# Let's talk Gotterdammerung........



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

This coming Saturday, the 27th, the Met is presenting Wagner's massive masterpiece.
The scope and beauty of its music still astonish me.

I thought since it's coming up this Saturday we could give our thoughts on it.

Musically, historically, philosophically, characters, etc.
Anything you might want to talk about this amazing work.

Looking forward to your thoughts.
Into the hall of the Gibichungs we go. 
hoyo toho!!!!!!!!! 
:tiphat:


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## Music Snob (Nov 14, 2018)

For me I will associate the Beginning with the Norns through to the Rhine Journey with the tail end of a 10 hr car ride last fall from Lincoln, NM to Phoenix, AZ on US 10. By the time I put this on the radio the sun had set and I was excited beyond belief to be in that moment of my life.

I would prefer any of Kna's versions if I had to choose.

As for my approach with most opera, my attention is totally about the music. I am thankful I do not know the words because I think it would take away from just _feeling_ the sentiment of the music... besides, could a piece like Siegfried's funeral music even have words? It is stunning in it's answer to death. Twilight of the Gods and destruction I hear not in this piece, but the living spirit even death cannot hold back.

Just some random musings...never even saw a Wagner opera... not sure I want to see one anyway...especially if it's not to the composers directions.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

_Gotterdammerung_ is interesting musically. As the climax of the _Ring_ it weaves together all the work's leitmotifs in a complex tapestry, making use of all the techniques of counterpoint, harmony and orchestration Wagner had learned from working on _Tristan_ and _Die Meistersinger_ as well as the earlier installments of the _Ring._ But it's also the most conventionally "operatic" member of the cycle, freely employing vocal ensembles - duets, trios, choruses - which are mostly absent from the rest of the _Ring._

_In Oper und Drama_ Wagner had reasoned that since people don't normally talk simultaneously, having them do so onstage was an old-fashioned operatic convention best eliminated in the service of dramatic realism. But he was always a superb composer of choruses (witness _Tannhauser_ and _Lohengrin_), and I suspect that he so enjoyed writing for ensembles in _Meistersinger_ (not to mention the love-duetting of Tristan and Isolde) that he couldn't resist the sound of voices in harmony where the libretto of _Gotterdammerung_ seems to permit them. Thus we have the climax of the love duet in the Prologue, Siegfried's and Gunther's oath of blood-brotherhood, the gathering of the vassals, the vengeance trio, and the leisurely singing of the Rhinedaughters. It all prompted G. B. Shaw to remark that Wagner had given up on the "music drama" and composed an old-fashioned grand opera.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Götterdämmerung (German: [ˈɡœtɐˌdɛməʁʊŋ] (About this soundlisten); Twilight of the Gods),[1] WWV 86D, is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four music dramas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, or The Ring for short). It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 17 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of the Ring.

The title is a translation into German of the Old Norse phrase Ragnarök, which in Norse mythology refers to a prophesied war among various beings and gods that ultimately results in the burning, immersion in water, and renewal of the world. However, as with the rest of the Ring, Wagner's account diverges significantly from his Old Norse sources.

from Wiki


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Next to Parsifal I like Gotterdammerung.
I don't know why it happens but every single time the climax with the horse comes, that music just envelops me and I am a sloppy mess of tears.
My favorite one is Nilsson.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> _Gotterdammerung_ is interesting musically. As the climax of the _Ring_ it weaves together all the work's leitmotifs in a complex tapestry, making use of all the techniques of counterpoint, harmony and orchestration Wagner had learned from working on _Tristan_ and _Die Meistersinger_ as well as the earlier installments of the _Ring._ But it's also the most conventionally "operatic" member of the cycle, freely employing vocal ensembles - duets, trios, choruses - which are mostly absent from the rest of the _Ring._
> 
> _In Oper und Drama_ Wagner had reasoned that since people don't normally talk simultaneously, having them do so onstage was an old-fashioned operatic convention best eliminated in the service of dramatic realism. But he was always a superb composer of choruses (witness _Tannhauser_ and _Lohengrin_), and I suspect that he so enjoyed writing for ensembles in _Meistersinger_ (not to mention the love-duetting of Tristan and Isolde) that he couldn't resist the sound of voices in harmony where the libretto of _Gotterdammerung_ seems to permit them. Thus we have the climax of the love duet in the Prologue, Siegfried's and Gunther's oath of blood-brotherhood, the gathering of the vassals, the vengeance trio, and the leisurely singing of the Rhinedaughters. It all prompted G. B. Shaw to remark that Wagner had given up on the "music drama" and composed an old-fashioned grand opera.


Personally I find all this - and the change from the previous operas - entirely appropriate for an opera about a time post-gods. The love potion bit and the comedy of errors plotting are all, to my mind, conscious choices. Wagner used the love potion in _Tristan und Isolde_, but it was not a cheap device like it is in _Götterdämmerung_. For _Tristan_ he spent time on it, developed themes around it, a backstory, and so on. In _Götterdämmerung_ it comes from nowhere, is never explained or discussed, and we see nothing else like it in the entire rest of the cycle. In my mind, that tells me that it was purposefully a cheap device.

Similarly, the musical devices that Wagner uses in _Götterdämmerung_ line up well with this opera as a model of the entire Ring. The Siegfried-Gunther duet isn't the first one in the Ring; we also had Siegmund and Sieglinde in _Die Walküre_. We don't get the chorus until act 2, which lines up with _Siegfried_, the opera in which the humans take over this world. And the vengeance trio at the end of act 2 lines up nicely with how _Siegfried_ ended; the trio is undoing the accomplishments of the Siegfried-Brünnhilde duet.

This strikes me as fitting with the Wagner who came up with reasons to have ballets in _Der fliegende Holländer_ and _Tannhäuser_. Wagner didn't want to use a ballet as a distraction, and similarly didn't want to include choruses just because they sound pretty. A less focused composer could have found a lot of places for choruses earlier in the Ring; the just didn't fit the overall conception.

I really like Shaw's book, but see him being over upset that Wagner ruined his (Shaw's that is, it was never Wagner's) socialist allegory. I really do think that Shaw saw a lot that Wagner did intend, but what Shaw missed is that Wagner had way more going on than that. I don't believe that Wagner was ever writing the Ring to expound upon socialism to the extent that he would let that drive the drama in the way that would have made Shaw happy.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I agree about Shaw's overly narrow view of what Wagner was up to. The younger Wagner was a socialist-anarchist - his revolutionary activities sent him into exile in Switzerland - and the _Ring_ implicitly condemns all forms of political and economic power inimical to the happiness and fulfillment of the human individual, including monarchy and capitalism. But it is not a political manifesto, and the longer Wagner worked on it the more he realized its deeper philosophical and psychological implications.

I'm not sure I'd call Hagen's forgetfulness potion and its antidote "cheap." The potion in _Tristan_ is a more pervasive plot element, but it's still to be understood more as a device that precipitates an emotional crisis than as literal magic. The _Ring_ traffics more in magic than does _Tristan,_ but Hagen's potion seems to symbolize Siegfried's personal immaturity, his naivete when confronted with a deceitfulness and opportunism foreign to his nature; Wagner seems to want to show us what can happen when honest, unsuspecting souls move out of the shelter of love into a corrupt world which only wants to use them. We have to think that Siegfried wouldn't choose consciously to be unfaithful to Brunnhilde, so the potion is a necessary device, and an apt one: offering a stranger a drink is a gesture of friendship, which makes it a perfect symbol of treachery in the house of the Gibichungs.

What I was pointing to as new in the music of _Gotterdammerung_ was the use of ensembles in which individual people who would speak alternately in real life sing in harmony - a convention exclusive to opera. Actually this new freedom to let people sing together began at the end of _Siegfried_ (which makes sense, since Act 3 of that opera was composed after _Tristan_ and _Meistersinger)._ It would have been reasonable and delightful to let Siegmund and Sieglinde sing a love duet, and no other opera composer would have passed up the opportunity to give them one, but Wagner refuses: they speak alternately, as prescribed in _Oper und Drama._ The only ensembles earlier in the _Ring_ are among the Rhinedaughters and the Valkyries, at moments when they're not functioning as individuals. The Nibelungs working at their anvils might have had an "anvil chorus" to express their collective servitude, and the reason they don't may be that Wagner was trying to avoid being too "operatic." But he has obviously shed his reservations in _Gotterdammerung;_ the vengeance trio in particular is extensive and exciting, leading up to the entrance of the wedding party and making a powerful conclusion to Act 2. In this gigantic score Wagner was willing to use all the techniques he knew for maximum effect.


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## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

Has anyone done a poll of how old people were when they first heard The Ring or a Wagner opera that got them, let's say "enthused" about Wagner's music?


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

I was nineteen. A radio broadcast of Tannhäuser. Hooked forever.


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## marceliotstein (Feb 23, 2019)

I am seeing Gotterdammerung at the Met on May 11 (also catching Seigfried two days before) and I am excited beyond description. I'm also a little worried about sitting through two 5-hour plus operas in 3 days, but I guess I'll tough it out. For me, it's the theme, the symbolism and the cultural connotations that fascinate me the most. I posted something to this forum earlier about one very curious aspect of this - the mention of "Gotterdammerung" in Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind". It is mentioned in the book, though doesn't make the movie. Ashley Wilkes, interestingly, is into Wagner:



> "She felt like snapping out abruptly: "To hell with everybody in the South! What about us?" but she remained silent because the tired feeling was back on her more strongly than ever. Ashley wasn't being any help at all.
> 
> "In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out. At least, it has been interesting, if not comfortable, to witness a Gotterdammerung."
> 
> ...


As I wrote previously, this may or may not be an anachronism, since the conversation takes place in 1866 and the opera didn't premiere until 1876. However, I also understand that the libretto was published and widely read earlier, so perhaps that is what Ashley is referring to. However, he also appears to be spouting a Nietzschean interpretation of Wagner, and Nietzschean was still a complete unknown in 1876. Or perhaps was the Nietzschean interpretation commonplace and obvious? It may be. I really don't know. All of this historical context is absolutely fascinating for me, anyway - and of course the correspondence between the idea of the destruction of Valhalla and the fall of the Third Reich is impossible to ignore, and I'm very curious how this correspondence was seen by contemporaries in the 1940s. Wagner's opera carries symbolism that is perhaps too heavy for us to even see it clearly today.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^ I suspect Margaret Mitchell is being anachronistic, knowingly or not. I don't know when the German word "Gotterdammerung" entered popular consciousness, but I doubt that it preceded the renown of the _Ring,_ which followed upon its spread into opera houses worldwide. I'd bet the farm that no one in the American south in 1866 had ever heard of it. But then, I dunno, maybe Wagner and Ashley were pen pals.

People are always dumping Wagner, Nietzsche, Darwin and Hitler into a pot of intellectual goulash. It's a real mess.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

mountmccabe said:


> Personally I find all this - and the change from the previous operas - entirely appropriate for an opera about a time post-gods. The love potion bit and the comedy of errors plotting are all, to my mind, conscious choices. Wagner used the love potion in _Tristan und Isolde_, but it was not a cheap device like it is in _Götterdämmerung_. For _Tristan_ he spent time on it, developed themes around it, a backstory, and so on. In _Götterdämmerung_ it comes from nowhere, is never explained or discussed, and we see nothing else like it in the entire rest of the cycle. In my mind, that tells me that it was purposefully a cheap device.
> 
> Similarly, the musical devices that Wagner uses in _Götterdämmerung_ line up well with this opera as a model of the entire Ring. The Siegfried-Gunther duet isn't the first one in the Ring; we also had Siegmund and Sieglinde in _Die Walküre_. We don't get the chorus until act 2, which lines up with _Siegfried_, the opera in which the humans take over this world. And the vengeance trio at the end of act 2 lines up nicely with how _Siegfried_ ended; the trio is undoing the accomplishments of the Siegfried-Brünnhilde duet.
> 
> ...


As Wagner wrote the libretto for Gotterdamerung last then I could never see Shaw's point anyway, but then I think he was a bit of an intellectual idealist anyway, and that's putting it politely. I think by the time Wagner wrote it he had been influenced by the old misrerabilist Schopenhauer and that's apparently why the ending is as it is. I think this opera is actually a retreat from Tristan into the more formal world of set pieces than the other parts of the Ring


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> ^^^ I suspect Margaret Mitchell is being anachronistic, knowingly or not. I don't know when the German word "Gotterdammerung" entered popular consciousness, but I doubt that it preceded the renown of the _Ring,_ which followed upon its spread into opera houses worldwide. I'd bet the farm that no one in the American south in 1866 had ever heard of it. But then, I dunno, maybe Wagner and Ashley were pen pals.


Yeah, I agree that that seems unrealistic.

Wagner didn't decide to call the final opera of the cycle "Götterdämmerung" until around 1856, and the text of the poem wasn't published under that name until 1863. Still before 1866, but that's very little time for an obscure poem to find its way across the ocean and into the consciousness of this character, especially with no music to help.

So technically it's possible, but people don't talk like that. (Well, some people do, using obscure phrases/references they can't expect anyone around them to understand... but I doubt that is meant as a character trait here). Even if the scene was set in 1877, and Ashley had gone to the continent to visit the opera festival... that phrasing doesn't make sense.

Quentin Tarantino did something similar in _Django Unchained_, set in the late 1850s. A German living in the US hears about a slave named Broomhilde and expounds upon the origin of that name. He mentions the Nibelungenlied... but it's Wagner's version that he tells, in a deliberate anachronism. Christoph Waltz, the storyteller in the film, took Tarantino to see the Ring Cycle in Los Angeles when the film was in development, and lot of that cycle ended up in the characters and structure of _Django Unchained_. (More discussion of the Wagner in Django abounds! Note that this article has spoilers for both Django and the Ring).


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Barbebleu said:


> I was nineteen. A radio broadcast of Tannhäuser. Hooked forever.


Fifteen, TV broadcast of Der Ring. Hooked forever.

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Memories recede into the mists of time, but I was probably about 14 when I heard Toscanini conduct the dawn sequence from _Gotterdammerung_ and Helen Traubel sing Isolde's "Liebestod," both on 78 rpm discs. Those bits seduced me into buying a couple of LPs of Wagner overtures and preludes, and my conversion was complete and irrevocable. My first complete Wagner operas, heard soon thereafter, were _Tristan _(Flagstad/Furtwangler) and _Parsifal_ (1951 Knappertsbusch). I still consider those works the twin peaks of opera.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

I believe I was 13 or 14 when for some reason that escapes me now I requested Solti's Ring LP cycle on interlibrary loan. That was cemented by watching the Boulez Ring on PBS some years later (I'm quite sure the interlibrary loan preceded that by a few years).

It had never occurred to me that Götterdämmerung = Ragnarok, but of course it is.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

19 for me. I bought the Kempe Lohengrin and at the end of each act I was shaking.
Then the Solti Dutchman and was blown away by the power of the music.
Then Karajan's Ring. I loved it, but was a bit disappointed because the voices were not what I expected in a Wagner.
Then I bought the Solti Ring and was blown away.
I appreciate Herbie's Ring more today than then, but I still love Solti's and love the memories if brings back.

It took me years to like Tristan, Meister and Parsifal.
First came Meister, then Parsifal and finally Tristan.
I never tire of them.


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## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

gardibolt said:


> I believe I was 13 or 14 when for some reason that escapes me now I requested Solti's Ring LP cycle on interlibrary loan. That was cemented by watching the Boulez Ring on PBS some years later (I'm quite sure the interlibrary loan preceded that by a few years).
> 
> It had never occurred to me that Götterdämmerung = Ragnarok, but of course it is.


So IT IS the end of the world! (and possibly the beginning in the beginning--or certainly, the beginning of The End!)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

To see how drastically Wagner altered the Norse myth of Ragnarok and gave it new meanings which it couldn't have held for the Vikings, here's a nicely concentrated telling of the mythic story:

https://norse-mythology.org/tales/ragnarok/

The way in which Wagner synthesizes the originally self-contained concept of the end of the gods with the other adventures of gods, heroes and elemental beings from Norse and German myth and legend, and his success in forging an original epic out of diverse materials, is, in a word, awesome.


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## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I'm not sure I'd call Hagen's forgetfulness potion and its antidote _*"cheap."*_ .....but Hagen's potion seems to symbolize Siegfried's personal immaturity, his naivete when confronted with a deceitfulness and opportunism foreign to his nature; Wagner seems to want to show us what can happen when honest, unsuspecting souls move out of the shelter of love into a corrupt world which only wants to use them..


Before I read the above post that I have quoted in excerpts with my own emphasis on the word "cheap" I think I had very similar thoughts and feelings about that magic potion, particularly because I thought the accidental swallowing of the dragon's blood was a "symbol" of a maturation process in Siegfried, BUT what you say here, Woodduck, I find EXTREMELY INSIGHTFUL AND HELPFUL. Whatever maturation was symbolized by the swallowing of the blood, doesn't mean that Siegfried didn't have a great deal more growth to go through, particularly after the all-consuming love of Brunnhilde!

Part of what got in my way re/ Siegfried is that his actions were so annoying to me. He did not present himself to me in either of the two Siegfried's I've watched thus far as an intelligent and person of depth, but who is naive. What I perceived as his obnoxious-ness and silliness was apparently how Wagner wanted this to be conveyed to the audience. It didn't work for me, but I most certainly get it NOW BASED ON WHAT Woodduck said--it transforms my entire way of looking and thinking about Siegfried and in light of this I CAN now see him as an incredibly heroic and tragic character.

I am very immersed in my Ring watching and listening and I've only missed 700 and something posts in 12 hours or so?!?! So I'm not even going to try and catch up and respond to everyone right now.

A million thanks for these amazing insights!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

One and a half days till Twilight time.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> One and a half days till Twilight time.


One might think you were about to get married.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

oops wrong thread.
see Metropolitan Opera thread


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## Bogdan (Sep 12, 2014)

Just finished watching the Barenboim Ring (from the 90's). Very well done, except for all the laser effects and the final act of Gotterdammerung, which was sort of disappointing. Strange ending with the curtain falling on a room filled with a mix of people watching TV, smoking, etc. while Alberich watches from outside?!

Some questions for the seasoned Wagnerites here:

Why did Brunnhilde not protect Siegfried's back? Out of a spirit of economy (not needed, since he never turns his back on the enemy), or to keep him under control and be able to hurt/kill him? Which, of course, is exactly how things turn out.

When Gutrune reveals that they drugged Siegfried to forget Brunnhilde, this seems to not register at all with Brunnhilde, who goes on about his betrayal, even after she learned that it was not done knowingly. Is she trying to justify the fact that she volunteered to Hagen the way to kill Siegfried? I guess at that point it didn't really matter anymore. She does get brownie points for returning the ring to the maidens though.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Bogdan said:


> Why did Brunnhilde not protect Siegfried's back?


because, as she confessed to Hagen, it was impossible that Siegfried would ever flee from enemies.

naturally, she had spared her magic (runes etc.) in regard to his back.


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## Bogdan (Sep 12, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> because, as she confessed to Hagen, it was impossible that Siegfried would ever flee from enemies.
> 
> naturally, she had spared her magic (runes etc.) in regard to his back.


But that does not preclude a deeper reason as well. After all, this little oversight turns out to be essential for Siegfried's killing.

Wouldn't it have been a bit embarrassing for Brunnhilde to have to say "Wait, he can't be killed. Best we can do is wait for him to die of old age" ?


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## MaxKellerman (Jun 4, 2017)

Bogdan said:


> But that does not preclude a deeper reason as well. After all, this little oversight turns out to be essential for Siegfried's killing.


Hey anything is possible. Maybe she _did_ purposely left him exposed juuuuust in case he turned out to be a unfaithful scumbag and she wanted to get her revenge on him. :lol:

This doesn't really hold up to scrutiny or make sense in the scheme of the drama, but I've seen crazier speculation about The Ring before. Really, in this case I don't see any reason why her words shouldn't be taken at face value. Does it all work out a little too coincidentally? Well, duh. Its also kind of coincidental that when Hagen finishes his speech to Gunther about Siegfried, Brunnhilde, and the treasure, Siegfried just magically appears on the raft floating into town. But this is a myth, and it works on allegorical and symbolic levels, not literal ones.


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## Blasted with ecstacy (Aug 11, 2021)

The sunrise section of "Gotterdammerung", towards the beginning, is marvelous and Mascagni must have thought so too - since he essentially plagiarized it in his opera "Iris" But he had good company. Chausson's opera "King Arthur" sounds very much like "Tristan" - lite. Wagner's overwhelming influence was hard to resist. I fell under the spell 55 years ago and my ID name here - "blasted with ecstacy" is from "Hamlet" and indicates the feeling of being immersed in Wagner. He is the only composer whose works sometimes literally makes the hair on my arms and legs stand on end. Oops - TMI. I saw "Tannhauser" at Bayreuth some years ago and just being there was a peak experience. It is really weird to know that Wagner considered at one time moving to the US. But then he has always been full of surprises - like standing on his head or climbing trees when happy, and wearing women's underwear. It worked for him. All I care about is his music.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Blasted with ecstacy said:


> The sunrise section of "Gotterdammerung"


second time i see it mentioned but can't make out which scene - the prelude or the prologue?


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## Blasted with ecstacy (Aug 11, 2021)

A terrific movie in its own right the 1981 "Excalibur" about the King Arthur legend has music from "Gotterdammerung" at key dramatic moments. It is the perfect blend of Wagner and heroic deeds on the screen. The use of Wagner's music to inspire heroic deeds is, of course, well-known but way before the Nazis did this at huge rallies it was also done by others. Theodor Herzl, the fonder of Zionism, loved Wagner's music and he opened the first International Zionism Conference in 1897 in Switzerland with an orchestra playing the overture to "Tannhauser" to inspire people assembled to plan for a Jewish homeland.


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## Blasted with ecstacy (Aug 11, 2021)

The two posted music excerpts are from the very beginning moments of the opera and from the Siegfried's Rhine Journey section. Neither is the "Dawn" section referred to in my earlier post, which is the dawn that precedes the thrilling duet that precedes Siegfried's Rhine Journey.


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## Blasted with ecstacy (Aug 11, 2021)

*length of "Gotterdammerung"*

There is a story from back in the 1940s about a man who had never been to an opera before and had heard that Wagner was the best of the best. So he went to "Gotterdammerung" at the Met. At the first intermission he stumbled out into the lobby and asked the first person he met "Is Roosevelt still president?"


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## Blasted with ecstacy (Aug 11, 2021)

When you hear Gottlob Frick sing Hagen in the Solti recording his great bass voice and looming evil presence leads one to assume he - Frick - was in real life a largish man. Not so. There is a DVD of Weber's opera "Die Freischutz" - an opera that Wagner saw and liked - and in the production the evil character Kaspar is sung by Gottlob Frick. He was actually kind of a small size man. "Die Freischutz" is considered the first German Romantic opera. It was also the first opera ever to be filmed in color, which is what the DVD shows. At the 1985 Ring production in San Francisco, which I went to, they paired the Ring with a production of "Die Freischutz", since it influenced Wagner. At that Ring production I got to see the thrilling pair of Peter Hoffman and Jeannine Altmeyer in "Die Walkure"


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

got that dvd file with Frick as Kaspar in my collection:


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## Blasted with ecstacy (Aug 11, 2021)

Most modern productions of the Ring quickly jettison almost all of Wagner's very explicit stage directions and other instructions about what he wanted the Ring to look like and sound like. Usually this is to accommodate the "vision" of some director and results in artistic atrocities. I would personally like to arrest most of these directors and put them in solitary confinement and have bagpipe music piped in 24 hours a day. But the other reason many Ring productions are not what they should be is just laziness. For example when Hagen calls the vassals Wagner wanted the raucus jarring sound of a steer horn to be used. Instead some productions substitute a trombone. Now anyone who can play a trumpet, French horn, or trombone can easily play a steer horn or a ram's horn (shofar) or antelope horn (also a shofar) with zero practice. You can only get two notes out of them - high and low. There is no excuse not to use what Wagner specified. And if a steer horn is not easy to obtain a shofar certainly is. 
And with other Wagner operas, like "The Flying Dutchman" is it too much to ask that a production of this opera, which is about a sea captain, two large boats, and the ocean, have at least a picture of a ship on stage if not an actual stage version of a ship? Or maybe people could talk occasionally about the ocean or hold up a sea shell now and then. Or have an open can of tuna fish on stage somewhere. Instead there is a new production that just opened somewhere where the whole opera takes place in a modern office building. No ship, no ocean, no can of tuna fish, nothing to even make a feeble gesture towards what Wagner wanted. It takes a whole lot of time, money, rehearsals and careful planning to put on an opera and then to squander all that on what I see as an atrocity is painful to think about. The solution? Don't think about it.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I saw it live and it was overwhelming. I think it is my favorite of the Ring operas. So many great scenes: The Dawn Duet, Bruinhilde with the chorus, the Immolation Scene just to name a few. I love the choral music. Choice for ideal Bruinhilde: Flagstad, Varnay, Traubel, Nilsson and Jones. The Dawn Duet with Varnay is recorded Wagner at it's best.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I took a friend of mine to a performance of Gotterdammerung as his first exposure to opera. He liked it so much that he immediately started making plans to attend a complete, week-long Ring Cycle, which we did in Seattle in 1980.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Blasted with ecstacy said:


> Most modern productions of the Ring quickly jettison almost all of Wagner's very explicit stage directions and other instructions about what he wanted the Ring to look like and sound like. Usually this is to accommodate the "vision" of some director and results in artistic atrocities. I would personally like to arrest most of these directors and put them in solitary confinement and *have bagpipe music piped in 24 hours a day.*


This is particularly (and delightfully) cruel, given that many of these directors appear to dislike music. Either that or they can't hear, in which case we might forego the bagpipes and paper their cells with nude photos of obese opera divas (nominees welcome) in horned helmets.


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## Music Snob (Nov 14, 2018)

Blasted with ecstacy said:


> Most modern productions of the Ring quickly jettison almost all of Wagner's very explicit stage directions and other instructions about what he wanted the Ring to look like and sound like. Usually this is to accommodate the "vision" of some director and results in artistic atrocities. I would personally like to arrest most of these directors and put them in solitary confinement and have bagpipe music piped in 24 hours a day. But the other reason many Ring productions are not what they should be is just laziness. For example when Hagen calls the vassals Wagner wanted the raucus jarring sound of a steer horn to be used. Instead some productions substitute a trombone. Now anyone who can play a trumpet, French horn, or trombone can easily play a steer horn or a ram's horn (shofar) or antelope horn (also a shofar) with zero practice. You can only get two notes out of them - high and low. There is no excuse not to use what Wagner specified. And if a steer horn is not easy to obtain a shofar certainly is.
> And with other Wagner operas, like "The Flying Dutchman" is it too much to ask that a production of this opera, which is about a sea captain, two large boats, and the ocean, have at least a picture of a ship on stage if not an actual stage version of a ship? Or maybe people could talk occasionally about the ocean or hold up a sea shell now and then. Or have an open can of tuna fish on stage somewhere. Instead there is a new production that just opened somewhere where the whole opera takes place in a modern office building. No ship, no ocean, no can of tuna fish, nothing to even make a feeble gesture towards what Wagner wanted. It takes a whole lot of time, money, rehearsals and careful planning to put on an opera and then to squander all that on what I see as an atrocity is painful to think about. The solution? Don't think about it.


C'mon man, everyone is an artist nowadays, right? /s

Seriously, couldn't agree more.


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## Blasted with ecstacy (Aug 11, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> This is particularly (and delightfully) cruel, given that many of these directors appear to dislike music. Either that or they can't hear, in which case we might forego the bagpipes and paper their cells with nude photos of obese opera divas (nominees welcome) in horned helmets.


 I saw a production of "Aida" at the Met some years ago where when Aida first appeared there was a large piece of odd looking stage furniture on stage. It suddenly started to move and it then became clear that this was Aida, although she (who will be nameless) was not, mercifully, nude. But the guys can be just as bad. At one point a NYTimes review of some opera with Pavarotti in it said that he had become almost spherical. 
One of the worst Wagner opera atrocities was when I saw "Siegfried" some years ago in Munich. At the musical and emotional climax of the opera, in the ecstatic love duet at the very end, the two singers were suddenly joined on stage by a third character - a man wearing a Star Wars Darth Vader mask - who came up to the loving pair and walked around them, peering close up into their faces as they were singing rapturously. It completely wrecked the mood. At least he did not try to sing. How this fit into the director's "Vision" somehow escapes me. 
There is an old New Yorker magazine cartoon from many years ago which shows an opera stage with the curtain closed and the director standing in front of it. He is addressing the audience and says "Is there a Siegfried in the house?". The role is notoriously difficult to sing. Some years ago, I think at the Met, the tenor singing Siegfried had to quit at the end of Act I. Fortunately that possibility was foreseen and his understudy was immediately brought in. But he did not make it through Act 2. At that point a man in the audience who was studying for the role and just happened to be there volunteered to give it a shot and stepped in to complete the opera. So yes, there was a Siegfried in the house, in the audience. My fantasy - as a world class mental singer (but only there) who knows the roles cold, is that I will jump up from the audience and save the day.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

As a former bagpipe player I feel extremely hurt by some of the comments above. Now if you’d suggested interminable banjo playing………!:lol:

Remember the definition of perfect pitch. The ability to throw a banjo into a dumpster from fifty feet without touching the sides.


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## Blasted with ecstacy (Aug 11, 2021)

Barbebleu said:


> As a former bagpipe player I feel extremely hurt by some of the comments above. Now if you'd suggested interminable banjo playing………!:lol:
> 
> Remember the definition of perfect pitch. The ability to throw a banjo into a dumpster from fifty feet without touching the sides.


No offense intended. Personally I like bagpipe music but know it is not to everyone's taste. When I got my first Covid vaccine shot the nurse asked me a few questions and asked if I had recently lost my sense of taste. I said no, I always dress this way.
I like banjo music too, but break out in hives if I get close to a guitar. Once I accidentally got close to a folk singer and needed CPR. 
The great bass Samuel Ramey was once asked what he like to listen to when relaxing and he said country and western music. I think he was from Texas. That put an odd thought into my head - what if you are born with a great voice and see it as a great career opportunity but do not care much for or even dislike the music that you do professionally. For something like Rossini where there is not a lot of emotional depth required in the singing and an audience probably would not notice. I suspect most great singers choose the kind of music they do based on several considerations - the fit to their voice and its strengths, popularity of the music with audiences, etc. but maybe their own personal preferences are not that important. Pavarotti worshipped the tenor Jussi Bjorling (my favorite tenor) and said that voices like his (Pavarotti's) come along once in a generation but voices like that of Jussi Bjorling come around once in a thousand years. Jussi would have been crazy to turn his back on a gift like that and he didn't but do we know that he actually liked the music he sang? With Wagner you would think that singers would succumb to the magic of the music and avidly pursue it or they would be spotted by the fanatical audiences as imposters. I never cared for Eva Marton. On stage she was cold as an ice queen. Maybe she was a Wagner imposter. Several of the great Wagnerian tenors like Renee Kollo and Windgassen and Jerusalem also appeared in productions of Viennese operettas (I have DVDs of these) and it is fun to see them in these high spirited comic roles. They are very clearly enjoying themselves a lot and, presumably, enjoying the music they are singing.

.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Not to denigrate anyone, but I wouldn’t think of the tenors you mentioned as “Great Wagnerian Tenors!” I’d maybe give Windgassen a bravo for his work with the Solti Ring. Though I couldn’t say that any of his contemporaries or even his successors could’ve done a better job, or lasted long enough to record it over several years (1958 - 1965)*



*Edit: come to think of it, the last three installments were recorded in 1962, 1964 and 1965, so not as long as I’d thought!


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## Bellerophon (May 15, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> To see how drastically Wagner altered the Norse myth of Ragnarok and gave it new meanings which it couldn't have held for the Vikings, here's a nicely concentrated telling of the mythic story:
> 
> https://norse-mythology.org/tales/ragnarok/
> 
> The way in which Wagner synthesizes the originally self-contained concept of the end of the gods with the other adventures of gods, heroes and elemental beings from Norse and German myth and legend, and his success in forging an original epic out of diverse materials, is, in a word, awesome.


I agree that Wagner's creative reworking of the myths into an original epic is hugely impressive. And the music is truly awesome. But it does leave some questions unanswered. The link you posted refers to an ambiguity in the original myths; is ragnarok the end of all things, or the end of one cycle allowing the beginning of a new one?

If Wagner intended the latter in his epic, who is left to begin this new world? Siegfried (the hero born to save the gods) is dead, so is Brunhilde. Brunhilde has ended the curse of the ring, but it doesn't prevent the catastrophe. I suppose the Rhinemaidens are happy. At the same time we are not told that Alberich is dead.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

^^ If you want to know what comes after, read Tom Holt's Expecting Someone Taller


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bellerophon said:


> I agree that Wagner's creative reworking of the myths into an original epic is hugely impressive. And the music is truly awesome. But it does leave some questions unanswered. The link you posted refers to an ambiguity in the original myths; is ragnarok the end of all things, or the end of one cycle allowing the beginning of a new one?
> 
> If Wagner intended the latter in his epic, who is left to begin this new world? Siegfried (the hero born to save the gods) is dead, so is Brunhilde. Brunhilde has ended the curse of the ring, but it doesn't prevent the catastrophe. I suppose the Rhinemaidens are happy. At the same time we are not told that Alberich is dead.


The end of the gods isn't the end of the world. The stage directions make this clear: "From the ruins of the fallen hall, the men and women, in the greatest agitation, look on the growing firelight in the heavens."

I wouldn't describe the new era as a "cycle," but as an unprecedented stage in the evolution of life on earth. The gods' role as active agents in the _Ring_ diminishes throughout the work as human agency increases, until they are reduced, in _Gotterdammerung,_ to religious shrines in the Gibichung hall, which itself eventually collapses to rubble. It's a metaphor for the recession of myth and the ascendance of reason in human history. Seen this way, the fourth opera of the _Ring_ is much more integral to the rest than Shaw, who tried to make the work a socialist allegory, understood it to be.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> ^^ If you want to know what comes after, read Tom Holt's Expecting Someone Taller


Looks like fun, but according to comments, it has to bring Wotan back to life. How does Holt pull off that trick?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

He doesn't say, but then again, Wagner never explicitly states that Wotan etc. are dead, maybe they were away for the weekend when Valhalla went up in flames.


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## Bellerophon (May 15, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> The end of the gods isn't the end of the world. The stage directions make this clear: "From the ruins of the fallen hall, the men and women, in the greatest agitation, look on the growing firelight in the heavens."
> 
> I wouldn't describe the new era as a "cycle," but as an unprecedented stage in the evolution of life on earth. The gods' role as active agents in the _Ring_ diminishes throughout the work as human agency increases, until they are reduced, in _Gotterdammerung,_ to religious shrines in the Gibichung hall, which itself eventually collapses to rubble. It's a metaphor for the recession of myth and the ascendance of reason in human history. Seen this way, the fourth opera of the _Ring_ is much more integral to the rest than Shaw, who tried to make the work a socialist allegory, understood it to be.


With respect, I'm not sure that's conclusive. They could be looking on in the greatest agitation because they know this is the end. Or it could be because they now have to face a world without divine rule.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bellerophon said:


> With respect, I'm not sure that's conclusive. They could be looking on in the greatest agitation because they know this is the end. Or it could be because they now have to face a world without divine rule.


I feel strongly about this, and I think the work itself, properly understood, supports me. Wagner wasn't a nihilist. There are always survivors at the ends of his operas, tragedies and comedies alike. If he had wanted to depict the end of all things he would certainly have destroyed the people along with the gods in the fire and flood. But doing so would negate the point of the whole work and reduce it to meaninglessness. Yes, the humans left behind do face a world without divine rule. The reign of the gods was a stage in the evolution of consciousness, specifically moral consciousness, which begins with Alberich's infantile egocentricity, takes us through conventional codes of honor, contracts and treaties, and ends with the loving and redemptive self-sacrifice of Brunnhilde. This evolution, and the conflicts and pains of its working out, is the essential tragedy of Wotan, the central character in the _Ring,_ whose agency in the story is gradually stripped from him. At the end of the work we, the audience, are asked to identify with the people onstage who watch as the gods go down to oblivion, and it's left to us to take up the challenge of conceiving a better world.


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## Bellerophon (May 15, 2020)

Wagner may not have been a nihilist, but death does seem
to have a special place in his work. In Tristan and Isolde, death is presented as a consummation of their love. Yes there are survivors but does Wagner so much as hint that he expects us to take an interest in them? Did King Mark have better luck next time? Does anyone care?

I am not saying that your interpretation is not a good one, only that I think Wagner’s intentions are not entirely clear. The end of the gods can be seen as the end of an order imposed from on high; humanity must take responsibility for itself. Siegfried’s death tells us that heroism alone
is not enough (maybe). But why does Brunnhilde have to die as she ushers in a new age of love?

And do you identify with the Gibichungs at the end? Really?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bellerophon said:


> Wagner may not have been a nihilist, but death does seem
> to have a special place in his work. In Tristan and Isolde, death is presented as a consummation of their love. Yes there are survivors but does Wagner so much as hint that he expects us to take an interest in them? Did King Mark have better luck next time? Does anyone care?
> 
> I am not saying that your interpretation is not a good one, only that I think Wagner's intentions are not entirely clear. The end of the gods can be seen as the end of an order imposed from on high; humanity must take responsibility for itself. Siegfried's death tells us that heroism alone
> ...


Death in Wagner's mythos is symbolic, and this does indeed give it a special place in his work. It represents a transition or transformation, not simply an end, just as it does in other mythologies, including the Christian. The Dutchman and Senta rise together from the sea. Tannhauser is saved from his burden of conflict by Elisabeth, who dies of love for him. Tristan's and Isolde's love can't exist in the "day" world, and they are finally delivered into the "Wunderreich der Nacht." Titurel's and Kundry's deaths symbolize the end of the reign of spiritual darkness effected by Parsifal's enlightenment.

Wagner isn't working fundamentally on the level of naturalism or literal reality; on that level, death may be a sad misfortune (Violetta or Butterfly), the consequence of a tragic flaw (Otello or Boris), or a payment for evildoing (Don Giovanni or Scarpia). But characters in Wagner, though their deaths may carry these meanings, die more significantly because their present state of being is no longer legitimate or tenable; they die in order to signal or bring about some higher state of being or consciousness. It's been rightly said that Wagner's works are not tragedies but religious dramas or mystery plays, which take place not in the world but in the soul. This becomes more and more the case as his stories become more and more symbolic, culminating in _Parsifal,_ which has a powerful consistency in its psycho-spiritual logic but will drive you nuts if you try to take it literally.

With that in mind, I would say yes, we are supposed to identify with the Gibichungs at the end, but only in the way, and to the appropriate extent, that we are supposed to identify with all Wagner's characters, each of whom represents not a separate individual such as we would meet in the external world but rather some partial aspect or complex of psychic traits which go to make up human nature. This is very much what we are asked to do when we consider the gods, demigods, and other magical beings in the world's mythologies. Wagner's imagination is thus genuinely mythic.

The _Ring_ shows us a continual stripping away of the divine, the supernatural, the fantastic, and a corresponding ascent of humanity - Brunnhilde embodies this evolution in herself - until finally, at the end, the gods are gone, and naked, de-mythologized humanity is all we have left. Those poor forked humans, standing appalled at the immolation of their gods, should be the last thing we see when the curtain falls. They are us, and everything is up to us now.


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## Blasted with ecstacy (Aug 11, 2021)

[QUOTE If you want to know what comes after, read Tom Holt's "Expecting Someone Taller/QUOTE]

"Wherefore I perceived that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his works; for that is his portion; for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?"

Ecclesiastes 3:22

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

― Mark Twain

So - no need to dwell on what, if anything comes after.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> He doesn't say, but then again, Wagner never explicitly states that Wotan etc. are dead, maybe they were away for the weekend when Valhalla went up in flames.


Did they have weekends back then?


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Did they have weekends back then?


Considering Valhalla is a Scandinavian invention-probably. In the U.S. we hardly even have weekends. Work, work, work, work ... it's the American way.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Bellerophon said:


> Wagner may not have been a nihilist, but death does seem
> to have a special place in his work. In Tristan and Isolde, death is presented as a consummation of their love. Yes there are survivors but does Wagner so much as hint that he expects us to take an interest in them? Did King Mark have better luck next time? Does anyone care?


Wagnerian characters certainly have a death-wish, and immortality is presented as a curse (Dutchman, Kundry). Wagner is probably for people who find a certain horror in the reality of existence. This same horror is the source of myth and all world religions. And since Wagner saw society as deprived from their religions due to the advancement of science and reason, he presented his art not only as a mirror but as the new elixir.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Did they have weekends back then?


"What is a weekend?," inquired the Dowager Countess of Grantham. (Downton Abbey)


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