I simply can't be entertained or impressed when I watch (or listen to) any Wagner opera. It's just so heavy, long and boring to me! I don't understand how it can be preferred to opera buffa, and no, I'm not an Italian nationalist who thinks bel canto is the only way to go.

I don't understand Wagner's idea of such a large and powerful orchestra for opera... I know I'm gonna get flames for this but I had to let it out

Welcome, sufeyang! and thanks for "Tchai-yo" (rough translation: "add more fuel," but you can correct me if I'm wrong ) to the Ring thread.
By the way, Morigan, I'll certainly disagree with your assessment of Wagner, but differences in musical taste do not merit "flames," and so you'll receive none from me.
And, so to JohnM, with whom I'd like to discuss the cycle (as well as anyone else who cares to chime in). For starters, maybe we can give our sound-bite impressions of the 4 works. I'll start:
1) Das Rheingold: underrated, even among Wagner fans. It is, however, handicapped by the complete absence of sympathetic characters.
2) Die Walkure: Wagner's most seemless welding of words and music.
3) Siegfried: the fulcrum. The action pivots fatalistically amongst the humor and (false) optimism.
4) Gotterdammerung: The architectonic majesty of the music is more than enough to make me overlook the "tubeway" plot line.

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The hardest knife ill us'd doth lose his edge. Shakespeare- Sonnet 95

I'd add to that by stating the obvious - Das Rheingold is an amazing glimpse of mythological characters and an introduction to the destructive power of greed.

Die Walkure - Hope - The most tender and moving parts of the whole cycle, for me, are contained in this opera.

Siegfried - Despair - it seems to me that having taken time off to compose Tristan and Die Meistersinger that Wagner returned to this opera in a far less less optimistic and charitable state of mind, as the whole mood of the Ring seems to change during Siegfried. This opera seems to be built upon almost continual conflict.

Die Gotterdammerung - dense, dark, heavy. It's amazing to contrast the transformation from the opening act of Rheingold to this bitter, tragic opera. It's also rather long.....

Actually, the whole Ring tetralogy could do with being a little bit shorter (or would that be sacrilege? )

The whole issue of whether The Ring specifically (and Wagner opera on general) could do with being a bit shorter is a topic that could make for a thread in itself. Generally speaking, most will conclude that Wagner is too long, but us Wagner fan-boys will say that it's just long enough

In candor, though, my belief is that 15 hours of music towards the same story-line is inevitably going to involve some longeurs. So, to answer your question... no, not sacrilege I believe, though, that the aesthetic impact of this can be minimized by reflecting on Robert Browning's most famous quote (from Andrea del Sarto): "Man's reach should exceed his grasp..."

I go back to the popularizer commentator Bill Parker, who had a more relevant observation on The Ring than many of the academics I've read. He speaks of "... the numerous recaps Wagner thoughfully works into the text as it goes along. (Some listeners hate these as holding up the action.)"

Yes, more than once. The first time was when the cycle was broadcast in the US on Public Television from the stage of the Met. At that time we had a VCR, and my wife and I decided to watch and listen a bit, but record it all for later piecemeal listening. It turned out we stayed up to end for all four, sometimes well past midnight. That was actually the first time either of us heard the whole of any of the operas.

Later we went on vacation in Seattle, Washington specifically to attend the full cycle performed in a one-week period. On the drive there, we listened to Milton Cross' tapes about the operas (purchased from The Metropolitan Opera Store), and while there attended classes on the morning of each production. Overall an excellent musical experience. Music and singing were outstanding, but we were critical of the staging.

Staging, too, could occupy a thread all its own. I thought of framing it "how did we get to this point?" where we could discuss the dichotomy between the leading school of thought in modern conducting (fidelity to the score) as contrasted to the leading school of thought in staging (fidelity to everything but the original stage instructions!)

I agree with Deryck Cooke, who argues that the point is not "what meaning can we find in the Ring?" but instead "what did Wagner mean by the Ring?" I hope I live to see the day where "personal vision" staging is viewed as a quaint, passe' oddity.

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The hardest knife ill us'd doth lose his edge. Shakespeare- Sonnet 95

I've been meaning to address this topic for a while. Now, with the story fresh in my mind, I'd like to do so.To begin with, I'd like to explore the Siegfried-Mime relationship. As we know from the development of the story, Mime views Siegfried as a means to an end. That is to say, Mime cares for Siegfried for the express purpose of maneuvering him to fulfill Mime's ambitions (most notably, the acquisition of the Ring).

Now, anyone who's had a relatively unsheltered life and a reasonably active intellect (and I'd assume that statement covers virtually all readers here) has had the experience of encountering a politician, or televangelist, or "community leader," or 'life coach,' or (insert occupation where journeyman skills of deception are a resume enhancement) who had achieved some success at fooling people, but he (or she) didn't fool you. Something in your gut set off the alarms. Now imagine having this feeling all the time. That is how Siegfried (grandson to a god, let us not forget) feels whenever he sees Mime. [Put another way, would YOU particularly mind setting a bear on Jim Bakker, if you had the means and opportunity?]

The fact that Mime had been at the task for about two decades does not change the nature of the manipulation attempt. Among real-life humans, it's not unknown for "gold-digger" types to befriend the wealthy elderly, performing the most menial-seeming tasks such as changing their dye-dees, not out of love but for the pay-off down the road. That Mime can be patient for years and years does not change the baseness of his motivations. (And if we adopt the "traditional mythological" interpretation that dwarves have naturally much longer life-spans than humans, it's really not such a long time for Mime, either.)

A last dynamic could take the form of a question: shouldn't Siegfried feel some gratitude and slight sense of obligation to Mime, for arranging for his survival in his most vulnerable years? It would be easy to answer "yes" to this question, if it was a boolean choice between raising him with the hopes of being a pawn in a scheme and leaving him in the woods to die. If Mime's designs were not so ignoble, then (we can speculate that) Siegfried would have shown genuine gratitude. One could posit other alternatives... how about presenting him as a foundling to a willing, intact nuclear family?

I stand by my statement that Siegfried is one of the more uncongenial tenor leads in the history of opera. However, he doesn't lose me in the opera Siegfried... and the stabbing of Mime troubles me not at all. Siegfried loses me in Gotterdammerung, when he kidnaps Brunnhilde, a felonious act not excusable on the grounds of the consumption of Hagen's potion. Not at all excusable, but explicable. That'll be the subject of part II.

An awful torture: tied somebody to a chair so he/she can't move, and force them to listen to the complete Ring at full volume, without interruptions. Ending the thing,began again from
the begining,and go on and on...

Nice to see that someone has taken up the rod of Rod in the latest edition of "wind-up-the-Wagner-fan." Great... it's good to know that I don't have to go to "Mayhem" to be exposed to quotes of such quality. I guess that means that interruptions for meals are out of the question. if I listened to angels and archangels and the choirs of the hosts of heaven "at full volume," I'd risk losing my hearing. It would, however, have no bearing on the quality of the music-making involved. I guess that means no bathroom breaks. However, if you allow for meals, volume that doesn't damage the cochlea, and intermezzos of biological necessity, I could listen again... Still, as the spirit of Merlin says to Arthur in "Excalibur," "a dream... for some- a nightmare for others!"

And with that, little o, I wish you the best of Wagner-free dreams. Yeah, I know, I know about the Rossini quote about "beautiful moments and awful half-hours." I think the last word on that attempted witticism belongs to Mrs. Philly, who said:

"An opera composer criticizing Wagner is like a hockey player criticizing Gretzky."

As we know from plot development in Gotterdammerung, Siegfried winds up drinking the potion that makes him forget he ever saw a woman, becomes irredeemably infatuated with Gutrune, and, with Gunther & Hagen holding the promise of uniting with Gutrune as reward, they induce Siegfried to abduct and procure Brunnhilde for Gunther.

Now, we've all had our misadventures in the playfield of Cupid, but multiple felonies crosses the line. How to explain it? Well, do you remember the lyrics of the Meat Loaf song "I would do anything for love (but I won't do that)?" In Siegfried's case, he would do anything for love, and he would do that! Does this make his love somehow stronger? Well... no- for civilized society, to be induced to do those things is something we'd take as evidence of a breech of trust and affection. For Siegfried, now, he doesn't take it that way. Speculation as to his thoughts is limited only by one's imagination. Perhaps he's seen acquisition of women by abduction as part of his "Rhine-journey." (Don't forget-- this is how Hunding came by Sieglinde back in Walkure.) Then he concluded that it would be all right "just this one time." Maybe the curse of the Ring affected his judgement (this, I think, is the most ready explanation to the thought expressed most directly by Berger (Wagner Without Fear) that Brunnhilde's "runes-of-wisdom" must have been cast in reverse!). Possibly, Warrior Siegfried falls prey to the epigram that "he has the greatest hammer in the world, and to him everything now looks like a nail."

Keep in mind that Tristan und Isolde was completed prior to Gotterdammerung, and in the former work, it's common-enough interpretation that Isolde's potion acted as amplifier and not attitude enplacement. Perhaps the potion completed a corruption that was only inchoate prior to the Ring and the manipulations of Hagen.

Wagner is really, REALLY an acquired taste. In order to appreciate the Ring, you REALLY have to become intimately familiar with his rival's (Verdi's) operas, then follow through by listening (and falling in love) with his technical successor's (Puccini) operas, and THEN get back to Wagner. For instance, Act One of the Valkyrie and Act Three of Ziegfried inspired most verismo composers, including Puccini. Boheme and Tosca in particular owe a lot to those two acts.

Ho-Yo-To-Hooo to All Wagnerites!


You-hooo! Yep, it is me, who can announce I'm a Wagner devotee and enjoy listening (and watching) the complete Ring tetralogy from the beginning to the end at least couple of times in a year (guess a short "natural" cuts R permitted during that long journey?). Yep, it takes some concentration, but apparently I'm the most patient person in Europe. A practical method is to divide for the same day's progam two parts from the beginning (Rheingold and Die Walküre), and leave the rest (Siegfried and Götterdämmerung) for the next day.

I like the characterization on Ring by JohnM, describing it's nature changing in different parts of the monumental tetralogy. And I appreciate CTP's throughgoing analysis, too. Must confess, the greatest shock I have experienced in my lifetime was to C the horrible, unforgivable act of Siegfried - this "supposed-to-be hero" brutally kidnapping Brünnhilde and stripping off the pursued ring from her! It doesn't help me to think that he was subordinated to Hagen's magical potion. D'oh! Why he had to act like a stupido and trust that treacherous Hagen?! Yep, I know, it "is written to happen so in the manuscript"! Hmmm...but still I feel tremendously disappointed, even if I have passed my teenage at least couple of years ago.

Thanks to its hypnotical excitement the Ring has got a special attraction to keep up a listener's interest from the beginning to the end. Surely these dramatic themes of this serie of "psychological thrillers"can offer great challenges for dramatic arts, too. Generally speaking, all the masterworks and their attraction R constructed from various factors, mysterious mythical plot, fantasy-like scene, but before everything, in Ring it is the huge (megalomanic) musical power and artistic genius of construction (die Leitmotivs).

Not to mention the plot, it deals with the fundamental themes like love, lust, revenge and other crucial contradictions between life and death. And those basic questions of humanity and morals R up to date still today, even if the time has changed. In the end of Götterdämmerung there is a strong sense of longing farewell and joy of waiting to C again. That's the genius in music writing - to make the listener return to the composition and start enjoying it once again, perhaps discovering some new details unCn before.

My own favourite recordings for the integral set R relatively "modern", by Haitink/SO des BayerischenRF (EMI) and Levine/MET (DG). Both have their advantages, but in my opinion no disadvantages, like them very much!

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"Silence is the Greatest Music" - Herbert von Karajan

There is much of value in the preceding post:There is definitely something of the "plot imperative" in this turn of the action. Then, it falls to apologists (like me) to "retro-fit" an explanation according to that imperative. The sheer scope of the Ring, combined with its recasting (most notably from a 'Feuerbachian*' to a 'Schopenhauerian' persective) have led to some contradictions in the finished product.Yeah... and nowhere are the Leitmotivs more masterfully applied than in Götterdämmerung. In fact, I'll opine that, whatever one may think of the story-line, Götterdämmerung is the most musically sophisticated of the "Ring" operas, or of all Wagner operas, for the matter of that. (Parsifal gives it very close competition.)You can check out the SchizophRINGia thread for my viewpoint on favored versions. I'll leave the "bilge-battles" over which version is or is not a flawed interpretation to those other places. (In fact, my primary quarrel in the SchizophRINGia thread is that one particular "authority" attempted to entertain multiple (and mutually exclusive) viewpoints.

*In earlier, 'Feuerbachian' form, Siegfried achieves Divine Ascension and is welcomed into the pantheon of gods...

Wagner is the best. Profound story, the best music ive heard. But yes, it requires some patience. But so do a book

Wagner's music asks for and requires Bel Canto singing. It is retarded singers who think they have the shout and scream every note that don't.

I honestly prefer R.Strauss. But Wagner is definitely up there.