Das Rheingold

See you there. Review next week.
----------------------------------------------
from the opera company's website:

Swept along by some of Wagner's most glorious music, Das Rheingold takes audiences from the depths of the Rhine to the cloud-swept turrets of Valhalla, where powerful Teutonic gods display all-too-human desires, and the pursuit of a magical ring of gold hurls the cosmos into chaos.

A spellbinding tale of greed, love, and treachery.

As Valhalla's chief god, James Morris, "the world’s greatest Wotan…he owns the role." Connoisseur magazine

As his imperious consort Fricka, Larissa Diadkova, "the celebrated Kirov star who astonishes with the vividness and force of her singing." Daily News, New York

In German with projected English titles.

Tannhauser and the Ride of the Valkyries are under rated classics.
Instead of 'Rap' music, the culture of Wagner should be broadcast over negro radio stations to intimidate and neutralise the audience of savage beasts.

Well let me say, I didnt like it as much as Siegfried, but enjoyed it greatly nonetheless.

The movie starts with an interesting conflict between Fricka (Frigga) and Wotan (Odin) that any married man can appreciate. Immediately, in the first part, the booming voice of the giant Fasolt steals the show.

Wotan and Loge, who steal the Rhinegold from the dwarf Alberich (who had tken it in turn from the Rhinemaidens and had it forged into a powerful ring by his brother Mime, who plays a large role in the drama "Siegfried,") and give that to the giants Fafnir and Fasolt, who built the gods a fortress (Asgard), and looked to Wotan's promise of Freia as their wage for this labor. The gods balk upon completion of the job, but the pact was sworn on Odin's spear so it may not be broken. However, Loge offers to ransom her by giving Fafnir and Fasolt the Rhinegold in her place. The giants agree.

Then Wotan and Loge (Loki) have to steal or trick the Rhinegold out of Alberich. This is an amusing part of the play. The interplay between Wotan and Loge brings alive this part of the Nordic myths which to me often seems lost on people who oversimplify the myths to suit their own notions.

They succeed and deliver the gold and ring to the giants. The ring, is cursed by Alberich, and Wotan is loath to give it up. But, nearing the end Erda, "the fat lady sang," and he then heeds the advice of this goddess who is a Fate-like mother Earth goddess, and gives it up. The curse works immediately and Fafnir kills his brother Fasolt. The gods get Freia back and ascend the rainbow bridge into their new home. The drama ends with Donner (Thor) swinging his hammer to conjure a storm. That was the "sturm und drang" part I guess. LOL

The propmasters in Chicago are tops. The way the engineered these big puppets for the giants was really wonderful. Also, they fashioned Thor's hammer as a ball and chain, and that worked pretty well especially when he spiralled it at the end.

The scenery was less sparse than it should have been in my view, but the Rhine sequence was excellent with plenty of positive three dimensional objects to add visual epth to the drama. The bouncing of the Rhinemaidens on bungee cords worked well. Also, the rainbow bridge at the end was good, and so was the sheet used to conjure a storm. If the rest of the scenery had as much substance as that used in the beginning and the end, the drama would have been much more watchable throughout.

James Morris is great, but I have heard him do better in other shows. Maybe he was tired or something, it lacked energy compared to other occasions I have seen. I was also more impressed by the singing of Alberich (Oleg Bryjack ) than Loge ( Bonaventura Bottone ). Really, Fasolt played by Andreas Silvestrelli, stole the show with his prodigious thundering voice. On the woman's side, Erda played by Jill Grove, was my favorite voice.

Final thought for VNNers: Wotan and Loge come across as deceptive schemers, but competent ones. The idea that deception is a strictly Jewish strategem is foolishness and nobody should know this better than "Odinists." Wagner's dramas explore the full range of human emotion especially the darker aspects.

from VNN reader mail, from Walter Meuller's newsletter:

"And second, the works themselves. He's the grand master of the sublime, but into the music is composed, decisively and inextricably a sense that the entire bid for transcendence may be in vain. You see, that's where Der Ring is. I hope you're going to get a good production of it. In an authentic production of the Ring, the fundamental question will be posed right away, and the fundamental question is: is there any transcendental meaning at all, or are we entirely subject to natural law?

What do you see? At the opening of Das Rheingold, you see the natural world in its most innocent stage, the three Rhinemaidens representing the natural world. Subaquarus, they represent the unconscious itself. That's the world before it was penetrated by human reflection and conscious intelligence. There they are, swimming around and notice the first line of Der Ring. This is by a man who is always accused of being much too verbose and going on and on forever, taking up time on things. The whole work begins:

Weia! Waga!

Woge, du Welle!

Walle zur Wiege!

Wagalaweia!

Those are playful sounds the two nouns have crept in - 'Welle' and 'Wiege'. What has happened to the world? Yes, language has entered it. What does it mean? Reflective consciousness has entered it. And guess what? The symbol of reflective consciousness turns up. What is the symbol? Well, it's an ugly dwarf. It's not a very attractive character in its early days. Why is it ugly and why not very attractive? The process by which reflective intelligence came into the world, so far as we know, was not a very clean one. All of this is understood by Wagner long before Darwin published The Origin of the Species. Rheingold was written in 1852.

Now, pay attention to the text, which unfortunately very few stage directors these days do. Take a look at what is said between Alberich and the Rhinemaidens who tease him, of course.

The first thing the Rhinemaidens see is he's clumsy. You see the stage directions - he has problems climbing on the rocks. He's not very agile. He doesn't move very well. What he says to the Rhinemaidens is that it's easy for you - they do it by pure instinct. He's got to learn everything. That's what consciousness does. It compels you to learn to do things that other creatures do instinctively.

But he's turned down by the first of the Rhinemaidens, who represent the natural world and are indifferent to him, just as they are indifferent to Siegfried. The natural world doesn't care about us as individuals. Listen to the music in Gtterdmmerung, Act III. That is one of the reasons why it has such enormous emotional force. The stream of time, the river, is entirely indifferent to the hero. Heroes come and go. The river and time remain - it's in the music. Only Wagner could do that!

What else does Alberich say? The first Rhinemaiden turns him down, and Alberich says "I'm glad there's more than one of you because if there was only one of you I wouldn't have much of a chance". What's the meaning of that line? He's accepted the law of probability as governing the world, the natural world, which it does. Probability governs our lives.

It is only when all three Rhinemaidens reject him that it occurs to him, well, the Rhein may move on but its not necessarily going to help him individually - one of nature's horrible truths. And it's only then that the ray of sunlight pierces the flowing water, a musically sensational moment among so many - and illuminates the gold at the base - a large block of raw gold.

And please, directors, please, do what Wagner says. Let the ray of sunlight illuminate the raw gold. Please don't turn it into a municipal water works or something else. Please don't try to have some artificial symbolism of 19th century capitalism. Please do what Wagner asked.

I assume what you're going to get is a very spare, lean production here in Adelaide. But maybe you'll be lucky enough. Maybe they'll pay attention to his stage directions.

And Alberich stops transfixed, as does everybody, transfixed by the music. And what does that stand for? Guess what? Reflective intelligence itself is represented by this ray of light on the gold.

The gold is a symbol of many other things besides, and I'm not saying that the anti-capitalist interpretation of Der Ring is wrong. You can take Der Ring as class warfare, but that's not a central part. Reflective consciousness has penetrated - there it is, and what is to be done with it? Well, it occurs to Alberich, 'I can do something with reflective consciousness. Instead of chasing these women who won't pay attention to me, maybe something can be done with the brain itself'. And he steals the gold, and takes the gold and brings it up above the surface. Above the surface, that is a symbol of bringing it into consciousness. He takes it up to his factory in the mountain and forges a ring. It's been said that if a symbol is easily defined verbally, it's not a hell of a good symbol. The 'ring' has so many aspects as a symbol, we'd be here all day. But it certainly does stand for the essence of reflective consciousness.

It's Alberich who puts it to work. It's Alberich's ring. It's Alberich who finds out what you can do with reflective consciousness. What you can do is all kinds of things. You can put your brother to work forging the Tarnhelm, for example. Don't forget that Rheingold was written three years after wire telegraphy had been invented. The electronic age had begun and again Wagner catches this - he knows this. The electronic age is implicit and the Tarnhelm stands for that, doesn't it? Wagner gets the point - it stands for instant transferability - 'Er entfhrt flugs dich dahin'. He catches all that. The difference is that Mime who can make it, doesn't own it. He can't control it. It is the one who made the ring who controls it.

Well, that's the first scene of Rheingold. We are off to the races for the rest of Der Ring. It just beggars belief that I have to read from people whom I know personally in New York or London, to say nothing of some others that Alberich is a specific Jewish caricature. If you want to believe that you can say "Very like a whale". If that's the way you want to interpret this scene, there's not much point in arguing, is there?

I said that I'd talk about errors, lies and nonsense. Since the errors, lies and nonsense are oceanic, we would certainly be here far too long even to get under the surface, much less to any great depth. I suppose this nonsense will be with us permanently because Wagner raises all the hard questions. No other composer raises as insistently as he does the basic fundamental philosophical questions?"

Gott, what do you say? Are you going to the show any time soon?

here is a good article on wagner from natvan org

http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=4422

Hi A.E.

Weird, I'm listening to a Das Rheingold right now - from Berlin, conducted by Christian Thielemann who is a German Nationalist of great talent and commitment - and then I see your posts and then I see your post to me. I have to reply after all that portent...If I don't there will probably be a Wagner thunderstorm and such.

Rheingold was the first Wagner opera I got. Before that it just sounded like endless noise to me - having been brought up on the super melodiousness of Italian opera. Then, one day, just playing it in the background...it all came together, made great sense and seemed to be what it is - incredibly beautiful. I listened to it all the time driving across North Dakota and Montana once, during the middle of nights, with the windows wide open and the sound cranked as high as it would go. Good things houses are far away from the road there. I can't think of many things more seductive or hypnotic than the song of the Rhine maidens at the beginning and the end. And only the grand finale of Guillaume Tell has the almost unimaginable grandeur of the finale to Rheingold - the splendor in the repeated cadences and the golden brass as the gods go proudly -- to their doom across the rainbow bridge to Walhall.

Wagner in opera houses is about as grim as Verdi in opera houses. Maybe you can get lucky once in a while and see something that doesn't make you barf...but that's pretty rare. The acting is so by rote too - those stinking stage directors should leave the singers alone to work it out for themselves - what they might do on instinct certainly can't be much worse than what those assholes give them to do.

I was amused (and pissed) by Polignano's super hick and naive review of Fliegende Hollander in SF (he'd actually listened to the entire overture before writing a piece on the opera - I didn't know Wagner was quite that easy to understand). 'Euro Trash' managers, 'artistic directors' and stage directors have made my interest in opera very simple (the SF director is a jewess, by the way). I trade for performances and listen. Sometimes I close my eyes and see it in my head a hell of a lot better than it could even be on a stage today.

Anyway, Wagner was really writing the first movies - what he asks for can't be convincingly staged, and if it was convincingly staged back then, they must have been really amazing on the level of presentation as well as creation. Lohengrin always works great seeing it in my head as I listen. The fight between Lohengrin and Telramund and the big choral stuff celebrating Lohengrin's victory and all the stuff leading up to their wedding looks absolutely great in my head. And, I could probably do a good job with crossing the rainbow bridge too, if the music wasn't so overwhelming that all I can do is sit there shaking with wonder.

It's sad and pitiful and contemptible that so many here don't know a god damn thing about their own culture. 4 hour operas...how boring...etc. etc. These 4 hour operas (Rheingold is real short, of course, by Wagner standards) are our culture and unlock the golden doors to how to think, good values, nobility, grace and most of the other things that make life worth living, and also worth fighting for.

Anyway, nice to write this and say hi to you.

HH

Thanks for stopping in Gott.

I think we're on the same page about all that.

But I'm not familiar with Lohengrin other than the Overture.

I enjoyed Chicago's performance. Alberich was loathsome, Wotan was enigmatic, Loge equally so. The interplay between the two, fascinating. That's in the story, that's in the myths, and it came out in the acting.

The giants in this presentation, were strong from a costume/prop perspective, OK as voices, and weak in terms of character development and acting. They are somewhat simple, sympathetic figures until Fafnir slays his brother at the end.

Is the crossing of the Rainbow Bridge the finale? Then is Donner (Thor) conjuring the storm a postlude? I cant recall. Or perhaps a prelude of sorts to the next in the cycle...?

Why dont you consider coming to Chicago this spring, they are staging Ring cycle. Rheingold, Walkure, Seigfried, Gotterdamerung. Way less expensive than NYC, not as far away as Bayreuth, and top drawer talent. Think about it.

http://www.lyricopera.org/ringMainPage.asp

Finale just means 'the end.' A final number – often a trio with ensemble elements – will be followed by a series of cadential figurations to bring down the curtain with an appropriately weighty (and applause generating) spectacular musical flourish. In this case, after calling up and ending the storm, the Gods cross the bridge and we hear a series of majestic cadences that are repeated many times, but with variants. Wagner tends to repeat and repeat. Even though economy is not one of his virtues, he can usually pull it off because he's a genius.



Lohengrin is ultra romantic/poetic. It's one of Wagner's most beautiful and stirring scores. Lohengrin is a mysterious knight who appears to defend the honor and life (as she is on trial for the murder of her younger brother) of Elsa of Brabant, who strangely has dreamed of a knight who will come to her rescue. Elsa's accuser is Telramund who is prompted by his terrifying wife Ortrud. The two men fight, Lohengrin wins, Elsa is thus acquitted, and Telramund disgraced (the law specifies that he must die, but Lohengrin spares him - banishment instead). In winning, Lohengrin also wins Elsa and they prepare to wed - the one condition being that she can never ask his name or his origin (he arrived in a boat, pulled by a swan, by the way...).



The second act begins with Telramund and Ortrud outside in the dark - a big party is taking place off stage celebrating the coming wedding. Ortrud controls her husband and tells him that Lohengrin won through black magic, etc. He leaves; Elsa comes out of her balcony and Ortrud plants seeds of doubt in Elsa's mind about Lohengrin (how come he won't tell you his name...are his people that awful that you can never ask about them? etc.).



It gets very heavy psychologically, but it is also, always, extroverted and highly spectacular dramatically and musically. I cannot recommend any Wagner opera more highly for accessibility. There are a few terrific dramatic surprises along the way too.



If you want to hear it, I'll be happy to knock off a copy (or two, or five) for you. I can even send you a video if you like, but I'm pretty sure there are no subtitles so you have to have a libretto if you want to know what's happening.



Growing up, I didn't like Wagner at all and a good friend suggested I just put the music on in the background and listen and sooner or later I'd get it. That is just what happened. And then, it only got better when I started following the words and could see/hear how uncannily the music fitted the meaning of the words - what music drama means, I guess.



Just pvt. me if you'd like a copy/copies.