.

I'm not unsympathetic - I've experienced those longeurs myself; but as I became more acquainted with The Ring over the years, the less slow the 'slow' bits seemed, and the more unified my perception of the whole has become. It's a lifetime project, but of course the rewards may not seem to justify the struggle, and for many people it's a commitment they (very reasonably) don't want to make. I'm currently feeling that way about my new hard leather Brooks bike saddle.

[Madiel]

That sounds like a mindset issue: doesn't it arise by approaching opera as if it were 'a play, with music added'? But it isn't that - or at least, at its best it isn't. It's not even accurate to say that the music is 'as important as' the plot. Rather, in the ideal opera the two are integrated to form a coherent and inseparable whole; and this is the region where The Ring, surely, is operating. It seems to go slowly only if we think of it as 'a play, with music added'; but plot, language, music (and ideally, staging) are interwoven and inseparable.

I'm not unsympathetic - I've experienced those longeurs myself; but as I became more acquainted with The Ring over the years, the less slow the 'slow' bits seemed, and the more unified my perception of the whole has become. It's a lifetime project, but of course the rewards may not seem to justify the struggle, and for many people it's a commitment they (very reasonably) don't want to make. I'm currently feeling that way about my new hard leather Brooks bike saddle.

No, it's not a mindset issue in that sense. I am perfectly capable of accepting that action stops for some singing.  However, the reason for stopping has to be sufficiently engaging.

The main reason it usually isn't engaging is because the characters are spouting sentiments that are incongruous or dated.  See my previous comments about some female characters in The Ring. Sieglinde in particular, I seem to remember.  Incongruous is a big problem for me in particular - 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 it's pretty damn difficult for me to stay engaged.

But maybe people just thought that way in the 19th century. I don't know. I do know that I can enjoy a modern musical. Les Miserables may have its flaws, but I found it moving in 1988 and I found it moving again in the recent film - and discovered I could still remember lots of the tunes before I saw the film.  The show may have a lot of old-fashioned sentiments but it is fundamentally a modern work aimed at modern sensibilities.

I also know that the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer called "Once More With Feeling" is an astonishing, brilliant piece of work that succeeds in moving forward elements of the show's plot that have been building up for half a dozen prior episodes, with its conceit that people are forced to sing their true feelings when they haven't been speaking them.  The songs have convincing reasons to exist and are engaging for that reason.

I found certain acts of The Ring extremely engaging on my first encounter, but it was highly patchy.

[DavidRoss]

I've seen (on TV or film) both The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. They were moderately entertaining. But still not things I would get wildly enthused about on a first listen.

I'm fairly sure I saw a filmed version of Carmen as well, but that was not in my adult years.

Seeing it on TV is not the same as going to the opera.  Attending opera is one of the great cultural pleasures my wife and I both enjoy.  On the other hand, filmed opera usually puts both of us to sleep. They are related in the same way that skiing at Alpine Meadows is related to "skiing" on a Wii gaming console.

Note that watching one of the Met's opera broadcasts at a state-of-the-art cinema is a lot more engaging than watching it on your big-screen TV at home ... but still falls far short of the real thing.

[Elgarian]

No, it's not a mindset issue in that sense. I am perfectly capable of accepting that action stops for some singing.  However, the reason for stopping has to be sufficiently engaging.

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.