The Ring Cycle Comes to Town

[MaestroDJS]

A few people have asked me why I've decided to skip the Ring Cycle at the Lyric Opera, practically in my own backyard here in Chicago. It's very tempting, because by all accounts it's a magnificent production, and Jane Eaglen is a wonderful Brünnhilde as usual. The Sunday Chicago Tribune had an affectionate article about Wagner pilgrims called "Ringheads" (a tip of the helmet to the Deadheads who follow the Grateful Dead everywhere). One of my Mensa friends is in his mid-70s and this is his 5th Ring Cycle. He says I don't know what I'm missing by not going to as many Ring Cycles as possible. That's just it; I do know what I'm missing: other composers.

Not so very long ago I completely immersed myself in Wagner for 2 solid years and loved every minute. However much I enjoyed Wagner, eventually I began to miss other composers, so I tore myself away. So much music, so little time, and I'd need to live at least a century to absorb even a fraction of all the great music on this Earth. Therefore I'm perfectly content with my Wagner experiences, and I'll still set aside a week every few years to watch the Ring Cycle on video. But there's simply more to music than any one composer or performer, and variety is the spice of life.

For example, last week I listened to Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz. Sure glad I took the time for that magnificent opera.

Dave

David Stybr, Engineer and Composer: It's Left Brain vs. Right Brain: best 2 falls out of 3
http://members.SibeliusMusic.com/Stybr

Coordinator, Classical Music SIG (Special Interest Group) of American Mensa

Life and Afterlife: Four Elegies for Soprano and Orchestra
http://www.SibeliusMusic.com/cgi-bin/sh ... reid=57666

[Guest]

It's only 4 evenings, out of 365 or so a year. But now I've ordered the tickets for the Ring at the Châtelet, I admit I'm wondering what madness made me commit 800 euros to it. What if it's dreadful?

[dzalman]

But now I've ordered the tickets for the Ring at the Châtelet, I admit I'm wondering what madness made me commit 800 euros to it. What if it's dreadful?

It's almost guaranteed dreadful. French, you know.

[Guest]

Well, the orchestra's French. That isn't a good start...

[Corlyss_D]

Not so very long ago I completely immersed myself in Wagner for 2 solid years and loved every minute. However much I enjoyed Wagner, eventually I began to miss other composers, so I tore myself away. So much music, so little time, and I'd need to live at least a century to absorb even a fraction of all the great music on this Earth.

I can appreciate that sentiment. The last time I was in a Wagner mood was when I listened to the Ring in 1978. A little dab'll do ya! Haven't seen or heard anything but Wagner's songs and an occasional piece since.

[Charles]

A few people have asked me why I've decided to skip the Ring Cycle at the Lyric Opera, practically in my own backyard here in Chicago. It's very tempting, because by all accounts it's a magnificent production, and Jane Eaglen is a wonderful Brünnhilde as usual. The Sunday Chicago Tribune had an affectionate article about Wagner pilgrims called "Ringheads" (a tip of the helmet to the Deadheads who follow the Grateful Dead everywhere). One of my Mensa friends is in his mid-70s and this is his 5th Ring Cycle. He says I don't know what I'm missing by not going to as many Ring Cycles as possible. That's just it; I do know what I'm missing: other composers.

Not so very long ago I completely immersed myself in Wagner for 2 solid years and loved every minute. However much I enjoyed Wagner, eventually I began to miss other composers, so I tore myself away. So much music, so little time, and I'd need to live at least a century to absorb even a fraction of all the great music on this Earth. Therefore I'm perfectly content with my Wagner experiences, and I'll still set aside a week every few years to watch the Ring Cycle on video. But there's simply more to music than any one composer or performer, and variety is the spice of life.

For example, last week I listened to Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz. Sure glad I took the time for that magnificent opera.

Dave

David Stybr, Engineer and Composer: It's Left Brain vs. Right Brain: best 2 falls out of 3
http://members.SibeliusMusic.com/Stybr

Coordinator, Classical Music SIG (Special Interest Group) of American Mensa

Life and Afterlife: Four Elegies for Soprano and Orchestra
http://www.SibeliusMusic.com/cgi-bin/sh ... reid=57666

I have by coincidence also fairly recently emerged from a two- or three-year complete immersion in Wagner and rejoined the rest of the universe. I wonder if there is something in Wagner, perhaps the intoxicating, almost drug-like addictive quality of the experience, which renders some of us more susceptible to a total immersion in his music than that of other composers? Has anyone ever had such a total immersion in ANOTHER composer for several years, to the exclusion of everything else?

One of the conclusions I reached while underwater was that The Ring is by and large inferior musically to W's other major works. In its 14 hours of turgid intellectualizing can be found perhaps an hour or two altogether of great music. In my mind I contrast this with such works as Meistersinger, Lohengrin and Tannhauser, each of which has not a phrase of "filler" musically.

It was The Ring Cycle at the Met which ended my Wagner immersion last year, and I've listened to little of him since then. I expect my Wagner listening to pick up again at some point, but I know I'll never attend a complete Ring again. And while I try to never take my own feelings as definitive, I'll always harbor a small suspicion that Ringheads are playing a bit of of a game of Emperor's New Clothes.

Charles
http://charles.zigmund.com

[dzalman]

I got hung up on Wagner some 12 years ago. I began with the Ring, then Parsifal and Tristan, and never got un-hung up. The Ring has me still completely hooked as the wealth of great music in that tetralogy is almost inexhaustible. Only Tristan can equal it in that respect. The earlier works (Dutchman through Lohengrin) I find fairly tedious with only flashes of great music (make that, really good music; there's really no great music in those operas with the possible exception of some of the music of Lohengrin), but not nearly enough to capture me for the whole work in each case. I look on them as kind of "practice pieces" for Wagner to prepare him for his real work that began with the Ring. I see no hope of disentangling myself from Wagner generally, and the Ring in particular, anytime in the near future. But that doesn't stop me from exploring music of the other greats.

[MaestroDJS]

I can appreciate that sentiment. The last time I was in a Wagner mood was when I listened to the Ring in 1978. A little dab'll do ya!

I have by coincidence also fairly recently emerged from a two- or three-year complete immersion in Wagner and rejoined the rest of the universe.

Nice to see I'm not the only one who has absorbed Wagner but also kept everything else in perspective. The music lover listens, and, having listened, moves on.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

And speaking of Lohengrin...

Lohengrin, by Mark Twain
Excerpt from A Tramp Abroad, Chapter IX, published in 1880

Another time, we went to Mannheim and attended a shivaree -- otherwise an opera -- the one called “Lohengrin.” The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. The racking and pitiless pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the time that I had my teeth fixed. There were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay through the four hours to the end, and I stayed; but the recollection of that long, dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. To have to endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder. I was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers, of the two sexes, and this compelled repression; yet at times the pain was so exquisite that I could hardly keep the tears back. At those times, as the howlings and wailings and shrieking of the singers, and the ragings and roarings and explosions of the vast orchestra rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer and fiercer, I could have cried if I had been alone. Those strangers would not have been surprised to see a man do such a thing who was being gradually skinned, but they would have marveled at it here, and made remarks about it no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the present case which was an advantage over being skinned. There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act, and I could not trust myself to do it, for I felt that I should desert to stay out. There was another wait of half an hour toward nine o’clock, but I had gone through so much by that time that I had no spirit left, and so had no desire but to be let alone.

I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were like me, for, indeed, they were not. Whether it was that they naturally liked that noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like it by getting used to it, I did not at the time know; but they did like -- this was plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked as rapt and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs; and whenever the curtain fell they rose to their feet, in one solid mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of applause swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me. Of course, there were many people there who were not under compulsion to stay; yet the tiers were as full at the close as they had been at the beginning. This showed that the people liked it.

It was a curious sort of a play. In the manner of costumes and scenery it was fine and showy enough; but there was not much action. That is to say, there was not much really done, it was only talked about; and always violently. It was what one might call a narrative play. Everybody had a narrative and a grievance, and none were reasonable about it, but all in an offensive and ungovernable state. There was little of that sort of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand down by the footlights, warbling, with blended voices, and keep holding out their arms toward each other and drawing them back and spreading both hands over first one breast and then the other with a shake and a pressure -- no, it was every rioter for himself and no blending. Each sang his indicative narrative in turn, accompanied by the whole orchestra of sixty instruments, and when this had continued for some time, and one was hoping they might come to an understanding and modify the noise, a great chorus composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth, and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, I lived over again all that I suffered the time the orphan asylum burned down.

We only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven’s sweet ecstasy and peace during all this long and diligent and acrimonious reproduction of the other place. This was while a gorgeous procession of people marched around and around, in the third act, and sang the Wedding Chorus. To my untutored ear that was music -- almost divine music. While my seared soul was steeped in the healing balm of those gracious sounds, it seemed to me that I could almost resuffer the torments which had gone before, in order to be so healed again. There is where the deep ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. It deals so largely in pain that its scattered delights are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts. A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.

I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans like so much as an opera. They like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with their whole hearts. This is a legitimate result of habit and education. Our nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt. One in fifty of those who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but I think a good many of the other forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, and the rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. The latter usually hum the airs while they are being sung, so that their neighbors may perceive that they have been to operas before. The funerals of these do not occur often enough.

Dave

David Stybr, Engineer and Composer: It's Left Brain vs. Right Brain: best 2 falls out of 3
http://members.SibeliusMusic.com/Stybr

Coordinator, Classical Music SIG (Special Interest Group) of American Mensa

Rosie: ein Walzer für Orchester -- http://www.SibeliusMusic.com/cgi-bin/sh ... reid=59153

[Charles]

I got hung up on Wagner some 12 years ago. I began with the Ring, then Parsifal and Tristan, and never got un-hung up. The Ring has me still completely hooked as the wealth of great music in that tetralogy is almost inexhaustible. Only Tristan can equal it in that respect. The earlier works (Dutchman through Lohengrin) I find fairly tedious with only flashes of great music (make that, really good music; there's really no great music in those operas with the possible exception of some of the music of Lohengrin), but not nearly enough to capture me for the whole work in each case. I look on them as kind of "practice pieces" for Wagner to prepare him for his real work that began with the Ring. I see no hope of disentangling myself from Wagner generally, and the Ring in particular, anytime in the near future. But that doesn't stop me from exploring music of the other greats.

Your take on Wagner is just about the opposite of mine in every respect, except for Tristan. I consider Meistersinger, Lohengrin, Tannhauser and Tristan the greatest of his operas, in terms of continuous wealth of great music with minimal fill. The Ring I find full of fill. But if you are still hanging around, would you be good enough to list some lesser-cited passages of the Ring which I might try again. Please leave out all the well known 'bleeding chunks' which appear on compilations, all the love duets, and all the singing by the Rhinemaidens, which I appreciate already.

Charles

[Guest]

We have Tristan at the end of this month in a production by Peter Sellars and video artist Bill Viola calculated to delight Dzalman. Insider news says that Waltraut Meier has "de beaux restes" - i.e., literally, "fine remains" of a voice. This confirms what I feared. And in this production, Act 2 is uncut. Heppner, apparently, is doing fine at rehearsals, and the rest of the cast is strong. But an uncut Tristan (pardon my French) without a proper Isolde is surely going to be a literal pain in the butt.

For those who read Spanish, the El cultural website has published a long, hagiographic article about this "most-awaited" production that will be 'the operatic event of the year" and may (I'm not making this up) "eventually be seen as a reference production by posterity." Of course, there is a "dream cast" and "opera-lovers and trend-spotters will flock to buy tickets at any price."

I'll post a review, le moment venu...

[dzalman]

Your [Dzalman] take on Wagner is just about the opposite of mine in every respect, except for Tristan. I consider Meistersinger, Lohengrin, Tannhauser and Tristan the greatest of his operas, in terms of continuous wealth of great music with minimal fill. The Ring I find full of fill. But if you are still hanging around, would you be good enough to list some lesser-cited passages of the Ring which I might try again. Please leave out all the well known 'bleeding chunks' which appear on compilations, all the love duets, and all the singing by the Rhinemaidens, which I appreciate already.

Except for a very few single passages (Siegfried's Trauermusik, for paradigmatic example, which is one of the greatest single passages in all of music history), there are no single, citable passages. The glory of the Ring music is the continuous interleaving, and symphonic and contrapuntal development, of its motifs throughout which create and constitute the very heart of the drama of the entire four-episode (music-)drama. If one misses that about the Ring, one misses everything about the Ring. I'll grant you that, for many, 15 hours of that sort of intense, continuous dramatic creation and development may be difficult to grasp, especially for those who -- a la with ordinary opera such as are all Wagner's early works -- are looking for "passages" to latch onto, and for them this is all just too much. But it's more than well-worth the investment in attention and time to make the effort to grasp, and continue to do so until one finally "gets it."

[Guest]

First reports of the dress rehearsal of Tristan are worryingly enthusiastic.

[Corlyss_D]

worryingly enthusiastic.

You may need a stiff drink to see the product.

[Guest]

Perhaps tomorrow or the next day, at the office, where I have more free time, I'll translate some of the wildly positive posts (e.g. "the best production I've seen since Wieland Wagner") now appearing on Opéras Database.

[Corlyss_D]

"the best production I've seen since Wieland Wagner"

Gee, I think my student production of Orfeo in pajamas would qualify . . .

[dzalman]

Perhaps tomorrow or the next day, at the office, where I have more free time, I'll translate some of the wildly positive posts (e.g. "the best production I've seen since Wieland Wagner") now appearing on Opéras Database.

I wonder if whomever wrote that really knows what he's saying. The best of Wieland's productions (some of the less-than-best were real turkeys) were easily the greatest and most profound stagings of Wagner's works in the entire history of those works.

[Guest]

Well, he did write "the best since," not "better than."

[Edited later]. That isn't exactly what he wrote. By the way, I see the production is financed in part by the sale of Bill Viola's videos to museums of modern art.

Here are two samples from a French site, after the dress rehearsal:

1.

I emerged from the Bastille yesterday evening, after the dress rehearsal, in a trance!!!!! ABSOLUTELY SPELLBOUND by this production!!!! I am weighing my words, but since WIELAND WAGNER I have never seen such a poignant TRISTAN….

2.

I don’t think I have ever seen a staging (although the term hardly seems adequate) that was so rich, stimulating and successful. The video projections were magnificent, devastating, illuminating various aspects of the work (by which I mean both music and libretto).

From where I was seated, the voices never seemed covered: the cast is flawless, with an extraordinary Waltraut Meier in full control of all the facets of her character (ah, the bitter irony of the first act, the gentleness of the Liebestod!) and Ben Heppner in top form, marvellously lyrical, very moving in the third act. The conducting might come as a surprise: delicate and lyrical.

What strikes you most in this production is the way the overall vision is shared and embodied by everyone: the singers, the musicians, the conductor, the production team… emotion in the extreme, and a tenderness that we don’t always associate with Tristan.

GO there, whatever you think of Wagner, it’s exactly the kind of show that will leave nobody indifferent, but that speaks to everyone!

[Guest]

And another, from a different site :

For a start I can say I got the impression I was witnessing a genuine team effort, a coming-together of various artistes to make a "Gestamtkunstwerk", in an atmosphere of great emotion (I understand Sellars’ tears). On the other hand – and I’m going to seem contradictory – you also get the impression that the show takes place at several levels, almost creating a broken-up effect. Let me explain: the singers move around in a very limited space – in terms of surface area and sets (a podium) – which would suffice on its own as a staging, so sincere is the performance of each. Above them, Viola’s images, so beautiful they could be watched for themselves. The opera orchestra, at its greatest, often attracts your gaze. At various times (I’ll keep them a surprise) the auditorium is brought into use (a rare thing at the Bastille). The spectator thus fins himself inside the drama, while those who should be on stage watch him as he does them.

Salonen’s conducting is remarkable. Very clear, very faithful to the score, no doubt a future great Wagnerian. Applauded each time he appeared by the orchestra (we all know the welcome they usually reserve for their leaders). The balance could perhaps be perfected (e.g. timpani covering the woodwind at the end of the prelude, but I must be too used to recordings from Bayreuth).

The singers show remarkable commitment, dramatically and vocally. Meier is all nuance, Selig devastating, Heppner impeccable. Same goes for Kurwenal and Brangäne.

As for Viola’s famous video images, that had Gérard Mortier telling us “Richard Wagner’s dream” has at last come true and that this production is “historic,” I would say that it is very beautiful, quite faithful to the text, but that it was perhaps not Tristan that should have been staged this way. With such a slow pace, it can only develop limited aspects of a text which is a good deal richer than just one idea every 15 minutes. And then sometimes it’s just a décor, as in the second act, where we go from a forest at night to dawn and daylight at the end. It’s occasionally splendid, often slow, at its worst a bit twee.

At any rate, musically it’s a superb production, scenically it’s new, and the overall result is very convincing.

[dzalman]

Thanks, Npwparis, for those reviews. The production sounds, at minimum, intriguing, even if I don't in the least accept a Frenchman's opinion (the reviewers', not you) of what constitutes first-rate Wagner (the approving remark, for instance, that, "[t]he conducting [was] delicate and lyrical," is all by itself enough to raise grave doubts about the rightness of the performance).

[Charles]

Your [Dzalman] take on Wagner is just about the opposite of mine in every respect, except for Tristan. I consider Meistersinger, Lohengrin, Tannhauser and Tristan the greatest of his operas, in terms of continuous wealth of great music with minimal fill. The Ring I find full of fill. But if you are still hanging around, would you be good enough to list some lesser-cited passages of the Ring which I might try again. Please leave out all the well known 'bleeding chunks' which appear on compilations, all the love duets, and all the singing by the Rhinemaidens, which I appreciate already.

Except for a very few single passages (Siegfried's Trauermusik, for paradigmatic example, which is one of the greatest single passages in all of music history), there are no single, citable passages. The glory of the Ring music is the continuous interleaving, and symphonic and contrapuntal development, of its motifs throughout which create and constitute the very heart of the drama of the entire four-episode (music-)drama. If one misses that about the Ring, one misses everything about the Ring. I'll grant you that, for many, 15 hours of that sort of intense, continuous dramatic creation and development may be difficult to grasp, especially for those who -- a la with ordinary opera such as are all Wagner's early works -- are looking for "passages" to latch onto, and for them this is all just too much. But it's more than well-worth the investment in attention and time to make the effort to grasp, and continue to do so until one finally "gets it."

Thank you for the advice. As one who loves Wagner like life itself, and finds a dense and prolonged mass of polyphonic development in Bach as delicious as chocolate, and yet still finds much of the Ring turgid and over-intellectualized as music and drama, I am still a bit skeptical this will work out for me, but am willing to try it. Now if I could only find the will power and interest to do it. It is not tempting, but instead seems to want to go on the shelf with other things I plan to do again someday, like try to read Joyce's Ulysses and try to listen to Schoenberg. Unlike those, however, I'm thoroughly familiar with the Ring.

Part of the problem may be that I just don't care about Wotan, who shakes out to be the central character in the drama after Wagner's false starts at Siegfried are put aside (the plot carries the awkwardness of this series of false starts like a great scar across its middle.) I could not give less of a s__t whether Wotan wins or loses, he is such a great bore. And his interminable music reflects his interminable boringness (except his farewell to Brunnehilde, which is one of the greatest things ever written). I am writing all of this partly tongue in cheek, forgive me. I really do appreciate your advice.

[dzalman]

Part of the problem may be that I just don't care about Wotan, who shakes out to be the central character in the drama after Wagner's false starts at Siegfried are put aside (the plot carries the awkwardness of this series of false starts like a great scar across its middle.) I could not give less of a s__t whether Wotan wins or loses, he is such a great bore. And his interminable music reflects his interminable boringness (except his farewell to Brunnehilde, which is one of the greatest things ever written). I am writing all of this partly tongue in cheek, forgive me. I really do appreciate your advice.

It might help (but then, again, it might make things worse for you) if you viewed and understood Wotan and the rest of the characters of the Ring as the archetypes they were intended to be. Ditto the drama and dramatic situations themselves. Lots of great music in the Ring is Wotan-connected, and in fact all the Ring's music, as well as its drama, is, in one way or another, evocative of his presence even when he plays no on-stage part in the drama. In short, Wotan, as realized in text and music taken as a single organic unity, is one of the greatest dramatic creations in the entire history of drama: written, spoken, and sung. It's not for nothing that Wotan is considered by singers to be the ultimate bass-baritone role.

[Corlyss_D]

It might help (but then, again, it might make things worse for you) if you viewed and understood Wotan and the rest of the characters of the Ring as the archetypes they were intended to be. Ditto the drama and dramatic situations themselves. Much of the great music in the Ring is Wotan-connected, and in fact all the Ring's music, as well as its drama, is, in one way or another, evocative of his presence even when he plays no on-stage part in the drama. In short, Wotan, as realized in text and music taken as a single organic unity, is one of the greatest dramatic creations in the entire history of drama: written, spoken, and sung. It's not for nothing that Wotan is considered by singers to be the ultimate bass-baritone role.

You've hit on the head the only thing that does interest me about the Ring and why I continue to be fascinated by the idea of the Ring without having the stamina to listen to much of it. I'm intrigued by the number of books on the subject of the Ring symbolism, just as I am with "the other Ring." And on some level when I get into it, it really does move me while "the other ring" leaves me cold.