elanya

So, this weekend, I watched, on successive evenings, Das Rheingold and Der Walkurie for the first time. So yes, Wagner is pretty damned awesome. Even though I knew a lot of the story elements anyway, it was all very engrossing. Next week I am missing Siegfried, and the week after that I'll likely take in Gotterdammerung (which I have to keep reminding myself does not actually translate as The God Damned Ring, although it may be an apt title ;).

The music was amazing - I haven't expressly listenied to a lot of Wagner before (I mean, who hasn't heard The Ride of the Valkyries, but other than that...) but I was really enthralled by it. I liked, conceptualy, how his stories were arranged for voice too, breaking out of some of the traditional operatic structures. It kept me more engaged, and I think the musical coherency of it helped with that. I am not a musical expert by any means, but at least on the first listen through I was able to pick out some of the more obvious lietmotifs (hello magical sword, you are the least subtle @_@). It definitely makes me want to listen more! I really really liked James Morris's Wotan, especially when he kills Hunding. Make's Voldemort's "Kill the spare" line read like an episode of the smurfs :p



There were some downsides to my experience though. I was watching these at the house of a professor emeritus in my program, who refurbished his garage as an opera viewing room... Giant really nice tv, a wall of operas in various media, etc. He hosts these things regularly, though this is the first time he's shown Wagner. Anyway - Wagner is kind of heavy, and he is showing allll of the Ring Saga in a month, broken up on three weekends. He had the advantage of seeing them all over the course of 4 nights at the MET back in 1990 (which is actually the same set of performances we were watching). The first night we had a fair sized crowd, and last night there was me and a bunch of guys.

To recap the basic premise of Die Walkurie: Wotan's illegitimate son (Siegmund) finds and falls in love with his long-lost twin sister (Sigeliende), steals her away from her husband (who wants him dead for killing some other relatives), and marries her. Fricka (Frigg), Wotan's wife and the goddess of matrimony, comes to Wotan and says "you have to kill these two, they're incestuous adulterers, her husband invoked me, and to let them live undermines the power of the gods." Wotan tries to get her to relent by explaining that he needs someone to fulfill a specific prophesized role to win back a dangerous magic ring in possession of a Giant (see Das Rheingold @_@). Fricka sees though this and points out to him that any hero he protects is automatically not qualified, and he relents, telling his Valkyrie daughter to go and kill the son. In fact he tells her *everything*, about the magic ring, how he needs the hero, etc. But she knows he still loves Sigmund, and when she goes to tell Sigmund that he is going to lose in battle to his sister-wife's husband, she lets him convince her to defy her father. When she does so, Wotan kills Sigmund himself, and she helpes Sigeliende espace instead, telling her she needs to learn because she is already knocked up by her brother-husband. Wotan cathes Brunhilde and punishes her by stripping her godhead, and putting her in a magical sleep protected by magic flames. Ironically, of course, the situation results in producing exactly the hero Wotan needs (the twin's son, who does not have his Grandfather's protection). Arguably you could say that once Wotan decides he must die, Sigmund counts, and so mighht Brunhilde (who is the one who eventualy winds up redeeming the ring of its curse, I believe) herself.

So, the guys I was watching this unanimously decided that Fricka was the villain of the piece, because she made Wotan kill his own childre. Despite the fact that he is continuoously unfaithful to her (as the goddess ...of marriage, and fidelity @_@), and that they have not onky transgressed against her domain as adulterers (and incestuous ones at that), but that the husband explicitly invoked her in that aspect. Its not Wotan's fault, or Siegmund's, or Sieglienda's... no. In fact the phrase uttered was ""She is everything men fear about marriage!" Wow. And my dissenting voice was pretty much ignored :p I acknowledge that there was some vindictiveness to her decree, but even he admits that she has been pretty tolerant of his indiscretions (e.g. when it comes to the Valkyries - his *nine* illegitimate daughters all from the same mother...).

Anyway, despite this (and other discomfiting conversation that had nothing to do with the opera), I did really enjoy the music. So probably I will check out more Wagner in the future. I'd love to see any of it performed live!

I leave you with the Overture and part of Act I from Die Walkure; it really drew *me* in. It was a dark and stormy night...