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!