# The Wagner Thread



## Itullian

Where we talk all things about the great composer's music, recordings, concerts.


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## Itullian

I'll start with DVDs.
What are your favorite DVDs? :tiphat:


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## brotagonist

I am very fond of Liszt's Wagner Transcriptions


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## Belowpar

Sorry can't help with DVD's.

Can anyone help? I have in mind a character saying to the effect that one should save Wagner and Venice until you had lived a bit, I think it suggested you be over 40. Posibly it was Aschenbach? I tried Googling it with out success, can anyone recall this? If not I'll start polishing it later.


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## Itullian

I think the Barenboim/Kupfer is an interesting production.
Excellent sound. Except for the kids at the end of Gotterdammerung i enjoy it.
Tomlinson in excellent voice i think.


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## DavidA

Itullian said:


> I think the Barenboim/Kupfer is an interesting production.
> Excellent sound. Except for the kids at the end of Gotterdammerung i enjoy it.
> Tomlinson in excellent voice i think.


The ending I'd poorly done which is a shame. But the rest is pretty good.


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## Don Fatale

DavidA said:


> The ending I'd poorly done which is a shame. But the rest is pretty good.


Actually, I didn't mind the ending, compared to other Ring scenes I've witnessed.

The search for an anywhere-near-good Ring on DVD goes on. Most of them (I have 6) have something to commend, but the ideal - in terms of production, performers and picture quality - feels a long way off.

(Currently listening to the Goodall sung-in-English 'Rhinegold'. Sung and played very well, but it's rather slow.)


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## Itullian

I'm tempted to get the Met Lepage set.

Yes?


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## Faustian

Itullian said:


> I'm tempted to get the Met Lepage set.
> 
> Yes?


I enjoyed the staging a lot. The production is sumptuous and imaginative, and most of the scenes in the operas are enhanced through beautiful backdrops and configurations. Then there are the little details, like bubbles rising out of the mouths of the Rhinemaidens as they sing, or leaves rustling around the feet of Siegfried as he walks that just add to the experience. The cast and conducting is a little hit or miss, but its definitely worth owning for the visual aspect.


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## Itullian

Faustian said:


> I enjoyed the staging a lot. The production is sumptuous and imaginative, and most of the scenes in the opera are enhanced through beautiful backdrops and configurations. Then there are the little details, like bubbles rising out of the mouths of the Rhinemaidens as they sing, or leaves rustling around the feet of Siegfried as he walks that just add to the experience. The cast and conducting is a little hit or miss, but its definitely worth owning for the visual aspect.


:tiphat:..............................


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## Itullian

Gonna hafta save up for this


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## Barbebleu

The Lepage is ok. The cast is definitely very hit or miss. Probably Walkure is the most consistent. Personally I prefer the Barenboim/Kupfer Ring from Bayreuth for the quality of the singing. And don't forget the Boulez centenary Ring. Fascinating production and pretty good singing.


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## SiegendesLicht

Itullian said:


> I'm tempted to get the Met Lepage set.
> 
> Yes?


Yes, go ahead!........


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## SiegendesLicht

Itullian said:


> I'll start with DVDs.
> What are your favorite DVDs? :tiphat:


This one:








and this one:


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## Pugg

​One of my very favourites:tiphat:


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## sharik

Itullian said:


> I think the Barenboim/Kupfer is an interesting production.


the ending ruins all of it.


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## sharik

Itullian said:


> I'm tempted to get the Met Lepage set. Yes?


no, the 1990s Met Otto Schenk production is much better, the best of the rest, despite its many faults.


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## DavidA

The late great Jon Vickers on Tristan and Isolde : "They were not nice people … It may be a great love story between two quite horrible human beings."


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## Faustian

I honestly don't see what makes them "horrible" people. Their adultery? If that's the case, a good portion of the human population are pretty horrible. They seem to me to be two people swept up in the emotions and turmoil of the situation they find themselves in.


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## howlingfantods

Itullian said:


> I'm tempted to get the Met Lepage set.
> 
> Yes?


I'd say no. It's interesting to see how it's staged and how they use The Machine. I liked it more than a lot of the critics, and thought a lot of the digital projection was clever and lovely.

But the singing was not great. I started fast forwarding through scenes just to look at the sets. Voigt was struggling, Jay Hunter Morris doesn't have the voice for the part. Terfel was only ok. Kaufmann, Owens and Blythe were excellent. Waltraud Meier is a shadow of herself.


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> The late great Jon Vickers on Tristan and Isolde : "They were not nice people … It may be a great love story between two quite horrible human beings."


Vickers was a great singer but he was a prig. I suppose he thought it was just wonderful that Isolde is stolen from her home to be shipped off to some damp, drafty castle and forced to bear children by a boring old geezer who happens to be the uncle of the man she loves.

A love-death may be better than a living death.

Moralists! Sheesh!


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## Itullian

I don't see anything bad about them at all.


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## Couchie

Vickers is correct. If you don't see anything wrong with Tristan killing Isolde's betrothed and kidnapping her, or Isolde's attempted murder-suicide, you have some issues.


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## Itullian

Couchie said:


> Vickers is correct. If you don't see anything wrong with Tristan killing Isolde's betrothed and kidnapping her, or Isolde's attempted murder-suicide, you have some issues.


What were the circumstances of Tristan killing Morold?


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> Vickers was a great singer but he was a prig. I suppose he thought it was just wonderful that Isolde is stolen from her home to be shipped off to some damp, drafty castle and forced to bear children by a boring old geezer who happens to be the uncle of the man she loves.
> 
> A love-death may be better than a living death.
> 
> Moralists! Sheesh!


I'd hardly think that calling two characters of a fictional opera 'unpleasant' qualifies one as a prig. He actually didn't say any of those things about Isolde. Just thought they were unpleasant.


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## Couchie

Itullian said:


> What were the circumstances of Tristan killing Morold?


Summary execution?


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## Itullian

Didn't Tristan kidnap Isolde under Mark's orders?


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## Itullian

Couchie said:


> Summary execution?


It wasn't in battle?


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## Itullian

Kurwenal appears in the women's quarters ("Auf auf! Ihr Frauen!") and announces that the voyage is coming to an end, Isolde warns Kurwenal that she will not appear before the King if Tristan does not come before her as she had previously ordered and drink atonement to her. When Tristan arrives, Isolde reproaches him about his conduct and tells him that he owes her his life and how his actions have undermined her honour,* since she blessed Morold's weapons before battle and therefore she swore revenge.* Tristan first offers his sword but Isolde refuses, they must drink atonement. Brangäne brings in the potion that will seal their pardon, Tristan knows that it may kill him, since he knows Isolde's magic powers ("Wohl kenn' ich Irland's Königin"). The journey is almost at its end, Tristan drinks and Isolde takes half the potion for herself. The potion seems to work but it does not bring death but relentless love ("Tristan! Isolde!"). Kurwenal, who announces the imminent arrival on board of King Marke, interrupts their rapture. Isolde asks Brangäne which potion she prepared and Brangäne replies, as the sailors hail the arrival of King Marke, that it was not poison, but rather a love potion.

*From Wiki*


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## Couchie

Itullian said:


> It wasn't in battle?


I don't recall mention of a battle. Morold traveled to collect tribute from Cornwall, Tristan "paid it" by slaying him.


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## Itullian

Couchie said:


> I don't recall mention of a battle. Morold traveled to collect tribute from Cornwall, Tristan "paid it" by slaying him.


Where is that? In the libretto?

I'm not arguing, just want to know.


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## DavidA

Must confess although the music of Tristan is remarkable I cannot at all identify with these somewhat cardboard characters he sets his plot round.


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## Itullian

DavidA said:


> Must confess although the music of Tristan is remarkable I cannot at all identify with these somewhat cardboard characters he sets his plot round.


Who said you have to identify with them.

And they're more psychologically complex than other operas.


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## Couchie

Itullian said:


> Where is that? In the libretto?
> 
> I'm not arguing, just want to know.


This comes from Kurwenal in Act I:

_"Lord Morold went
off to sea
to exact tribute in Cornwall;
an island floats
in the desolate seas,
there he now lies buried!
But his head is hanging
in Ireland
as tribute paid
to England:
hail to our hero, Tristan,
he knows how to exact tribute!"

_I will also point out that had Tristan's actions been justifiable, he would not have been compelled to offer his sword to Isolde for her to take his life, nor drink the drink of atonement he knew in all likelihood could kill him.


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## DavidA

Mind you the characters in the Ring are mostly unpleasant too!


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## Itullian

DavidA said:


> Must ne you the characters in the Ring are mostly unpleasant too!


But very interesting!!

And I like Brunhilde, Wotan, Loge and Siegfried.


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## Couchie

I imagine it would be quite difficult to build a dramatic opera out of a cast of characters who are nothing but pleasant to each other.


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## Itullian

Couchie said:


> This comes from Kurwenal in Act I:
> 
> _"Lord Morold went
> off to sea
> to exact tribute in Cornwall;
> an island floats
> in the desolate seas,
> there he now lies buried!
> But his head is hanging
> in Ireland
> as tribute paid
> to England:
> hail to our hero, Tristan,
> he knows how to exact tribute!"
> 
> _I will also point out that had Tristan's actions been justifiable, he would not have been compelled to offer his sword to Isolde for her to take his life, nor drink the drink of atonement he knew in all likelihood could kill him.


His remorse is a good sign though.
And though the killing is wrong, it was done under the yoke of oppression.
I don't know if he's an awful person.


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## DavidA

Itullian said:


> But very interesting!!
> 
> And I like Brunhilde, Wotan, Loge and Siegfried.


Goodness! Wotan is a power crazed meglomaniac! Siegfried is a most unpleasant bully boy for the first two acts anyway!


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## Itullian

And for Isolde, who can blame her?
Her fiancé is killed and she's being kidnapped.


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## Woodduck

People, people, people...! (sigh)

_Tristan_ is a medieval romance. These were dark ages. Very dark. Life was horrible. You probably died at birth, or if you didn't you died at twenty from disease or at forty from exhaustion. Loving someone was practically a mortal sin even if you didn't do anything about it. Everybody had duties to everyone and everything from cradle to grave. If you didn't do your duty you got thrown in the dungeon or excommunicated. If you went to court over it they threw you in the river to see if you'd float. Try it yourself sometime. See if you don't become a "quite horrible human being." See if you're not ready to drink poison.

Mr. Vickers, shut your trap and just sing.


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## Itullian

DavidA said:


> Goodness! Wotan is a power crazed meglomaniac! Siegfried is a most unpleasant bully boy for the first two acts anyway!


I don't think that of either.
Wotan is flawed and Siegy is saddled with someone that's using him and ultimately wants to use and kill him.


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## Couchie

Woodduck said:


> People, people, people...! (sigh)
> 
> _Tristan_ is a medieval romance. These were dark ages. Very dark. Life was horrible. You probably died at birth, or if you didn't you died at twenty from disease or at forty from exhaustion. Loving someone was practically a mortal sin even if you didn't do anything about it. Everybody had duties to everyone and everything from cradle to grave. If you didn't do your duty you got thrown in the dungeon or excommunicated. If you went to court over it they threw you in the river to see if you'd float. Try it yourself sometime. See if you don't become a "quite horrible human being." See if you're not ready to drink poison.
> 
> Mr. Vickers, shut your trap and just sing.


This is quite true. Murder (ie. a noble "duel"), especially by heads of state, can be forgiven. The only crime they would have concerned themselves with at the time was making sure Brangane was properly burned at the stake for her witchcraft.


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## Itullian

I love Tristan talk.


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## Couchie

Itullian said:


> And for Isolde, who can blame her?
> Her fiancé is killed and she's being kidnapped.


For all his supposed revolutionariness, Wagner never did dispense with the standard opera convention that the leading lady ought to be a manic-depressive prone to suicide. A more adjusted woman might have waited to make an escape in the night after her arrival in England.


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## DavidA

Itullian said:


> I don't think that of either.
> Wotan is flawed and Siegy is saddled with someone that's using him and ultimately wants to use and kill him.


If I behaved to my wife like Wotan does then I think you'd say I was more than flawed!


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> People, people, people...! (sigh)
> 
> _Tristan_ is a medieval romance. These were dark ages. Very dark. Life was horrible. You probably died at birth, or if you didn't you died at twenty from disease or at forty from exhaustion. Loving someone was practically a mortal sin even if you didn't do anything about it. Everybody had duties to everyone and everything from cradle to grave. If you didn't do your duty you got thrown in the dungeon or excommunicated. If you went to court over it they threw you in the river to see if you'd float. Try it yourself sometime. See if you don't become a "quite horrible human being." See if you're not ready to drink poison.
> 
> Mr. Vickers, shut your trap and just sing.


Yes but that was not the world in Wagner's imagination. It was a far more idealised world of courtly love which is where the Tristan romance comes from.


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## Itullian

DavidA said:


> Yes but that was not the world in Wagner's imagination. It was a far more idealised world of courtly love which is where the Tristan romance comes from.


I still can't see how they're horrible people
and even if they are, it doesn't mitigate the greatness of this work.


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## DavidA

Itullian said:


> I still can't see how they're horrible people
> and even if they are, it doesn't mitigate the greatness of this work.


Correct which is what Vickers actually said. Mind you as Vickers always studied deeply and lived his roles onstage I think his opinion cannot be dismissed lightly. He tended to see deeply into the characters he played.


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## Itullian

DavidA said:


> Correct which is what Vickers actually said.


He said they're horrible, which I don't agree with.


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> Yes but that was not the world in Wagner's imagination. It was a far more idealised world of courtly love which is where the Tristan romance comes from.


Wagner was a scholar. He read extensively in history. He wasn't creating Disney animated fairy tales, or merely relating a charming, antique love story. He adapted stories to suit himself, and the only courtliness he retained in _Tristan_ is Tristan's distancing himself from Isolde aboard ship and the pair's rather contemptuous reference to "custom" during their act one sparring. Custom - the oppressive demands of their world, the deceitful world of Day - is their enemy throughout. It was a hard life they were trapped in and they sought to escape into their own reality, like all doomed lovers. They're ready to drink that potion because they see no way out. Whether Vickers or you or I find them "nice" is neither here nor there.


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## sharik

howlingfantods said:


> Voigt was struggling, Jay Hunter Morris doesn't have the voice for the part.


right as he started singing, i thought his voice is suited for a Nibelung, not Siegfried, and Wagner must be rolling in his grave.


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## sharik

Couchie said:


> Vickers is correct. If you don't see anything wrong with Tristan killing Isolde's betrothed and kidnapping her, or Isolde's attempted murder-suicide, you have some issues.


his wrong. Tristan killed Morold in a fair fight to define which side is to pay exaction. Isolde kidnapped not but is taken as the bride to wed the ruler of victorious race. Isolde at the same time is furious at Tristan's ingratitude... that's the way life is.


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## sharik

DavidA said:


> Mind you the characters in the Ring are mostly unpleasant too!


that's a different case. _Der Ring_ is an Apocalyptic piece that shows they drive the World to its end.


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## sharik

DavidA said:


> Goodness! Wotan is a power crazed meglomaniac! Siegfried is a most unpleasant bully boy for the first two acts anyway!


they are just being honest and not hypocrites.


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## sharik

Couchie said:


> For all his supposed revolutionariness, Wagner never did dispense with the standard opera convention that the leading lady ought to be a manic-depressive prone to suicide. A more adjusted woman might have waited to make an escape in the night after her arrival in England.


then we would have Offenbach's _Pericola_ instead of _T&I_.


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## sharik

DavidA said:


> If I behaved to my wife like Wotan does then I think you'd say I was more than flawed!


like every man. Wotan, on the other hand, does what his wife told him to in the end.


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## sharik

DavidA said:


> Mind you as Vickers always studied deeply and lived his roles onstage I think his opinion cannot be dismissed lightly.


if in personal conversation, then it cannot, but when expressed through some media outlet, then it can be dismissed.


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> Wagner was a scholar. He read extensively in history. He wasn't creating Disney animated fairy tales, or merely relating a charming, antique love story. He adapted stories to suit himself, and the only courtliness he retained in _Tristan_ is Tristan's distancing himself from Isolde aboard ship and the pair's rather contemptuous reference to "custom" during their act one sparring. Custom - the oppressive demands of their world, the deceitful world of Day - is their enemy throughout. It was a hard life they were trapped in and they sought to escape into their own reality, like all doomed lovers. They're ready to drink that potion because they see no way out. Whether Vickers or you or I find them "nice" is neither here nor there.


I don't think I said that Wagner was trying to create Disney. Historically that would have been difficult unless he had a time machine! I also have no problem with whether they are nice or not. That is a matter of opinion. I just stated Vickers' opinion. Like all Wagner's characters I don't personally find them very sympathetic but I know others do. I find I can relate far more to Verdi's characterisations. But note that Tristan is fiction not real life. There is no such thing as a love potion in real life.


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## SiegendesLicht

DavidA said:


> If I behaved to my wife like Wotan does then I think you'd say I was more than flawed!


Wotan is a god, he is supposed to bring forth new life, and a lot of it. He cannot really afford to be monogamous. His wife is the real nasty one here, the Control-Freacka  But then she also does only what her divine role obligates her to.


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## Steatopygous

Woodduck said:


> Wagner was a scholar. He read extensively in history. He wasn't creating Disney animated fairy tales, or merely relating a charming, antique love story. He adapted stories to suit himself, and the only courtliness he retained in _Tristan_ is Tristan's distancing himself from Isolde aboard ship and the pair's rather contemptuous reference to "custom" during their act one sparring. Custom - the oppressive demands of their world, the deceitful world of Day - is their enemy throughout. It was a hard life they were trapped in and they sought to escape into their own reality, like all doomed lovers. They're ready to drink that potion because they see no way out. Whether Vickers or you or I find them "nice" is neither here nor there.


Vickers is perfectly entitled to find them objectionable. And it was "here or there" to him, as he sang the role. And I think you are getting your centuries a little confused with going to court or being thrown in the pond. The story dates to the 12th century but is probably set about the 5th century. Life wasn't so hard for the nobility, then or any age - "hard" is of course relative. I imagine what Vickers has in mind begins with the betrayal of trust. 
Mind you, Vickers was a strong Christian who refused to sing Tannhauser as he considered it blasphemous, so not everyone on this forum will necessarily share his values. 
If your point is the broader one that bad behaviour by characters cannot disqualify an opera (or we wouldn't have many left), that I can accept and endorse. If it is to deny that there is bad behaviour in Tristan, or if there is then it is irrelevant, then I can't.


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## Steatopygous

sharik said:


> they are just being honest and not hypocrites.


That's an odd argument. Does it apply to the Nazis? They were perfectly honest in their contempt for lesser races. I'm definitely with DavidA on this - Siegfried is a prototype SS thug, entirely lacking in moral imagination. But crikey, he gets good music to sing.


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## SiegendesLicht

Couchie said:


> For all his supposed revolutionariness, Wagner never did dispense with the standard opera convention that the leading lady ought to be a manic-depressive prone to suicide. A more adjusted woman might have waited to make an escape in the night after her arrival in England.


Romeo and Juliet tried that, and it did not work out either. And Wagner used his characters not only for storytelling, but also to make a philosophical statement. So they had to die.


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## SiegendesLicht

Woodduck said:


> Vickers was a great singer but he was a prig. I suppose he thought it was just wonderful that Isolde is stolen from her home to be shipped off to some damp, drafty castle and forced to bear children by a boring old geezer who happens to be the uncle of the man she loves.
> 
> A love-death may be better than a living death.
> 
> Moralists! Sheesh!


King Marke was not an old geezer, he was a noble man who admired Isolde so much he did not even touch her. And he was ready to part with her and allow her to marry Tristan as soon as he learned the whole story with the love potion. Except that he came too late.


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## SiegendesLicht

Steatopygous said:


> That's an odd argument. Does it apply to the Nazis? They were perfectly honest in their contempt for lesser races. I'm definitely with DavidA on this - Siegfried is a prototype SS thug, entirely lacking in moral imagination. But crikey, he gets good music to sing.


Oh, not another one...


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## Faustian

Steatopygous said:


> Vickers is perfectly entitled to find them objectionable. And it was "here or there" to him, as he sang the role. And I think you are getting your centuries a little confused with going to court or being thrown in the pond. The story dates to the 12th century but is probably set about the 5th century. Life wasn't so hard for the nobility, then or any age - "hard" is of course relative. I imagine what Vickers has in mind begins with the betrayal of trust.
> Mind you, Vickers was a strong Christian who refused to sing Tannhauser as he considered it blasphemous, so not everyone on this forum will necessarily share his values.
> If your point is the broader one that bad behaviour by characters cannot disqualify an opera (or we wouldn't have many left), that I can accept and endorse. If it is to deny that there is bad behaviour in Tristan, or if there is then it is irrelevant, then I can't.


Compared to other roles Mr. Vickers sang like Otello or Canio from Pagliacci (husbands who murder their wives in a jealous rage), or Herod from Salome (a man who lusts after his stepdaughter and beheads a prophet to appease her), Tristan and Isolde, while perhaps not absolved from engaging in some objectionable behavior, seem to come in pretty low on the "horrible"-ness meter. Why he singled them out as a special case is a bit confusing, at least from my understanding of the drama.


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## Steatopygous

Faustian said:


> Compared to other roles Mr. Vickers sang like Otello or Canio from Pagliacci (husbands who murder their wives in a jealous rage), or Herod from Salome (a man who lusts after his stepdaughter and beheads a prophet to appease her), Tristan and Isolde, while perhaps not absolved from engaging in some objectionable behavior, seem to come in pretty low on the "horrible"-ness meter. Why he singled them out as a special case is a bit confusing, at least from my understanding of the drama.


Fair point. But his self-ban was Tannhauser on grounds of blasphemy, which to a man of his convictions would be more serious than sexually objectionable behaviour. In other words he sang Otello and Canio AND Tristan, and is allowed to think the people he is portraying are morally objectionable.


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## SiegendesLicht

Steatopygous said:


> Fair point. But his self-ban was Tannhauser on grounds of blasphemy, which to a man of his convictions would be more serious than sexually objectionable behaviour. In other words he sang Otello and Canio AND Tristan, and is allowed to think the people he is portraying are morally objectionable.


I wonder what exactly his argumentation was and what he considered to be blasphemous about Tannhauser.

And here is a quote from an interview of his, concerning people relating to operatic characters:

_BD: Do you think that opera should speak to everyone?

JV: Absolutely. I'm not sure that it can speak to everyone, but it should attempt always to speak to everyone. There is a great difference between entertaining the masses and seeking to make them turn their eyes symbolically to that idealistic, divine struggle that is the example of manhood and womanhood. You understand? That element within mankind which is divine. I think that once we lower our sights from that which is unattainable, that degree of perfection which is totally beyond our understanding, beyond our comprehension and beyond our grasp, then if we only shoot at the tree-tops we'll only hit the tops of the fence posts.

BD: So you shoot higher than you can ever attain?

JV: Of course. As a result, I am condemned for my stand sometimes because I do not believe it is possible to bring great works of art to the masses. I think that we should strive always to do it, but to go half-way and say, "Well, we will ease the masses into an understanding by lowering our own sights, by not giving such a heavy dose to start with, by writing things about their *little petty situations * and by calling it art to make the lowest common denominator believe that they have attained the heights of a Schubert or Bach," then we are failing them because we are deluding them._

http://www.bruceduffie.com/vickers.html

Exactly. Opera should not be about little petty situations, it should be grand and heroic


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## Sloe

SiegendesLicht said:


> Exactly. Opera should not be about little petty situations, it should be grand and heroic


Or make little petty situations appear grand and heroic.


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## gardibolt

DavidA said:


> The late great Jon Vickers on Tristan and Isolde : "They were not nice people … It may be a great love story between two quite horrible human beings."


Sounds like Wuthering Heights.


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## Woodduck

All this nattering about whether operatic characters are nice, or horrible, or "blasphemous"! Most of them aren't nice. Most of us aren't either - not all the time, anyway, try as we may. We are flawed, and life is full of impossible situations, where we don't get to choose good over evil but only the more good or the less evil. Opera is said to be unrealistic. I disagree. Opera - the great operas, anyway - looks at the tragedy and grandeur of life without evasion or repression; it peels away some of the "civilized" veneer which we need every day to keep order and sanity. It allows us to experience, for a few hours, contact with the greatness and the awfulness of reality. That's what Greek drama was for, and - as Wagner intended - that's what opera can still give us today. The very last thing that enters my mind when Wotan rips the ring from Alberich's finger is that he isn't being nice. What's happening is much bigger than either of them, and it's our privilege to watch it play out and to be there for the immolation of the corrupt world and the promise in the orchestra that love will survive.

Nice? Pfui!


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## sorcered

I'm trying very hard not to just put my copy of Die Meistersinger... on fire. I watched the first act and despite the excellent acting (I have this version: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wagner-Die-Meistersinger-Nürnberg-Blu-ray/dp/B008GY8R98/) there's simply no melody anywhere to be found  I'm sure it's intended, given the story is about a complete novice trying to compose a hit out of nowhere, but please, please tell me it gets better later on. So far, it's a ton of speaking, a ton of noise, and very little music I can actually remember and sing in the shower...


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## Itullian

sorcered said:


> I'm trying very hard not to just put my copy of Die Meistersinger... on fire. I watched the first act and despite the excellent acting (I have this version: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wagner-Die-Meistersinger-Nürnberg-Blu-ray/dp/B008GY8R98/) there's simply no melody anywhere to be found  I'm sure it's intended, given the story is about a complete novice trying to compose a hit out of nowhere, but please, please tell me it gets better later on. So far, it's a ton of speaking, a ton of noise, and very little music I can actually remember and sing in the shower...


It is music and melody from beginning to end my friend. Let it settle in your mind and listen again.
It's one of the most beautiful operas ever written.
There are many tunes to whistle. I do all day.


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## Steatopygous

Woodduck said:


> All this nattering about whether operatic characters are nice, or horrible, or "blasphemous"! Most of them aren't nice. Most of us aren't either - not all the time, anyway, try as we may. We are flawed, and life is full of impossible situations, where we don't get to choose good over evil but only the more good or the less evil. Opera is said to be unrealistic. I disagree. Opera - the great operas, anyway - looks at the tragedy and grandeur of life without evasion or repression; it peels away some of the "civilized" veneer which we need every day to keep order and sanity. It allows us to experience, for a few hours, contact with the greatness and the awfulness of reality. That's what Greek drama was for, and - as Wagner intended - that's what opera can still give us today. The very last thing that enters my mind when Wotan rips the ring from Alberich's finger is that he isn't being nice. What's happening is much bigger than either of them, and it's our privilege to watch it play out and to be there for the immolation of the corrupt world and the promise in the orchestra that love will survive.
> 
> Nice? Pfui!


By and large I agree with you. If I recall aright, this began because someone posted that Vickers didn't like the lovers in Tristan. But he still sang the role, so he can't have considered it overwhelmingly important. A very devout Christian, he did consider what he believed to be blasphemy in Tannhauser of such importance to rule it out for him. That's his right, and none of us has to agree with him. The moral character of protagonists in opera is often of great importance *within the opera* but that is the case in literature and other art forms. In Rigoletto we are expected to recognise that the duke is a shallow philanderer, it is an essential aspect of the story. But whether he is nice or whether we like him or identify with him etc is, as you say, largely beside the point.


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## howlingfantods

sorcered said:


> I'm trying very hard not to just put my copy of Die Meistersinger... on fire. I watched the first act and despite the excellent acting (I have this version: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wagner-Die-Meistersinger-Nürnberg-Blu-ray/dp/B008GY8R98/) there's simply no melody anywhere to be found  I'm sure it's intended, given the story is about a complete novice trying to compose a hit out of nowhere, but please, please tell me it gets better later on. So far, it's a ton of speaking, a ton of noise, and very little music I can actually remember and sing in the shower...


That's a great video version. Stick with it--Act 1 is pretty terrific but there's definitely some draggy bits when David is teaching Walther all about medieval music composition arcana. And you barely get a sense of the main character of the piece, Hans Sachs, the great poet/composer/shoemaker, until Act 2. Things definitely pick up, and when you revisit Act 1 after getting completely obsessed with this opera, you'll think that Wagner could've made that bit about music composition arcana even longer.


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## DavidA

howlingfantods said:


> That's a great video version. Stick with it--Act 1 is pretty terrific but there's definitely some draggy bits when David is teaching Walther all about medieval music composition arcana. And you barely get a sense of the main character of the piece, Hans Sachs, the great poet/composer/shoemaker, until Act 2. Things definitely pick up, and when you revisit Act 1 after getting completely obsessed with this opera, you'll think that Wagner could've made that bit about music composition arcana even longer.


Mastersingers has some great things in it but is vastly over long (like a lot of Wagner) and hence contains some bits which drag interminably for all apart from Wagner disciples. The other problem is that it is supposed to be a comedy but is simply not very funny. Wagner could have taken a leaf out of Verdi's book and got a Boito to edit his libretto. Verdi's Falstaff is everything that Wagner's Mastersingers is not - it is fast, shimmering and witty. And very funny!


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> All this nattering about whether operatic characters are nice, or horrible, or "blasphemous"! Most of them aren't nice. Most of us aren't either - not all the time, anyway, try as we may. We are flawed, and life is full of impossible situations, where we don't get to choose good over evil but only the more good or the less evil. Opera is said to be unrealistic. I disagree. Opera - the great operas, anyway - looks at the tragedy and grandeur of life without evasion or repression; it peels away some of the "civilized" veneer which we need every day to keep order and sanity. It allows us to experience, for a few hours, contact with the greatness and the awfulness of reality. That's what Greek drama was for, and - as Wagner intended - that's what opera can still give us today. The very last thing that enters my mind when Wotan rips the ring from Alberich's finger is that he isn't being nice. What's happening is much bigger than either of them, and it's our privilege to watch it play out and to be there for the immolation of the corrupt world and the promise in the orchestra that love will survive.
> 
> Nice? Pfui!


Opera is certainly not realistic. It might reflect real life in certain ways but it is certainly a very artificial art form. The fact that people sing rather than talk for a start! I wish we'd realise it is an elitist entertainment enjoyed by a few (me included) and not by the majority of people. Most people I know - perfectly normal, hard working people - cannot relate to it at all. Let's not make the mistake of some of the people who watch the soaps and think our operatic characters are in any way real. Tristan and Isolde, Papegeno, Figaro, Rigoletto, et al, were not real people. So guys, let's just enjoy opera for all its worth (I certainly do) but not make it out to be something it isn't!


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## The Conte

DavidA said:


> Opera is certainly not realistic. It might reflect real life in certain ways but it is certainly a very artificial art form. The fact that people sing rather than talk for a start! I wish we'd realise it is an elitist entertainment enjoyed by a few (me included) and not by the majority of people. Most people I know - perfectly normal, hard working people - cannot relate to it at all. Let's not make the mistake of some of the people who watch the soaps and think our operatic characters are in any way real. Tristan and Isolde, Papegeno, Figaro, Rigoletto, et al, were not real people. So guys, let's just enjoy opera for all its worth (I certainly do) but not make it out to be something it isn't!


Rubbish! When I took one of my 'perfectly normal, hard working' friends to see La Traviata and Faust he said that going to an opera is like seeing five episodes of Coronation Street (a very long-running British soap) one after the other. Actually when have soaps ever been true to life?

I wonder what your friends think of when they hear the word "opera", overweight ladies in horned helmets? I think if somebody likes musicals, there is no reason for them not to enjoy a good performance of Magic Flute. Of course opera is not for everybody (some people don't like music for one), but I find it difficult to believe that an art form that has evolved over 400 years + and includes examples of wildly differing styles in both performance and music is an 'elitist entertainment' that can only appeal to few people.

N.


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## Celloman

DavidA said:


> Mastersingers has some great things in it but is vastly over long (like a lot of Wagner) and hence contains some bits which drag interminably for all apart from Wagner disciples. The other problem is that it is supposed to be a comedy but is simply not very funny. Wagner could have taken a leaf out of Verdi's book and got a Boito to edit his libretto. Verdi's Falstaff is everything that Wagner's Mastersingers is not - it is fast, shimmering and witty. And very funny!


Really? I find _Die Meistersinger_ to be hilarious in many places. Some examples:

1. David describes the many different varieties of songs, red, blue, and green tones, etc.

2. Beckmesser's bungled attempt to serenade Eva in Act 2.

3. Beckmesser again in Act 3, sneaking around Hans Sach's house to look for the song he transcribed for Walther.

4. Eva complains about her shoes to Sachs - too tight _and_ too wide!

5. Beckmesser fails hilariously at the singing competition.

Not funny? I couldn't disagree more. The humor is brilliant and well-articulated, and the development of the characters is more interesting and subtle than anything Verdi could have ever dreamed of. I consider it to be his finest libretto.


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> Mastersingers has some great things in it but is vastly over long (like a lot of Wagner) and hence contains some bits which drag interminably for all apart from Wagner disciples. The other problem is that it is supposed to be a comedy but is simply not very funny. Wagner could have taken a leaf out of Verdi's book and got a Boito to edit his libretto. Verdi's Falstaff is everything that Wagner's Mastersingers is not - it is fast, shimmering and witty. And very funny!


I hardly think that the millions of people who have chosen repeatedly to sit through Wagner's "vastly overlong" operas for the last century and a half can be fairly characterized as "Wagner disciples," do you? Personally, I don't know any Wagner disciples. Actually I prefer to avoid disciples, no matter who they're disciples of; I find they have a tendency to engage in pompous moralistic pronouncements and stink up whatever room they happen to be in. On the other hand I do know people who love Wagner's operas and don't find them "vastly overlong."

Perhaps what you really ought to say is that Wagner's operas drag interminably for everyone except the people for whom they don't drag interminably.

Having said that, I wonder what makes you characterize the fact that _Die Meistersinger_ doesn't make you laugh as a "problem" - indeed, as "the other problem," "problem" number two, as if we had already conceded that the length of Wagner's operas was "problem" number one. If you have difficulty accepting _Meistersinger_ as what it is, rather than as what you think it should be, perhaps the "problem" is not with _Meistersinger_ but with you.

The fact that _Meistersinger_ and _Falstaff _are both classified as comedies doesn't necessitate that they be works of the same kind and that they appeal equally to everyone. Falstaff is most certainly not "everything" that _Meistersinger_ is not; in fact you only list four things, while "everything" is considerably more than four, at last count, and some of the four you do list are debatable. It might be said with equal (un)truth that _Meistersinger_ is "everything" that _Falstaff_ is not. These two comedies both fulfill completely, but in different ways according to the sensibilities and purposes of their composers, any informed definition of comedy you can come up with. The ablility to make any given individual roll on the floor is, you may be surprised to learn, not a part of any such definition. If we must compare the two works, we ought at least to try to take their content into account and show that we understand it, rather than merely criticize them for not being something they are not trying to be.

Getting down to brass tacks, it is of course true that _Meistersinger_ is, dramatically speaking, a comedy of more serious character and intention than _Falstaff_. Its central character, Hans Sachs, is an intelligent and somewhat melancholy artist and philosopher, while the central character of _Falstaff_ might fairly be described as a fat, stupid, drunken buffoon. Accordingly, the plot of _Meistersinger_ dramatizes a number of ideas about art and life, while the plot of _Falstaff_ is concerned mainly with humiliating a pompous fool and making him look as ridiculous as possible. The latter is certainly more obviously "comical" material - but, of course, _Meistersinger_ also has its pompous fool who gets his well-deserved comeuppance, one difference being that the humiliation of Beckmesser is not the central concern of the work in which he appears. The point of _Falstaff_ is, we assume, summed up in its final ensemble, "the whole world is a joke and man is born a clown." What we take away from this in the end, and what we take away from the musings and machinations of Hans Sachs, and how deeply we are moved by these things to laugh or smile about the nature of human life, will surely be a matter of our individual temperament and sense of life. We will accordingly prefer certain works of art to others, and there is no need to inflate our personal preferences into pseudo-critiques of the works we do not prefer.


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## The Conte

_Meistersinger_ vs _Falstaff_

I can only think of similarities when I consider these two works:
1) Both comedies by composers who are more famous for serious works (if Meistersingers is less obviously a comedy it is the fault of unimaginative productions/attitudes along the lines of "it's Wagner, it shouldn't be funny").

2) Whilst both contain much melodious music, the melodies tend to be fleeting and interwoven and it is difficult to extract excerpts from either piece (more true for Falstaff, but perhaps that is accentuated by comparison with the rest of Verdi's work where stand alone pieces abound).

3) Both have a serious point to make in addition to the comedy factor.

4) Musically complex and subtle (both of them).

Is this because Meistersinger is the most italianate of Wagner's mature operas and Falstaff the most germanic of Verdi's?

N.


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## sorcered

LOL, you people are definitely serious about defending your own tastes. 

I'll obviously see the rest of the opera, if only to learn the whole story. 

Yes, I get the philosophical undertones of tradition vs innovation, form vs effect, noble birth vs actual worth as a living being etc. but those are "nice to haves" to me, while a melody I can remember and hum for myself is a "must-have". Carmen has the Toreador's song and Habanera, Traviata has Brindisi and Sempre Libera, Barbiere... has Largo al Factotum, etc.
Die Meistersingers... has nothing of the sort, at least in Act 1.


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## The Conte

sorcered said:


> LOL, you people are definitely serious about defending your own tastes.
> 
> I'll obviously see the rest of the opera, if only to learn the whole story.
> 
> Yes, I get the philosophical undertones of tradition vs innovation, form vs effect, noble birth vs actual worth as a living being etc. but those are "nice to haves" to me, while a melody I can remember and hum for myself is a "must-have". Carmen has the Toreador's song and Habanera, Traviata has Brindisi and Sempre Libera, Barbiere... has Largo al Factotum, etc.
> Die Meistersingers... has nothing of the sort, at least in Act 1.


Meistersinger's musical highlights are the overture, the quartet in Act two and the Prize Song in Act three, so it's definitely worth continuing.

I would also give Pogner's aria "Das schoene Fest" and Walther's aria "Fanget an!" a few listens and see if you feel the same after they have sunk in a bit.

N.


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## Sloe

sorcered said:


> LOL, you people are definitely serious about defending your own tastes.
> 
> I'll obviously see the rest of the opera, if only to learn the whole story.
> 
> Yes, I get the philosophical undertones of tradition vs innovation, form vs effect, noble birth vs actual worth as a living being etc. but those are "nice to haves" to me, while a melody I can remember and hum for myself is a "must-have". Carmen has the Toreador's song and Habanera, Traviata has Brindisi and Sempre Libera, Barbiere... has Largo al Factotum, etc.
> Die Meistersingers... has nothing of the sort, at least in Act 1.


Are single memorable parts that important?
I think it is more important if the operas have nice music between the hit tunes than not. A huge part of what makes an opera good is how not boring the boring parts are. Die Meistersinger it is more the opera as a unit than different parts that is memorable and hummable.


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> I hardly think that the millions of people who have chosen repeatedly to sit through Wagner's "vastly overlong" operas for the last century and a half can be fairly characterized as "Wagner disciples," do you? *Personally, I don't know any Wagner disciples*. Actually I prefer to avoid disciples, no matter who they're disciples of; I find they have a tendency to engage in pompous moralistic pronouncements and stink up whatever room they happen to be in. On the other hand I do know people who love Wagner's operas and don't find them "vastly overlong."
> 
> Perhaps what you really ought to say is that Wagner's operas drag interminably for everyone except the people for whom they don't drag interminably.
> 
> Having said that, I wonder what makes you characterize the fact that _Die Meistersinger_ doesn't make you laugh as a "problem" - indeed, as "the other problem," "problem" number two, as if we had already conceded that the length of Wagner's operas was "problem" number one. If you have difficulty accepting _Meistersinger_ as what it is, rather than as what you think it should be, perhaps the "problem" is not with _Meistersinger_ but with you.
> 
> The fact that _Meistersinger_ and _Falstaff _are both classified as comedies doesn't necessitate that they be works of the same kind and that they appeal equally to everyone. Falstaff is most certainly not "everything" that _Meistersinger_ is not; in fact you only list four things, while "everything" is considerably more than four, at last count, and some of the four you do list are debatable. It might be said with equal (un)truth that _Meistersinger_ is "everything" that _Falstaff_ is not. These two comedies both fulfill completely, but in different ways according to the sensibilities and purposes of their composers, any informed definition of comedy you can come up with. The ablility to make any given individual roll on the floor is, you may be surprised to learn, not a part of any such definition. If we must compare the two works, we ought at least to try to take their content into account and show that we understand it, rather than merely criticize them for not being something they are not trying to be.
> 
> Getting down to brass tacks, it is of course true that _Meistersinger_ is, dramatically speaking, a comedy of more serious character and intention than _Falstaff_. Its central character, Hans Sachs, is an intelligent and somewhat melancholy artist and philosopher, while the central character of _Falstaff_ might fairly be described as a fat, stupid, drunken buffoon. Accordingly, the plot of _Meistersinger_ dramatizes a number of ideas about art and life, while the plot of _Falstaff_ is concerned mainly with humiliating a pompous fool and making him look as ridiculous as possible. The latter is certainly more obviously "comical" material - but, of course, _Meistersinger_ also has its pompous fool who gets his well-deserved comeuppance, one difference being that the humiliation of Beckmesser is not the central concern of the work in which he appears. The point of _Falstaff_ is, we assume, summed up in its final ensemble, "the whole world is a joke and man is born a clown." What we take away from this in the end, and what we take away from the musings and machinations of Hans Sachs, and how deeply we are moved by these things to laugh or smile about the nature of human life, will surely be a matter of our individual temperament and sense of life. We will accordingly prefer certain works of art to others, and there is no need to inflate our personal preferences into pseudo-critiques of the works we do not prefer.


Hmmm...................


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## howlingfantods

DavidA said:


> Mastersingers has some great things in it but is vastly over long (like a lot of Wagner) and hence contains some bits which drag interminably for all apart from Wagner disciples. The other problem is that it is supposed to be a comedy but is simply not very funny. Wagner could have taken a leaf out of Verdi's book and got a Boito to edit his libretto. Verdi's Falstaff is everything that Wagner's Mastersingers is not - it is fast, shimmering and witty. And very funny!


Keep in mind that "comedy" is used in opera in the classical sense, meaning a play with a happy ending. Falstaff is funnier but that doesn't make it a better comic opera, because the point of comic opera isn't to be funny. I find Meistersinger to be a superior comic opera because it's a better opera, with vastly more beautiful music, more sympathetic and richer characters and more interesting themes. As much as I love Verdi, Meistersinger is on a different level than anything Joe Green wrote.


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## Celloman

DavidA said:


> Hmmm...................


Woodduck has furnished you with a strong, well-articulated argument. Could you elaborate on that "hmmm" a bit?

Incidentally, I don't know any Wagner disciples either. I know many people who admire Wagner's work and even agreeing with some of his philosophies, while certainly not all of them.

Those who love Wagner accept the good aspects of what he did, and he did them very well. He isn't a Verdi or Puccini. Even _Die Meistersinger_, his only comedy, deals in depth with his interest in the artistic concerns of his time. _Falstaff_ - which, by the way, is my favorite Verdi opera - is almost pure silliness. But then again, it's supposed to be. It's not a lesser work than Wagner's opera, for that matter. They both succeed at what they do best.


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## DavidA

howlingfantods said:


> Keep in mind that "comedy" is used in opera in the classical sense, meaning a play with a happy ending. Falstaff is funnier but that doesn't make it a better comic opera, because the point of comic opera isn't to be funny. I find Meistersinger to be a superior comic opera because it's a better opera, with vastly more beautiful music, more sympathetic and richer characters and more interesting themes. As much as I love Verdi, Meistersinger is on a different level than anything Joe Green wrote.


Franly I just cannot see how anyone could find Mastersingers better than the sheer genius of matching words and music Verdi shows in Falstaff. Of course, that is my opinion and I know people think differently. I only know when I came away from the Met Falstaff I was vastly more elevated and satisfied than when I watched their Mastersingers. However, many I know disagree. But I'm quite happy for them too as I'll get on with enjoying ~Falstaff!


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## SiegendesLicht

sorcered said:


> LOL, you people are definitely serious about defending your own tastes.
> 
> I'll obviously see the rest of the opera, if only to learn the whole story.
> 
> Yes, I get the philosophical undertones of tradition vs innovation, form vs effect, noble birth vs actual worth as a living being etc. but those are "nice to haves" to me, while a melody I can remember and hum for myself is a "must-have". Carmen has the Toreador's song and Habanera, Traviata has Brindisi and Sempre Libera, Barbiere... has Largo al Factotum, etc.
> Die Meistersingers... has nothing of the sort, at least in Act 1.


"Am stillen Herd im Winterzeit" and "Fanget an! - so rief der Lenz in den Wald..." are two perfectly singable arias, and they are both in Act 1.


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## howlingfantods

SiegendesLicht said:


> "Am stillen Herd im Winterzeit" and "Fanget an! - so rief der Lenz in den Wald..." are two perfectly singable arias, and they are both in Act 1.


To be fair though, those two are pretty short and at the very end of the act after a first time listener has been stupefied with an hour of David rambling on about knee-strap melodies and green tones, and a huge horde of quickly introduced meistersingers saying "howdy" to each other.

Keep on keeping on, sorcered. It really is just the most delightful opera. Plenty of tuneful moments, although maybe not as earworm-y as Brindisi or Largo al factotum. Wagner might not be the composer for you if the memorable earworms are the most important thing, though--it simply wasn't a major aesthetic goal for him. He does toss one off for the prizewinning song here, but he generally is more interested in musical development and transformation, and earwormy arias are generally pretty antithetical to that purpose.


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## gardibolt

I'd say the whole third act of Meistersinger is pretty terrific. The second half of Act II as well. It takes a while to get going, though.


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## Itullian

Well, I guess I'll chime in.

I like ALL of it. :tiphat:


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## Celloman

How can anyone say that Die Meistersinger doesn't have any tunes? It has:

The Short, Long, and Overlong tones;
the Writing-Paper and Black Ink melodies;
the Red, Blue, and Green tones;
the Hawthorn, Straw and Fennel melodies;
the Tender, the Sweet, the Rose tones;
the Rosemary and Wall-Flower melodies;
the Rainbow and Nightingale melodies;
the Pewter and Cinnamon-Stick melodies;
Fresh Orange, Green Lime Blossom melodies;
the Frog, the Calf, the Goldfinch melodies;
the Departed Glutton melody;
the Lark, the Snail, the Barker tones;
the Little Blam-Mint, the Marjioram melodies ... just to name a few!


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## Itullian

Not only does it have beautiful tunes, they are constantly woven throughout
the entire opera!


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## Barbebleu

DavidA said:


> Mastersingers has some great things in it but is vastly over long (like a lot of Wagner) and hence contains some bits which drag interminably for all apart from Wagner disciples. The other problem is that it is supposed to be a comedy but is simply not very funny. Wagner could have taken a leaf out of Verdi's book and got a Boito to edit his libretto. Verdi's Falstaff is everything that Wagner's Mastersingers is not - it is fast, shimmering and witty. And very funny!


Over long? As in uber lang (ton):lol:


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## sharik

but the David character in _Die Meistersinger_ is a very complicated role to act... he needs to look both annoying and charming all at the same time.


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## DavidA

gardibolt said:


> I'd say the whole third act of Meistersinger is pretty terrific. The second half of Act II as well. It takes a while to get going, though.


a while? It takes an eternity to get going! By thetime is done your backside is worn out with sitting!


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## The Conte

DavidA said:


> a while? It takes an eternity to get going! By thetime is done your backside is worn out with sitting!


I guess some people just don't like opera. One of the great things about Wagner is that you get so much more opera for your pounds!

N.


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## DavidA

The Conte said:


> I guess some people just don't like opera. One of the great things about Wagner is that you get so much more opera for your pounds!
> 
> N.


What's the good of that if you get piles through sitting so long! :lol:


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## DavidA

sharik said:


> but the David character in _Die Meistersinger_ is a very complicated role to act... he needs to look both annoying and charming all at the same time.


Must confess I've only noticed the annoying aspect!


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## The Conte

DavidA said:


> What's the good of that if you get piles through sitting so long! :lol:


Too much information!

N.


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## Steatopygous

DavidA said:


> a while? It takes an eternity to get going! By thetime is done your backside is worn out with sitting!


Reminds me of lovely story about George Bernard Shaw, a noted music critic as well as playwright. He was at a string quartet recital, when a fellow critic leaned across and whispered, "do you know these fellows have been playing together for 20 years?"
Shaw replied: "Surely we've been sitting here longer than that!"


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## Steatopygous

PS, Shaw, interestingly, put Mozart and Wagner at the pinnacle of composers.


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## DonAlfonso

Not only Shaw. Check the results from the TC top 100 opera poll currently happening in the Classical Music Discussion forum:
1. Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
2. Mozart: Don Giovanni
3. Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
4. Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro
5. Verdi: Don Carlos
6. Mozart: Die Zauberflöte


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## DavidA

Steatopygous said:


> Reminds me of lovely story about George Bernard Shaw, a noted music critic as well as playwright. He was at a string quartet recital, when a fellow critic leaned across and whispered, "do you know these fellows have been playing together for 20 years?"
> Shaw replied: "Surely we've been sitting here longer than that!"


"I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide."
- Mark Twain in Eruption


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## DavidA

Celloman said:


> Incidentally, I don't know any Wagner disciples either. .


Mark Twain did. He described them as "persons in whom this [Wagner's] music produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity...........These devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion. It is only here [Bayreuth] that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any worldly pollution. In this remote village there are no sights to see, there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world, there is nothing going on, it is always Sunday. The pilgrim wends to his temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of tremendous emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service. This opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven."


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## DavidA

Steatopygous said:


> PS, Shaw, interestingly, put Mozart and Wagner at the pinnacle of composers.


Well Shaw was half right then! :lol:


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## Barbebleu

DavidA said:


> Well Shaw was half right then! :lol:


I'm with you David A. Mozart wasn't that good!!

For those with no sensayuma, that was a little joke. We all know DavidA's predilections.


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## SiegendesLicht

DavidA said:


> Mark Twain did. He described them as "persons in whom this [Wagner's] music produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity...........These devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion. *It is only here [Bayreuth] that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any worldly pollution*. In this remote village there are no sights to see, there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world, there is nothing going on, it is always Sunday. The pilgrim wends to his temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of tremendous emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service. *This opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away.* I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, *and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.*"


Regarding Bayreuth - I wish it was still so!
Regarding the brokenhearted devotees - I think back then people were more sensitive towards such work of art because they did not experience them all too often. Today we are under a constant barrage of entertainments and messages and have developed a certain insensitivity towards the broken-hearted and dying heroes.
And regarding the heretic in heaven - and here Mark Twain is telling absolute truth.


----------



## sorcered

Sloe said:


> Are single memorable parts that important?
> I think it is more important if the operas have nice music between the hit tunes than not. A huge part of what makes an opera good is how not boring the boring parts are. Die Meistersinger it is more the opera as a unit than different parts that is memorable and hummable.


Yes, they are essential. I don't care about "nice music". I care about arias that move me immediately, not sequences I need to listen 10 times to "grow on me". Life is too short. Also, the whole opera is hummable? ROFLMAO. I'd like to see you humming the whole Die Meistersinger... in the shower.


----------



## sorcered

howlingfantods said:


> Keep on keeping on, sorcered. It really is just the most delightful opera. Plenty of tuneful moments, although maybe not as earworm-y as Brindisi or Largo al factotum. Wagner might not be the composer for you if the memorable earworms are the most important thing, though--it simply wasn't a major aesthetic goal for him. He does toss one off for the prizewinning song here, but he generally is more interested in musical development and transformation, and earwormy arias are generally pretty antithetical to that purpose.


Great comment. Thanks! I've been busy but I'll set up time this weekend to finish watching Die Meistersingers...
Apologies if my posts come out as irreverent


----------



## Celloman

sorcered said:


> Yes, they are essential. I don't care about "nice music". I care about arias that move me immediately, not sequences I need to listen 10 times to "grow on me". Life is too short. Also, the whole opera is hummable? ROFLMAO. I'd like to see you humming the whole Die Meistersinger... in the shower.


Ah! There's nothing like instant gratification. Why not just listen to a 3-minute pop song that's catchy _and_ simple? That way, you don't have to work hard at it. You can just sit back and relax. Classical music should be like fast food, tasty and without any actual substance.


----------



## Itullian

Don't throw it in the fire my friend.
You WILL return to it.

At first hearing I didn't catch it either.
I now find beauty and wonder in every bar.

You may too.


----------



## howlingfantods

Celloman said:


> Ah! There's nothing like instant gratification. Why not just listen to a 3-minute pop song that's catchy _and_ simple? That way, you don't have to work hard at it. You can just sit back and relax. Classical music should be like fast food, tasty and without any actual substance.


I think it's a pretty legitimate aesthetic judgment to prefer operas that have great arias instead of Wagner's endless melody and development. I mean, that's basically all opera before Wagner and most opera after Wagner for that matter, and I don't think preferring Verdi or Mozart means you only like music without substance.

I also disagree that pop music is without substance but that's pretty OT.

Oh and sorcered, if Meistersinger doesn't end up working out for you after a couple of listens, you might try some of Wagner's earlier operas--they're more full of standard arias. Lohengrin and Fliegende Hollander are especially popular with folks who primarily like a more traditional opera.


----------



## DavidA

Barbebleu said:


> I'm with you David A. Mozart wasn't that good!!
> 
> For those with no sensayuma, that was a little joke. *We all know DavidA's predilections*.


And I'm thankful for them!!


----------



## Becca

sorcered said:


> LOL, you people are definitely serious about defending your own tastes.
> 
> I'll obviously see the rest of the opera, if only to learn the whole story.
> 
> Yes, I get the philosophical undertones of tradition vs innovation, form vs effect, noble birth vs actual worth as a living being etc. but those are "nice to haves" to me, while a melody I can remember and hum for myself is a "must-have". Carmen has the Toreador's song and Habanera, Traviata has Brindisi and Sempre Libera, Barbiere... has Largo al Factotum, etc.
> Die Meistersingers... has nothing of the sort, at least in Act 1.


...and how many of those operas have all the set pieces in the first act? I presume that you listened to all of those operas before you made judgments, so why not give Meistersinger the same consideration?


----------



## Woodduck

Originally Posted by Celloman:
_Incidentally, I don't know any Wagner disciples either._ .


DavidA said:


> Mark Twain did. He described them as "persons in whom this [Wagner's] music produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity...........These devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion. It is only here [Bayreuth] that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any worldly pollution. In this remote village there are no sights to see, there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world, there is nothing going on, it is always Sunday. The pilgrim wends to his temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of tremendous emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service. This opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven."


Mark Twain was a writer and humorist. That's how he made a living. Enough said?

Twain's amazement at the emotions aroused by _Tristan _ echoes accounts of other responses to early performances. The French composer Emmanuel Chabrier heard it in Munich in 1880 and broke down during the prelude, sobbing uncontrollably. Another composer, Guillaume Lekeu fainted during a performance at Bayreuth and had to be carried out of the theater. In 1886, the novelist Richard Strauss, on conducting his first _Tristan_, said it was the most wonderful day of his life. Verdi, in an interview in 1899, said "The work which always arouses my greatest admiration is _Tristan_. This gigantic structure fills me time and time again with astonishment and awe, and I still cannot quite comprehend that it was conceived and written by a human being. I consider the second act, in its wealth of musical invention, its tenderness and sensuality of musical expression and inspired orchestration, to be one of the finest creations that has ever issued from a human mind." There are numerous stories chronicling the extreme emotional and physical reactions of audiences to _Tristan_, and plenty of testimony to the extreme regard in which great composers, performing musicians, scholars and critics have always held it.

But _Parsifal_, a subtler, more esoteric, more controversial work, has aroused similarly rapturous reactions. Hugo Wolf, present at the premiere, called it "colossal - Wagner's most inspired, sublimest creation," and said "_P__arsifal_ is without doubt by far the most beautiful and sublime work in the whole field of Art." Gustav Mahler, seeing it in 1883, wrote to a friend "I can hardly describe my present state to you. When I came out of the Festspielhaus, completely spellbound, I understood that the greatest and most painful revelation had just been made to me, and that I would carry it unspoiled for the rest of my life." Max Reger simply noted that "When I first heard _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth I was fifteen. I cried for two weeks and then became a musician." Alban Berg described Parsifal in 1909 as "magnificent, overwhelming," and Jean Sibelius, visiting Bayreuth in 1894 said "Nothing in the world has made so overwhelming an impression on me. All my innermost heart-strings throbbed... I cannot begin to tell you how _Parsifal_ has transported me. Everything I do seems so cold and feeble by its side. That is really something." Debussy, though he found the plot incomprehensible (he was hardly the last!) wrote that the music was "incomparable and bewildering, splendid and strong. _Parsifal_ is one of the loveliest monuments of sound ever raised to the serene glory of music."

It seems that Wagner had some pretty distinguished "disciples." (P.S. We may presume that they didn't find his works "overlong" - or that, if they did, they didn't think it mattered.)


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Woodduck said:


> It seems that Wagner had some pretty distinguished "disciples."


That sounds pretty intimidating. I mean, how can a humble truck company clerk who cannot compose a single bar of music or even sing it properly, ever believe oneself to be able to rise to those hallowed halls where Mahler and Sibelius are feasting with the Meister


----------



## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> Originally Posted by Celloman:
> _Incidentally, I don't know any Wagner disciples either._ .
> 
> Mark Twain was a writer and humorist. That's how he made a living. Enough said?
> 
> Twain's amazement at the emotions aroused by _Tristan _ echoes accounts of other responses to early performances. The French composer Emmanuel Chabrier heard it in Munich in 1880 and broke down during the prelude, sobbing uncontrollably. Another composer, Guillaume Lekeu fainted during a performance at Bayreuth and had to be carried out of the theater. In 1886, the novelist Richard Strauss, on conducting his first _Tristan_, said it was the most wonderful day of his life. Verdi, in an interview in 1899, said "The work which always arouses my greatest admiration is _Tristan_. This gigantic structure fills me time and time again with astonishment and awe, and I still cannot quite comprehend that it was conceived and written by a human being. I consider the second act, in its wealth of musical invention, its tenderness and sensuality of musical expression and inspired orchestration, to be one of the finest creations that has ever issued from a human mind." There are numerous stories chronicling the extreme emotional and physical reactions of audiences to _Tristan_, and plenty of testimony to the extreme regard in which great composers, performing musicians, scholars and critics have always held it.
> 
> But _Parsifal_, a subtler, more esoteric, more controversial work, has aroused similarly rapturous reactions. Hugo Wolf, present at the premiere, called it "colossal - Wagner's most inspired, sublimest creation," and said "_P__arsifal_ is without doubt by far the most beautiful and sublime work in the whole field of Art." Gustav Mahler, seeing it in 1883, wrote to a friend "I can hardly describe my present state to you. When I came out of the Festspielhaus, completely spellbound, I understood that the greatest and most painful revelation had just been made to me, and that I would carry it unspoiled for the rest of my life." Max Reger simply noted that "When I first heard _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth I was fifteen. I cried for two weeks and then became a musician." Alban Berg described Parsifal in 1909 as "magnificent, overwhelming," and Jean Sibelius, visiting Bayreuth in 1894 said "Nothing in the world has made so overwhelming an impression on me. All my innermost heart-strings throbbed... I cannot begin to tell you how _Parsifal_ has transported me. Everything I do seems so cold and feeble by its side. That is really something." Debussy, though he found the plot incomprehensible (he was hardly the last!) wrote that the music was "incomparable and bewildering, splendid and strong. _Parsifal_ is one of the loveliest monuments of sound ever raised to the serene glory of music."
> 
> It *seems that Wagner had some pretty distinguished "disciples." (P.S. We may presume that they didn't find his works "overlong" - or that, if they did, they didn't think it mattered.)*


*

I'm not particularly interested in whether or not they found his works overlong. I'm just saying I do! 
*


----------



## sorcered

Becca said:


> ...and how many of those operas have all the set pieces in the first act? I presume that you listened to all of those operas before you made judgments, so why not give Meistersinger the same consideration?


Habanera - act 1
Brindisi - act 1
Factotum - act 1

I picked those examples for a reason...


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> I'm not particularly interested in whether or not they found his works overlong. I'm just saying I do!
> [/B]


No, you didn't just say that you do. What you said was that only Wagner's "disciples" don't find his works overlong, and you're the one who called Wagner enthusiasts "disciples." You're the one who posed the challenge, David. If you're going to throw stink bombs, you shouldn't be surprised when something comes back over the wall.


----------



## Barbebleu

DavidA said:


> I'm not particularly interested in whether or not they found his works overlong. I'm just saying I do!
> [/B]


So, DavidA, why on earth do you waste your time listening to and commenting on them?


----------



## Becca

sorcered said:


> Habanera - act 1
> Brindisi - act 1
> Factotum - act 1
> 
> I picked those examples for a reason...


Yes, and Toreador Song (which you also picked) ... act 2

So your definition off a good opera is one where there is some hummable aria in the first act?


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> No, you didn't just say that you do. What you said was that only Wagner's "disciples" don't find his works overlong, and you're the one who called Wagner enthusiasts "disciples." You're the one who posed the challenge, David. If you're going to throw stink bombs, you shouldn't be surprised when something comes back over the wall.


Why is it when people disagree with you they are 'throwing stink bombs?' I find that discourteous! I can hardly see that giving an opinion that a composers works are over long (which is incidentally shared by other commentators) is the equivalent of throwing stink bombs! I also did not say that it's only Wagner's disciples who don't find them over-long. Please do not misinterpret my meaning.


----------



## DavidA

Barbebleu said:


> So, DavidA, why on earth do you waste your time listening to and commenting on them?


Sorry but I thought the purpose of TC was to express opinion


----------



## Couchie

Why do you have a personal vendetta against Wagner, DavidA? He may not have been the best person personally, but he brought a great deal of beauty into the world to enrich humankind for as long as we do exist. If he was a better person, but wrote less good operas, would he be a better composer in your book? If you want to take great achievers of lasting significance but hold the fact that they were not good people against them, in fairness should you not take good people but hold the fact that they are not great achievers against them? In other words, are you not necessarily but a misanthrope who all who cherish life and the achievements of man should merely disregard?


----------



## DavidA

Couchie said:


> Why do you have a personal vendetta against Wagner, DavidA? He may not have been the best person personally, but he brought a great deal of beauty into the world to enrich humankind for as long as we do exist. If he was a better person, but wrote less good operas, would he be a better composer in your book? If you want to take great achievers of lasting significance but hold the fact that they were not good people against them, in fairness should you not take good people but hold the fact that they are not great achievers against them? In other words, are you not necessarily but a misanthrope who all who cherish life and the achievements of man should merely disregard?


Sorry but I don't want to descend into this sort of name calling. Saying that Wagner's works are over long in places does not amount to a personal vendetta! In fact it's a view many commentators agree with!


----------



## Couchie

DavidA said:


> Sorry but I don't want to descend into this sort of name calling.


But you will insult a dead man unable to defend himself with whatever whim takes your fancy?


----------



## Barbebleu

DavidA said:


> Sorry but I thought the purpose of TC was to express opinion


But you clearly have no love or even a great liking for Wagner or his music so I find it surprising that you would spend so much time disparaging and criticising him. I have no great fondness for Ligeti or Stockhausen but I don't feel the desire to get into debates with those who do. A waste of my time and theirs.


----------



## Belowpar

SiegendesLicht said:


> Regarding the brokenhearted devotees - I think back then people were more sensitive towards such work of art because they did not experience them all too often. Today we are under a constant barrage of entertainments and messages and have developed a certain insensitivity towards the broken-hearted and dying heroes.


This is a geat point and probably worthy of it's own thread. Imagine in a world with no CD's, Radio, Television, Youtube and once in a while you got to go to the *Opera*! Would you not be overwhelmed?

I recently saw Mastersingers at the ENO and on the stairs on the way out overheard an older man say to his young companion,
"I'll try and read something soothing, it will take me hours to come down from this."


----------



## DavidA

Couchie said:


> But you will insult a dead man unable to defend himself with whatever whim takes your fancy?


What have I said that isn't true? I mean I have read threads on TC where people have given pretty vitriolic views on religious beliefs.


----------



## DavidA

Barbebleu said:


> But you clearly have no love or even a great liking for Wagner or his music so I find it surprising that you would spend so much time disparaging and criticising him. I have no great fondness for Ligeti or Stockhausen but I don't feel the desire to get into debates with those who do. A waste of my time and theirs.


As I have all of Wagner's operas on my shelves including three recordings of the Ring and four of Tristan so to say I have no liking for the music seems somewhat incongruous. The problem is that when one expresses reservations about the opera or the man people take it personally. I don't know why this is the case. It doesn't seem the case for other composers.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Couchie said:


> But you will insult a dead man unable to defend himself with whatever whim takes your fancy?


A lack of reverence for God's chosen people is a crime that can never be forgiven, much less after death.


----------



## Steatopygous

DavidA said:


> As I have all of Wagner's operas on my shelves including three recordings of the Ring and four of Tristan so to say I have no liking for the music seems somewhat incongruous. The problem is that when one expresses reservations about the opera or the man people take it personally. I don't know why this is the case. It doesn't seem the case for other composers.


I'm not sure why David has incurred such wrath either. Wagner was a real excreta of a human being, and one of the greatest musical geniuses who ever lived. There is nothing contradictory in this claim. Many of you know the facts of his life as well as I do. You may consider them irrelevant, and I have no problem with that. He's far from Robinson Crusoe. But David is breaking no divine or human law in criticising the man or the music.


----------



## eljr

Steatopygous said:


> But David is breaking no divine or human law in criticising the man or the music.


how boring would the world be if we were all the same?


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Steatopygous said:


> I'm not sure why David has incurred such wrath either.


Mostly because he's been saying the same things over and over again in each Wagner thread since 2012.



> Wagner was a real excreta of a human being, and one of the greatest musical geniuses who ever lived. There is nothing contradictory in this claim. Many of you know the facts of his life as well as I do.


Sure, we know the facts of Wagner's life, and some of us still don't agree with your assessment. Yes, he did not exactly have much reverence for God's chosen people, so what?


----------



## eljr

This thread is how/why I found this forum. 

I need a course in Wagner 101.

Where should I start?


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## Celloman

eljr said:


> I need a course in Wagner 101.
> 
> Where should I start?


Don't start here. Read this article.


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## SiegendesLicht

eljr said:


> This thread is how/why I found this forum.
> 
> I need a course in Wagner 101.
> 
> Where should I start?


Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Das Rheingold. Try listening to some excerpts first and see what sounds most interesting (they are all great though). Here is a thread about best recordings of each: http://www.talkclassical.com/36611-here-ye-here-ye.html


----------



## Itullian

What if Wagner had lived to be 80.

What do you think he'd have written?


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## Celloman

Der Ring des Nibelungen: The Sequel

One of the Norns steal the Rhinegold (she has to sing the part of a Rhinemaiden at the same time _a la_ "stage magic") and she enchants it with a horrible curse that makes everyone who wears it sing a sustained high C. The Gibichungs and the Vulsas kill each other off in a cataclysmic brawl and the gold at last finds its way into the hands a cute little cupid named Gertie. She forges it into a giant whoopee cusion that creates earth-shattering thunder when someone sits on it and the universe is obliterated once and for all.


----------



## Morimur

Itullian said:


> What if Wagner had lived to be 80.
> 
> What do you think he'd have written?


**** Crap. ****


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Itullian said:


> What if Wagner had lived to be 80.
> 
> What do you think he'd have written?


That Buddhist opera of his, I think it was called Die Sieger. But I, for one, would love to see more mythology, more heroes, more medieval history. Other stories from the Arthurian legendarium would be great. The one about Friedrich I. Barbarossa that he started and then gave up on, would be great. And a couple symphonies, please! The longer the better.


----------



## Woodduck

SiegendesLicht said:


> That Buddhist opera of his, I think it was called Die Sieger. But I, for one, would love to see more mythology, more heroes, more medieval history. Other stories from the Arthurian legendarium would be great. The one about Friedrich I. Barbarossa that he started and then gave up on, would be great. And a couple symphonies, please! The longer the better.


Wagner did say that _Parsifal_ would be his last opera. I'm inclined to believe he would have kept to this intention, given that all his operas required years to evolve, and that two unfulfilled projects, _Die Sieger_ and _Jesus of Nazareth_, were more or less dismembered and absorbed into the music and drama of _Parsifal_. That opera, in extending, synthesizing, and resolving so many themes from his earlier works, really is a culmination. He said he wanted to try writing symphonies. Who knows how that would have worked out? My suspicion is that he would have found it difficult, given that his ideal in absolute music had always been Beethoven. He also admired Haydn, and when he did comment on non-operatic music he expressed misgivings about composers who might think they could apply his operatic innovations to symphonic music. "For the symphony," he said to Cosima, "one thinks very differently." Too bad we'll never know!


----------



## Itullian

Morimur said:


> **** Crap. ****


I'm sure that would have been great too. :tiphat:


----------



## anmhe

If Wagner had indefinite time on this earth to create music, we might have even gotten a Gahmuret opera at some point.


----------



## Woodduck

anmhe said:


> If Wagner had indefinite time on this earth to create music, we might have even gotten a Gahmuret opera at some point.


How about _Gahmuret und Herzeleide_, a prequel to _Parsifal_? It would end with "Herzeleide's Liebesgeburt," in which, just having heard of the death of Gahmuret in battle, she feels Parsifal stirring in her womb and sings of how her love for her husband will now save her son from a similar fate, as a vision of Parsifal appears, clad white robes and bearing aloft the Grail and Spear.

That reminds me of those Renaissance paintings where the baby Jesus is sitting on Mary's knee holding a little cross.


----------



## anmhe

Woodduck said:


> How about _Gahmuret und Herzeleide_, a prequel to _Parsifal_? It would end with "Herzeleide's Liebesgeburt," in which, just having heard of the death of Gahmuret in battle, she feels Parsifal stirring in her womb and sings of how her love for her husband will now save her son from a similar fate, as a vision of Parsifal appears, clad white robes and bearing aloft the Grail and Spear.
> 
> That reminds me of those Renaissance paintings where the baby Jesus is sitting on Mary's knee holding a little cross.


I'd like that, though I also would need at least one act in Zazamanc. Gahmuret abandoning his first wife is an important part of his story.


----------



## Steatopygous

SiegendesLicht said:


> Mostly because he's been saying the same things over and over again in each Wagner thread since 2012.
> 
> Sure, we know the facts of Wagner's life, and some of us still don't agree with your assessment. Yes, he did not exactly have much reverence for God's chosen people, so what?


I'm not going to keep posting on this if people are bored with it, because I'm sure it is well-trodden ground in these threads though it is the first one in which I have been involved. But it's not just his virulent anti-Semitism (and he was hypocritical even about that), it was his grandiloquent self-obsession, the way he saw everybody simply as a means to his own ends, his lack of gratitude, the way he treated Minna etc. He was a sociopath, a monomaniacal narcissist. This may have been necessary to being such a great visionary and composer, or it may not. We will never know. 
And what do you mean by "so what?" You don't have much reverence for God's chosen people? Racism doesn't matter? It had no effect on his music? (This too is disputed ground.) 
If you don't agree with my assessment, I'd be interested to know your reasons.


----------



## Woodduck

Steatopygous said:


> I'm not going to keep posting on this if people are bored with it, because I'm sure it is well-trodden ground in these threads though it is the first one in which I have been involved. But it's not just his virulent anti-Semitism (and he was hypocritical even about that), it was his grandiloquent self-obsession, the way he saw everybody simply as a means to his own ends, his lack of gratitude, the way he treated Minna etc. He was a sociopath, a monomaniacal narcissist. This may have been necessary to being such a great visionary and composer, or it may not. We will never know.
> And what do you mean by "so what?" You don't have much reverence for God's chosen people? Racism doesn't matter? It had no effect on his music? (This too is disputed ground.)
> If you don't agree with my assessment, I'd be interested to know your reasons.


I think you're raising an issue of some importance here, Steatopygous. May I address it?

Wagner is no doubt the most controversy-inspiring composer who ever lived. The controversies concern both his life and his works. Even a quick search on the internet turns up seemingly obligatory repetitions, by people of no particular erudition or credentials, of misconceptions and glib judgments which have simply become cultural myths. For those deeply interested in his work, this is a rather painful situation, and however tempting it may be to raise certain issues and questions on a forum such as this, I have found it best not to attempt it on threads dealing with his music.

Moral judgments of Wagner as a person, in particular, always engender arguments on threads about him, and well they might. The specific, concrete facts about his actions in life are matters of record. However, the moral judgments we make on the basis of those facts are just that: judgments. Judgments are not facts. We're all entitled to our judgments, but people who come onto a music forum, find threads about Wagner where music lovers are sharing their interest in his operas, and begin hammering on his personal faults _as they understand them_ are regarded by most people here as pests.

The distinction I'm trying to make between facts and judgments could be illustrated by any number of examples, but I'll choose one. It is a fact that Wagner and Cosima began having an affair while Cosima was still married to Hans von Bulow. No one is likely to object to that fact being mentioned. But it is a judgment, not a fact, and on that ground certainly open to objection, to say that Wagner was a "wife stealer." Factually, there is no such thing as a wife-stealer, unless we're talking about Vikings looting and pillaging. It is on record that Cosima quite literally threw herself at Wagner's feet some time before they began their relationship, and that Wagner was startled and rather baffled by it at the time. I find that, unfortunately, the complexities of human nature and human behavior are rarely a concern to those mainly interested in casting moral judgments about. They may, however, be a concern to others, and those others may find moralistic pronouncements about composers distasteful and even offensive, even if they agree with them.

Insistent moralizing about people tends to be seen here as provocation; it will lead to debates which will never be resolved and will tend to derail threads. It will also make you disliked, and may even result in infractions if it is seen by the moderators as trolling. Those who have been here for a while have seen it happen repeatedly, and very few of us want it to happen yet again.

The forum is a much more civil and pleasant place without that sort of thing.


----------



## Balthazar

Steatopygous said:


> I'm not going to keep posting on this if people are bored with it, because I'm sure it is well-trodden ground in these threads though it is the first one in which I have been involved. But it's not just his virulent anti-Semitism (and he was hypocritical even about that), it was his grandiloquent self-obsession, the way he saw everybody simply as a means to his own ends, his lack of gratitude, the way he treated Minna etc. He was a sociopath, a monomaniacal narcissist. This may have been necessary to being such a great visionary and composer, or it may not. We will never know.
> And what do you mean by "so what?" You don't have much reverence for God's chosen people? Racism doesn't matter? It had no effect on his music? (This too is disputed ground.)
> If you don't agree with my assessment, I'd be interested to know your reasons.


Steatopygous, you should feel welcome to express your views in any manner you see fit so long as it complies with the Terms of Service of this site.

Any implication to the contrary by a non-moderator strikes me as a particularly low form of bullying and wholly inappropriate.



Itullian said:


> What if Wagner had lived to be 80.
> 
> What do you think he'd have written?


Some purely instrumental works would have been nice.


----------



## Woodduck

Balthazar said:


> Steatopygous, you should feel welcome to express your views in any manner you see fit so long as it complies with the Terms of Service of this site.
> 
> Any implication to the contrary by a non-moderator strikes me as a particularly low form of bullying and wholly inappropriate.


Calling other members bullies because they offer advice you disagree with might also be considered wholly inappropriate. It might also be considered name-calling, about which the Terms of Service, which you invoke, has something to say.

Steatopygous is of course permitted to broach any topic he wishes. I thought it might be helpful for him to know what invariably happens here when a certain line of discussion is pursued. Those who have been here long enough know exactly what I'm talking about. Most people here want to talk about music, not wrangle about politics and morality. The forum has a politics and religion forum for those with a taste for that, and moderation discourages debate on such subjects on music threads. In fact, threads have been closed down because they have veered off into acrimonious disputes having nothing to do with music. Is that what you want? I don't know anyone who does. I thought it would benefit Steatopygous to know these things.

Now shall we focus on music?


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## Steatopygous

Balthazar said:


> Steatopygous, you should feel welcome to express your views in any manner you see fit so long as it complies with the Terms of Service of this site.
> 
> Any implication to the contrary by a non-moderator strikes me as a particularly low form of bullying and wholly inappropriate.
> 
> Some purely instrumental works would have been nice.


Thank you very much for coming to my defence, and I appreciate the generosity of spirit behind it. But there is no need; I took no offence at Woodduck's remarks, which were also generously motivated, just explaining the background to the discussion.


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## Steatopygous

Woodduck said:


> I think you're raising an issue of some importance here, Steatopygous. May I address it?
> 
> Wagner is no doubt the most controversy-inspiring composer who ever lived. The controversies concern both his life and his works. Even a quick search on the internet turns up seemingly obligatory repetitions, by people of no particular erudition or credentials, of misconceptions and glib judgments which have simply become cultural myths. For those deeply interested in his work, this is a rather painful situation, and however tempting it may be to raise certain issues and questions on a forum such as this, I have found it best not to attempt it on threads dealing with his music.
> 
> Moral judgments of Wagner as a person, in particular, always engender arguments on threads about him, and well they might. The specific, concrete facts about his actions in life are matters of record. However, the moral judgments we make on the basis of those facts are just that: judgments. Judgments are not facts. We're all entitled to our judgments, but people who come onto a music forum, find threads about Wagner where music lovers are sharing their interest in his operas, and begin hammering on his personal faults _as they understand them_ are regarded by most people here as pests.
> 
> The distinction I'm trying to make between facts and judgments could be illustrated by any number of examples, but I'll choose one. It is a fact that Wagner and Cosima began having an affair while Cosima was still married to Hans von Bulow. No one is likely to object to that fact being mentioned. But it is a judgment, not a fact, and on that ground certainly open to objection, to say that Wagner was a "wife stealer." Factually, there is no such thing as a wife-stealer, unless we're talking about Vikings looting and pillaging. It is on record that Cosima quite literally threw herself at Wagner's feet some time before they began their relationship, and that Wagner was startled and rather baffled by it at the time. I find that, unfortunately, the complexities of human nature and human behavior are rarely a concern to those mainly interested in casting moral judgments about. They may, however, be a concern to others, and those others may find moralistic pronouncements about composers distasteful and even offensive, even if they agree with them.
> 
> Insistent moralizing about people tends to be seen here as provocation; it will lead to debates which will never be resolved and will tend to derail threads. It will also make you disliked, and may even result in infractions if it is seen by the moderators as trolling. Those who have been here for a while have seen it happen repeatedly, and very few of us want it to happen yet again.
> 
> The forum is a much more civil and pleasant place without that sort of thing.


Thank you for taking the trouble to post a pleasantly toned and generous explanation of how people react to such debates. That still doesn't rule out such debates. Music doesn't outrank morals, in my view, though the relationship between them is complex. When someone says Wagner had no time for Jews, so what? I do find that somewhat disturbing - that is, the "so what?". But instead of leaping to judgment I hoped to explore a bit more what was meant. It is very easy to misunderstand on internet forums. 
But if someone says - and I do not accuse my interlocutor of this, I am merely concerned that it is a possible interpretation - "Aren't Jews pretty disgusting, and Wagner was right, and what a great musician he was", then my disgust will cause me to leave this forum. That would be sad for me personally, as in my month or so I have enjoyed it a lot. I have learned a fair amount. But I do not want to be complicit in giving such views oxygen. As for the fact-value distinction, as someone well into a PhD on moral philosophy, I would like to assure you that this is not new ground for me. 
As for being liked, naturally I would prefer to be liked but I would rather have my self-respect than the respect of others.


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## SiegendesLicht

Steatopygous said:


> I'm not going to keep posting on this if people are bored with it, because I'm sure it is well-trodden ground in these threads though it is the first one in which I have been involved. But it's not just his virulent anti-Semitism (and he was hypocritical even about that), it was his grandiloquent self-obsession, the way he saw everybody simply as a means to his own ends, his lack of gratitude, the way he treated Minna etc. He was a sociopath, a monomaniacal narcissist. *This may have been necessary to being such a great visionary and composer*, or it may not. We will never know.
> And what do you mean by "so what?" You don't have much reverence for God's chosen people? Racism doesn't matter? It had no effect on his music? (This too is disputed ground.)
> If you don't agree with my assessment, I'd be interested to know your reasons.


I tend to think it was pretty much necessary. Without grand ambitions and self-confidence Wagner would not be able to realize his plans (and the Ring is a grand plan indeed), and without using King Ludwig's friendship and sponsorship the theater in Bayreuth wouls have never been built. I don't call it self-obsession, I call it knowing your own worth. Had Wagner been an overtly humble man hiding in a corner and waiting for people to pay attention to his ideas, we would probably not have much of his heritage left for us to enjoy.

Regarding Wagner's "wife-stealing", Woodduck has already said it very well. A woman is not a sack of potatoes that you can put on your shoulders and carry away, not in the civilized parts of the world at least. Unless she was willing to leave her husband for Wagner, there was no way he could have stolen her.

Whether racism matters in relation to Wagner's music - no, not in Wagner's case. But yes, he was a great composer. And my own reverence for the abrahamic God and the whole notion of a single nation being God-chosen and thus more worthy and special than the rest is of no relevance to the topic.

And now lt's return to the music.


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## sorcered

Finished Act 2 of Die Meistersingers... - still no trace of anything similar to a "hit" aria. Liked the story and the comedic moments, the actors do their jobs wonderfully but music-wise there's still nothing I can remember (the Marker's serenade is memorable for all the wrong reasons lol).
On with Act 3.


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## anmhe

sorcered said:


> Finished Act 2 of Die Meistersingers... - still no trace of anything similar to a "hit" aria. Liked the story and the comedic moments, the actors do their jobs wonderfully but music-wise there's still nothing I can remember (the Marker's serenade is memorable for all the wrong reasons lol).
> On with Act 3.


Keep with it. I had to listen to Meistersinger a few times and a few different recordings to appreciate that work. It's wonderful fun once it all clicks for you.


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## sorcered

I think Die Meistersingers... is a "better than the sum of its parts" example. However, I enjoyed the actors, the scenography and the costumes, and the story, more than the music. The winning song is perhaps the closest to what I was looking for (a hummable aria that I can use to convince other people to watch / listen to the opera) but it's still somewhat unfulfilling. Well, I guess it's time to move on and return to Wagner later.


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## anmhe

sorcered said:


> I think Die Meistersingers... is a "better than the sum of its parts" example. However, I enjoyed the actors, the scenography and the costumes, and the story, more than the music. The winning song is perhaps the closest to what I was looking for (a hummable aria that I can use to convince other people to watch / listen to the opera) but it's still somewhat unfulfilling. Well, I guess it's time to move on and return to Wagner later.


Reading up on the history and culture of Hans Sachs' era also helped me enjoy the opera more.


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## Celloman

sorcered said:


> Finished Act 2 of Die Meistersingers... - still no trace of anything similar to a "hit" aria. Liked the story and the comedic moments, the actors do their jobs wonderfully but music-wise there's still nothing I can remember (the Marker's serenade is memorable for all the wrong reasons lol).
> On with Act 3.


Perhaps, you're approaching it the wrong way. There are no arias, as such, but I find the music particularly memorable for the way it weaves seamlessly from one idea to another.

What I like about Act 2 is that it blends comedy with elements of a more serious nature, such as Hans Sachs' reflections on the ailing health of art. Eventually, the quarrel between Sachs and Beckmesser culminates in a hilarious brawl with all the townspeople, so you might see the entire act as a gradual build-up to that point. Wagner keeps it interesting by moving forward with the drama. He doesn't need any "hit" arias in order to get this done.


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## Barbebleu

Wagner and "hit" arias? An oxymoron surely?


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## howlingfantods

sorcered said:


> I think Die Meistersingers... is a "better than the sum of its parts" example. However, I enjoyed the actors, the scenography and the costumes, and the story, more than the music. The winning song is perhaps the closest to what I was looking for (a hummable aria that I can use to convince other people to watch / listen to the opera) but it's still somewhat unfulfilling. Well, I guess it's time to move on and return to Wagner later.


Yeah, like I said before, I think maybe Wagner's not the right composer for you given what you're looking for. If you do feel like giving him another shot, I do think you're likelier to like his earlier operas, either Flying Dutchman or Lohengrin--those are popular entry points for folks who are coming to Wagner from earlier, more traditional operas or from the French or Italian traditions.


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## anmhe

Barbebleu said:


> Wagner and "hit" arias? An oxymoron surely?


There are a few. King Heinrich's appeal to the people of Brabant in act I of Lohengrin, Donner's bit before he puts the hammer down, and even Brunhilde's big ol' finale from Götterdämmerung could be categorized as such.


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## Woodduck

Barbebleu said:


> Wagner and "hit" arias? An oxymoron surely?


Oh, I don't know... I heard that "Amfortas! Die Wunde!" was quite the hit at Montsalvat when Parsifal and the knights all gathered around the restocked swan pond on summer evenings and reminisced about old times.


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## Barbebleu

My idea of an aria as such is something that can safely be listened to in isolation from the opera it came from with no loss of continuity. I don't think any of Wagner's moments could be judged so. Heda, Hedo would just sound weird sung on its own.


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## expat

Barbebleu said:


> My idea of an aria as such is something that can safely be listened to in isolation from the opera it came from with no loss of continuity. I don't think any of Wagner's moments could be judged so. Heda, Hedo would just sound weird sung on its own.


In fernem Land. 
Steuermann lass die Wacht
Winterstuerme wichen dem Wonnemond


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## Barbebleu

expat said:


> In fernem Land.
> Steuermann lass die Wacht
> Winterstuerme wichen dem Wonnmeond


Oh very well. I might grudgingly concede that there are some moments that might, in the very broadest sense, be very loosely classed as "arias". But they can't be compared to things like Lucevan le stelle, La Donna e mobile or other arias where the audience might stop the action to applaud the singer. That would never happen in a Wagner opera.


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## expat

Barbebleu said:


> Oh very well. I might grudgingly concede that there are some moments that might, in the very broadest sense, be very loosely classed as "arias". But they can't be compared to things like Lucevan le stelle, La Donna e mobile or other arias where the audience might stop the action to applaud the singer. That would never happen in a Wagner opera.


Conceded. The concept is very different. But so much more rewarding as the discovery of yet another layer of details never stops.


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## Steatopygous

Barbebleu said:


> My idea of an aria as such is something that can safely be listened to in isolation from the opera it came from with no loss of continuity. I don't think any of Wagner's moments could be judged so. Heda, Hedo would just sound weird sung on its own.


Yet in my catalogue under Wagner opera I have 630 entries, and most of these are not complete operas. Lots will be orchestral, such as Siegfried's Rhine Journey or Lohengrin prelude etc, but it certainly shows that record companies and singers have felt there are many Wagner "arias" or excerpts that can be sung by a soloist by themselves, or on their own. For example, there are a score of Tristan und Isolde: Mild und leise wie er lachelt (Isolde's Liebestod), apart from the opera itself.


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## Barbebleu

Re


Steatopygous said:


> Yet in my catalogue under Wagner opera I have 630 entries, and most of these are not complete operas. Lots will be orchestral, such as Siegfried's Rhine Journey or Lohengrin prelude etc, but it certainly shows that record companies and singers have felt there are many Wagner "arias" or excerpts that can be sung by a soloist by themselves, or on their own. For example, there are a score of Tristan und Isolde: Mild und leise wie er lachelt (Isolde's Liebestod), apart from the opera itself.


But I'm not sure they mean anything out of context. And for my part they just don't sound right when not part of the whole. For that matter neither does any aria when removed from its home!


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## Steatopygous

Barbebleu said:


> Re
> 
> But I'm not sure they mean anything out of context. And for my part they just don't sound right when not part of the whole. For that matter neither does any aria when removed from its home!


So what you are really arguing for is operas only in their entirety. That's not really practical for performers or listeners. I understand reservations about bleeding chunks being torn from the living beast, but there's also a place for extracts. Mind you, it is much better if the listener already knows the opera so the context etc is actually present.


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## SiegendesLicht

The Ride of the Valkyries sounds great when it opens the third act of Die Walküre. As an extract it is far too overused and does not have nearly the same effect.


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## Steatopygous

SiegendesLicht said:


> The Ride of the Valkyries sounds great when it opens the third act of Die Walküre. As an extract it is far too overused and does not have nearly the same effect.


True, but it now has associations well beyond the opera, obviously from Apocalypse Now, and is used in ads and in other objectionable ways. I think Siegfried's funeral march is wonderful music that I can listen to as stand alone music, to pick an example. (I especially love Levine and the Met's really dramatic thunderclaps, available on Youtube). But in my mind's eye I see Hagen's men bearing the body on their shoulders and the anxiously awaiting Gutrune etc. In other words, as Barbeblue suggested, context is still important.


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## Woodduck

It would be interesting to know how some of Wagner's orchestral interludes impress people who don't know their dramatic context. The preludes are another matter; I knew most of them before i knew their operas and loved them purely as music, which is probably the experience of many people. 

The "curtain-raisers" for Dutchman, Tannhauser (with or without the Venusberg ballet), Lohengrin (acts one and three), Tristan (with or without Liebestod), Meistersinger (acts one and three) and Parsifal are all wonderful compositions in their own right, just as powerful if you don't know what they're "about." In the Ring, the Ride of the Valkyries is still exciting even if abused, the combining of the "Dawn" sequence and the Rhine Journey makes a fairly substantial tone poem, and the Funeral March is impressive, though for me doesn't make quite the impression it does in context even if the scene is easy to imagine. 

The Good Friday music from Parsifal is gorgeous on its own, but I wonder if I'm the only one who's annoyed by the standard cut in it, which eliminates the darkly magical harmonies of Gurnemanz's "Das ist Charfreitags Zauber, Herr!" and Parsifal's anguished reply. Leaving this passage out necessitates an awkward key change, but even more importantly diminishes the emotional depth of the piece by taking away the pain which gives the bliss meaning. My first recording of this piece retained that passage, and I can't comprehend the point of leaving it out.


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## Dustin

Speaking of not knowing the dramatic context, that coincidentally leads into a question I have here. I've been trying on and off for maybe a year now to really fall hard for the music of Wagner but up to this point, I've been somewhat unsuccessful. Tristan Und Isolde is the opera that I've _listened_ to now maybe a total of 5 or 6 times. I italicize "listened" because I'm curious if ya'll think I am missing too significant a piece of the puzzle by not watching it in order to really have it click with me. I have not watched the opera once yet, mainly due to not owning a DVD player and feeling like the Youtube videos I've seen have awful sound. I absolutely love the prelude in the beginning and the Act 3 prelude but a lot of the in-between leaves me feeling nothing. I know it might sound crazy to not watch the opera but that is how I enjoy countless other operas, by just focusing on the music. So anyway, do you think Wagner, maybe more than other opera composers, necessitates being seen as well as heard?

Also, another possibility is maybe his music is just so dense that it'll take me 10+ listens before I really get it.


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## expat

Dustin said:


> Speaking of not knowing the dramatic context, that coincidentally leads into a question I have here. I've been trying on and off for maybe a year now to really fall hard for the music of Wagner but up to this point, I've been somewhat unsuccessful. Tristan Und Isolde is the opera that I've _listened_ to now maybe a total of 5 or 6 times. I italicize "listened" because I'm curious if ya'll think I am missing too significant a piece of the puzzle by not watching it in order to really have it click with me. I have not watched the opera once yet, mainly due to not owning a DVD player and feeling like the Youtube videos I've seen have awful sound. I absolutely love the prelude in the beginning and the Act 3 prelude but a lot of the in-between leaves me feeling nothing. I know it might sound crazy to not watch the opera but that is how I enjoy countless other operas, by just focusing on the music. So anyway, do you think Wagner, maybe more than other opera composers, necessitates being seen as well as heard?
> 
> Also, another possibility is maybe his music is just so dense that it'll take me 10+ listens before I really get it.


there are easier ways in than T+I, try Fliegende Hollander, Tannhaueser (ouverture and Act 2) or Lohengrin (act 1), Rheingold or Walkeure (act1).


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## Becca

expat said:


> there are easier ways in than T+I, try Fliegende Hollander, Tannhaueser (ouverture and Act 2) or Lohengrin (act 1), Rheingold or Walkeure (act1).


...or act 3 of Meistersinger. I am tempted to add act 3 of Gotterdammerung but that maybe pushing it a tad far


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## Steatopygous

Dustin said:


> Speaking of not knowing the dramatic context, that coincidentally leads into a question I have here. I've been trying on and off for maybe a year now to really fall hard for the music of Wagner but up to this point, I've been somewhat unsuccessful. Tristan Und Isolde is the opera that I've _listened_ to now maybe a total of 5 or 6 times. I italicize "listened" because I'm curious if ya'll think I am missing too significant a piece of the puzzle by not watching it in order to really have it click with me. I have not watched the opera once yet, mainly due to not owning a DVD player and feeling like the Youtube videos I've seen have awful sound. I absolutely love the prelude in the beginning and the Act 3 prelude but a lot of the in-between leaves me feeling nothing. I know it might sound crazy to not watch the opera but that is how I enjoy countless other operas, by just focusing on the music. So anyway, do you think Wagner, maybe more than other opera composers, necessitates being seen as well as heard?
> 
> Also, another possibility is maybe his music is just so dense that it'll take me 10+ listens before I really get it.


Advice above is good about ways into Wagner. I don't think I would describe his music as dense. I don't think there is any other composer whose music is so immediately powerful, overwhelming, and - at the beginning - I wouldn't try to intellectualise it or unpick it or try to understand the structure. Later, the more you know it the more you will appreciate it - the extraordinary genius in the way he uses short phrases as themes that remind you, unconsciously even, of what they represent. For now, let it wash over you as you (probably) would Mozart or Schubert.


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## Woodduck

expat said:


> there are easier ways in than T+I, try Fliegende Hollander, Tannhaueser (ouverture and Act 2) or Lohengrin (act 1), Rheingold or Walkeure (act1).


I agree with expat: if Wagner doesn't grab you right away, _Tristan_ may be a tough place to begin. I'm not sure seeing it would help, since there's very little action on stage, and the music is what really carries it. That music is indeed dense.

I find people really differ in which operas they like and dislike. Some people love _Tannhauser_, while I like it least of all Wagner's operas (except for the revised Act 1 with the Venusberg music, which is mind-blowing stuff). Those who like myth and fantasy might start in on the _Ring_, which is musically varied, has a lot of picturesque characters, and can be more fun to watch than _Tristan_ or _Parsifal_. I recommend _Die Walkure_ especially. _Lohengrin_ is a fairy tale with a lot of simply beautiful music and a couple of fantastic villains. _Parsifal_ may confuse you, bore you, or cast a magic spell on you that you'll never shake for the rest of your life. _Die Meistersinger_ is enjoyed by many people who find other Wagner difficult; it's musically rich, but very enjoyable to watch, and it has a very witty libretto. It's such an individual matter!

One thing I do recommend, though, is that if you're going to listen to a complete opera (and not just Wagner) you shouldn't go in "cold." Read a synopsis of the plot, read the libretto before listening, read a little about the work. Wagner's musical style, his "free narrative" way of composing an operatic score with few obvious divisions and set pieces or arias, may have to grow on you, but in the meantime there's a lot of relevant information, and you never know what may offer a key to unlock a door or a window in your mind. More than most composers, Wagner's works are about more than music, while yet being rich in some of the most dramatically sensitive and powerful music ever written.

Don't force yourself to listen if you're not grabbed by what you hear, but do come back. The rewards are great if you and Wagner finally learn to get along.


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## Dustin

Thanks for the advice Woodduck and the previous posters as well. I'll certainly try mixing up my listening and not just sticking to the same work over and over. I'm sure it's just a matter of when, and not if, I'll finally turn the corner. I've already seen brief glimpses of enlightenment.


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## Chipomarc

I'm just at the stage of testing the waters as far a listening to opera. I've decided to leave Wagner for a little later on when I get more exposure other ones.

I've found the Opera Strip to be quite informative before a listen

http://www.sinfinimusic.com/uk/features/guides/opera-guides/opera-plots-and-synopses-in-comic-book-format


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## Woodduck

Dustin said:


> Thanks for the advice Woodduck and the previous posters as well. I'll certainly try mixing up my listening and not just sticking to the same work over and over. I'm sure it's just a matter of when, and not if, I'll finally turn the corner. I've already seen brief glimpses of enlightenment.


Attaboy! :tiphat: ...........


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## Barbebleu

Y


Woodduck said:


> It would be interesting to know how some of Wagner's orchestral interludes impress people who don't know their dramatic context. The preludes are another matter; I knew most of them before i knew their operas and loved them purely as music, which is probably the experience of many people.
> 
> The "curtain-raisers" for Dutchman, Tannhauser (with or without the Venusberg ballet), Lohengrin (acts one and three), Tristan (with or without Liebestod), Meistersinger (acts one and three) and Parsifal are all wonderful compositions in their own right, just as powerful if you don't know what they're "about." In the Ring, the Ride of the Valkyries is still exciting even if abused, the combining of the "Dawn" sequence and the Rhine Journey makes a fairly substantial tone poem, and the Funeral March is impressive, though for me doesn't make quite the impression it does in context even if the scene is easy to imagine.
> 
> The Good Friday music from Parsifal is gorgeous on its own, but I wonder if I'm the only one who's annoyed by the standard cut in it, which eliminates the darkly magical harmonies of Gurnemanz's "Das ist Charfreitags Zauber, Herr!" and Parsifal's anguished reply. Leaving this passage out necessitates an awkward key change, but even more importantly diminishes the emotional depth of the piece by taking away the pain which gives the bliss meaning. My first recording of this piece retained that passage, and I can't comprehend the point of leaving it out.


I have no problem with orchestral Wagner being excised from its natural environment. It's more the vocal side of things that I feel doesn't sound right out of context as beautiful or as thrilling as it may sound.


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## expat

Barbebleu said:


> Y
> 
> I have no problem with orchestral Wagner being excised from its natural environment. It's more the vocal side of things that I feel doesn't sound right out of context as beautiful or as thrilling as it may sound.


it's because it's meant to blend with the orchestra as if it was another instrument.


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## gardibolt

My real introduction to Wagner was when my high school band did the Act III Prelude to Meistersinger; our band director always had interesting things for us to work on, and I really loved that even though I didn't have the faintest idea regarding the context. So I got the LPs for Meistersinger from the interlibrary loan, and that led to Rheingold and on and on. And here I am.


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## Becca

Dustin said:


> Thanks for the advice Woodduck and the previous posters as well. I'll certainly try mixing up my listening and not just sticking to the same work over and over. I'm sure it's just a matter of when, and not if, I'll finally turn the corner. I've already seen brief glimpses of enlightenment.


For what it's worth, I have been to quite a few Wagner opera performances including a complete Ring cycle in one week (Mon, Tues, Thurs, Sat.) and very much enjoyed them BUT I have yet to be able to manage more than one act of _Tristan_ at a time! Maybe one of these days but why sweat it, there is much great music that I do find captivating. And please note, I do not say that to disparage the opera, far from it.


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## mountmccabe

When I first started listening to classical music in earnest I was still not ready for opera. Orchestral Wagner basically forced me to keep listening to opera, as it was some of the deepest, most touching music I had ever heard, even without knowing any of the dramatic content. The monumental symphonies of Anton Bruckner were the closest I could get, but there was more in the music of Wagner.

There were some other full operas I appreciated/loved before I fully accepted Wagner, but I would not have had as much interest in La traviata or Don Giovanni or Nixon in China if it had not been for Wagner.


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## Itullian

mountmccabe said:


> When I first started listening to classical music in earnest I was still not ready for opera. Orchestral Wagner basically forced me to keep listening to opera, as *it was some of the deepest, most touching music I had ever heard,* even without knowing any of the dramatic content. The monumental symphonies of Anton Bruckner were the closest I could get, but there was more in the music of Wagner.
> 
> There were some other full operas I appreciated/loved before I fully accepted Wagner, but I would not have had as much interest in La traviata or Don Giovanni or Nixon in China if it had not been for Wagner.


Totally agree. It's absolutely incredible. Nothing like it.


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## Itullian

I read that the Ring was actually conceived symphonically............

Rheingold, opening movement
Walkure,, slow movement
Siegfried, scherzo
Gotterdammerung, final movement

Amazing!


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## DavidA

Itullian said:


> I read that the Ring was actually conceived symphonically............
> 
> Rheingold, opening movement
> Walkure,, slow movement
> Siegfried, scherzo
> Gotterdammerung, final movement
> 
> Amazing!


I've read that but I think it's an interpretation someone has fancied on it rather than conceived by Wagner himself. You'd hardly class the storm that opens Walkure as a 'slow movement'. Or maybe he was thinking of the beginning of Act 3, the Ride of the Valkyries?


----------



## Itullian

DavidA said:


> I've read that but I think it's an interpretation someone has fancied on it rather than conceived by Wagner himself. You'd hardly class the storm that opens Walkure as a 'slow movement'. Or maybe he was thinking of the beginning of Act 3, the Ride of the Valkyries?


I knew you couldn't stand such a positive statement.

The opera as a whole!
And it fits perfectly.

Wagner conceived each act and each opera and the Ring as a whole as one and symphonically.
He was a gigantic genius.


----------



## Sloe

DavidA said:


> I've read that but I think it's an interpretation someone has fancied on it rather than conceived by Wagner himself. You'd hardly class the storm that opens Walkure as a 'slow movement'. Or maybe he was thinking of the beginning of Act 3, the Ride of the Valkyries?


I would say Die Walküre as a whole is a bit slow.


----------



## Celloman

Sloe said:


> I would say Die Walküre as a whole is a bit slow.


And thank goodness, because it means that we get to explore the psychological motivations of the characters on a deeper level. It certainly beats the action-packed superficiality of a summer blockbuster.


----------



## Itullian

Celloman said:


> And thank goodness, because it means that we get to explore the psychological motivations of the characters on a deeper level. It certainly beats the action-packed superficiality of a summer blockbuster.


Yup, agrand scale.
The first act duet, Brunhilde and Wotan, and the fairwell and fire music.
Slow but totally mesmerizing.


----------



## DavidA

Sloe said:


> I would say Die Walküre as a whole is a bit slow.


Some of it is slow. Some of Siegfried is slow too! and Rheingold and Gotterdamerung too!

I read about the 'symphonic' interpretation as a boy and thought it a bit far fetched then.


----------



## Itullian

DavidA said:


> Some of it is slow. Some of Siegfried is slow too!


Not overall sir. Of course "some"
Sheeeeeeesh, amazing.


----------



## Faustian

Itullian said:


> I read that the Ring was actually conceived symphonically............
> 
> Rheingold, opening movement
> Walkure,, slow movement
> Siegfried, scherzo
> Gotterdammerung, final movement
> 
> Amazing!


I think the comparison is definitely sort of fun (and perhaps describing Walkure as the "lyrical" movement in this giant, metaphorical symphony would be more apropos?), but I'm not sure Wagner _conceived_ they cycle in this way. Maybe someone with more knowledge on the genesis of the Ring could enlighten us....


----------



## Woodduck

Faustian said:


> I think the comparison is definitely sort of fun (and perhaps describing Walkure as the "lyrical" movement in this giant, metaphorical symphony would be more apropos?), but I'm not sure Wagner _conceived_ they cycle in this way. Maybe someone with more knowledge on the genesis of the Ring could enlighten us....


I'm not aware of any evidence that Wagner thought of the _Ring_ as a gigantic symphony, but I can believe that the suggestion would have delighted him. After all, form is form, and the contrasts of character between movements that make a symphony interesting and satisfying can certainly pertain, at least roughly, to a sequence of operas. And let's not forget the quasi-symphonic development of thematic material, which is laid out in a clear "exposition" in _Das Rheingold_ and recapitulated magnificently at the end of _Gotterdammerung._ As Anna Russell reminds us, "You're right back where you started, twenty hours ago!"


----------



## DavidA

Itullian said:


> Not overall sir. Of course "some"
> Sheeeeeeesh, amazing.


Actually most of the final duet is pretty slow, apart from the end!


----------



## Itullian

DavidA said:


> Actually most of the final duet is pretty slow, apart from the end!


Scherzos can be that way. The ends of all 3 acts are fast.

Face the genius!!!!!!!!


----------



## Itullian

Rheingold
Walkure
Siegried
Gotterdammerung

The greatest symphony ever.


----------



## Itullian

Anyone interested?


----------



## Sonata

Becca said:


> For what it's worth, I have been to quite a few Wagner opera performances including a complete Ring cycle in one week (Mon, Tues, Thurs, Sat.) and very much enjoyed them BUT I have yet to be able to manage more than one act of _Tristan_ at a time! Maybe one of these days but why sweat it, there is much great music that I do find captivating. And please note, I do not say that to disparage the opera, far from it.


We're on a similar page. Tristan was my intro to Wagner and very nearly turned me off of Wagner altogether. I tried to hammer some liking into my brain with no avail. Thanks to this forum, Jonas Kaufmann, and a couple of good orchestral excerpts albums I managed to discover the beauty of Wagners music. I'm going through my first full listen to the Ring and it's an incredible work!!!


----------



## Sonata

Itullian said:


> Anyone interested?


Why yes I am.... Once I've listened to Solti, Karajan, Krauss, Barenboim and Haitink!!


----------



## Itullian

Sonata said:


> Why yes I am.... Once I've listened to Solti, Karajan, Krauss, Barenboim and Haitink!!


And all great in their own way.


----------



## Itullian

Sonata said:


> We're on a similar page. Tristan was my intro to Wagner and very nearly turned me off of Wagner altogether. I tried to hammer some liking into my brain with no avail. Thanks to this forum, Jonas Kaufmann, and a couple of good orchestral excerpts albums I managed to discover the beauty of Wagners music. I'm going through my first full listen to the Ring and it's an incredible work!!!


Tristan is tough for many.
It took me awhile. And then.............
I normally pick an Act at a time. Same with most Wagner operas.
There's so much to hear and digest, each act is its own wonder.
But I must admit, it has spoiled me for other operas.
I get bored without all the wondrous orchestration and invention.


----------



## Azol

My favorite Wagner operas are Der fliegende Holländer, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde (which I enjoy the most). Parsifal starts to fascinate me as well. But I couldn't get into Ring at all. Guess I am not a true wagnerian


----------



## gardibolt

Deryck Cooke's 2-CD Introduction to the Ring (really an explanation of many of the leitmotifs and how they work) is essential to appreciation of the Ring, to my mind. It gives you a sense of the awe-inspiring mosaic that Wagner has created that you might not get at first blush. There's just so much going on all the time, and the orchestra is saying things that the vocalists aren't.


----------



## Faustian

Totally agree with the Cooke recommendation for anyone approaching the work for the first time, or trying to get over the hurdle of tackling it. I know it helped me immensely to become familiar with many of the themes I was going to be hearing, to better understand their context, and just have more appreciation for the musical structure of the work as a whole.

I would also strongly suggest following along with a libretto that traces some of the prominent leitmotifs as you're following the text for that extra level of enjoyment. I really like Stewart Spencer's:


----------



## Steatopygous

Azol said:


> My favorite Wagner operas are Der fliegende Holländer, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde (which I enjoy the most). Parsifal starts to fascinate me as well. But I couldn't get into Ring at all. Guess I am not a true wagnerian


Yet!
Short step from Tristan to Ring, and I'm confident you'll make it some time.


----------



## Steatopygous

gardibolt said:


> Deryck Cooke's 2-CD Introduction to the Ring (really an explanation of many of the leitmotifs and how they work) is essential to appreciation of the Ring, to my mind. It gives you a sense of the awe-inspiring mosaic that Wagner has created that you might not get at first blush. There's just so much going on all the time, and the orchestra is saying things that the vocalists aren't.


Completely agree. It's not _necessary_, in the sense that the human ear picks up the themes subconsciously (or many of them), especially on repeated hearings, but it really helped me understand in detail the extraordinary genius that has gone into the leitmotifs and how they are woven into the texture.


----------



## Itullian

Steatopygous said:


> Completely agree. It's not _necessary_, in the sense that the human ear picks up the themes subconsciously (or many of them), especially on repeated hearings, but it really helped me understand in detail the extraordinary genius that has gone into the leitmotifs and how they are woven into the texture.


It boggles the mind.


----------



## Admiral

Had one of those cool moments we all get yesterday. Shuffling through some old LPs I found that I already own the Karajan Walkure and Siegfried on vinyl, just when I was poised to buy the set on CD.

Popped the Siegfried on (Act 2, Scene 2) and was amazed by the sound. The woodwinds and hunting horn are especially well-recorded.

Love it when that happens.


----------



## Admiral

Show of hands - how many of you played the Immolation Scene for their spouses (who hate Wagner) this morning?

Anyone, anyone?

Just me?


----------



## DavidA

Admiral said:


> Show of hands - how many of you played the Immolation Scene for their spouses (who hate Wagner) this morning?
> 
> Anyone, anyone?
> 
> Just me?


After over 40 years of marriage I have learned to be smarter than that!


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Itullian said:


> But I must admit, it has spoiled me for other operas.
> I get bored without all the wondrous orchestration and invention.


That's the reason I found it difficult to get into other opera, apart from Wagner. The music and the stories just did not have the same magic.


----------



## Admiral

DavidA said:


> After over 40 years of marriage I have learned to be smarter than that!


Only 30 years for me but she knew I was a tenor when she signed the papers.


----------



## Steatopygous

Admiral said:


> Only 30 years for me but she knew I was a tenor when she signed the papers.


truly, love is blind.


----------



## DavidA

Admiral said:


> Only 30 years for me but she knew I was a tenor when she signed the papers.


I leave any singing to my wife! Else the neighbours complain!


----------



## DavidA

SiegendesLicht said:


> That's the reason I found it difficult to get into other opera, apart from Wagner. The music and the stories just did not have the same magic.


I'm glad I can enjoy opera over a wide range of composers, from Handel to Janacek. It's the sheer variety that is so enriching.


----------



## Steatopygous

DavidA said:


> I'm glad I can enjoy opera over a wide range of composers, from Handel to Janacek. It's the sheer variety that is so enriching.


With your permission, I'll amend this to "the sheer variety is one of the things that is so enriching". For it certainly is, but those like SiegendesLicht who don't find this true still find opera enriching, and we doubtless share much of that with him/her.


----------



## Woodduck

Steatopygous said:


> With your permission, I'll amend this to "the sheer variety is one of the things that is so enriching". For it certainly is, but those like SiegendesLicht who don't find this true still find opera enriching, and we doubtless share much of that with him/her.


Variety per se isn't always enriching anyway. I feel a lot more enriched by one superbly performed _Walkure_ or _Troyens_ than by an assorted dozen Offenbach tales, early Verdian vendettas, Rossiniana, and what have you.

Variety may be either the spice of life or a waste of time.


----------



## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> Variety per se isn't always enriching anyway. I feel a lot more enriched by one superbly performed _Walkure_ or _Troyens_ than by an assorted dozen Offenbach tales, early Verdian vendettas, Rossiniana, and what have you.
> 
> Variety may be either the spice of life or a waste of time.


You once again take a statement to its bleakly logical conclusion. I don't believe I mentioned an assorted dozen Offenbach tales among my operatic fancies.


----------



## Itullian

I love variety. I listen to *all* Wagner's mature operas.


----------



## DavidA

Itullian said:


> I love variety. I listen to *all* Wagner's mature operas.


So do I (except Tannhauser which I find boring) but please, not all the time! Cleanse ones soul with Bach and Mozart!


----------



## Itullian

DavidA said:


> So do I but Please, not all the time! Cleanse ones soul with Bach and Mozart!


I cleanse my soul at confession. 
Wagner does soothe my soul. I love Wolfy, just not in that mood lately.
Love Bach too. And Haydn, Brahms, Schumann.
Jethro Tull, The Who, Yes, etc


----------



## DavidA

Itullian said:


> I cleans my soul at confession.
> Wagner does soothe my soul. I love Wolfy, just not in that mood lately.
> Love Bach too. And Haydn, Brahms, Schumann.
> Jethro Tull, The Who, Yes, etc


I think we go through phases where a particular composer (or type of music) is 'in'. I know I do.


----------



## Itullian

DavidA said:


> I think we go through phases where a particular composer (or type of music) is 'in'. I know I do.


True. I always have room for a Mozart piano concerto or Bach on the piano.


----------



## Itullian

Listened to Act I of Meister last night. What beautiful music.


----------



## Sonata

Itullian said:


> Listened to Act I of Meister last night. What beautiful music.


So did I  Act II starting in a few minutes


----------



## Itullian

Sonata said:


> So did I  Act II starting in a few minutes


Love it ..................
Which one?


----------



## Sonata

Borrowed from the library: Jochum with Placido Domingo, Christa Ludwig, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.


----------



## Itullian

Sonata said:


> Borrowed from the library: Jochum with Placido Domingo, Christa Ludwig, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.


I like that one a lot. Some don't like DFD or Domingo, but I think they're excellent.
Especially his Prize Song.


----------



## Sonata

Yeah, I'm enjoying it so far. It's so strange, after being unable to get into Wagner aside from the bleeding chunks for years, he's finally clicking for me. Part of it I think is simply more experience listening to opera, I've built up the endurance for longer pieces. Also I realize that the particular recording can make or break a Wagner opera for me. It's been an exciting few weeks. 

My Barenboim Ring arrived in the mail today  yay! And I have a Parsifal, Tristan, and Dutchman arriving next week.

Only downside: my goal to limit myself to 1-2 albums per month has been shot.....again.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Steatopygous said:


> PS, Shaw, interestingly, put Mozart and Wagner at the pinnacle of composers.


Shaw also thought that Stalin was candid, fair, and honest- and that water ran uphill.

But we won't hold his eclipsing of Verdi and Strauss by Mozart and Wagner against him.


----------



## DavidA

Marschallin Blair said:


> Shaw also thought that Stalin was candid, fair, and honest- and that water ran uphill.
> 
> But we won't hold his eclipsing of Verdi and Strauss by Mozart and Wagner against him.


Shaw also denounced the trio of Pasteur, Lister and Jenner as murderers posing as saviours of mankind. How wrong can you be?


----------



## Steatopygous

Marschallin Blair said:


> Shaw also thought that Stalin was candid, fair, and honest- and that water ran uphill.
> 
> But we won't hold his eclipsing of Verdi and Strauss by Mozart and Wagner against him.


Very fair-minded of you. I can understand him liking the Fabians, but admiration for Stalin must have involved wilful blindess. But look at Bertrand Russell's ethics. You find it everywhere. 
At risk of straying far off topic, I was an ardent socialist for about four months when I was 18. In my town there were about 42 socialists, and 19 socialist parties, and we spent every minute fighting not injustice but for the defeat and humiliation of the other socialist parties. That is more years ago than I care to consider, but even then I knew what Stalin was.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Steatopygous said:


> Very fair-minded of you. I can understand him liking the Fabians, but admiration for Stalin must have involved wilful blindess. But look at Bertrand Russell's ethics. You find it everywhere.
> At risk of straying far off topic, I was an ardent socialist for about four months when I was 18. *In my town there were about 42 socialists, and 19 socialist parties, and we spent every minute fighting not injustice but for the defeat and humiliation of the other socialist parties.* That is more years ago than I care to consider, but even then I knew what Stalin was.


As long as they stay that way, they are harmless.


----------



## Figleaf

Steatopygous said:


> Very fair-minded of you. I can understand him liking the Fabians, but admiration for Stalin must have involved wilful blindess. But look at Bertrand Russell's ethics. You find it everywhere.
> *At risk of straying far off topic, I was an ardent socialist for about four months when I was 18. In my town there were about 42 socialists, and 19 socialist parties, and we spent every minute fighting not injustice but for the defeat and humiliation of the other socialist parties. *That is more years ago than I care to consider, but even then I knew what Stalin was.


It's a rite of passage, we've all been there!  I think that with regard to music, Shaw was simply a contrarian and a silly one at that. If he were around now he would probably be rubbishing Wagner, that universally acclaimed composer of operatic warhorses, and championing something unfashionable, obscure or relatively new- once he'd made sure there was already a bandwagon to jump on to, since he wasn't the first critic to promote Wagner's operas.


----------



## Marschallin Blair

Steatopygous said:


> Very fair-minded of you. I can understand him liking the Fabians, but admiration for Stalin must have involved wilful blindess. But look at Bertrand Russell's ethics. You find it everywhere.
> At risk of straying far off topic, I was an ardent socialist for about four months when I was 18. In my town there were about 42 socialists, and 19 socialist parties, and we spent every minute fighting not injustice but for the defeat and humiliation of the other socialist parties. That is more years ago than I care to consider, but even then I knew what Stalin was.


I always found Shaw clever but rarely profound.

And though Shaw's individualistic and atheistic views more or less dovetail with my own, I have to admit that it was his nemesis, the arch-Catholic G.K. Chesterton, who seemed to come out on top in the exchange of wit.

But in academe, Chesterton is deep-sixed down the Orwellian Memory Hole. . .

I love your story about your town with forty-two socialists and nineteen socialist parties- and how the top priority was to defeat the other parties. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Kautsky, Trotsky, Stalin, Lenin, Lasalle, whomever- no socialist will call any other party true socialism unless it assigns to themselves the most lofty and eminent position.


----------



## Itullian

Spot on in his music though.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Itullian said:


> Listened to Act I of Meister last night. What beautiful music.


I am doing the same right now after a few weeks' diet of black- and folk-metal. Sonic orgasm! Not that the metal was bad...


----------



## Itullian

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am doing the same right now after a few weeks' diet of black- and folk-metal. Sonic orgasm! Not that the metal was bad...


I recently went through a Who and Jeff Beck period


----------



## Marschallin Blair

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am doing the same right now after a few weeks' diet of black- and folk-metal. Sonic orgasm! Not that the metal was bad...







Meistersinger 'and' Immortal: that yin-and-yangs beautifully.

'Beautiful-and-bad.'

I like it.


----------



## gardibolt

Finally got around to having time to spend with the 1953 Keilberth and it's quite wonderful. The recording quality seems better than the Krauss---I take it this was the second cycle and they had a chance to adjust the recording equipment?


----------



## Itullian

gardibolt said:


> Finally got around to having time to spend with the 1953 Keilberth and it's quite wonderful. The recording quality seems better than the Krauss---I take it this was the second cycle and they had a chance to adjust the recording equipment?


It is better balanced I think. I love it.


----------



## howlingfantods

gardibolt said:


> Finally got around to having time to spend with the 1953 Keilberth and it's quite wonderful. The recording quality seems better than the Krauss---I take it this was the second cycle and they had a chance to adjust the recording equipment?


Nope, Keilberth did the first cycle and Krauss the second. I agree that the recording quality seems better with the Keilberth, no idea why though.

Honestly I don't know why folks around here seem to like the 1953 Keilberth so much. I much prefer his 1952 and 1955 cycles, the 1955 for the sound and the better Sieglinde with Brouwenstijn and the 1952 for some interesting performers like Borkh and Lorenz and the blazingly hot take on Rheingold that Keilberth never equalled. I suppose I could see the appeal of the 1953 if you prefer Modl over Varnay...


----------



## Steatopygous

Figleaf said:


> It's a rite of passage, we've all been there!  I think that with regard to music, Shaw was simply a contrarian and a silly one at that. If he were around now he would probably be rubbishing Wagner, that universally acclaimed composer of operatic warhorses, and championing something unfashionable, obscure or relatively new- once he'd made sure there was already a bandwagon to jump on to, since he wasn't the first critic to promote Wagner's operas.


We have indeed. I'm not vain enough to think my story unusual. There's the famous dictum of Churchill to general effect (ie not an accurate quote) that anyone who is not a socialist at 18 is a cad but anyone who is still a socialist at 40 is an idiot. 
I disagree re Shaw, though. He had strong opinions on music, and perhaps enjoyed it if they were contrarian, but I think they were genuine, not affected.


----------



## Steatopygous

Marschallin Blair said:


> I always found Shaw clever but rarely profound.
> 
> And though Shaw's individualistic and atheistic views more or less dovetail with my own, I have to admit that it was his nemesis, the arch-Catholic G.K. Chesterton, who seemed to come out on top in the exchange of wit.
> 
> But in academe, Chesterton is deep-sixed down the Orwellian Memory Hole. . .
> 
> I love your story about your town with forty-two socialists and nineteen socialist parties- and how the top priority was to defeat the other parties. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
> 
> Kautsky, Trotsky, Stalin, Lenin, Lasalle, whomever- no socialist will call any other party true socialism unless it assigns to themselves the most lofty and eminent position.


Thank you. I am also a fan of Chesterton, author of some wonderful one-liners, the entertaining Father Brown series, and a really fine book on theology/social observation in Orthodoxy.


----------



## Sonata

Steatopygous said:


> So what you are really arguing for is operas only in their entirety. That's not really practical for performers or listeners. I understand reservations about bleeding chunks being torn from the living beast, but there's also a place for extracts. Mind you, it is much better if the listener already knows the opera so the context etc is actually present.


Now you are saying that there is a place for extracts from opera? That one may listen to some of the opera and not all yet still have value derived? You were debating the exact opposite in the Mozart opera thread


----------



## Steatopygous

Sonata said:


> Now you are saying that there is a place for extracts from opera? That one may listen to some of the opera and not all yet still have value derived? You were debating the exact opposite in the Mozart opera thread


Aha! Sprung, it seems. You've caught me in an inconsistency?  
Perhaps I can explain a little further. Of course there is a place for extracts, including recitals by singers who pluck an aria or two from an opera, or when you just feel like hearing a particular bit. Most of us can't sit down and listen to two to six hours of an opera without explicitly planning to do so, and I recognise that. 
My comments in the other thread are directed at people who think they are "listening to the opera" as it were but cutting out the recitative or"boring" bits. And also at those who say they know the opera when they have never sat down with score or libretto and actually paid it serious attention. And again, that takes explicit planning and commitment. But I aver that unless you know what the characters are saying and singing, and how the plot develops in detail, and have some sort of understanding of how the composer achieves all that musically, you cannot possibly be said to "know" the opera. You can certainly be said, however, to "enjoy" the opera. And if that is all people want to do, well that's their choice. The only reason I take the line I do is that I think people would get even more out any given opera if they listened seriously, that the more you put in the more you get out.


----------



## Sonata

I'm debating whether to listen to Leinsdorf Walkure or Jess Thomas in Lohengrin.....


----------



## Itullian

Lohengrin .......................


----------



## Sonata

Itullian said:


> Lohengrin .......................


that was my choice! But I didn't have it downloaded on my phone .

Walkure it is then! Lohengrin by Thursday


----------



## The Conte

howlingfantods said:


> Nope, Keilberth did the first cycle and Krauss the second. I agree that the recording quality seems better with the Keilberth, no idea why though.
> 
> Honestly I don't know why folks around here seem to like the 1953 Keilberth so much. I much prefer his 1952 and 1955 cycles, the 1955 for the sound and the better Sieglinde with Brouwenstijn and the 1952 for some interesting performers like Borkh and Lorenz and the blazingly hot take on Rheingold that Keilberth never equalled. *I suppose I could see the appeal of the 1953 if you prefer Modl over Varnay...*


And that is one of the reasons why I love the Keilberth 53.

N.


----------



## Itullian

Hey Wagnerians, how many Rings in modern sound from Bayreuth are there?
I have the Boulez, Barenboim and now getting the Thielemann.
Any others?


----------



## howlingfantods

Itullian said:


> Hey Wagnerians, how many Rings in modern sound from Bayreuth are there?
> I have the Boulez, Barenboim and now getting the Thielemann.
> Any others?


The Bohm. Otherwise, that's the full list of commercial recordings, although you can easily get tapings of many if not all the others through various sources like Opera Depot.


----------



## gardibolt

Does Bayreuth routinely record all of the performances there? If so, when did they start doing that?


----------



## DavidA

gardibolt said:


> Does Bayreuth routinely record all of the performances there? If so, when did they start doing that?


Certainly many operas have seemed to be recorded regularly post WW2.


----------



## Itullian

howlingfantods said:


> *The Bohm*. Otherwise, that's the full list of commercial recordings, although you can easily get tapings of many if not all the others through various sources like Opera Depot.


Oh yeah, Got it. :tiphat:


----------



## Barbebleu

Itullian said:


> Hey Wagnerians, how many Rings in modern sound from Bayreuth are there?
> I have the Boulez, Barenboim and now getting the Thielemann.
> Any others?


Hi Itullian. There's a Ring from Bayreuth 1983 conducted by Solti. This is available from various sources and it was on YouTube too. Audio only though.


----------



## Barbebleu

Itullian said:


> Hey Wagnerians, how many Rings in modern sound from Bayreuth are there?
> I have the Boulez, Barenboim and now getting the Thielemann.
> Any others?


Here's a link for the 1983 cycle

http://www.opera-club.net/release.asp?rel=544


----------



## Itullian

Wow, those opening chords at the beginning of Act 3 of Tristan wafting upwards
and then then the wind solo.
So gripping.................


----------



## Itullian

For 1.99 I'm giving this a try..............










Samples sounded pretty good. Nice sound.


----------



## Woodduck

Itullian said:


> For 1.99 I'm giving this a try..............
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Samples sounded pretty good. Nice sound.


I can just hear that stylish sister trio on the cover singing "Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo!"


----------



## Itullian

Woodduck said:


> I can just hear that stylish sister trio on the cover singing "Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo!"


:lol: I hope they're as good as the Andrews.


----------



## gardibolt

I just learned that by an historical accident (the first Lohengrin was not very good so Wagner instructed that he shouldn't sing the second half of his story in Act III after In fernem Land), the second half of Lohengrin's tale is by longstanding practice routinely omitted from performances and recordings. Does anyone know of a list of which recordings have the entire thing? I can see I'll be checking my versions against scores to see whether I have truncated versions or not.


----------



## Barbebleu

gardibolt said:


> I just learned that by an historical accident (the first Lohengrin was not very good so Wagner instructed that he shouldn't sing the second half of his story in Act III after In fernem Land), the second half of Lohengrin's tale is by longstanding practice routinely omitted from performances and recordings. Does anyone know of a list of which recordings have the entire thing? I can see I'll be checking my versions against scores to see whether I have truncated versions or not.


I'm sure the Barenboim has the extended version of the grail narration.


----------



## howlingfantods

Barbebleu said:


> I'm sure the Barenboim has the extended version of the grail narration.


The Kaufmann Wagner recital album with Runnicles has the full version too. Other than that, the Leinsdorf and the Bychkov both do apparently, but I've not heard them.


----------



## Barbebleu

Here's a link to Konya singing the extended Grail narration from Leinsdorf's Lohengrin.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

Just starting with Act III of die Meistersinger (Glyndebourne production). The prelude is amazing. So much peace, and sadness, and longing...


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## Itullian

SiegendesLicht said:


> Just starting with Act III of die Meistersinger (Glyndebourne production). The prelude is amazing. So much peace, and sadness, and longing...


Always gets to me, and how Sachs overcomes his sadness.
What a monologue!


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## SiegendesLicht

Yes, and what do you think about the Glyndebourne production? Have you ever seen it?


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## Itullian

What an act it is. 
The prelude, Sach's monologue, the prize song, the scene with Eva, the quintet the festival, the contest, the finale.
INCREDIBLE!!!


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## Itullian

SiegendesLicht said:


> Yes, and what do you think about the Glyndebourne production? Have you ever seen it?


The one with Finley as Sachs?
WONDERFUL!!!

Its a smaller scale Meister, but I think it works.

Walther is a bit light though.


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## SiegendesLicht

I'm watching it for the first time now, and I find it wonderful too.

If I ever have to choose music for a wedding, it will be some part of Die Meistersinger. It's just so joyful.

Ah yes, and Beckmesser is hilarious.


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## Itullian

SiegendesLicht said:


> I'm watching it for the first time now, and I find it wonderful too.
> 
> If I ever have to choose music for a wedding, it will be some part of Die Meistersinger. It's just so joyful.


Not the 2nd act riot scene I hope 
just kidding


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## SiegendesLicht

The quintet's coming...

I realize I'm probably getting on people's nerves already with my boundless admiration of all things Teutonic.... but I really really like the way Wagner's German sounds here, with all the voices blending. It's a perfect match for the music.


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## mountmccabe

That Glyndebourne production is coming to San Francisco next month. There are six performances, November 18 through December 6. I had been planning on seeing it on the 6th, the day before my birthday but yesterday I realized that that would leave me no chance to see a second performance! Or a third.

Hans Sachs - Greer Grimsley
Walther von Stolzing - Brandon Jovanovich
Eva - Rachel Willis-Sørensen
Magdalena - Sasha Cooke
David - Alek Shrader
Sixtus Beckmesser - Martin Gantner

Mark Elder is conducting.


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## Itullian

SiegendesLicht said:


> The quintet's coming...
> 
> I realize I'm probably getting on people's nerves already with my boundless admiration of all things Teutonic.... but I really really like the way Wagner's German sounds here, with all the voices blending. It's a perfect match for the music.


This is the Wagner thread.
Let it roll.

Next is the festival!


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## SiegendesLicht

I've gotten to the finale by now. What a music! What an opera! What a Meister!

It's been a fun evening, and by now it is slowly turning into morning. Sweet dreams to all fellow admirers!


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## Itullian

SiegendesLicht said:


> I've gotten to the finale by now. What a music! What an opera! What a Meister!
> 
> It's been a fun evening, and by now it is slowly turning into morning. Sweet dreams to all fellow admirers!


I take it you enjoyed it 
Hope you slept ok.


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## gardibolt

SiegendesLicht said:


> The quintet's coming...
> 
> I realize I'm probably getting on people's nerves already with my boundless admiration of all things Teutonic.... but I really really like the way Wagner's German sounds here, with all the voices blending. It's a perfect match for the music.


If you can't say it here in the Wagner thread, where could you say it? Lay on, Macduff.


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## SiegendesLicht

gardibolt said:


> If you can't say it here in the Wagner thread, where could you say it? Lay on, Macduff.


All over the place 

Just now I am trying to get through some of Arthur Schopenhauer's _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, another source of inspiration for Wagner. For now I don't want to wade through the entire huge volume, so I went straight to the chapter on denial of the will to live. I find it to be a very pessimistic, ascetic philosophy and definitely not something I would want to live by. But I understand much better where Wagner was coming from when he made his Tristan and Isolde desire to be united in death.


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## gardibolt

I see the Met Live in HD programme will have Levine conducting Tannhäuser on October 31, noon EST. First season it's been performed at the Met in a decade as I understand it. I intend to be there. Who's with me?


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## Barbebleu

Nbbbb


SiegendesLicht said:


> The quintet's coming...
> 
> I realize I'm probably getting on people's nerves already with my boundless admiration of all things Teutonic.... but I really really like the way Wagner's German sounds here, with all the voices blending. It's a perfect match for the music.


No way you are getting on anyone's neves on this thread. Keep on keeping on!!


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## Barbebleu

SiegendesLicht said:


> The quintet's coming...
> 
> I realize I'm probably getting on people's nerves already with my boundless admiration of all things Teutonic.... but I really really like the way Wagner's German sounds here, with all the voices blending. It's a perfect match for the music.


No way you are getting on anyone's neves on this thread. Keep on keeping on!! Sorry about double post.


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## SiegendesLicht

gardibolt said:


> I see the Met Live in HD programme will have Levine conducting Tannhäuser on October 31, noon EST. First season it's been performed at the Met in a decade as I understand it. I intend to be there. Who's with me?


I am with you. The Met live in HD programme is coming to my native city of Minsk this year - for the first time ever!!!


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## Barbebleu

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am with you. The Met live in HD programme is coming to my native city of Minsk this year - for the first time ever!!!


Minsk! Приятно слышать от вас другу. I hope I have got that right?


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## SiegendesLicht

^ Almost.

Fun fact: October 31 is celebrated as Reformation Day in Lutheran parts of Germany. Whereas the plot of Tannhäuser takes place at the same Wartburg Castle where Marthin Luther worked on his translation of the Bible into German that was the beginning of the Reformation.


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## Barbebleu

D


SiegendesLicht said:


> ^ Almost.
> 
> Fun fact: October 31 is celebrated as Reformation Day in Lutheran parts of Germany. Whereas the plot of Tannhäuser takes place at the same Wartburg Castle where Marthin Luther worked on his translation of the Bible into German that was the beginning of the Reformation.


What should it have been? I was trying to say Good to hear from you friend. My Russian is not good I'm afraid. My German is better I think and so is my Spanish.


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## SiegendesLicht

I've replied on your wall.


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## Barbebleu

SiegendesLicht said:


> I've replied on your wall.


Got it! Regards to all from sunny Athens.


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## Itullian

Beginning of a new RING by Naxos..............


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## SiegendesLicht

Less than three hours until Tannhäuser! Yeay!


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## Pugg

SiegendesLicht said:


> Less than three hours until Tannhäuser! Yeay!


I can not wait .
Our Domestic : Eva Maria Westbroek


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## SiegendesLicht

So, how did you like it?


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## gardibolt

I quite enjoyed it. Botha was good though it took some time to get used to his voice. The Elisabeth was really powerful and she made Act III very moving.


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## Sonata

Listened to Lohengrin twice in a row this week! Well almost. I listened to Acts I @ II last week. I listened to the final act yesterday and as soon as that was done, I started it right over again.

It might be my favorite Wagner opera alongside Rheingold. (though I wouldn't rule out Gotterdammerung or Dutchman yet, I haven't listened to them yet enough to make a full decision).

I listened to the Domingo and Normal version and loved it. Beautiful singing, beautiful orchestra. I understand the criticism that Norman doesn't sound like an innocent young woman but I don't care because she sounds gorgeous here. That said I would be open to another interpretation!!

What are your favorite *Lohengrins*?


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## Itullian

^^^Kempe, EMI/Warner, Solti top 2.


















I think you might like Abbado too.


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## howlingfantods

Sonata said:


> What are your favorite *Lohengrins*?


I'll give you my top 2 picks, since I think they're a notch above the others.









My favorite is a bit of an underdog. Kubelik, also responsible for my favorite Meistersinger and Parsifal, gives a great and great sounding performance of the score. It has that completely necessary dreamy fairytale quality without bogging down and losing forward momentum. My absolute favorite Elsa here, in Gundula Janowitz. Her beautiful, silvery voice and her reserved charm is perfect for Elsa. James King is a fine, heroic Lohengrin, more helden than Domingo or Thomas, although maybe not as ingratiating on the ear as either. King is more to my tastes. A very strong overall cast--Stewart is a fine manly Telramund, Ridderbusch and Nienstadt doing their usual very good low-voiced work as the King and the Herald. Probably the weakest link is Gwyneth Jones, sounding a mite wobbly. It's not too bad at this point in her career, and she does sound suitably loopy and crazed, but she won't erase any memories of Ludwig or Klose.









Second is the very popular top pick, the Kempe. A very fine performance with one big flaw. Lohengrin is one of Kempe's most successful operas--where I find him at times underdramatic in his two Ring cycles, Lohengrin and Meistersinger takes well to his overall lighter subtler approach. Thomas and Grummer are outstanding as the leads, and this also has my favorite Ortrud in Ludwig. Unfortunately it also has what I think is a slightly poorly cast DFD as Telramund--DFD always seems to think his voice is bigger and darker than it is, and I find him a little undercast for a lot of the Wagner he attempts. Much worse is the absolutely past his prime Otto Wiener as the Herald. Normally a role that's far too minor to be a major impediment, but Wiener sounds so awful and nasal, it totally ruins the spell every time he has a line. And since the Herald is the first voice heard, it always takes me out of the opera just as it's starting.

Still, I think on a different level above many of the other picks, and if you can overlook the crap in the punchbowl, a totally reasonable top pick.

Lohengrin has been pretty fortunate on disc, with a lot of very good recordings and few duds. Not as special as the first two but still very good recordings include the two Konya Bayreuth recordings with Matacic and Clutens, the Heger with Volker and Muller, and that Domingo recording you have.


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## The Conte

Itullian said:


> ^^^Kempe, EMI/Warner, Solti top 2.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think you might like Abbado too.


The Abbado gets my vote (I prefer Meier over Ludwug as Ortrud, but only just) for first choice and then Kempe for second choice. My favourite live recording is this one:









I don't know if it is available outside of the Met Wagner box set.

N.


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## Itullian

Despite his disdain for some of the sillier aspects of grand opera, H.L. Mencken once said that Die Meistersinger was the greatest single work of art in Western civilization


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## Sloe

Itullian said:


> Despite his disdain for some of the sillier aspects of grand opera, H.L. Mencken once said that Die Meistersinger was the greatest single work of art in Western civilization


I don´t think Die Meistersinger is one of the most accessible Wagner operas. I needed to listen to it some times to really appreciate it. I would place it along with Tristan und Isolde. Less accessible than The Ring, Dutchman and Lohengrin but more accessible than Tannhäusser and Parsifal.


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## DavidA

Sloe said:


> I don´t think Die Meistersinger is one of the most accessible Wagner operas. I needed to listen to it some times to really appreciate it. I would place it along with Tristan und Isolde. Less accessible than The Ring, Dutchman and Lohengrin but more accessible than Tannhäusser and Parsifal.


It would be a lot more accessible if it were shorter imo. Wagner does labour his points somewhat - David's interminable e plantation of the rules is one example - and probably about an hour could be lost from the running time without too much damage to the drama. But Wagner never felt the need to employ an editor, apparently! Of course there is some great music but I always feel it's effect is diluted by the sheer length.


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## howlingfantods

DavidA said:


> It would be a lot more accessible if it were shorter. Wagner does labour his points somewhat and probably about an hour could be lost from the running time without too much damage to the drama. But Wagner never felt the need to employ an editor, apparently! Of course there is some great music but I always feel it's effect is diluted by the shher length.


I wouldn't want to lose many minutes from any of his operas. I'm not a stickler for completism and I can enjoy recordings with a few minor cuts, but I never feel like those cuts improve the experience any.

I also can't really see how there's anything at all inaccessible about Meistersinger. It's so cheerful and full of bonhomie. I find Meistersinger and Parsifal the most accessible since those are the two most musically inspired. Tannhauser isn't less accessible--it's just not as good as his other operas.


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## Sloe

howlingfantods said:


> I wouldn't want to lose many minutes from any of his operas. I'm not a stickler for completism and I can enjoy recordings with a few minor cuts, but I never feel like those cuts improve the experience any.
> 
> I also can't really see how there's anything at all inaccessible about Meistersinger. It's so cheerful and full of bonhomie. I find Meistersinger and Parsifal the most accessible since those are the two most musically inspired. Tannhauser isn't less accessible--it's just not as good as his other operas.


With accessible I meant capability to manage listening or seeing through the complete opera regardless if it is because they are not so good or not. I think many cheerfull operas can be a bit difficult to get through. Die Meistersinger is great but it is not an opera that is full of highlights from the beginning to the end most of it are scenes were they are just talking with each others. Even if you and me don´t think Tannhäusser is so good it is still one of the most popular operas by Wagner and loved by many others.


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## Woodduck

Which Wagner we find most accessible - or most musically inspired - is obviously quite an individual matter. A lot of people have trouble with _Parsifal_, but it worked its magic on me immediately, and the length of it was not a deterrent. _Tristan_ absorbed me pretty quickly too, and the _Ring _instantly grabbed the imagination of a kid who grew up reading mythological tales. _Meistersinger_ took longer, not because the music is inferior but because it's subject matter is more mundane and it doesn't go to the emotional extremes or present the other-worldly imagery that so appealed to my youthful imagination. Maybe if you grew up on Mozart, _Meistersinger_ would be the Wagnerian starting point for you.


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## Itullian

It took me a while on Meister too.
Bit I now love every glorious minute. It's astounding.


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## Faustian

howlingfantods said:


> I wouldn't want to lose many minutes from any of his operas. I'm not a stickler for completism and I can enjoy recordings with a few minor cuts, but I never feel like those cuts improve the experience any.


I agree completely. Yes one could makes cuts to Die Meistersinger and still understand the plot and main thrust of the drama, but the length would only be an issue for me if there were elements in it that felt redundant or extraneous, or if there were segments where the music was significantly less inspired. But none of these things are the case. Every dramatic situation or conversation in the opera deepens our understanding and appreciation of the characters and their motivations, makes them more vivid, and ultimately enriches the complex drama. And of course the music is unwavering in its brilliance.


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## gardibolt

It took a while for Meistersinger to grow on me as well. It does require a major commitment of time and attention because of its sheer size, and that's increasingly difficult to ask of people. The 19th century moved at a more leisurely pace.


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## Itullian

gardibolt said:


> It took a while for Meistersinger to grow on me as well. It does require a major commitment of time and attention because of its sheer size, and that's increasingly difficult to ask of people. The 19th century moved at a more leisurely pace.


I took it an act at a time at first after my initial listening.


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## Barbebleu

gardibolt said:


> It took a while for Meistersinger to grow on me as well. It does require a major commitment of time and attention because of its sheer size, and that's increasingly difficult to ask of people. The 19th century moved at a more leisurely pace.


Four and a half hours of your life is hardly a major commitment. The reward is greater than the investment in time. Of course it depends on one's individual circumstances and I understand that some of us have many things that require attention in our lives. I am fortunate enough to be retired and therefore work is not an issue but I do lead a busy life, but I can always make time for Richard's music.


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## Steatopygous

It moves around for me. Right now, Gotterdammerung is my favourite Wagner opera. It replaced Walkure, which replaced Lohengrin, which replaced the Dutchman. I expect Parsifal will be next. But it's only in a thread like this that I think in those terms. Mostly I am happy to accept them all as magnificent. Mind you, Wagner himself obviously grows in maturity between the Dutchman and Gotterdammerung.


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## SiegendesLicht

Itullian said:


> It took me a while on Meister too.
> Bit I now love every glorious minute. It's astounding.


Yes! Die Meistersinger is not a minute too long.


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## Dim7

Great overture, great ending, but otherwise I was frankly bored. What's with the mundane plot? I should post the part where they sing about shoes to the "Dull text excerpts to stave off the excitement" thread.


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## gellio

Itullian said:


> Despite his disdain for some of the sillier aspects of grand opera, H.L. Mencken once said that Die Meistersinger was the greatest single work of art in Western civilization


As much as I love Wagner, I'd give that nod to Le nozzle di Figaro or Don Giovanni.


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## The Conte

Itullian said:


> Despite his disdain for some of the sillier aspects of grand opera, H.L. Mencken once said that Die Meistersinger was the greatest single work of art in Western civilization


Poor Mencken, couldn't he get tickets for the Ring?

N.


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## anmhe

Itullian said:


> Beginning of a new RING by Naxos..............


I was on board until I saw "Van Zweden." If it's on par with his Parsifal recording, I'm out. Does he do a better job here?


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## Sonata

Barbebleu said:


> *Four and a half hours of your life is hardly a major commitment*. The reward is greater than the investment in time. Of course it depends on one's individual circumstances and I understand that some of us have many things that require attention in our lives. I am fortunate enough to be retired and therefore work is not an issue but I do lead a busy life, but I can always make time for Richard's music.


Agree to disagree!  No, four and a half hours over the course of days or a couple weeks is not a huge commitment. HOWEVER some works can be. If I have less than forty minutes to devote to a new opera, I'm better off leaving it aside for the future when I have more time. (Unless 40 minutes covers a full act, a natural stopping point.) Start-stop-start-stop to a very long new work and I'm likely to end up focusing on "just getting through it" rather than being able to enjoy it properly


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## DavidA

Sitting down to listen to a whole opera is quite a commitment of time as well as the auditory senses when not also accompanied by the visual. I tend to listen to opera act by act. Tonight I shall listen to Act 3 of Rusalka. Poor old prince!


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## Dim7

Even an opera hater like me is sometimes compelled to listen to Wagner. That is remarkable.


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## Woodduck

The Conte said:


> Poor Mencken, couldn't he get tickets for the Ring?
> 
> N.


Or _Tristan_ or _Parsifal?_

Marvelous as _Meistersinger_ is as music and as storytelling, it isn't likely to upset anyone's reality except Beckmesser's. Wagner's greatest works can take us places we are not sure it's altogether safe to go. _Tristan_ and _Parsifal_ - at times the _Ring_ too, though in less concentrated form - open doors to hidden realms of exaltation and horror, often simultaneously, to which Wagner, alone among opera composers, had the key. _Meistersinger_, I think, was a needed vacation for him after the exhausting experience of _Tristan_, and an opportunity to flex the compositional muscles his work on the _Ring_ and _Tristan_ had developed, to his immense delight. It's a celebration of music, and purely as music probably the equal of anything he did. But it's in _Tristan_ that he created the most inconceivable thing ever composed or set upon the stage, and in _Parsifal_ that he penetrated the most secret places of the soul.


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## Guest

Dim7 said:


> Even an opera hater like me is sometimes compelled to listen to Wagner. That is remarkable.


Really? Somebody somewhere has just banned you from something.


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## TxllxT

*Wagner - Das Rheingold*

Wagner - Der Ring Des Nibelungen: Das Rheingold [Boulez] - English Subs






WAGNER - DAS RHEINGOLD - SAWALLISCH






WAGNER - Das Rheingold / OAOE / Sir Simon Rattle - Baden Baden, 2004


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## TxllxT

*Wagner - Die Walküre*

Wagner - Der Ring Des Nibelungen: Die Walküre [Act I/II; Boulez] - English Subs






Wagner - Die Walküre, Bayreuth 1992 (Barenboim, Tomlinson, Elming, Secunde)






Wagner Die Walkuere Wiener Staatsoper, 2015


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## TxllxT

*Wagner - Siegfried*

Wagner - Der Ring Des Nibelungen: Siegfried [Act I/II; Boulez] - English Subs






Richard Wagner - Siegfried, Wiener Staatsoper, 2015






Wagner "Siegfried" -- Furtwängler -- Suthaus -- Patzak -- Frantz -- Mödl 1953


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## TxllxT

*Wagner - Götterdämmerung*

Wagner, Götterdämmerung, Boulez, Bayreuth '79






Wagner - Götterdämmerung, Knappertsbusch, Bayreuth '51






Wagner "Götterdämmerung" -- Furtwängler --Lorenz -- Flagstad -- Höngen 1950


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## gardibolt

Esteemed silent film composer/conductor Robert Israel wrote this excellent summation of Fritz Lang's two films on the Nibelungenlied, Siegfried and Kriemhild's Revenge (Kriemhild being the equivalent of Wagner's Gutrune), over at Nitrateville.com. I thought I'd share it here for Lang's different but yet familiar take on the original of Wagner's operas. In particular, Gutrune/Kriemhild is a much more active participant for Lang, Etzel (Attila the Hun) gets involved, and Siegfried drinks no potion---he's just a right ******* in order to get his hands on Gutrune/Kriemhild. No Ring necessary, but Brünnhilde still kills herself.
-----------------------------


Robert Israel Music
Posts: 34
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2010 2:53 pm
Re: Cinema Arte's DIE NIBELUNGEN
PostTue Nov 24, 2015 5:05 pm

Fritz Lang’s epic film version of DIE NIBELUNGENLIED is certainly one of the great cinematic achievements of the early to mid 1920s. To understand the ending one must understand what kind of characters are represented throughout this particular adaptation.

Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou managed to distill key elements from the original source, and the play version by Friedrich Hebbel, and it is their version that concentrates on some basic human-psychological elements, and some socio-political questions. Siegfried is merely a blacksmith’s apprentice, a simple youth who manages to surpass his master’s skill at forging and crafting swords, so much so that he has inadvertently earned his master’s complete contempt. Hearing tales of the Burgundian court and the very beautiful Kriemhild, sister of King Gunther, Siegfried is determined to ride off to the far away land to woo the princess. His master takes this opportunity to misdirect the naïve youth and send him directly into the path of the fire breathing dragon, Fafnir. The battle waged by Siegfried is an honest one and he earns his right of passage by slaying the dragon in fair combat. He tastes the dragon’s blood which gives him the gift of the language of the birds, who in turn inform Siegfried to bathe in the dragon’s blood so that his body may become impervious to any attack. Unfortunately, fate has it that a linden leaf falls from a tree and covers one specific part of his body so that he has his one vulnerable place.

Siegfried manages to slay the king of the Nibelungs and acquire a massive treasure. From this point, we come to understand that Siegfried has traveled to many lands and has conquered many kings who now serve him as his vassals. It is at this point that he goes to Burgundy and to meet with King Gunther to request the hand of the king’s sister in marriage. This is where all of the trouble starts for all of the characters, and it is at this point that one must observe who is doing what and why. Remember, up to this point in time, Siegfried has earned his place because of his bravery and determination. He is arrogant and ambitious, but it was he who faced the dragon single-handed and vanquished his opponent in fair combat.

Having established this background, let’s cut to the chase: Gunther and his family are all a bunch of cockroaches. Kriemhild does not initially appear this way as she is a young virginal beauty who is naïve to the ways of the world and her family’s politics–more on that later. Gunther desires Brunhilde to be his bride but he knows that he cannot defeat her in fair competition to EARN the right to be her husband. Gunther is weak, is cowardly, and is ultimately very selfish. Hagen of Tronje, his uncle, is the embodiment of the black evil knight: his only interest is what serves his needs of the court of Burgundy. Considering the fact that every decision Gunther makes is based upon his uncle’s council, we may be sure that Hagen is the man behind the man, that he governs the court of Burgundy and not his weakling nephew. It is he that suggests Siegfried help them to defeat Brunhilde in competition so that Gunther may finally have his way. This is the turning point for Siegfried and it is not a good one.

Siegfried becomes equally selfish because the cost to marry Kriemhild comes at a corrupted price–in order to do this, he must first get Brunhilde to become Gunther’s wife. Simply put, he is willing to dishonor a woman’s virtue purely because of selfish gain. No longer can Siegfried be considered an honorable man, and the fact that he has allowed himself to become complicit in Hagen and Gunther’s evil plan–it is absolutely evil because Gunther is taking something that does not belong to him, he has not earned the right to take this powerful lady to be his bride, and he will deflower her under false pretenses which is nothing less than rape.

The evil deed is committed and now Siegfried’s reward is to get married to the woman he loves. How can this youth not expect karma to deal him a deserving blow?! Up to this point, Kriemhild is unaware of all of the intrigue involved in this subterfuge, but after Siegfried takes Gunther’s place to subdue Brunhilde so that Gunther may consummate his marriage (as Gunther is far too weak to dominate Brunhilde physically, and his evil deed is almost exposed while he struggles against Brunhilde under her physical attack), after he has taken control of Brunhilde, Siegfried takes her armlet as a trophy and gives it to Kriemhild. He tells his wife about his secrets and swears her to secrecy. This is the first moment when we get a hint of Kriemhild’s inner nature–she goes along with the plan, perhaps naively, perhaps not…it is too early to say for sure, but she becomes complicit. At any rate, Siegfried and Gunther consummate their bond by taking the blood oath in a sacred ceremony, and I must emphasize the word “sacred.” They have become blood brothers.

One day, when Kriemhild encounters Brunhilde on the way to mass at the cathedral, the two women argue with one another about who has the higher station in Burgundy, and in a fit of frustration, Kriemhild foolishly reveals the truth of what happened to Brunhilde and how she had been defeated by Siegfried on behalf of her brother, King Gunther. We must remember that Brunhilde did not invite these people into her life and that she lived as an honorable queen among her people in far away Iceland; that she defeated all of the previous suitors in fair competition, all of whom were given fair warning about the consequences for failure; that Gunther and his court went to her and that they deceived her and dishonored her; and, that Gunther ultimately had raped her. Now, they must deal with the consequences of their actions. Brunhilde demands the death of Siegfried, not only because of his role in things, but she knows that it will destroy Gunther’s entire family.

Hagen’s advice is that this is necessary, but his motivation is far from serving to satisfy the Queen Brunhilde. No! He sees that Siegfried is gaining favor among the Burgundian public and Hagen will take no chances to keep his position in the court; therefore, he knows his only possible way of securing this item is to remove Siegfried from the game. He tricks his niece into revealing the vulnerable spot and he murders Siegfried under the pretense that he will protect Kriemhild’s husband. Furthermore, Gunther is all too willing to go along with this plan because Brunhilde has informed him that Siegfried took her virginity on the wedding night. In spite of the sacred blood oath, Gunther is willing to go against his solemn vow. These people have no morals, no integrity, no decency, and no loyalty. 

Kriemhild learns of the death of her husband and goes to mourn over the body of her beloved Siegfried, but only until Hagen appears before Siegfried’s corpse and the wound begins to bleed, does she understand that it was her own uncle that betrayed her. She demands justice and calls for the death of her uncle for his act of treachery, but all the brothers and members of the court take the side of Hagen and Gunther claiming to be true to their code of honor. It is all the more damning because they live under a pretense of honor, something they clearly know nothing about. It is completely false and misguided. The fables of good kings and queens has no place in this tale as this is something far more based upon the dark realities of the political world.

Brunhilde reveals the truth to Gunther that she lied about Siegfried and that he did not go to bed with her and after her revenge, she does the one thing left that she may do for herself, as she has nothing left to live for and certainly she is no hypocrite and she will not serve this corrupt family–she commits suicide.

Part two merely reveals that the apple does not fall far from the tree. Kriemhild, who we once saw as young, naïve, and a victim, comes to full maturity and is hell-bent on revenge. There is this to say about Etzel and his court–they ARE honorable men. He woos Kriemhild because he has learned of her legendary beauty and he wants a queen so that he may have a child and an heir to his throne. At first, Kriemhild refuses the proposal but when she learns that Hagen has disposed of Siegfried’s treasure (which was rightfully hers), and she was using this resource to foment an insurrection against her uncle, she decides selfishly that by marrying Etzel she may continue her plotting.

Etzel, completely unaware of all of this previous treachery and violence, welcomes his bride and makes a new home for her, even throwing his majestic cloak upon a puddle of water so that his bride may cross to him unhindered and without inconvenience to person. It is a simple act but it is designed so that we as viewers may be assured that Etzel is the real thing, an honorable man and a gentleman, something you will not find in Burgundy.

They have a child and Kriemhild hatches her scheme–she urges her husband to invite her family to celebrate the midsummer solstice and to put the past behind. Etzel does this in good faith and this is the impression shared by his court which includes his messenger Rudiger, Dietrich of Bern, and Hildebrand. So, when during the celebration all hell breaks loose and Hagen murders Etzel’s son, there is a profound confusion among Etzel’s people at first. Dietrich of Bern negotiates the safe passage out of the hall for his king and entourage. The series of battles which continue are all predicated upon one thing: Kriemhild wants them to give up Hagen to her so that she may have her bloodlust satiated. The Burgundians refuse. During this time, Rudiger is with Dietrich of Bern and Hildebrand and they warn him to stay out of the fight. They believe that the fight is about Etzel wanting justice for the murder of his baby boy, but they have yet to witness the truth about what is going on. Rudiger is then manipulated by Kriemhild to fulfill his sacred oath he had made to her (part of the condition of accepting the marriage proposal of his king) and to face Hagen as her champion. Rudiger is a man of honor and explains to Etzel that he must not ask him do this because his only child has wed one of the Burgundians. Etzel merely shows Rudiger the corpse of his baby boy and Rudiger goes to fulfill his oath. During his attempted attack upon Hagen, Rudiger’s only son steps in the way and is killed by his own father, at which point another battle breaks out and Rudiger is killed.

Finally, Kriemhild has the hall set on fire and it is at this point that Etzel asks her if they are finally united in a common cause, if she could ever put Siegfried into her past and move forward with him. You would think that she would be mourning the murder of her baby boy and that would be an even greater reason why she would want Hagen, but when she tells Etzel that she has never felt so much love in her heart than at the moment of watching the great hall burn like an inferno, Etzel realizes that she has only been bent upon her bloodlust and that she was using him to serve her revenge needs. When Gunther and Hagen are the only two survivors, and Hagen still refuses to say where the treasure has been dispatched, Kriemhild orders the beheading of her brother Gunther. Even when showed the severed head, Hagen defiantly taunts his niece that he will never reveal the location of Siegfried’s treasure, at which point she finally murders her uncle.

So, Kriemhild has laid waste to her husband’s court, she has been responsible for all of the murder that has ensured, she married Etzel under false pretenses, she has dishonored the code of ethics and conduct of the court…you do not invite people into your court and then murder them while celebrating at a feast, particularly when it is your own family…and she is responsible for the entire slaughter of her family, the Burgundians, and Etzel’s people. Her complete arrogance and disregard for human life, her narcissistic selfishness and evil nature should be absolutely clear–she is no different from Hagen or her brothers, but then why should she be? Her family was corrupt, vicious, cruel, and deceitful. So, Hildebrand, understanding all of this now as an eyewitness, does the one thing that must be done…he executes Kriemhild for all of her crimes.


----------



## Sloe

gardibolt said:


> Esteemed silent film composer/conductor Robert Israel wrote this excellent summation of Fritz Lang's two films on the Nibelungenlied, Siegfried and Kriemhild's Revenge (Kriemhild being the equivalent of Wagner's Gutrune), over at Nitrateville.com. I thought I'd share it here for Lang's different but yet familiar take on the original of Wagner's operas. In particular, Gutrune/Kriemhild is a much more active participant for Lang, Etzel (Attila the Hun) gets involved, and Siegfried drinks no potion---he's just a right ******* in order to get his hands on Gutrune/Kriemhild. No Ring necessary, but Brünnhilde still kills herself.
> -----------------------------
> 
> Robert Israel Music
> Posts: 34
> Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2010 2:53 pm
> Re: Cinema Arte's DIE NIBELUNGEN
> PostTue Nov 24, 2015 5:05 pm
> 
> Fritz Lang's epic film version of DIE NIBELUNGENLIED is certainly one of the great cinematic achievements of the early to mid 1920s. To understand the ending one must understand what kind of characters are represented throughout this particular adaptation.
> 
> Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou managed to distill key elements from the original source, and the play version by Friedrich Hebbel, and it is their version that concentrates on some basic human-psychological elements, and some socio-political questions. Siegfried is merely a blacksmith's apprentice, a simple youth who manages to surpass his master's skill at forging and crafting swords, so much so that he has inadvertently earned his master's complete contempt. Hearing tales of the Burgundian court and the very beautiful Kriemhild, sister of King Gunther, Siegfried is determined to ride off to the far away land to woo the princess. His master takes this opportunity to misdirect the naïve youth and send him directly into the path of the fire breathing dragon, Fafnir. The battle waged by Siegfried is an honest one and he earns his right of passage by slaying the dragon in fair combat. He tastes the dragon's blood which gives him the gift of the language of the birds, who in turn inform Siegfried to bathe in the dragon's blood so that his body may become impervious to any attack. Unfortunately, fate has it that a linden leaf falls from a tree and covers one specific part of his body so that he has his one vulnerable place.
> 
> Siegfried manages to slay the king of the Nibelungs and acquire a massive treasure. From this point, we come to understand that Siegfried has traveled to many lands and has conquered many kings who now serve him as his vassals. It is at this point that he goes to Burgundy and to meet with King Gunther to request the hand of the king's sister in marriage. This is where all of the trouble starts for all of the characters, and it is at this point that one must observe who is doing what and why. Remember, up to this point in time, Siegfried has earned his place because of his bravery and determination. He is arrogant and ambitious, but it was he who faced the dragon single-handed and vanquished his opponent in fair combat.
> 
> Having established this background, let's cut to the chase: Gunther and his family are all a bunch of cockroaches. Kriemhild does not initially appear this way as she is a young virginal beauty who is naïve to the ways of the world and her family's politics-more on that later. Gunther desires Brunhilde to be his bride but he knows that he cannot defeat her in fair competition to EARN the right to be her husband. Gunther is weak, is cowardly, and is ultimately very selfish. Hagen of Tronje, his uncle, is the embodiment of the black evil knight: his only interest is what serves his needs of the court of Burgundy. Considering the fact that every decision Gunther makes is based upon his uncle's council, we may be sure that Hagen is the man behind the man, that he governs the court of Burgundy and not his weakling nephew. It is he that suggests Siegfried help them to defeat Brunhilde in competition so that Gunther may finally have his way. This is the turning point for Siegfried and it is not a good one.
> 
> Siegfried becomes equally selfish because the cost to marry Kriemhild comes at a corrupted price-in order to do this, he must first get Brunhilde to become Gunther's wife. Simply put, he is willing to dishonor a woman's virtue purely because of selfish gain. No longer can Siegfried be considered an honorable man, and the fact that he has allowed himself to become complicit in Hagen and Gunther's evil plan-it is absolutely evil because Gunther is taking something that does not belong to him, he has not earned the right to take this powerful lady to be his bride, and he will deflower her under false pretenses which is nothing less than rape.
> 
> The evil deed is committed and now Siegfried's reward is to get married to the woman he loves. How can this youth not expect karma to deal him a deserving blow?! Up to this point, Kriemhild is unaware of all of the intrigue involved in this subterfuge, but after Siegfried takes Gunther's place to subdue Brunhilde so that Gunther may consummate his marriage (as Gunther is far too weak to dominate Brunhilde physically, and his evil deed is almost exposed while he struggles against Brunhilde under her physical attack), after he has taken control of Brunhilde, Siegfried takes her armlet as a trophy and gives it to Kriemhild. He tells his wife about his secrets and swears her to secrecy. This is the first moment when we get a hint of Kriemhild's inner nature-she goes along with the plan, perhaps naively, perhaps not…it is too early to say for sure, but she becomes complicit. At any rate, Siegfried and Gunther consummate their bond by taking the blood oath in a sacred ceremony, and I must emphasize the word "sacred." They have become blood brothers.
> 
> One day, when Kriemhild encounters Brunhilde on the way to mass at the cathedral, the two women argue with one another about who has the higher station in Burgundy, and in a fit of frustration, Kriemhild foolishly reveals the truth of what happened to Brunhilde and how she had been defeated by Siegfried on behalf of her brother, King Gunther. We must remember that Brunhilde did not invite these people into her life and that she lived as an honorable queen among her people in far away Iceland; that she defeated all of the previous suitors in fair competition, all of whom were given fair warning about the consequences for failure; that Gunther and his court went to her and that they deceived her and dishonored her; and, that Gunther ultimately had raped her. Now, they must deal with the consequences of their actions. Brunhilde demands the death of Siegfried, not only because of his role in things, but she knows that it will destroy Gunther's entire family.
> 
> Hagen's advice is that this is necessary, but his motivation is far from serving to satisfy the Queen Brunhilde. No! He sees that Siegfried is gaining favor among the Burgundian public and Hagen will take no chances to keep his position in the court; therefore, he knows his only possible way of securing this item is to remove Siegfried from the game. He tricks his niece into revealing the vulnerable spot and he murders Siegfried under the pretense that he will protect Kriemhild's husband. Furthermore, Gunther is all too willing to go along with this plan because Brunhilde has informed him that Siegfried took her virginity on the wedding night. In spite of the sacred blood oath, Gunther is willing to go against his solemn vow. These people have no morals, no integrity, no decency, and no loyalty.
> 
> Kriemhild learns of the death of her husband and goes to mourn over the body of her beloved Siegfried, but only until Hagen appears before Siegfried's corpse and the wound begins to bleed, does she understand that it was her own uncle that betrayed her. She demands justice and calls for the death of her uncle for his act of treachery, but all the brothers and members of the court take the side of Hagen and Gunther claiming to be true to their code of honor. It is all the more damning because they live under a pretense of honor, something they clearly know nothing about. It is completely false and misguided. The fables of good kings and queens has no place in this tale as this is something far more based upon the dark realities of the political world.
> 
> Brunhilde reveals the truth to Gunther that she lied about Siegfried and that he did not go to bed with her and after her revenge, she does the one thing left that she may do for herself, as she has nothing left to live for and certainly she is no hypocrite and she will not serve this corrupt family-she commits suicide.
> 
> Part two merely reveals that the apple does not fall far from the tree. Kriemhild, who we once saw as young, naïve, and a victim, comes to full maturity and is hell-bent on revenge. There is this to say about Etzel and his court-they ARE honorable men. He woos Kriemhild because he has learned of her legendary beauty and he wants a queen so that he may have a child and an heir to his throne. At first, Kriemhild refuses the proposal but when she learns that Hagen has disposed of Siegfried's treasure (which was rightfully hers), and she was using this resource to foment an insurrection against her uncle, she decides selfishly that by marrying Etzel she may continue her plotting.
> 
> Etzel, completely unaware of all of this previous treachery and violence, welcomes his bride and makes a new home for her, even throwing his majestic cloak upon a puddle of water so that his bride may cross to him unhindered and without inconvenience to person. It is a simple act but it is designed so that we as viewers may be assured that Etzel is the real thing, an honorable man and a gentleman, something you will not find in Burgundy.
> 
> They have a child and Kriemhild hatches her scheme-she urges her husband to invite her family to celebrate the midsummer solstice and to put the past behind. Etzel does this in good faith and this is the impression shared by his court which includes his messenger Rudiger, Dietrich of Bern, and Hildebrand. So, when during the celebration all hell breaks loose and Hagen murders Etzel's son, there is a profound confusion among Etzel's people at first. Dietrich of Bern negotiates the safe passage out of the hall for his king and entourage. The series of battles which continue are all predicated upon one thing: Kriemhild wants them to give up Hagen to her so that she may have her bloodlust satiated. The Burgundians refuse. During this time, Rudiger is with Dietrich of Bern and Hildebrand and they warn him to stay out of the fight. They believe that the fight is about Etzel wanting justice for the murder of his baby boy, but they have yet to witness the truth about what is going on. Rudiger is then manipulated by Kriemhild to fulfill his sacred oath he had made to her (part of the condition of accepting the marriage proposal of his king) and to face Hagen as her champion. Rudiger is a man of honor and explains to Etzel that he must not ask him do this because his only child has wed one of the Burgundians. Etzel merely shows Rudiger the corpse of his baby boy and Rudiger goes to fulfill his oath. During his attempted attack upon Hagen, Rudiger's only son steps in the way and is killed by his own father, at which point another battle breaks out and Rudiger is killed.
> 
> Finally, Kriemhild has the hall set on fire and it is at this point that Etzel asks her if they are finally united in a common cause, if she could ever put Siegfried into her past and move forward with him. You would think that she would be mourning the murder of her baby boy and that would be an even greater reason why she would want Hagen, but when she tells Etzel that she has never felt so much love in her heart than at the moment of watching the great hall burn like an inferno, Etzel realizes that she has only been bent upon her bloodlust and that she was using him to serve her revenge needs. When Gunther and Hagen are the only two survivors, and Hagen still refuses to say where the treasure has been dispatched, Kriemhild orders the beheading of her brother Gunther. Even when showed the severed head, Hagen defiantly taunts his niece that he will never reveal the location of Siegfried's treasure, at which point she finally murders her uncle.
> 
> So, Kriemhild has laid waste to her husband's court, she has been responsible for all of the murder that has ensured, she married Etzel under false pretenses, she has dishonored the code of ethics and conduct of the court…you do not invite people into your court and then murder them while celebrating at a feast, particularly when it is your own family…and she is responsible for the entire slaughter of her family, the Burgundians, and Etzel's people. Her complete arrogance and disregard for human life, her narcissistic selfishness and evil nature should be absolutely clear-she is no different from Hagen or her brothers, but then why should she be? Her family was corrupt, vicious, cruel, and deceitful. So, Hildebrand, understanding all of this now as an eyewitness, does the one thing that must be done…he executes Kriemhild for all of her crimes.


In The Völsungasaga and Edda. Gudrun marries Atle (Attila) but it is Atle who kills Gunnar and Högne to take revenge on the death of his sister Brynhild. Then Gudrun take revenge on her brothers and kills her children with Atle and then Atle himself.
Fortunately Wagner´s ring stops before that so we don´t have to worry about what would have been right or not.


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## Itullian

The more I listen to Wagner, the more in awe I am.


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## gellio

Itullian said:


> The more I listen to Wagner, the more in awe I am.


The more I listen to Wagner, the more in awe I am, too.


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## gellio

Woodduck said:


> Which Wagner we find most accessible - or most musically inspired - is obviously quite an individual matter. A lot of people have trouble with _Parsifal_, but it worked its magic on me immediately, and the length of it was not a deterrent. _Tristan_ absorbed me pretty quickly too, and the _Ring _instantly grabbed the imagination of a kid who grew up reading mythological tales. _Meistersinger_ took longer, not because the music is inferior but because it's subject matter is more mundane and it doesn't go to the emotional extremes or present the other-worldly imagery that so appealed to my youthful imagination. Maybe if you grew up on Mozart, _Meistersinger_ would be the Wagnerian starting point for you.


Interesting. As I was reading this, we were point for point. The Ring, Parsifal and Tristan are, to me, Wagner's most accessible works. Meistersinger I am struggling with. However, Mozart was my first opera love. Interesting. I think The Ring is just the most magnificent thing.


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## MosmanViolinist

I have the DVD set of Th Copenhagen Ring, quite a good performance though I don't care for the production too much.


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## Itullian

MosmanViolinist said:


> I have the DVD set of Th Copenhagen Ring, quite a good performance though I don't care for the production too much.


Par for the course these days.


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## Itullian

I prefer cd's . That way I see my own production.


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## Woodduck

Itullian said:


> I prefer cd's . That way I see my own production.


Nowadays, one's own "productions" are often the best. The pictures Wagner's music evokes in my mind are not much like the ones on the stages of today's world.


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## The Conte

Woodduck said:


> Nowadays, one's own "productions" are often the best. The pictures Wagner's music evokes in my mind are not much like the ones on the stages of today's world.


This is interesting as I really don't 'see' a production in my head when I listen to opera on CD (unless it is a recording of a performance I have been to). Maybe that's why I am open to 'crazy' productions. I would say that I have enjoyed about 50% of the controversial productions I have seen at the ROH, so I don't like all 'modern' productions and I have also enjoyed productions that some complain are too traditional (e.g. the ROH Tosca).

N.


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## The Conte

Itullian said:


> I prefer cd's . That way I see my own production.


I quite often prefer CDs, but for a totally different reason: the singing is usually better than that offered by today's live performances.

N.


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## DavidA

Wagner is immensely difficult to stage. His ideas went totally beyond what the theatre of his day (and even today) could realistically manage. You often of necessity to have singers who are mature and therefore don't look the part, especially on broadcast or film. 
One example (maybe extreme)









Hence I prefer to hear Wagner on CD where I can imagine the action.


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## SiegendesLicht

I won't have much time for Wagner during the next four months of preparation for my big German exam, or for much of any classical music for that matter. We have a long weekend becuse of the Eastern Orthodox Christmas right now, and I am splitting it between grammar books and Patrick Suskind's "Perfume". But hey, preparing for an advanced-level German exam is also a Wagnerian undertaking . When I get back to him, I am sure I will be more in awe than ever...


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> Wagner is immensely difficult to stage. His ideas went totally beyond what the theatre of his day (and even today) could realistically manage. You often of necessity to have singers who are mature and therefore don't look the part, especially on broadcast or film.
> One example (maybe extreme)
> 
> View attachment 79905
> 
> 
> Hence I prefer to hear Wagner on CD where I can imagine the action.


Those singers don't look "mature"! They look _inflated_. That production is criminally static and boring, partly because of the directing, and partly because of Levine's conducting, but mainly because the singers (especially Eaglen) apparently can't lift their own blimpy bodies to move them from point A to point B.

Agreed that Wagner's imagination outstrips the capabilities of the stage of his era and to some extent of ours, although we can do amazing things now and it's mainly the _Ring_ that calls for some effects which only film can create. If he were alive now his _gesamtkunstwerk_ would surely embrace the cinema. Can't someone scrape up the funds to give us a great _Ring_ on film?


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> Those singers don't look "mature"! They look _inflated_. That production is criminally static and boring, partly because of the directing, and partly because of Levine's conducting, but mainly because the singers (especially Eaglen) apparently can't lift their own blimpy bodies to move them from point A to point B.
> 
> Agreed that Wagner's imagination outstrips the capabilities of the stage of his era and to some extent of ours, although we can do amazing things now and it's mainly the _Ring_ that calls for some effects which only film can create. If he were alive now his _gesamtkunstwerk_ would surely embrace the cinema. Can't someone scrape up the funds to give us a great _Ring_ on film?


Karajan started filming the Ring but it was a bit of a flop, possibly because he insisted on directing it himself!


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## gardibolt

DavidA said:


> Wagner is immensely difficult to stage. His ideas went totally beyond what the theatre of his day (and even today) could realistically manage. You often of necessity to have singers who are mature and therefore don't look the part, especially on broadcast or film.
> One example (maybe extreme)
> 
> View attachment 79905
> 
> 
> Hence I prefer to hear Wagner on CD where I can imagine the action.


The beauty of staging Tristan though is that you have the convenient device of the love potion---it doesn't make any difference what the leads look like, they're literally enchanted to find each other entrancing.


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## Barbebleu

OperaDepot are offering a free download of Tristan conducted by Boulez. It is ostensibly from Osaka 1969 but this is incorrect. It is the Bayreuth Festival on tour and is Osaka, but 1967 with Windgassen, Nilsson and Hotter. For free, if you don't already have it, what's not to like?


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## Barbebleu

I have decided that in light of the fact that according to my iTunes library I have 378 days of music, I am buying/downloading no more. Unless of course something special appears. That is 378 days at 24 hours per day. If I manage 2 hours listening every day it will take me about 13 years to listen to what I already have. As I am 67 that will take me up to 80!, provided I live that long or at least have my hearing and haven't gone senile. Oh for a time machine!!:lol:


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## DavidA

gardibolt said:


> The beauty of staging Tristan though is that you have the convenient device of the love potion---it doesn't make any difference what the leads look like, they're literally enchanted to find each other entrancing.


Does it blind them too?


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## Woodduck

gardibolt said:


> The beauty of staging Tristan though is that you have the convenient device of the love potion---it doesn't make any difference what the leads look like, they're literally enchanted to find each other entrancing.


I'm afraid that pair needed to share the love potion with the audience.


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## Couac Addict

MosmanViolinist said:


> I have the DVD set of Th Copenhagen Ring, quite a good performance though I don't care for the production too much.


The easiest way to enjoy The Ring is to know that you're not watching this...


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## ma7730

Couac Addict said:


> The easiest way to enjoy The Ring is to know that you're not watching this...


"Richard Wagner's" Die Walküre. How is it even legal for them to put Wagner's name anywhere in anything to do with this?


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## Woodduck

ma7730 said:


> "Richard Wagner's" Die Walküre. How is it even legal for them to put Wagner's name anywhere in anything to do with this?


I can't even speculate on which characters are supposed to be represented.

It isn't going to keep me awake tonight.


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## amfortas

gardibolt said:


> The beauty of staging Tristan though is that you have the convenient device of the love potion---it doesn't make any difference what the leads look like, they're literally enchanted to find each other entrancing.


But they love each other even before drinking the potion, which only frees them to embrace a passion that was already there. So it's helpful if, even in simple, everyday terms, they're at least moderately attractive.


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## DarkAngel

amfortas said:


> But *they love each other even before drinking the potion*, which only frees them to embrace a passion that was already there. So it's helpful if, even in simple, everyday terms, they're at least moderately attractive.


Very helpful for Tristan opera to know the "backstory" and history of main characters complex relations (including Tristan and king Marke, Kurnewal) that occur *before opening the scence* of Wagner's opera, I found it very helpful for my enjoyment to get this very cheap movie from Amazon, everything happening in the opera made much more sense after viewing this movie......not saying this is a great movie but provides very useful backstory


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## Bill H.

DarkAngel said:


> Very helpful for Tristan opera to know the "backstory" and history of main characters complex relations that occur *before opening the scence* of Wagner's opera, I found it very helpful for my enjoyment to get this very cheap movie from Amazon, everything happening in the opera made much more sense after viewing this movie......not saying this is a great movie but provides very useful backstory


In one of the Saxon Tale series of novels by Bernard Cornwell, he also tells the T&I story, but it's not nearly as romantic--instead it reflects the barbarism of the times, in England during and after the reign of Alfred the Great. IIRC the lovers are little more than teenagers, with Isolde being just post-pubescent. When they are found out and captured, Tristan is killed in a contest which Isolde is forced to watch, then she is burned at the stake. Uhtred (the main character in the series who is narrating the events years afterwards) tells the story with a great deal of sorrow. What I don't recall without going back to the book is whether it was King Mark who authorized the killings, but I believe it was.


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## Woodduck

DarkAngel said:


> Very helpful for Tristan opera to know the "backstory" and history of main characters complex relations (including Tristan and king Marke, Kurnewal) that occur *before opening the scence* of Wagner's opera, I found it very helpful for my enjoyment to get this very cheap movie from Amazon, everything happening in the opera made much more sense after viewing this movie......not saying this is a great movie but provides very useful backstory


Can't you just hear those kids singing like Flagstad and Melchior?


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## mountmccabe

Woodduck said:


> I can't even speculate on which characters are supposed to be represented.
> 
> It isn't going to keep me awake tonight.


It's Wotan and Fricka.

And since that may not be definitive, Wotan is in the foreground.


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## Woodduck

mountmccabe said:


> It's Wotan and Fricka.
> 
> And since that may not be definitive, Wotan is in the foreground.


 Maybe I was happier not knowing.


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## howlingfantods

Heh, I guess I'm in the very tiny minority but I really want to watch that LA Ring, and I can definitely imagine really enjoying it. The snippets I've heard sound pretty good. 

As far as non-traditional stagings go, I prefer this type thing using oddball visuals to present the familiar narrative over the Castorf Ring type of thing where they abandon the narrative or try to impute a meaning (oil is bad or something?) that the original narrative didn't have.


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## Woodduck

^^^Well, if that were the choice, I might have to agree. From what I gather, the L.A. _Ring_ more or less attempts to tell the actual story, but in a visually bizarre way, with effects so weird and wacky that most of the work would be unrecognizable without its music. Photos and clips I've been looking at look like something out of a child's nightmare - maybe a dream about the contents of a toy chest coming to life and doing evil things. Granted that the _Ring_ is fantasy, the production might be entertaining while we're under water or among the dwarves, and I do think the lightness and humor in Wagner is too often overlooked. But I can't imagine that the serious and noble aspects of the work would survive the looniness very well. I might be curious to see it if it ever comes out on video. Meanwhile I've found these comments, clips, and photos, and a Valkyrie carousel on YouTube:






http://www.wagneropera.net/Articles/Los-Angeles-Ring.htm


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## mountmccabe

I certainly would love to see Freyer's Ring at LA Opera. They are (or were, at least) planning on reviving it, eventually. If they do I would certainly plan to head down to see it.

Freyer also directed a Ring for Mannheim in 2013. There had been some thought of the 2010 LAO Ring being a co-production with Mannheim, but it didn't work out logistically/the stages were too different. The Mannheim Ring seems to have a similar aesthetic.






It was released on DVD, though I'm having trouble finding much information about it. It may not be available in a region-free edition.

Though, of course, I would also love to see the Frank Castorf Ring. If I had to choose between the Freyer and the Castorf, I might go for the latter.


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## Woodduck

mountmccabe said:


> I certainly would love to see Freyer's Ring at LA Opera. They are (or were, at least) planning on reviving it, eventually. If they do I would certainly plan to head down to see it.
> 
> Freyer also directed a Ring for Mannheim in 2013. There had been some thought of the 2010 LAO Ring being a co-production with Mannheim, but it didn't work out logistically/the stages were too different. The Mannheim Ring seems to have a similar aesthetic.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It was released on DVD, though I'm having trouble finding much information about it. It may not be available in a region-free edition.
> 
> Though, of course, I would also love to see the Frank Castorf Ring. If I had to choose between the Freyer and the Castorf, I might go for the latter.


This clip from Mannheim is plain, irredeemable crap, and puts the L.A. production in perspective. We can see here Freyer's real, ultimate goal, which is to make a mockery of Wagner. Vandals like this don't deserve to exist. If Domingo had foreseen this 2013 production, would he have hired Freyer? I sincerely hope not, as I've always had considerable respect for him.


----------



## Poppy Popsicle

I loved that clip from Mannheim! It even makes me want to buy the DVD of this total artwork.


----------



## Woodduck

Poppy Popsicle said:


> I loved that clip from Mannheim! It even makes me want to buy the DVD of this total artwork.


Perhaps you can explain why you think it's a legitimate visualization of Wagner's work? Last time I checked, Siegfried was a naive boy discovering his sexuality, not an idiotic clown, and Brunnhilde was a warrior goddess awakening to mortal womanhood, not a hot air balloon with a target painted on her breast.


----------



## Sloe

mountmccabe said:


> I certainly would love to see Freyer's Ring at LA Opera. They are (or were, at least) planning on reviving it, eventually. If they do I would certainly plan to head down to see it.
> 
> Freyer also directed a Ring for Mannheim in 2013. There had been some thought of the 2010 LAO Ring being a co-production with Mannheim, but it didn't work out logistically/the stages were too different. The Mannheim Ring seems to have a similar aesthetic.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It was released on DVD, though I'm having trouble finding much information about it. It may not be available in a region-free edition.
> 
> Though, of course, I would also love to see the Frank Castorf Ring. If I had to choose between the Freyer and the Castorf, I might go for the latter.


I wonder how that director would stage Pagliacci or maybe that is the only opera that director should stage.


----------



## Itullian

How about doing the whole RING upside down?


----------



## DavidA

mountmccabe said:


> I certainly would love to see Freyer's Ring at LA Opera. They are (or were, at least) planning on reviving it, eventually. If they do I would certainly plan to head down to see it.
> 
> Freyer also directed a Ring for Mannheim in 2013. There had been some thought of the 2010 LAO Ring being a co-production with Mannheim, but it didn't work out logistically/the stages were too different. The Mannheim Ring seems to have a similar aesthetic.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It was released on DVD, though I'm having trouble finding much information about it. It may not be available in a region-free edition.
> 
> Though, of course, I would also love to see the Frank Castorf Ring. If I had to choose between the Freyer and the Castorf, I might go for the latter.


So sorry I missed this. Poor singng, bad acting and a production that makes a Punch and Judy show look profound. If I had paid money to see this I'd gave demanded my money back as the production appeared to have nothing to do with Wagner's Siegfried. Where do opera houses get these idiots from? If they're stuck for a producer I'll do it better than that at half the price! I mean, who could do it any worse?


----------



## Barbebleu

Woodduck said:


> This clip from Mannheim is plain, irredeemable crap, and puts the L.A. production in perspective. We can see here Freyer's real, ultimate goal, which is to make a mockery of Wagner. Vandals like this don't deserve to exist. If Domingo had foreseen this 2013 production, would he have hired Freyer? I sincerely hope not, as I've always had considerable respect for him.


Crap is too nice a term!


----------



## mountmccabe

Sloe said:


> I wonder how that director would stage Pagliacci or maybe that is the only opera that director should stage.


His schedule at operabase shows he's very busy! Most recently a _Don Giovanni_ at Volkopera Wien, and next up being a _Medea_ at Mannheim.


----------



## Barbebleu

mountmccabe said:


> His schedule at operabase shows he's very busy! Most recently a _Don Giovanni_ at Volkopera Wien, and next up being a _Medea_ at Mannheim.


God, if there is a god, help them!


----------



## Pugg

DavidA said:


> So sorry I missed this. Poor singng, bad acting and a production that makes a Punch and Judy show look profound. If I had paid money to see this I'd gave demanded my money back as the production appeared to have nothing to do with Wagner's Siegfried. Where do opera houses get these idiots from? If they're stuck for a producer I'll do it better than that at half the price! I mean, who could do it any worse?


Hear, hear:tiphat:


----------



## Reichstag aus LICHT

Woodduck said:


> Last time I checked... Brunnhilde was a warrior goddess awakening to mortal womanhood, not a hot air balloon.


In mitigation, that would make for a potentially explosive Immolation Scene.


----------



## damianjb1

Barbebleu said:


> My idea of an aria as such is something that can safely be listened to in isolation from the opera it came from with no loss of continuity. I don't think any of Wagner's moments could be judged so. Heda, Hedo would just sound weird sung on its own.


Isolde's Liebestod is often performed in isolation. Try Brunnhilde's Immolation, Wolfram's Evening Star aria (from Tannhauser), Elsa's Dream (Lohengrin). Elisabeth's Greeting (Tannhauser). Also, Siegmund's Wintersturme and Sieglinde's Du Bist Der Lenz.


----------



## Reichstag aus LICHT

damianjb1 said:


> Isolde's Liebestod is often performed in isolation. Try Brunnhilde's Immolation, Wolfram's Evening Star aria (from Tannhauser), Elsa's Dream (Lohengrin). Elisabeth's Greeting (Tannhauser). Also, Siegmund's Wintersturme and Sieglinde's Du Bist Der Lenz.


True, but most of them require special intros and/or "outros" to be written for them to stand alone. The last two in particular - _Winterstürme_ and _Du bist der Lenz_ - flow wonderfully into one another in their original form, an organic unity entirely missing from their "concert" versions. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not quite as moving as they are in context. (Incidentally, I've sung _Winterstürme_ a few times in concerts, and I always felt unfulfilled by having a contrived cadence instead of a Sieglinde on the receiving end. I doubt that the audience wanted more, but I certainly did )


----------



## scratchgolf

A true Wagnerian names their first son Tristan. If their 2nd child isn't a girl, they name him Und.


----------



## Woodduck

scratchgolf said:


> A true Wagnerian names their first son Tristan. If their 2nd child isn't a girl, they name him Und.


Unless it's a hermaphrodite, in which case go with the whole title. The kid can decide later which parts to keep.


----------



## scratchgolf

Woodduck said:


> Unless it's a hermaphrodite, in which case go with the whole title. The kid can decide later which parts to keep.


So basically like the Voight children.


----------



## Admiral

Can someone suggest a Miestersinger to purchase, perhaps one DVD and one CD?

I have the Varviso-led version that's in the Decca complete operas box, but it's not doing anything for me. Given the rave reviews of the opera I think I need to give it some more time.

I'm still spending a lot of time with the massive haul of Walhall Rings I bought last year so I thought I'd work in something a little bit lighter from time to time.


----------



## DavidA

Admiral said:


> Can someone suggest a Miestersinger to purchase, perhaps one DVD and one CD?
> 
> I have the Varviso-led version that's in the Decca complete operas box, but it's not doing anything for me. Given the rave reviews of the opera I think I need to give it some more time.
> 
> I'm still spending a lot of time with the massive haul of Walhall Rings I bought last year so I thought I'd work in something a little bit lighter from time to time.


The Varviso has one great performance - Riddersbusch as Sachs but the rest are pretty ordinary. I have Karajan I & II both of which
are beautifully done although some don't like Adam's Sachs in Karajan II. Pity as Riddersbusch was in the cast anyway he didn't sing it but I think East German politics played a hand in Adam getting the part. He certainly wasn't Karajan's first choice.


----------



## Faustian

Admiral said:


> Can someone suggest a Miestersinger to purchase, perhaps one DVD and one CD?
> 
> I have the Varviso-led version that's in the Decca complete operas box, but it's not doing anything for me. Given the rave reviews of the opera I think I need to give it some more time.
> 
> I'm still spending a lot of time with the massive haul of Walhall Rings I bought last year so I thought I'd work in something a little bit lighter from time to time.


The Kubelik Meistersinger on CD is my favorite all around performance.


----------



## amfortas

For a DVD, I recommend the David McVicar Glyndebourne production.










Updated (attractively) to the early 19th century of Wagner's youth, the production has mixed singing but overall provides the most compelling staging of the story.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

amfortas said:


> For a DVD, I recommend the David McVicar Glyndebourne production.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Updated (attractively) to the early 19th century of Wagner's youth, the production has mixed singing but overall provides the most compelling staging of the story.


Second this. I love it very very much. And the acting, especially by David and Beckmesser, is wonderful.


----------



## DarkAngel

amfortas said:


> For a DVD, I recommend the David McVicar Glyndebourne production.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Updated (attractively) to the early 19th century of Wagner's youth, the production has mixed singing but overall provides the most compelling staging of the story.


I love this also (especially blu ray) visually a great production, the weak link is technical singing quality of Walther, Finley a fine Sachs capturing the emotional nuances of the aging voice of reason character. McVicar's updated town square scences remind me of Dicken's novel, all in service of wagner's story narrative, a model of fine production values

A bright spot is Topi Lehtipuu's David performance......



> The Kubelik Meistersinger on CD is my favorite all around performance.


This is perhaps the best stereo choice with strong cast, however the 1950s Bayreuth era yielded some really great Meisters that should be collected especially with Grummer as Eva, the best ever.....


----------



## Admiral

I adore Janowitz (her 4 Last Songs is one of my desert-island discs). Okay, I think I know what I'm doing in February.

Thanks all


----------



## Reichstag aus LICHT

DarkAngel said:


> This is perhaps the best stereo choice with strong cast, however the 1950s Bayreuth era yielded some really great Meisters that should be collected especially with Grummer as Eva, the best ever.....


Agreed (the Kempe might well be my favourite), although I wouldn't recommend either to a _Meistersinger_ sceptic. Overall, the Kubelik is a fairly safe bet.


----------



## Admiral

Oh crap. As a wistful middle-aged male I'm identifying too much with Sachs vis Eva; so, it's not a "lighter" opera at all!

I also realized that I had a Furtwangler recording in that big Legacy box that I can give a listen to.


----------



## DavidA

Admiral said:


> Oh crap. As a wistful middle-aged male I'm identifying too much with Sachs vis Eva; so, it's not a "lighter" opera at all!
> 
> I also realized that I had a Furtwangler recording in that big Legacy box that I can give a listen to.


It's not comic at all. When I sat through it there were no laughs from the audience.


----------



## Admiral

Myto has a/the 1958 Bayreuth Tristan coming out in February. I don't know if this one has been out before.

Nilsson/Windgassen/Sawallisch


----------



## Barbebleu

Admiral said:


> Myto has a/the 1958 Bayreuth Tristan coming out in February. I don't know if this one has been out before.
> 
> Nilsson/Windgassen/Sawallisch


Thanks for the heads up on this. is this a UK release or USA only?


----------



## Jeffrey Smith

DarkAngel said:


> I love this also (especially blu ray) visually a great production, the weak link is technical singing quality of Walther, Finley a fine Sachs capturing the emotional nuances of the aging voice of reason character. McVicar's updated town square scences remind me of Dicken's novel, all in service of wagner's story narrative, a model of fine production values
> 
> A bright spot is Topi Lehtipuu's David performance......
> 
> This is perhaps the best stereo choice with strong cast, however the 1950s Bayreuth era yielded some really great Meisters that should be collected especially with Grummer as Eva, the best ever.....


Agree about the Kubelik, although I have a weakness for Solti's first recording.
But speaking of Knappertsbusch this recording made me fall in love with Meistersinger as a teenager in an LP version. I have it now in this issue, and it is just as good now as it was then.


----------



## DarkAngel

Admiral said:


> Myto has a/the 1958 Bayreuth Tristan coming out in February. * I don't know if this one has been out before.
> *Nilsson/Windgassen/Sawallisch


I bought that 58 Bayreuth Myto last year and it is a very good Tristan, sound is better than the 59 Tristan at La Scala with Karajan also from Myto.......both with Nilsson & Windgassen


----------



## Admiral

DarkAngel said:


> I bought that 58 Bayreuth Myto last year and it is a very good Tristan, sound is better than the 59 Tristan at La Scala with Karajan also from Myto.......both with Nilsson & Windgassen


Interesting, that's the Tristan but Amazon shows it as a February 12 release.

I'm guessing that it was a 2009 import release and the "new" release is simply the US release of this older import?


----------



## DarkAngel

Admiral said:


> Interesting, that's the Tristan but Amazon shows it as a February 12 release.
> 
> I'm guessing that it was a 2009 import release and the "new" release is simply the US release of this older import?


I may have gotten that from another vendor besides Amazon USA, I purchased "massive quantities" of Wagner Myto from website called Norbeck, Peters and Ford.......very low prices for Myto plus free shipping over $50


----------



## Admiral

Thanks DA - that is a dangerous website, very good prices on lots and lots of things on my want list


----------



## Becca

*Rattle rehearsing & discussing Rheingold*

I came across this today quite by accident. Last spring Simon Rattle did a concert performance of Rheingold with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orch. in the Herkulesaal in Munich, a performance that was recorded and released recently on CD to very good reviews. Here is a 5 minute segment of the rehearsal for that performance along with some commentary


----------



## Itullian

Rheingold is amazing. Perfection.


----------



## scratchgolf

I just sprung for a little pay day gift.















I guess I'll be looking for a nice _Lohengrin_ on Bluray in the near future. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated but I'm looking for clarity and a traditional to semi-traditional version. Let's say Barenboim's Bayreuth or Boulez's are as "crazy" as I'm willing to go (Ring Cycles, that is). Basically, I'm not looking for Lohengrin dressed like a character from _Godspell_. Mind you, I don't have to have it immediately (Ok, I'll probably buy one anyway) but I will do some research. I'll have plenty to hold me over.


----------



## Pugg

DarkAngel said:


> I may have gotten that from another vendor besides Amazon USA, I purchased "massive quantities" of Wagner Myto from website called Norbeck, Peters and Ford.......very low prices for Myto plus free shipping over $50


Thank you for sharing, if I get in trouble with my credit card.
 who's to blame D.A :lol:


----------



## DarkAngel

scratchgolf said:


> I just sprung for a little pay day gift.
> 
> View attachment 80823
> View attachment 80824
> 
> 
> I guess I'll be looking for a nice _Lohengrin_ on Bluray in the near future. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated but I'm looking for clarity and a traditional to semi-traditional version. Let's say Barenboim's Bayreuth or Boulez's are as "crazy" as I'm willing to go (Ring Cycles, that is). Basically, I'm not looking for Lohengrin dressed like a character from _Godspell_. Mind you, I don't have to have it immediately (Ok, I'll probably buy one anyway) but I will do some research. I'll have plenty to hold me over.


That new Barenboim Ring (la scala) is interesting visually with both computer projected images and modern dance performers inserted into some scences.......










For Lohengrin my overall favorite would be the KF Vogt, a modern Lehhoff production that closely follows original opera narrative, Waltraud Meier as Ortrud a big plus, KF Vogt is a light tone voice for Wagner

Kaufmann vocally is great but a quasi reggie production that will frustrate some, not excessive though......Nagano conducts both


----------



## scratchgolf

Wow, thanks very much. I have the Barenboim Bayreuth also and the Boulez never bothered me much (Except Siegmund). I did read a few eye opening reviews but also scores of raves. The ballet-esque numbers were the most mentioned concern. The price was very right though and I'm a big supporter of Danny B.

I'll check those _Lohengrins_ out today. 

And in case anyone was wondering, the Bayreuth Blu Ray is currently at $82.29 usd and the DVD is inexplicably priced at $193.92 usd. So, for all you DVD purists, jump on the latter before the price goes up more :lol:

http://www.amazon.com/Wagner-Bayreu...d=1454081725&sr=8-1&keywords=bayreuth+edition


----------



## Clayton

Oh I definitely second the Nagano/Lehnhoff

A Waltraud Meier blow your mind performance and KFV and Kringelborn are wonderful too. I watched it on a streaming service and went and bought the dvd straight away.


----------



## Itullian

I think they're all horrible except for the 2 Levine Rings and the Boulez.

And the Levine and Nelsson Lohengrins.

I somewhat enjoy the Barenboim Bayreuth DVD and cd. CD even more.

just mho.

Have we forgotten what these music dramas are supposed to be?


----------



## scratchgolf

Itullian said:


> I think they're all horrible except for the 2 Levine Rings and the Boulez.
> 
> And the Levine and Nelsson Lohengrins.
> 
> I somewhat enjoy the Barenboim Bayreuth DVD and cd. CD even more.
> 
> just mho.
> 
> Have we forgotten what these music dramas are supposed to be?


It's hard to forget something I'm in the process of learning but I'll agree to spot checks


----------



## Pugg

DarkAngel said:


> I may have gotten that from another vendor besides Amazon USA, I purchased "massive quantities" of Wagner Myto from website called Norbeck, Peters and Ford.......very low prices for Myto plus free shipping over $50


Again tanks D.A , feels like a child in the candy store, spend more then two hours browsing, fantastic :tiphat:


----------



## DarkAngel

^^^^^ I first found that obscure website (Norbeck, Peters and Ford) from RES at Callas thread regarding Myto Callas CDs, but then found out they have very large collection of many comnposers and artists on Myto, Walhall and other labels, some very hard to find for very low price plus the free shipping over $50.......I go right to the huge CD sale section

I have made 5-6 orders from them so far, fast service and great savings........


----------



## Pugg

DarkAngel said:


> ^^^^^ I first found that obscure website (Norbeck, Peters and Ford) from RES at Callas thread regarding Myto Callas CDs, but then found out they have very large collection of many comnposers and artists on Myto, Walhall and other labels, some very hard to find for very low price plus the free shipping over $50.......I go right to the huge CD sale section
> 
> I have made 5-6 orders from them so far, fast service and great savings........


Alas, the shipping for me:



> Foreign parcels (including Canada) -
> Foreign Parcels are shipped by US Postal Airmail. Rates are based on current US Postal Airmail charts. These charts are based on postal zones.
> 
> Shipping will appear in the shopping cart and the order invoice. You will be sent an email from us finalizing the shipping costs for your order.
> 
> As always, we strive to ship as inexpensively as possible.
> 
> If you are paying by other than credit card, please contact us and we shall let you know how much to add for shipping"


From the website


----------



## mountmccabe

scratchgolf said:


> I just sprung for a little pay day gift.
> 
> View attachment 80823
> View attachment 80824
> 
> 
> I guess I'll be looking for a nice _Lohengrin_ on Bluray in the near future. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated but I'm looking for clarity and a traditional to semi-traditional version. Let's say Barenboim's Bayreuth or Boulez's are as "crazy" as I'm willing to go (Ring Cycles, that is). Basically, I'm not looking for Lohengrin dressed like a character from _Godspell_. Mind you, I don't have to have it immediately (Ok, I'll probably buy one anyway) but I will do some research. I'll have plenty to hold me over.


I have been trying to hold out on buying The Bayreuth Edition box, but my resistance is waning.

I've seen half of the recordings included - _Holländer_, _Lohengrin_, _Meistersinger_ - and find them all wonderful and thrilling. I am looking for a satisfying _Tannhäuser_, and the Baumgarten is high on my list of options. I don't know much about the Dorst _Die Walküre_ but it does sound compelling. The Marthaler _Tristan_ is less intriguing, but I'd still love to see it.

Enjoy!


----------



## damianjb1

That's a fair point. But then, isn't that one of the wonderful things about Wagner? I'm not sure how to put this. For a passage to have it's maximum effect you have to go through everything that comes before it??? 
Personally, I find the opening of the 3rd act of Tristan to be the most anguished, agonising music that exists. But for it to have its maximum effect, you've got to go through the previous 2.5 hours of drama. 
In one way, that's a wonderful thing. But it does make it difficult to pull individual 'numbers' out of a Wagner opera.
Mahler symphonies are the same.


----------



## Faustian

damianjb1 said:


> That's a fair point. But then, isn't that one of the wonderful things about Wagner? I'm not sure how to put this. For a passage to have it's maximum effect you have to go through everything that comes before it???
> Personally, I find the opening of the 3rd act of Tristan to be the most anguished, agonising music that exists. But for it to have its maximum effect, you've got to go through the previous 2.5 hours of drama.
> In one way, that's a wonderful thing. But it does make it difficult to pull individual 'numbers' out of a Wagner opera.
> Mahler symphonies are the same.


Absolutely. And I love how his work so often feels like a journey. Take for example one of my favorite moments in his operas, the Sachs' Wahn Monologue at the beginning of Act III of Meistersinger. The movement of feeling from the beginning to end of it is a whole progress which might well take a person all their mature years to move through, yet which seems quite naturally to take a mere 10 minutes.


----------



## Barbebleu

While listening to the '51 Parsifal from Bayreuth I got to thinking about Wolfgang Windgassen's contribution to post-war Bayreuth. I knew that he sang there for twenty years and that he made his debut in Parsifal in 1951. So I did a little research and discovered the following.

Over his twenty year Bayreuth career he sang 186 times in 11 different roles.

He sang Froh (3), Loge (12), Erik (5), Siegmund (1), Walther (21), Tannhauser (33). Lohengrin (17), Parsifal (19), Siegfried Siegfried (19), Gotterdammerung Siegfried (19) and Tristan (37). His busiest year was 1954 when he gave 15 performances, 7 Lohengrins, 5 Parsifals and 2 each of S. Siegfried and G. Siegfried. His least busiest years were 1959 and 1970 with 3 Tristans each.

He never missed a year and I personally don't believe he ever gave less than his best over these twenty years and sometimes his best was as good as you are likely to get. He was a giant over two decades and would that we had heroic tenors that were half as good in the modern age. He died a scant three years after his last performance at Bayreuth as Tristan and Opera Depot have that particular performance, with Nilsson and Bohm in their catalogue.


----------



## DarkAngel

^^^^ Also among Bayreuth singers I was marveling at the historical thread that Gustav Neidlinger performed Alberich and Klingsor for 23 years from 1952-75......

The entire *new Bayreuth core group* of Hotter, Windgassen, Vinay, London, Uhde, Griendl, Neidlinger for men and Varnay, Modl, Nilsson, Resnik, Grummer, Ludwig, Rysanek, Silja etc for women........a golden age we shall never hear again


----------



## gardibolt

Opera Depot just added a 1974 Ring from Bayreuth, bringing them up to 21 Rings (which happen to be on sale this week at 50% off).


----------



## Barbebleu

DarkAngel said:


> ^^^^ Also among Bayreuth singers I was marveling at the historical thread that Gustav Neidlinger performed Alberich and Klingsor for 23 years from 1952-75......
> 
> The entire *new Bayreuth core group* of Hotter, Windgassen, Vinay, Thomas, Konya, London, Uhde, Griendl, Neidlinger for men and Varnay, Modl, Nilsson, Resnik, Grummer, Ludwig, Rysanek, Silja etc for women........a golden age we shall never hear again


That's an excellent book DA.


----------



## Barbebleu

Following up my Windgassen info here is something similar for Neidlinger specially for DA.

Over his twenty four year Bayreuth career (1952 to 1975 he sang 200 times in 9 different roles. I consider the Rheingold, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung Alberichs as separate entities

He sang RA (34), SA (34), GA (33), Sachs (10), Kothner (16), Nachtwachter (7), Von Telramund (7), Klingsor (41), Kurwenal (18). His busiest year was 1963 when he gave 17 performances, 4 Kurwenals, 8 Kothners and 5 Klingsors. His least busiest years were 1973 and 1975 with 1 each of the three Alberichs. His busiest Alberich year was 1971 with 10 Alberichs in total.


----------



## Barbebleu

And here's the same for Birgit Nilsson. Not as prolific as you might have thought.

Over her seventeen year Bayreuth career (1954 to 1970) she sang 73 times in 9 different roles. I consider the Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung Brunnhildes as separate entities. I know she sang at Bayreuth in 1953 in Beethoven's Ninth but I have not considered that as part of her Wagnerian career at Bayreuth.

She sang WB (6), SB (10), GB (9), Ortlinde (2), Elsa (6), Sieglinde (2), 3rd Norn (2), Isolde (36). Her busiest year was 1957 when she gave 10 performances, 2 Sieglindes, 6 Isoldes and 2 3rd Norns. Her least busiest year was 1968 with 2 Isoldes.


----------



## gardibolt

Interesting statistics. Between Varnay and Mödl I suppose there wasn't as much left over for Nilsson to do for the 1950s into the 60s. If only we had such a surplusage of Wagnerian sopranos today.

The 1974 Ring from Opera Depot mentions that the soprano scheduled to sing Brünnhilde was unable to do so, and thus there are three fill-ins, including Gwyneth Jones. Anyone know who was the scheduled Brünnhilde for 1974?


----------



## Barbebleu

If I can find the time I'll do a similar thing for Varnay and Modl.


----------



## Itullian

I highly recommend the Thielemann Ring on cd.
The sound is absolutely gorgeous, the conducting fantastic and the singers, while not quite classic, are totally committed to their roles and really great actors.
An amazing Ring imo.


----------



## DavidA

Barbebleu said:


> While listening to the '51 Parsifal from Bayreuth I got to thinking about Wolfgang Windgassen's contribution to post-war Bayreuth. I knew that he sang there for twenty years and that he made his debut in Parsifal in 1951. So I did a little research and discovered the following.
> 
> Over his twenty year Bayreuth career he sang 186 times in 11 different roles.
> 
> He sang Froh (3), Loge (12), Erik (5), Siegmund (1), Walther (21), Tannhauser (33). Lohengrin (17), Parsifal (19), Siegfried Siegfried (19), Gotterdammerung Siegfried (19) and Tristan (37). His busiest year was 1954 when he gave 15 performances, 7 Lohengrins, 5 Parsifals and 2 each of S. Siegfried and G. Siegfried. His least busiest years were 1959 and 1970 with 3 Tristans each.
> 
> He never missed a year and I personally don't believe he ever gave less than his best over these twenty years and sometimes his best was as good as you are likely to get. He was a giant over two decades and *would that we had heroic tenors that were half as good in the modern age*. He died a scant three years after his last performance at Bayreuth as Tristan and Opera Depot have that particular performance, with Nilsson and Bohm in their catalogue.


It's interesting that to me Windgassen had a relatively light voice for the roles he was singing. He does sound rather thin and strained in the Bohm Tristan of 1966. It's perhaps no wonder he died of a heart attack at the age of 60


----------



## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> It's interesting that to me Windgassen had a relatively light voice for the roles he was singing. He does sound rather thin and strained in the Bohm Tristan of 1966. It's perhaps no wonder he died of a heart attack at the age of 60


I wouldn't want to presume that Windgassen's singing killed him - lots of men (both of my uncles) die from heart trouble at around that age (my own heart seems fine, thanks) - but I agree that he was not by any stretch a heldentenor. His voice was surely quite strong, as we can hear him in recordings holding his own against the likes of Modl and Nilsson. I never found it a beautiful voice, but do greatly admire his artistry and commitment. In act two of the Bohm _Tristan_ I'm uncomfortably conscious of his dry and aging sound, yet he gets through the whole challenging act with his voice intact and goes on to sing a powerfully intense act three, where the lack of vocal beauty seems no liability, and even part and parcel of Tristan's agony.


----------



## DavidA

Iii


Woodduck said:


> I wouldn't want to presume that Windgassen's singing killed him - lots of men (both of my uncles) die from heart trouble at around that age (my own heart seems fine, thanks) - but I agree that he was not by any stretch a heldentenor. His voice was surely quite strong, as we can hear him in recordings holding his own against the likes of Modl and Nilsson. I never found it a beautiful voice, but do greatly admire his artistry and commitment. In act two of the Bohm _Tristan_ I'm uncomfortably conscious of his dry and aging sound, yet he gets through the whole challenging act with his voice intact and goes on to sing a powerfully intense act three, where the lack of vocal beauty seems no liability, and even part and parcel of Tristan's agony.


It would be interesting to find out the medical possibilities as to whether singing such heavy roles puts a strain on the heart. I find in Bohm Tristan Windgassen is somewhat unfavourably balanced compared with Nilsson which of course puts him at a double disadvantage with such a powerhouse. I agree about Windgassen's artistry but his voice cannot match either of the great post war Tristan's - Vinay and Vickers. But his work rate was phenomenal - 10/10 for effort!
As for Siegfried - as Culshaw said, he was for quite a time the only guy who could sing the role! Although we can blame Wagner for that rather than the singers!


----------



## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> Iii
> 
> It would be interesting to find out the medical possibilities as to whether singing such heavy roles puts a strain on the heart. I find in Bohm Tristan Windgassen is somewhat unfavourably balanced compared with Nilsson which of course puts him at a double disadvantage with such a powerhouse. I agree about Windgassen's artistry but his voice cannot match either of the great post war Tristan's - Vinay and Vickers. But his work rate was phenomenal - 10/10 for effort!
> As for Siegfried - as Culshaw said, he was for quite a time the only guy who could sing the role! Although we can blame Wagner for that rather than the singers!


Since roles are heavy in proportion to the voice that sings them, I guess the question is whether singing roles too heavy for one's voice is bad for the heart. I don't think Tristan taxed Melchior's ticker, or even Vickers' for that matter. We know that Schnorr von Carolsfeld died soon after singing the premiere, and Wagner wondered whether his opera had killed his dear tenor, but the cause wasn't heart failure. I don't know of any other instances of opera killing anyone except conductors, but apparently Artur Rodzinski's doctors told him he shouldn't be conducting anything, much less Wagner.


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## Becca

I see that Alberto Remedios died recently at age 81. Singing lots of Wagner including Siegried apparently didn't affect his heart!


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## DavidA

Post deleted. .


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## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> Since roles are heavy in proportion to the voice that sings them, I guess the question is whether singing roles too heavy for one's voice is bad for the heart. I don't think Tristan taxed Melchior's ticker, or even Vickers' for that matter. We know that Schnorr von Carolsfeld died soon after singing the premiere, and Wagner wondered whether his opera had killed his dear tenor, but the cause wasn't heart failure. I don't know of any other instances of opera killing anyone except conductors, but apparently *Artur Rodzinski's doctors told him he shouldn't be conducting anything, much less Wagner*.


I know Keiberth's death from a heart attack in Munich while conducting Tristan caused Karajan to direct his Foundation to examine stress in music making.


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## Belowpar

The British TV presenter and pianist Jools Holland is something of a one off, a bit of a card.

He did a magazine article, "My Perfect Day" or similar, where he said he likes to read the morning paper standing up, because he always read the Obituary section and had noticed the Conductors always seemed to live to a ripe old age.


I only mention this here because I saw him a few weeks ago for Tannhauser at the ROH.

:tiphat:


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## Barbebleu

Further to my earlier posts on this topic here's the same for Astrid Varnay. 

Over her seventeen year Bayreuth career (1951 to 1967) she sang 115 times in 10 different roles. I consider the Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung Brunnhildes as separate entities. 

She sang WB (16), SB (18), GB (22), Gutrune (2), Ortrud (23), Sieglinde (1), Senta (13), Kundry (13) 3rd Norn (2), Isolde (4). Her busiest year was 1956 when she gave 12 performances, 1 WB, 1SB, 1GB, 1 Kundry, 7 Sentas and 1 3rd Norn. Her least busiest year was 1959 with 2 Ortruds. 1959 was a bad year for a lot of singers like Varnay as there were no Ring cycles that year so no opportunity to sing any of the major Ring roles.

Her most prolific role was Ortrud with 23 Performances starting in 1953 and giving her last performance in 1967. In the Ring she sang Brunnhilde 40 times between 1951 and 1967.

Modl to follow when I get round to it.


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## Barbebleu

Here's the one for Martha Modl.

Over her seventeen year Bayreuth career (1951 to 1967) she sang 79 times in 11 different roles. I consider the Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung Brunnhildes as separate entities.

She sang WB (5), SB (5), GB (5), Gutrune (4), Sieglinde (1), Waltraute (6), Fricka (1), Kundry (30), Alto Solo Parsifal (11), 3rd Norn (5), Isolde (6). Her busiest year was 1952 when she gave 13 performances, 5 Kundrys, 2 Gutrunes, 4 Isoldes and 2 3rd Norn. Her least busiest years were 1959 and 1960 with 1 Kundry each. 

Her most prolific role was Kundry with 30 Performances starting in 1951 and giving her last performance in 1960. In the Ring she sang Brunnhilde 15 times between 1953 and 1958.


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## cheftimmyr

Could someone enlighten me on some Wagner history and evolution. I've read that Wagner himself intended for his works to be sung in the "bel canto" style, yet I recall reading numerous places that Wagner operas are polar opposite of "bel canto operas" (I can't recall specific source and page, but I've come across it numerous times in reading about opera in general). I've also read there was a change at some point (maybe 1920's-30's?) in how his operas were sung, specifically referencing the "Bayreuth bark" which I haven't had a chance to hear an example of, but sounds horrid, which now appears to be an obsolete practice, transitioning to a more melodic approach. 

So my longwinded questioned, condensed, is can a Wagnerite explain to me how all this fits? (Or recommend a source that would be good for addressing this). DA, Duck, Barbie and others have been extremely kind about dropping knowledge in the past!

Thx in advance!


----------



## Barbebleu

cheftimmyr said:


> Could someone enlighten me on some Wagner history and evolution. I've read that Wagner himself intended for his works to be sung in the "bel canto" style, yet I recall reading numerous places that Wagner operas are polar opposite of "bel canto operas" (I can't recall specific source and page, but I've come across it numerous times in reading about opera in general). I've also read there was a change at some point (maybe 1920's-30's?) in how his operas were sung, specifically referencing the "Bayreuth bark" which I haven't had a chance to hear an example of, but sounds horrid, which now appears to be an obsolete practice, transitioning to a more melodic approach.
> 
> So my longwinded questioned, condensed, is can a Wagnerite explain to me how all this fits? (Or recommend a source that would be good for addressing this). DA, Duck, Barbie and others have been extremely kind about dropping knowledge in the past!
> 
> Thx in advance!


This is quite interesting. 
http://humanities.music.composers.wagner.narkive.com/QcM7RfLt/the-bayreuth-bark

I don't think Wagner wanted a specifically Italianate style of singing but he definitely wanted singing rather than "barking" and would have been appalled by some of what passes for Wagner singing in the present day.


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## DavidA

Just been reading the reviews of the ENO Tristan. Love this bit:
"Kramer [the director] also needs to realise that sturdily built opera singers act much better when weird balletic gestures and manoeuvres aren't imposed on them - the cavortings during the love duet were merely ludicrous."

For the rest of the review:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/wh...eno-review-anish-kapoor-has-not-been-madly-i/

The typically idiotic Guardian says:
"It certainly provokes thought......"

It makes me think not to bother, certainly! I wonder why the ENO is in financial crisis?


----------



## Barbebleu

DavidA said:


> Just been reading the reviews of the ENO Tristan. Love this bit:
> "Kramer [the director] also needs to realise that sturdily built opera singers act much better when weird balletic gestures and manoeuvres aren't imposed on them - the cavortings during the love duet were merely ludicrous."
> 
> For the rest of the review:
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/wh...eno-review-anish-kapoor-has-not-been-madly-i/
> 
> The typically idiotic Guardian says:
> "It certainly provokes thought......"
> 
> It makes me think not to bother, certainly! I wonder why the ENO is in financial crisis?


I heartily concur DavidA. Bonkers production, poorly cast. No wonder the company is going down the pan. Ah well, at least I have my imagination.


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## interestedin

DavidA said:


> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/wh...eno-review-anish-kapoor-has-not-been-madly-i/


It's a very short review so it's hard to tell what this ENO Tristan is about, but the photos on which the singers are looking like caricatures are not a good sign. 

For a really good Tristan the reviewer should have chosen the Deutsche Oper in Berlin on Saturday. By far the best I have heard and seen live for a long time. Regietheater but _good Regietheater._ Very, very intense, devastating but not mocking or ridiculing the opera. Performed by Nina Stemme & Stephen Gould both in top form with no weak link in the cast. Magical. :angel:


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> Just been reading the reviews of the ENO Tristan. Love this bit:
> "Kramer [the director] also needs to realise that sturdily built opera singers act much better when weird balletic gestures and manoeuvres aren't imposed on them - the cavortings during the love duet were merely ludicrous."
> 
> For the rest of the review:
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/wh...eno-review-anish-kapoor-has-not-been-madly-i/
> 
> The typically idiotic Guardian says:
> "It certainly provokes thought......"
> 
> It makes me think not to bother, certainly! I wonder why the ENO is in financial crisis?


How is it possible to refer to Tristan and Isolde cutting themselves during their love scene and Isolde arriving in Kareol as an albino "minor irritants"? Minor compared to what? The review's headline is : "Anish Kapoor has not been madly inspired." I would have written "Anish Kapoor is a f****** a****** and should be sentenced to five years of solitary confinement inside his own act three bleeding vulva." After that he could be released on probation under orders not to produce any more operas.

At the risk of being politically incorrect, how could a soprano who looks like a ball of cookie dough be cast as the fair Irish princess? In the Middle Ages no one had access to enough Hostess Twinkies, ice cream, potato chips, and high fructose corn syrup to make herself look like that. I think opera houses need to start invoking the Deborah Voigt precedent. Seriously.

But I guess she fits right into a production that plays Wagner for laughs.


----------



## Woodduck

cheftimmyr said:


> Could someone enlighten me on some Wagner history and evolution. I've read that Wagner himself intended for his works to be sung in the "bel canto" style, yet I recall reading numerous places that Wagner operas are polar opposite of "bel canto operas" (I can't recall specific source and page, but I've come across it numerous times in reading about opera in general). I've also read there was a change at some point (maybe 1920's-30's?) in how his operas were sung, specifically referencing the "Bayreuth bark" which I haven't had a chance to hear an example of, but sounds horrid, which now appears to be an obsolete practice, transitioning to a more melodic approach.
> 
> So my longwinded questioned, condensed, is can a Wagnerite explain to me how all this fits? (Or recommend a source that would be good for addressing this). DA, Duck, Barbie and others have been extremely kind about dropping knowledge in the past!
> 
> Thx in advance!


I don't think Wagner himself used the term "bel canto." Our use of that term to refer to a certain period of Italian opera history doesn't date back that far. However, different national schools of vocal pedagogy and singing style were recognized in the 19th century and persisted well into the 20th. I love the story Jess Thomas tells of his first year singing at Bayreuth (1961). An elderly woman approached him, complimented him for singing Parsifal "in the Italian style," and asked where he had studied. When he said he had studied in America, she expressed surprise, and then introduced herself as Frida Leider. Anyone who's heard much of Leider knows that she sang Wagner with a perfect consistency of tone and a smooth legato line, absolute requisites of what was traditionally considered Italian schooling. She also had a coloratura technique (including an excellent trill) that subsequent Wagnerian sopranos did not possess, but predecessors such as Lehmann, Nordica and Gadski did.

Wagner spent six years as music director of the Dresden opera, where he conducted many popular Italian operas. He acquired there a lifelong love of Bellini, especially of _Norma_ (a role that Leider and the early Wagner sopranos had the technique to sing), and when he was composing _Tristan_ he wrote to Mathilde Wesendonck that Bellini was on his mind. However vast the difference in style between Bellini's work and his own, specifically in their melodic style, Wagner referred to his music as "endless melody" and told his singers at Bayreuth "There is no recitative in my operas. It's all arias." He loved Italian singers - he met and complimented Mattia Battistini - and clearly wanted his vocal lines shaped with a firm legato. Granting that he doesn't always make this easy, the greatest Wagner singers have known how to do it.

It seems that "German style" singing was encouraged at Bayreuth by Cosima during her reign after Wagner's death, perhaps with the idea of emphasizing the "heroic" aspect of Wagner at a time when the cultural atmosphere was unfortunately conducive to that sensibility. I can't say I know just what that sounded like, but it didn't seem to affect the work of the best singers, at least as we hear them on recordings. "Italian style" Wagner singing more or less petered out by the '50s, but we can still hear it in a soprano like Elisabeth Grummer or a baritone like Hermann Uhde, for whom expressive effect was achieved through a strong legato line. Most Wagner singing now has no particular style at all, and singers just try to get out the notes cleanly with an occasional expressive emphasis or bit of parlando so that we know they know what they're singing about. But then, a lot of operatic singing sounds like that to me.


----------



## cheftimmyr

Woodduck said:


> I don't think Wagner himself used the term "bel canto." Our use of that term to refer to a certain period of Italian opera history doesn't date back that far. However, different national schools of vocal pedagogy and singing style were recognized in the 19th century and persisted well into the 20th. I love the story Jess Thomas tells of his first year singing at Bayreuth (1961). An elderly woman approached him, complimented him for singing Parsifal "in the Italian style," and asked where he had studied. When he said he had studied in America, she expressed surprise, and then introduced herself as Frida Leider. Anyone who's heard much of Leider knows that she sang Wagner with a perfect consistency of tone and a smooth legato line, absolute requisites of what was traditionally considered Italian schooling. She also had a coloratura technique (including an excellent trill) that subsequent Wagnerian sopranos did not possess, but predecessors such as Lehmann, Nordica and Gadski did.
> 
> Wagner spent six years as music director of the Dresden opera, where he conducted many popular Italian operas. He acquired there a lifelong love of Bellini, especially of _Norma_ (a role that Leider and the early Wagner sopranos had the technique to sing), and when he was composing _Tristan_ he wrote to Mathilde Wesendonck that Bellini was on his mind. However vast the difference in style between Bellini's work and his own, specifically in their melodic style, Wagner referred to his music as "endless melody" and told his singers at Bayreuth "There is no recitative in my operas. It's all arias." He loved Italian singers - he met and complimented Mattia Battistini - and clearly wanted his vocal lines shaped with a firm legato. Granting that he doesn't always make this easy, the greatest Wagner singers have known how to do it.
> 
> It seems that "German style" singing was encouraged at Bayreuth by Cosima during her reign after Wagner's death, perhaps with the idea of emphasizing the "heroic" aspect of Wagner at a time when the cultural atmosphere was unfortunately conducive to that sensibility. I can't say I know just what that sounded like, but it didn't seem to affect the work of the best singers, at least as we hear them on recordings. "Italian style" Wagner singing more or less petered out by the '50s, but we can still hear it in a soprano like Elisabeth Grummer or a baritone like Hermann Uhde, for whom expressive effect was achieved through a strong legato line. Most Wagner singing now has no particular style at all, and singers just try to get out the notes cleanly with an occasional expressive emphasis or bit of parlando so that we know they know what they're singing about. But then, a lot of operatic singing sounds like that to me.


Duck, thanks for taking the time to share that. Uhde has high regard from me as both Wotan and the Dutchman. I need to find where I read that Wagner had intended his operas be sung bel canto. Entirely possible I was reading multiple books at the same time and that amalgamated in my head... I'll have to get to the bottom of it!

As an aside, I've been listening to strictly Wagner for over 6 months, so I put on Die Zauberflote and Le Nozze de Figaro today and listened to them both. I was surprised at how jarring the recitative portions were to me, then the light bulb went off... Listening exclusively to Wagner for the last while had trained my ears, so to speak, to not expect that. I love Mozart but after listening to the aforementioned, I need some Parsifal or Tristan now...


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## Woodduck

cheftimmyr said:


> Duck, thanks for taking the time to share that. Uhde has high regard from me as both Wotan and the Dutchman. I need to find where I read that Wagner had intended his operas be sung bel canto. Entirely possible I was reading multiple books at the same time and that amalgamated in my head... I'll have to get to the bottom of it!
> 
> As an aside, I've been listening to strictly Wagner for over 6 months, so I put on Die Zauberflote and Le Nozze de Figaro today and listened to them both. I was surprised at how jarring the recitative portions were to me, then the light bulb went off... Listening exclusively to Wagner for the last while had trained my ears, so to speak, to not expect that. I love Mozart but after listening to the aforementioned, I need some Parsifal or Tristan now...


I first heard Uhde as Klingsor, to which he brought a manic, unhinged quality right out of _Wozzeck._ I don't think anyone equals him in that part. It was in his Telramund (another part in which he's unsurpassed) that I realized what a superbly musical and technically grounded singer he was, capable of expressing great intensity of feeling through entirely musical means based on rock-solid vocal technique. I can think of no one who sings Wagner like that today.

I chuckle over your reaction to recitative. I was deep into Wagner before I'd heard a Mozart opera in its entirety, and the _recitativo secco_ was quite a shock to me. Speaking candidly, I didn't like it at all, and unless I'm hearing it in the theater accompanied by action I still find it a chore to listen to, despite the fact that Mozart handled it better than anyone else. Basically, it all sounds the same, and hasn't much musical interest to begin with. Accompanied recitative (at which Mozart was brilliant) is SO much better.


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## DavidA

cheftimmyr said:


> Duck, thanks for taking the time to share that. Uhde has high regard from me as both Wotan and the Dutchman. I need to find where I read that Wagner had intended his operas be sung bel canto. Entirely possible I was reading multiple books at the same time and that amalgamated in my head... I'll have to get to the bottom of it!
> 
> As an aside, _*I've been listening to strictly Wagner for over 6 months*_, so I put on Die Zauberflote and Le Nozze de Figaro today and listened to them both. I was surprised at how jarring the recitative portions were to me, then the light bulb went off... Listening exclusively to Wagner for the last while had trained my ears, so to speak, to not expect that. I love Mozart but after listening to the aforementioned, I need some Parsifal or Tristan now...


Then you definitely need a break! :lol:


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## Pugg

DavidA said:


> Then you definitely need a break! :lol:


At least 6 months I say .


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## dieter

Woodduck said:


> I first heard Uhde as Klingsor, to which he brought a manic, unhinged quality right out of _Wozzeck._ I don't think anyone equals him in that part. It was in his Telramund (another part in which he's unsurpassed) that I realized what a superbly musical and technically grounded singer he was, capable of expressing great intensity of feeling through entirely musical means based on rock-solid vocal technique. I can think of no one who sings Wagner like that today.
> 
> I chuckle over your reaction to recitative. I was deep into Wagner before I'd heard a Mozart opera in its entirety, and the _recitativo secco_ was quite a shock to me. Speaking candidly, I didn't like it at all, and unless I'm hearing it in the theater accompanied by action I still find it a chore to listen to, despite the fact that Mozart handled it better than anyone else. Basically, it all sounds the same, and hasn't much musical interest to begin with. Accompanied recitative (at which Mozart was brilliant) is SO much better.


When I can I programme out all the Recitatives on all the Handel Operas, any opera for that matter.


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## KenOC

You can program out all the recitatives and some other boring parts of the Bach passions using the listings here:

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/bach-s-passions-reader-s-digest-versions


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## DavidA

KenOC said:


> You can program out all the recitatives and some other boring parts of the Bach passions using the listings here:
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/bach-s-passions-reader-s-digest-versions


Can you do the same for Mastersingers?


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## dieter

DavidA said:


> Can you do the same for Mastersingers?


That's nasty:lol:


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## dieter

KenOC said:


> You can program out all the recitatives and some other boring parts of the Bach passions using the listings here:
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/bach-s-passions-reader-s-digest-versions


I do often skip the Cantata recits, but am happy to sit through the Passions, it's a kind of respite...


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## interestedin

Woodduck said:


> Isolde arriving in Kareol as an albino "minor irritants"? Minor compared to what?
> .


I'm not sure, but she could have come back as a rat, an astronaut or a Nazi soldier. So yes, minor


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## Barbebleu

Woodduck said:


> At the risk of being politically incorrect, how could a soprano who looks like a ball of cookie dough be cast as the fair Irish princess? In the Middle Ages no one had access to enough Hostess Twinkies, ice cream, potato chips, and high fructose corn syrup to make herself look like that. I think opera houses need to start invoking the Deborah Voigt precedent.


Quite right Woodduck. I had originally made the same observation in my post then I chickened out and deleted it for fear of being moderated or worse.


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## interestedin

Woodduck said:


> At the risk of being politically incorrect, how could a soprano who looks like a ball of cookie dough be cast as the fair Irish princess?


Which one of the many slender, beautiful 17-year-old-girls who are singing Isolde today would you have casted as the princess if you had been director of the ENO? Do tell!


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## Woodduck

interestedin said:


> Which one of the many slender, beautiful 17-year-old-girls who are singing Isolde today would you have casted as the princess if you had been director of the ENO? Do tell!


If I were director of the ENO and I were stuck with Anish Kapoor as misdirector and Plumpty Dumpty as prima donna I'd cancel plans for _Tristan_ altogether and put on _Tosca._ Her final leap into the Tiber would cause quite a splash.


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## Barbebleu

I suppose the non-PC answer is not to employ artists, overweight or otherwise, in roles that they clearly can't carry off without further distancing the already declining audiences.


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## Woodduck

Barbebleu said:


> I suppose the non-PC answer is not to employ artists, overweight or otherwise, in roles that they clearly can't carry off without further distancing the already declining audiences.


I think that's a legitimate view for an opera company to hold. But at bottom it's about art. In concert it doesn't matter what a singer looks like, but in theater it certainly does. Bass Thomas Quasthoff had a fine career in concert and recordings, but he sensibly avoided opera where his short stature would have made him ridiculous as King Philip or Hagen. In our PC climate it's quite conceivable that someone like him would go to court for the "right" to play such roles, artistic integrity be damned.

Obesity is perhaps not fully equivalent to dwarfism, but if we've come to regard it as normal it's mainly because we (at least in America) are well on our way to a population in which half of us are significantly overweight. When I was born in 1949 a really obese person was a rarity; I can remember vividly the very few fat people I knew, and people assumed that they simply had a "medical" problem, which may indeed have been the case in most instances. It's only in more recent decades that eating ourselves into diabetes, heart attacks, cancer and death has become a national pastime.

Opera singers have long had a reputation for being large, but these things are relative. Look at photos of great singers of the past, even those who sang the heavy roles of Wagner, and very few of them carried the amount of weight that quite a few singers do now: "the opera isn't over until the fat lady sings" hardly applied to Frida Leider, Kirsten Flagstad or Birgit Nilsson during their prime performing years. It's ironic that the ballooning of the population coincides with the supposed "new" concern for dramatic truth in opera production (which I think is partly a modern conceit), but perhaps its presence in absurd regietheater concoctions such as Anish Kapoor's _Tristan_ creates no such incongruity.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> You can program out all the recitatives and some other boring parts of the Bach passions using the listings here:
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/bach-s-passions-reader-s-digest-versions


That's sickening. You're taking out half of the drama of Bach's most dramatic works. The animus against recitative here is baffling.


----------



## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> I think that's a legitimate view for an opera company to hold. But at bottom it's about art. In concert it doesn't matter what a singer looks like, but in theater it certainly does. Bass Thomas Quasthoff had a fine career in concert and recordings, but he sensibly avoided opera where his short stature would have made him ridiculous as King Philip or Hagen. In our PC climate it's quite conceivable that someone like him would go to court for the "right" to play such roles, artistic integrity be damned.
> 
> Obesity is perhaps not fully equivalent to dwarfism, but if we've come to regard it as normal it's mainly because we (at least in America) are well on our way to a population in which half of us are significantly overweight. When I was born in 1949 a really obese person was a rarity; I can remember vividly the very few fat people I knew, and people assumed that they simply had a "medical" problem, which may indeed have been the case in most instances. It's only in more recent decades that eating ourselves into diabetes, heart attacks, cancer and death has become a national pastime.
> 
> Opera singers have long had a reputation for being large, but these things are relative. Look at photos of great singers of the past, even those who sang the heavy roles of Wagner, and very few of them carried the amount of weight that quite a few singers do now: "the opera isn't over until the fat lady sings" hardly applied to Frida Leider, *Kirsten Flagstad* or Birgit Nilsson during their prime performing years. It's ironic that the ballooning of the population coincides with the supposed "new" concern for dramatic truth in opera production (which I think is partly a modern conceit), but perhaps its presence in absurd regietheater concoctions such as Anish Kapoor's _Tristan_ creates no such incongruity.


"She won't tire - she's built like a battleship" (Hans Knappersbusch on Kirsten Flagstad)


----------



## DavidA

Mahlerian said:


> That's sickening. You're taking out half of the drama of Bach's most dramatic works. The animus against recitative here is baffling.


Of course, it depends who composed the recits. Both Bach in the Passions and Mozart's in his operas are brilliant. They carry the drama along in a way even Wagner's endless melody sometimes doesn't. One reason that Tito hasn't achieved the same success was his other mature operas is that he was so short of time he left the recits to his pupil.


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## DavidA

interestedin said:


> Which one of the many slender, beautiful 17-year-old-girls who are singing Isolde today would you have casted as the princess if you had been director of the ENO? Do tell!


The 18 year-old who did carry it off was Anja Silja. She sang the major Wagner roles at a young age.


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## DavidA

Barbebleu said:


> I suppose the non-PC answer is not to employ artists, overweight or otherwise, in roles that they clearly can't carry off without further distancing the already declining audiences.


I believe it was Karajan who reckoned one of his contributions to opera was "I got rid of all those fat ladies off the stage." To me it makes no sense of the visual drama to have elderly, overweight people singing what are supposed tone young lovers, especially in these days of HD recording.


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## Mahlerian

DavidA said:


> Of course, it depends who composed the recits. Both Bach in the Passions and Mozart's in his operas are brilliant. They carry the drama along in a way even Wagner's endless melody sometimes doesn't. One reason that Tito hasn't achieved the same success was his other mature operas is that he was so short of time he left the recits to his pupil.


Obviously it depends, just as the quality of every kind of music depends on the composer, not the form or genre. At its worst, secco recitative is indeed formulaic, dull filler between the arias that people actually care about, but at its best, it carries the drama and enhances it. It is this dramatic quality that Beethoven, Mahler, and others sought to emulate in instrumental music when they composed recitative-like passages.


----------



## interestedin

DavidA said:


> "She won't tire - she's built like a battleship" (Hans Knappersbusch on Kirsten Flagstad)


As I recall he said that during one of their recording sessions in 1956 or 1957.

In 1935 when she was hired for the MET Bodanzky told her: "Come to New York ... And above all do not go and get fat! Your slender, youthful figure is not the least reason you were engaged."

After the war, when she was not at all slender she was still singing Isolde. She did really not look like a princess in the 50's anymore but I can not imagine anyone complaining. Obviously if Melton had Flagstad's voice we wouldn't be discussing this...


----------



## Woodduck

interestedin said:


> As I recall he said that during one of their recording sessions in 1956 or 1957.
> 
> In 1935 when she was hired for the MET Bodanzky told her: "Come to New York ... And above all do not go and get fat! Your slender, youthful figure is not the least reason you were engaged."
> 
> After the war, when she was not at all slender she was still singing Isolde. She did really not look like a princess in the 50's anymore but I can not imagine anyone complaining. Obviously if Melton had Flagstad's voice we wouldn't be discussing this...


We have to remember that in 1955 Kirsten Flagstad was 60 years old and still singing magnificently and making recordings we continue to treasure. She gave up doing the big Wagner roles in the opera house after the 1950 La Scala _Ring_ under Furtwangler. She certainly gained weight in later years, as many older people do, but as photos show, in her prime she was not fat. "She won't tire - she's built like a battleship," if it is not merely an ungracious remark about a distinguished woman in her sixties, may be taken as a humorous tribute to her physical sturdiness and stamina in response to someone's doubts about that. It reminds me of the story John Culshaw tells about his recording of _Das Rheingold,_ at which Flagstad's first vocal utterance caused the entire Vienna Philharmonic to turn and stare at her in amazement at the voluminous tones that came out of her. Had she actually looked like a "battleship," I doubt they would have been so shocked.

"Battleship" is not the image that comes to mind when I think of Jane Eaglen, who plopped herself onto the Met stage as Isolde and seemed virtually incapable of moving anything but her arm, and that not too enthusiastically. Her Tristan, Ben Heppner, was only slightly less enormous, and the two of them conveyed the erotic charge of a pair of grain silos and together reduced an already static production to mind-numbing paralysis. We can certainly accept large-figured people on the opera stage, but obesity is relative, and our powers of disbelief can only be taxed so far.

Here is Flagstad in her 40's as a beautiful, happy valkyrie:






A little corny, but when we get another dramatic soprano whose voice pours forth with that kind of beauty and ease, we can revisit the subject of weight and dramatic credibility.


----------



## DavidA

Just noted there is a Flagstad documentary here






Haven't seen it yet so don't know the quality. Comments?


----------



## interestedin

DavidA said:


> Just noted there is a Flagstad documentary here
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Haven't seen it yet so don't know the quality. Comments?


I saw it years ago. It's mostly or only about the consequences the war had for Flagstad and how she was mistreated. Not about her whole life. Good quality, but may or may not be the 100% up to date, there has been more published recently, a book on the issue was presented on the KF museums's website a couple of months ago.


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## Barbebleu

interestedin said:


> I saw it years ago. It's mostly or only about the consequences the war had for Flagstad and how she was mistreated. Not about her whole life. Good quality, but may or may not be the 100% up to date, there has been more published recently, a book on the issue was presented on the KF museums's website a couple of months ago.


Ive seen this documentary too. It's ok but not enough musical content in it for my liking.


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## Woodduck

I saw most of that documentary and found it interesting. The animosity over her return to America after the war was sad and a little shocking to me. Imagine picketing the Met! But then we're the country that sent all those Japanese-Americans to detention camps.


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## DarkAngel

Duck since acquiring many early MET historical books I am just amazed how fit and slim many of the greatest MET female singers of early 1900s were, a case in point is Caruso's leading lady of the day Geraldine Farrar...........even the wagner singers back then were close to normal weight, I love these old pix


----------



## Barbebleu

DarkAngel said:


> Duck since acquiring many early MET historical books I am just amazed how fit and slim many of the greatest MET female singers of early 1900s were, a case in point is Caruso's leading lady of the day Geraldine Farrar...........even the wagner singers back then were close to normal weight, I love these old pix


The Met's first Butterfly I believe and such an attractive looking person. If she hadn't been such a brilliant singer she could probably have had a fine career in films. You don't need to be 280lbs to sing!


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## Woodduck

In the 19th century a bit of extra flesh was considered a sign of good health. It looks to me as if the first generation of recorded singers tended to be a bit larger than the next: Marcella Sembrich, Nellie Melba, Lilli Lehmann and Lillian Nordica were certainly well-nourished, and Luisa Tetrazzini and Ernestine Schumann-Heink more than that. Adelina Patti looks petite in most of her photos. Art-deco slimness was more valued by the 1920s: Geraldine Farrar, Amelita Galli-Curci, Lucrezia Bori and Rosa Ponselle were quite svelte. The very early singers were obviously corseted in photos, and I gather that corsets were worn on stage, but apparently a properly fitted corset pinches below the level which would greatly affect lung capacity. The singing of those ladies doesn't seem to have suffered. Most of the famous female singers of the '30s, '40s and '50s, like most people generally during the WW II years, were pretty slender.

Among earlier male singers, it's hard to think of one who was really obese, though many put on weight with age.


----------



## Figleaf

Woodduck said:


> We have to remember that in 1955 Kirsten Flagstad was 60 years old and still singing magnificently and making recordings we continue to treasure. She gave up doing the big Wagner roles in the opera house after the 1950 La Scala _Ring_ under Furtwangler. She certainly gained weight in later years, as many older people do, but as photos show, in her prime she was not fat. "She won't tire - she's built like a battleship," if it is not merely an ungracious remark about a distinguished woman in her sixties, may be taken as a humorous tribute to her physical sturdiness and stamina in response to someone's doubts about that. It reminds me of the story John Culshaw tells about his recording of _Das Rheingold,_ at which Flagstad's first vocal utterance caused the entire Vienna Philharmonic to turn and stare at her in amazement at the voluminous tones that came out of her. Had she actually looked like a "battleship," I doubt they would have been so shocked.
> 
> "Battleship" is not the image that comes to mind when I think of Jane Eaglen, who plopped herself onto the Met stage as Isolde and seemed virtually incapable of moving anything but her arm, and that not too enthusiastically. Her Tristan, Ben Heppner, was only slightly less enormous, and the two of them conveyed the erotic charge of a pair of grain silos and together reduced an already static production to mind-numbing paralysis. We can certainly accept large-figured people on the opera stage, but obesity is relative, and our powers of disbelief can only be taxed so far.
> 
> Here is Flagstad in her 40's as a beautiful, happy valkyrie:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A little corny, but when we get another dramatic soprano whose voice pours forth with that kind of beauty and ease, we can revisit the subject of weight and dramatic credibility.


What a brilliant clip of Flagstad! She looks as well as sounds totally at ease, as if standing on a rock wearing a winged helmet and waving a spear was all in a day's work for her - which I suppose it was! There's none of that physical straining and face pulling you see from lesser singers in more recent times.


----------



## Woodduck

Figleaf said:


> What a brilliant clip of Flagstad! She looks as well as sounds totally at ease, as if standing on a rock wearing a winged helmet and waving a spear was all in a day's work for her - which I suppose it was! There's none of that physical straining and face pulling you see from lesser singers in more recent times.


Yeah, she seemed to produce all that sound without effort. Some feel that it was just too easy for her, and that her singing and acting were often too placid and lacking in dramatic tension. There's some truth to that, but oh to be able to hear such a voice filling an auditorium! So many, including Joan Sutherland, thought Flagstad's the greatest voice they had ever heard. Hearing her and Melchior in the duets from _Tristan_ and the _Ring_ was certainly an experience inconceivable to any present-day operagoer. Their partnership was the Met's biggest box office draw in the '30s.

This _Gotterdammerung_ duet is a phenomenal exhibition of vocal vitality, even if the fast tempos don't leave much room for nuance:






The conductor's gasp at the end is treasurable. He understood what he'd just heard!


----------



## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> I saw most of that documentary and found it interesting. The animosity over her return to America after the war was sad and a little shocking to me. Imagine picketing the Met! But then we're the country that sent all those Japanese-Americans to detention camps.


If you read about the men who lost their lives working on the Burma Railway I think you'd have preferred the American detention camp to that! It's easy to judge our forefathers when we're not the ones at war.


----------



## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> If you read about the men who lost their lives working on the Burma Railway I think you'd have preferred the American detention camp to that! It's easy to judge our forefathers when we're not the ones at war.


I fail to see the point of the comparison. Do you know how many innocent Americans, rounded up solely because they had Japanese names, were deprived of their property and livelihood because we were at war with ancestors to whom they had no allegiance? No one nowadays thinks this draconian measure was necessary or even rational. I'm not judging those responsible. I'm judging the action itself and calling it the foolish overreaction it was. Americans love to have enemies, and if they can't find them they create them. The same principle applies to the treatment accorded Flagstad, who was just about the last person a rational observer could imagine as having Nazi sympathies, and who stated quite clearly that she was simply concerned for her husband and wished to be with him.


----------



## KenOC

I have done a lot of reading about the Japanese internment. I am quite convinced that, in the same circumstances, we'd do it again. This is not to say it was justified in any way, or even a practical solution to any problems, just that we'd do it again.


----------



## Woodduck

KenOC said:


> I have done a lot of reading about the Japanese internment. I am quite convinced that, in the same circumstances, we'd do it again. This is not to say it was justified in any way, or even a practical solution to any problems, just that we'd do it again.


It scares me to admit that you're probably right. That's why a Trump can't be allowed near the halls of government.

Uh oh... Back to Wagner, eh? :angel:


----------



## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> It scares me to admit that you're probably right. That's why a Trump can't be allowed near the halls of government.


Trump? Earl Warren, the darling of liberals, totally supported the internment of Japanese while Attorney General of California. It doesn't take a Trump!


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## DavidA

U


Woodduck said:


> I fail to see the point of the comparison. Do you know how many innocent Americans, rounded up solely because they had Japanese names, were deprived of their property and livelihood because we were at war with ancestors to whom they had no allegiance? No one nowadays thinks this draconian measure was necessary or even rational. I'm not judging those responsible. I'm judging the action itself and calling it the foolish overreaction it was. Americans love to have enemies, and if they can't find them they create them. The same principle applies to the treatment accorded Flagstad, who was just about the last person a rational observer could imagine as having Nazi sympathies, and who stated quite clearly that she was simply concerned for her husband and wished to be with him.


it may appear to us living about 70 years later an over-reaction, but the problem is that we have to judge it by the fact that America was at war with Japan at the time. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour. It is all very well for the do-gooders of the day to judge the people who were actually fighting the war, but we weren't there. Hindsight helps us to be wise. Our forefathers did not have the benefit of it.


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## dieter

DavidA said:


> If you read about the men who lost their lives working on the Burma Railway I think you'd have preferred the American detention camp to that! It's easy to judge our forefathers when we're not the ones at war.


I fail to see the point of your comparison. What has the Burma railway got to do with locking up American citizens of Japanese ethnic origin?
The Australian clowns who blindly followed Britain into their wars ( just as they now blindly follow the USA on most of their murderous follies ) similarly interred Germans civilians living in Australia so that camps in places like Tatura were full of German speakers, a lot of them German Jews.


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## dieter

DavidA said:


> U
> 
> it may appear to us living about 70 years later an over-reaction, but the problem is that we have to judge it by the fact that America was at war with Japan at the time. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour. It is all very well for the do-gooders of the day to judge the people who were actually fighting the war, but we weren't there. Hindsight helps us to be wise. Our forefathers did not have the benefit of it.


Many historians are of the opinion that the Japanese were forced to go to war because of the economic strangulation inflicted on them by the USA.
I sound like a stuck record, but do yourself a favour, DavidA. read Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke.


----------



## DavidA

dieter said:


> Many historians are of the opinion that the Japanese were forced to go to war because of the economic strangulation inflicted on them by the USA.
> I sound like a stuck record, but do yourself a favour, DavidA. read Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke.


No thanks. As a historian I don'the deal in fiction


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## dieter

DavidA said:


> No thanks. As a historian I don'the deal in fiction


Human Smoke is not fiction: Baker just quotes the protagonists of the prelude to the outcome known as Aushwitz. He quotes Zweig, Churchill, Roosevelt, Morgantheau, Goring, American ambassadors to Japan etc etc.


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## dieter

Woodduck said:


> It scares me to admit that you're probably right. That's why a Trump can't be allowed near the halls of government.
> 
> Uh oh... Back to Wagner, eh? :angel:


Mind you, Mr Woodduck, same should have been said about clowns like Dubbya and his cohort of fascist lunatics.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

dieter said:


> I fail to see the point of your comparison. What has the Burma railway got to do with locking up American citizens of Japanese ethnic origin?
> The Australian clowns who blindly followed Britain into their wars ( just as they now blindly follow the USA on most of their murderous follies ) similarly interred Germans civilians living in Australia so that camps in places like Tatura were full of German speakers, a lot of them German Jews.


The Americans did this, the Russians did this, but it's the first time I read about Australians doing it too.


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## Barbebleu

To be fair, Wagner was not responsible for any of this.


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## dieter

SiegendesLicht said:


> The Americans did this, the Russians did this, but it's the first time I read about Australians doing it too.


The interred Germans - probably more of Jewish stock than so-called 'Aryan' - were called 'The Dunera Boys'. Look it up...


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## dieter

Barbebleu said:


> To be fair, Wagner was not responsible for any of this.


It's weird, but a Wagner thread often ends up like this.


----------



## DavidA

dieter said:


> Human Smoke is not fiction: Baker just quotes the protagonists of the prelude to the outcome known as Aushwitz. He quotes Zweig, Churchill, Roosevelt, Morgantheau, Goring, American ambassadors to Japan etc etc.


These guys have to earn a living who write such stuff. It has similarly been argued that the Nazis were driven by economic considerations, which of course they were. Hitler's handling of the German economy was a bubble that was going to collapse unless he expanded the territory of Germany. But was that a good reason for going to war in which 50 million people were killed? Does that excuse the attempted extermination of the Jews? As I say clever minded people writing history many years after the event come up with these theories. Like AJP Taylor in his history of the Second World War. Because the so-called historian writes it does not make it a fact. Every historian writes from his own point of view. Anyway, this is getting very far from the Wagner thread.


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## SiegendesLicht

dieter said:


> It's weird, but a Wagner thread often ends up like this.


As I remember, almost all of them end up like this.


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## Itullian

Please get back to Wagner. Please


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## dieter

Itullian said:


> Please get back to Wagner. Please


Wagner who? ( Just an attempt at humour.)


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## dieter

'These guys have to earn a living who write such stuff.'
Nah, Baker is a novelist, he's not an historian. This is a telling of history from the mouths of the horses who rode the race. He simply quotes things from some of the actors on the stage. If he has an agenda it's one of pacifism. So it makes absolutely no excuses for the Nazis, it just unfolds the course of events from the perspective of the protagonists and actors and observers. You'd be surprised, I think.


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## Barbebleu

I loved him in Hart to Hart. Oops, wrong Wagner!


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## Pugg

SiegendesLicht said:


> As I remember, almost all of them end up like this.


Not almost, every Wagner topic .


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## DavidA

dieter said:


> 'These guys have to earn a living who write such stuff.'
> Nah, *Baker is a novelist, he's not an historian. * This is a telling of history from the mouths of the horses who rode the race. He simply quotes things from some of the actors on the stage. If he has an agenda it's one of pacifism. So it makes absolutely no excuses for the Nazis, it just unfolds the course of events from the perspective of the protagonists and actors and observers. You'd be surprised, I think.


Exactly! As Time Magazine said at the time: : "facts, even tragic ones, require context and interpretation. They don't speak for themselves. That's why we need historians". This is one of the milder reviews of this book. British historian Dominic Sandbrook referred to the "mendaciousness, even fraudulence, of this extraordinarily self-righteous book", contending that many of Baker's assertions, such as that Roosevelt conspired to provoke the Japanese into bombing Pearl Harbor, were not new and had been refuted long ago by scholarly historians.
Christopher Hitchens said the book was 'ahistorical' He goes one to say that numerous passages in the book served as a reminder of how "fatuous the pacifist position can sound, or indeed can be".
So don't believe all you read!


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## Woodduck

LISTEN UP, FOLKS! THIS IS A WAGNER - REPEAT, _WAGNER_ - THREAD.

A simple remark was made (by me, alas) that Kirsten Flagstad, the great Wagnerian - repeat, WAGNERIAN - soprano, was treated shamefully by Americans (my fine compatriots) after WW II, and that such prejudice might be expected given our overreaction in locking up our every fine compatriot of Japanese ancestry during the war. An observation both parenthetical and, I think, uncontroversial.

I was then given a lecture about not judging others when I wasn't there. Said lecture was delivered by someone who has made a virtual career out of judging Wagner, the putative subject of this thread, while not being there.

Why must some people turn every Wagner discussion into a moral/political lecture? There's no point in lecturing Wagner about his sins. He's dead. And there's no point in lecturing us, since frankly, my dear, we don't give a...

Now. Do you suppose it's possible to take this un-Wagnerian - repeat, UN-WAGNERIAN - conversation over to the politics section of the forum and return to the putative subject of this one?

Thank you.


----------



## DavidA

Can we dos a bit of history instead of trying to score points.........I'm including this in the Wagner thread as Flagstad was a great Wagner singer and because the case has been raised.
Concerning Flagstad: her career took a knock when she decided to return to Nazi occupied Norway in 1941 to be with her husband, a wealthy lumber industrialist, Henry Johansen. Many of the accusations against her - that she dropped off at Berlin on the way and performed Wagner for Hitler - were simply misinformation. It does show to me not that Americans need enemies but that they swallowed the misinformation. Again it is easy to judge because this misinformation came from the highest sources. While some of the facts are beyond dispute, much of the anti-Flagstad feeling came from the lies and distortions that were circulated -- by Norwegian diplomats, politicians, journalists and lawyers who were aiming to defame the character of Kirsten Flagstad, her husband Johansen and other family members in the second half of the 1940's. Those allegations have now been disproved beyond all reasonable doubt. Among the prime movers in this hate campaign were the Norwegian ambassador in Washington and one Sundfor, a lawyer with a long-standing grudge against Johansen. They were supported by socialist politicians who, after the war ended, were vindictive against businessmen like Johansen, who had joined the NS party (this was not the "Nazi party" but the right wing anti-communist party led by Vidkun Quisling which had links to the Nazis) because of their fear of those very politicians with their close ties to Stalin. That does not excuse any of them who continued their membership of the NS after Norway was occupied and it is to Henry Johansen's credit that he resigned - at the persuasion of his wife and daughter - from the party.
This campaign was inflamed by a newspaper whose editors tried to inflate the case against Henry Johansen into a big story, which it never was. Although his company like the rest of the timber industry had collaborated with the occupying forces, they had not made the enormous profits that were alleged. This campaign even extended to blackening the names of members of the Johansen family who had been active in the resistance during the occupation. Most of the charges -- with the exceptions of those against one of Henry Johansen's sons, Fredrik -- were dismissed by the judges in the trial of 1949 .
it should be noted that whatever her husband's sympathies Flagstad did not give concerts after her return to Norway apart from Sweden and Switzerland, countries not occupied by German forces. In 1948, she performed several benefit concerts for the United Jewish Appeal. In defense of Flagstad's husband, Henry Johansen, it should be noted that after his death it was revealed that during the occupation he was arrested by the Gestapo and held for eight days. Also, one of Johansen's sons by his first marriage, Henry Jr, had been a member of the Norwegian underground throughout the war.
Whether Flagstad was right in returning to occupied Norway during the war is a matter of opinion. It wold appear, however, that the only 'crime' she might have been guilty of is that of misjudgment. Again, it is easy for us to judge those who protested against Flagstad in America. If my brother or son had been killed fighting the Nazis and one was fed propaganda that this woman was a collaborator, then who knows?
The affair does no credit to anyone. It is difficult to believe Flagstad was so naive as not to know what was going on with the Nazis and her husband. And that he didn't have at least some sympathy for their views. But there is a difference between a compromiser (which Flagstad might have been) and a collaborator (which she almost certainly wasn't). Being a great singer does not excuse her actions but neither does it condemn her.


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## SiegendesLicht

Woodduck said:


> LISTEN UP, FOLKS! THIS IS A WAGNER - REPEAT, _WAGNER_ - THREAD.
> 
> A simple remark was made (by me, alas) that Kirsten Flagstad, the great Wagnerian - repeat, WAGNERIAN - soprano, was treated shamefully by Americans (my fine compatriots) after WW II, and that such prejudice might be expected given our overreaction in locking up our every fine compatriot of Japanese ancestry during the war. An observation both parenthetical and, I think, uncontroversial.
> 
> I was then given a lecture about not judging others when I wasn't there. Said lecture was delivered by someone who has made a virtual career out of judging Wagner, the putative subject of this thread, while not being there.
> 
> Why must some people turn every Wagner discussion into a moral/political lecture? There's no point in lecturing Wagner about his sins. He's dead. And there's no point in lecturing us, since frankly, my dear, we don't give a...
> 
> Now. Do you suppose it's possible to take this un-Wagnerian - repeat, UN-WAGNERIAN - conversation over to the politics section of the forum and return to the putative subject of this one?
> 
> Thank you.


Your "fine" compatriots, Woodduck, have seen a few too many Hollywood war movies of the sort of Private Ryan and the like. Consequently when a conversation about the greatest of all Germans comes up, they cannot think of anything else. Frankly, sometimes I wish I could gather you all and take you on a tour of Wagnerian places - to Bavaria or to Lake Lucerne where Wagner also lived for a while. I believe these conversations would take a different turn.


----------



## Woodduck

SiegendesLicht said:


> Your "fine" compatriots, Woodduck, have seen a few too many Hollywood war movies of the sort of Private Ryan and the like. Consequently when a conversation about the greatest of all Germans comes up, they cannot think of anything else. Frankly, sometimes I wish I could gather you all and take you on a tour of Wagnerian places - to Bavaria or to Lake Lucerne where Wagner also lived for a while. I believe these conversations would take a different turn.


The only turn these conversations need to take is away from politics, junk psychology, and pompous moralizing, and toward art. If a trip to Lake Lucerne can help with that, let's go!


----------



## Guest

SiegendesLicht said:


> [...] sometimes I wish I could gather you all and take you on a tour of Wagnerian places - to Bavaria or to *Lake Lucerne* where Wagner also lived for a while. [...]


That's an interesting point about Lake Lucerne. A good number of composers have made allusions to Switzerland in their music and indeed have spent various periods of time there. Of particular note musically speaking is the use of the _ranz des vaches_ (or _ Kuhreihen_) in conjuring up that "Swiss" feeling (e.g. Mahler's lied "On the Ramparts of Strasbourg", the horn call in the finale of Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, one of the movements in Liszt's "Years of Pilgrimage", etc.).
I wonder what the attraction was for 'things Swiss' for such composers. Any thoughts, ladies and gentlemen?


----------



## DavidA

Woodduck said:


> The only turn these conversations need to take is away from politics, junk psychology, and pompous moralizing, and toward art. If a trip to Lake Lucerne can help with that, let's go!


Well, lead the way, friend! Although I fail to see how a visit to Lake Lucerne would help solve the questions raised on these forums. However, having visited it, I can testify that it is a most beautiful place.


----------



## Reichstag aus LICHT

Mahlerian said:


> The animus against recitative here is baffling.


Ironic on a Wagner thread, whose greatest works relied heavily on very long recitatives


----------



## SiegendesLicht

DavidA said:


> Well, lead the way, friend! Although I fail to see how a visit to Lake Lucerne would help solve the questions raised on these forums. However, having visited it, I can testify that it is a most beautiful place.


I believe beauty is effective against ignorance and hate


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## Guest

DavidA said:


> Well, lead the way, friend! Although *I fail to see how a visit to Lake Lucerne would help solve the questions raised on these forums*. However, having visited it, I can testify that it is a most beautiful place.


I have addressed this particular point in my post #494. It is not a solution to anything, rather a point of interest that might generate an interesting side-topic.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

TalkingHead said:


> I have addressed this particular point in my post #494. It is not a solution to anything, rather a point of interest that might generate an interesting side-topic.


Actually what I meant, was getting people to know there is more to the German-speaking world than the "nutzies".


----------



## Guest

SiegendesLicht said:


> Actually what I meant, was getting people to know there is more to the German-speaking world than the "nutzies".


I understand that, SL; what I was hoping to do was to use your comment about Lake Lucerne as a springboard into another music-related topic about representations of Switzerland in 18th and 19th century music and why there was such interest shown by composers (Brahms, Liszt _et al_) in that country.
I'm not trying to derail this Wagner thread, but I think such "deviations" are of interest and permitted by the TOS. If they're not, I'll soon be bidding you all _adieu_.


----------



## SiegendesLicht

^ Sure they are. As to why certain composers had an interest in all things Swiss - I am merely guessing but I think beauty and romanticism. And that pastoral feeling - it is really very peaceful up in the mountains. Compared with all the tumults Germany went through, particularly in the 19th century, it probably seemed to be an idyll. And it was right next door.

It's a pity there are not more composers _from_ Switzerland.


----------



## Guest

SiegendesLicht said:


> ^ Sure they are. As to why certain composers had an interest in all things Swiss - I am merely guessing but I think beauty and romanticism. *And that pastoral feeling* - it is really very peaceful up in the mountains. Compared with all the tumults Germany went through, particularly in the 19th century, it probably seemed to be an idyll. And it was right next door. [...]


Yes, I have a feeling Switzerland represented some sort of Arcadia in the mind of these composers.
Regarding the _ranz des vaches_, it appears that in the 17th/18th century it had a deleterious effect on expatriate Swiss people (usually mercenaries serving in the French or Prussian armies) who were so touched by _heimveh_ (_mal du pays_/homesickness) on hearing the faint call of an alpine horn that they would commit suicide. Hard to imagine in our days, no?


----------



## SiegendesLicht

TalkingHead said:


> Yes, I have a feeling Switzerland represented some sort of Arcadia in the mind of these composers.
> Regarding the _ranz des vaches_, it appears that in the 17th/18th century it had a deleterious effect on expatriate Swiss people (usually mercenaries serving in the French or Prussian armies) who were so touched by _heimveh_ (_mal du pays_/homesickness) on hearing the faint call of an alpine horn that they would commit suicide. Hard to imagine in our days, no?


Committing suicide because of homesickness is crazy indeed since it will not bring you home.

And it is not only composers who drew their inspiration from the Swiss landscapes. If the name _Rivendell_ says anything to you, then you should know that the idea of this otherworldly beautiful place from Tolkien's legendarium is inspired by the place called Lauterbrunnental - in Switzerland.

I hope mentioning Tolkien in a thread about Wagner is not entirely off-topic?


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## interestedin

SiegendesLicht said:


> Committing suicide because of homesickness is crazy indeed since it will not bring you home.


Coming home through death? We ARE back at Tristan, finally


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## Woodduck

interestedin said:


> Coming home through death? We ARE back at Tristan, finally


How better to celebrate than with this most ecstatic performance by Frida Leider?


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## Sloe

DavidA said:


> They were supported by socialist politicians who, after the war ended, were vindictive against businessmen like Johansen, who had joined the NS party (this was not the "Nazi party" but the right wing anti-communist party led by Vidkun Quisling


Nasjonal Samling was the Norwegian Nazi party.
A composer who joined Nasjonal Samling was Christian Sinding.


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## Sloe

SiegendesLicht said:


> Committing suicide because of homesickness is crazy indeed since it will not bring you home.


Nostalgia was originally a term for serious homesickness that could cause people to commit suicide so that happens.


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## DavidA

Sloe said:


> Nasjonal Samling was the Norwegian Nazi party.
> A composer who joined Nasjonal Samling was Christian Sinding.


They were a fascist party certainly. Whether they were 'Nazis' a la Hitler is a matter of dispute.


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## Guest

Sloe said:


> Nostalgia was originally a term for serious homesickness that could cause people to commit suicide so that happens.


This was certainly the position of medical practitioners of the 18th century such the thesis of Johannes Hofer published by Theodor Zwinger in 1710 - and taken up by various scholarly works, ranging from the _Beschreibung der Natur-Geschichten des Schweizerlands_ by Scheuchzer (published in 1706), the _Schilderung des Gebirgsvölker_ by Johann Gottfried Ebel (published in 1798) and also Rousseau's _Dictionnaire_ (published in 1767).


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## Guest

Sloe said:


> Nostalgia was originally a term for serious homesickness that could cause people to commit suicide so that happens.


For the more clinically-minded among us, the term is pathopatridalgia. Apparently.


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## Belowpar

TalkingHead said:


> I understand that, SL; what I was hoping to do was to use your comment about Lake Lucerne as a springboard into another music-related topic about representations of Switzerland in 18th and 19th century music and why there was such interest shown by composers (Brahms, Liszt _et al_) in that country.
> I'm not trying to derail this Wagner thread, but I think such "deviations" are of interest and permitted by the TOS. If they're not, I'll soon be bidding you all _adieu_.


I believe this interest was widespread accross many arts. The start of travel for pleasure, the grand tour. The Swiss alps offered a natural counterpoint to the man made arts witnessed in Italy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy)


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## Guest

interestedin said:


> Coming home through death? We ARE back at Tristan, finally


Oh, it goes much further back than Tristan!


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## Reichstag aus LICHT

TalkingHead said:


> For the more clinically-minded among us, the term is pathopatridalgia. Apparently.


Let's face it, nostalgia isn't what it used to be.


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## Woodduck

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> Ironic on a Wagner thread, whose greatest works relied heavily on very long recitatives


I'll take the smiley face as an indication that your remark is facetious. But there's room for discussion here. Let's have Wagner and Stravinsky talk about it:

_There are no recitatives in my operas. It's all arias._ - Richard Wagner, instructing his singers at rehearsal on how, and how not, to perform his music.

_"Endless melody" is no melody at all._ - Igor Stravinsky, smiling wryly and peering through his monocle.

How _should_ we describe Wagner's style of vocal writing?


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## mmsbls

Let's keep the thread focused on Wagner and musical topics. Purely political posts are off limits here.


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## SiegendesLicht

TalkingHead said:


> Yes, I have a feeling Switzerland represented some sort of Arcadia in the mind of these composers.
> Regarding the _ranz des vaches_, it appears that in the 17th/18th century it had a deleterious effect on expatriate Swiss people (usually mercenaries serving in the French or Prussian armies) *who were so touched by heimveh (mal du pays/homesickness) on hearing the faint call of an alpine horn* that they would commit suicide. Hard to imagine in our days, no?


I do get a bit of that sentiment on hearing the not-so-faint call of Wagnerian brass: the prelude to Rheingold, or to Tannhauser, for example. And from Bruckner's brass as well, and from some other pieces by other composers. But dying, especially now that I am expecting to be on my way soon? Heck, no! :lol:


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## Barbebleu

Woodduck said:


> I'll take the smiley face as an indication that your remark is facetious. But there's room for discussion here. Let's have Wagner and Stravinsky talk about it:
> 
> _There are no recitatives in my operas. It's all arias._ - Richard Wagner, instructing his singers at rehearsal on how, and how not, to perform his music.
> 
> _"Endless melody" is no melody at all._ - Igor Stravinsky, smiling wryly and peering through his monocle.
> 
> How _should_ we describe Wagner's style of vocal writing?


Proper music drama that is well nigh uncategorisable! Perhaps we should describe it as Wagnerian! (Uncategorisable, mmm, I see I have now joined Shakespeare as a coiner of new words!):tiphat:


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## cheftimmyr

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> Ironic on a Wagner thread, whose greatest works relied heavily on very long recitatives


To my ear, the "recitatives" in Wagner are woven seamlessly and still have a melodic component which, in my opinion, makes them more like monologues; contrasted with a work like The Magic Flute (which i listened to a few days ago), and the breaks from arias to recitative are very pronounced. Not saying one is better than the other, but to my ear there is a definite difference in the listening experience...

Also, thx to the Mod for getting this thread back on track... My only request would be that swifter action be taken to remedy the situation next time... Many thanks and look forward to more Wagner discussion!


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## Itullian

And there's always amazing music going on in the background.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT

Woodduck said:


> I'll take the smiley face as an indication that your remark is facetious... "There are no recitatives in my operas. It's all arias"... How _should_ we describe Wagner's style of vocal writing?


Only a bit facetious. Perhaps Wagner's observation had more to do with the delivery of the music (and text) than with its structure.


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## Woodduck

cheftimmyr said:


> To my ear, the "recitatives" in Wagner are woven seamlessly and still have a melodic component which, in my opinion, makes them more like monologues; contrasted with a work like The Magic Flute (which i listened to a few days ago), and the breaks from arias to recitative are very pronounced. Not saying one is better than the other, but to my ear there is a definite difference in the listening experience...


Wagner's vocal writing really spans the possibilities. There are very few passages which I'd characterize as recitative, given all that "amazing music going on in the background," as Itullian puts it, which is often as much "foreground" as the singing. In a way Wagner reinvents the monody of early Baroque opera before aria and recitative became distinct from one another: a flexible musical line directly responsive to the words, capable of short verbal ejaculations, extended lyricism, and everything in between - except that in Wagner's case the elaborate harmonic scheme of the accompanying orchestral music tends to dictate the shape of the melodic lines. That factor required that singers and audiences of the day accept a somewhat new idea of what "melody" could be; Wagner called it "endless melody," a description to which Stravinsky raised his (half-serious?) objection. Nowadays I think it would be hard for most people to say that Wagner destroyed melody, but he certainly broke down its familiar symmetries to a marked extent.


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## Itullian

Would leitmotivs be considered melodies?


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## Mahlerian

Itullian said:


> Would leitmotivs be considered melodies?


It depends on how you want to define melody. If it's any collection of notes with a melodic character, then sure, but usually a melody is thought to be more extended than a motif, with a closed shape.


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## Woodduck

Itullian said:


> Would leitmotivs be considered melodies?


Depends on how you define "melodies," and on the individual case. For some of them the melodic interest is slight and their character is mostly harmonic (the "fate" motif in the _Ring_), or even rhythmic (the Nibelungs' anvil tapping). Others have more extended melodies (Siegmund and Sieglinde's love theme). The idea is that they can be transformed, broken down, interrelated, expanded, reharmonized, or combined in the greatest number of ways, yet still be recognizable. Wagner's ability to create a vast and cohesive musical narrative by coming up with motifs suitable for such treatment and subjecting them to seemingly limitless permutations is uncanny.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Depends on how you define "melodies," and on the individual case. For some of them the melodic interest is slight and their character is mostly harmonic (the "fate" motif in the _Ring_), or even rhythmic (the Nibelungs' anvil tapping). Others have more extended melodies (Siegmund and Sieglinde's love theme). *The idea is that they can be transformed, broken down, interrelated, expanded, reharmonized, or combined in the greatest number of ways, yet still be recognizable*. Wagner's ability to create a vast and cohesive musical narrative by coming up with motifs suitable for such treatment and subjecting them to seemingly limitless permutations is *uncanny*.


No real arguments on my part against this post, Duck. For the section I have bolded, this could very aptly be applied to LvB's "Diabelli Variations", but this is an _umleitung_. Just one doubt, however: why the use of the word "uncanny" for Wagner's ability for limitless melodic transformation?


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## Woodduck

TalkingHead said:


> No real arguments on my part against this post, Duck. For the section I have bolded, this could very aptly be applied to LvB's "Diabelli Variations", but this is an _umleitung_. Just one doubt, however: why the use of the word "uncanny" for Wagner's ability for limitless melodic transformation?


Well, anything limitless is uncanny. (Ask a funny question, get a funny answer. On the other hand, make a funny statement, get a funny question. Or whatever. ) It wasn't just that he was a great transformer, but that he could make it all hang together over such long time spans.

Beethoven's transformational skills were uncanny too. I think Wagner thought himself Beethoven's heir in that respect. I won't argue with that.


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## SiegendesLicht

I am wondering, which recording of Tristan und Isolde I should hear tonight, Daniel Barenboim









or Karl Böhm









Which one do you like better?


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## Reichstag aus LICHT

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am wondering, which recording of Tristan und Isolde I should hear tonight, Daniel Barenboim or Karl Böhm. Which one do you like better?


Böhm's would be my favourite of the two. Barenboim's is a fine recording, however.


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## Woodduck

Bohm and company are intense and powerful in acts 1 and 3, but their "Liebesnacht" is short on poetry (Furtwangler shows how it should be done). I haven't heard the Barenboim, but suspect its virtues might be complementary to those of the Bohm.


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## Itullian

I think I favor the Barenboim, BUT, the third Act has a digital edge that bothers my ears. For some reason they switched engineers.
Its better paced for my taste.


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## DavidA

I'm afraid the Bohm doesn't sit well with me. Too little light and shade although this might be the recording. 
If you want a searing experience of Tristan go to Karajan 1952 with Modl and Vinay. I wouldn't advise it in the evening as I listened to it one evening and was awake half the night! Karajan had to be almost carried from the rostrum at the end. 
For an experience to live with try Karajan 2 with Denersch and Vickers, especially the love duet. 
For the most beautiful Isolde try Kleiber. Pity about Kollo's Tristan and F-D's over the hill Kurwenall. 
For the classic try the Furtwangler although to me Flagstad sounds a bit past her best.


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## SiegendesLicht

Thanks for all recommendations. I am going with Böhm so far. As for staying awake half the night - I can certainly relate to that. That is why I do not listen to Tristan (and to Wagner in general) very often any more: so that this experience will not become dulled through repetition, but will remain ever new and powerful.


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## Itullian

I usually do one act at a listen.


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## Woodduck

Among _Tristan_ recordings, more than honorable mention should go to Goodall, who has a majestic approach to the score and a very lovely, feminine Isolde in Linda Esther Gray.

To get the full measure of this opera we need to supplement our collections with some of the live 1930s recordings featuring Melchior and Flagstad in their glorious primes. I have a Met performance from 1937 under Bodanzky. We haven't heard singing like this since, Bodanzky directs with real-life passion, and the audience got many times its money's worth that night. There are other noteworthy live ones under Reiner and Beecham. There's also one with Melchior and Traubel, whose splendid singing nearly equals Flagstad's.


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## SiegendesLicht

The first gleam of dawn is appearing in the sky, some folks are walking down the street returning from a nightclub, and here the Liebestod is just over. Who needs clubs when one can have the company of the Meister instead, as reflected in his greatest masterpiece... I say greatest, because since a certain time I believe this is indeed his best opera, even more intense and dramatic than the Ring, and all the more wonderful since the drama unfolds through emotions rather than events. It seems now quite strange that when I heard it for the first time, Isolde seemed to me a somewhat annoying girl who somehow falls in love with a man who had murdered her fiance. BUt this is a story of love that is above all human logic and considerations, and above the fear of death itself.


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## kineno

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am wondering, which recording of Tristan und Isolde I should hear tonight, Daniel Barenboim
> 
> View attachment 86044
> 
> 
> or Karl Böhm
> 
> I
> View attachment 86046
> 
> 
> Which one do you like better?


I would choose neither: today being Johannistag, my choice is Meistersinger (Reiner/Met)!


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## Woodduck

SiegendesLicht said:


> The first gleam of dawn is appearing in the sky, some folks are walking down the street returning from a nightclub, and here the Liebestod is just over. Who needs clubs when one can have the company of the Meister instead, as reflected in his greatest masterpiece... I say greatest, because since a certain time I believe this is indeed his best opera, even more intense and dramatic than the Ring, and all the more wonderful since the drama unfolds through emotions rather than events. It seems now quite strange that when I heard it for the first time, Isolde seemed to me a somewhat annoying girl who somehow falls in love with a man who had murdered her fiance. BUt this is a story of love that is above all human logic and considerations, and above the fear of death itself.


Maybe it's the greatest of all operas. I prefer _Parsifal_, a perfect work in its own way, but that's a subtler experience. _Tristan_ was a nuclear explosion in the history of music. It just mows you down.


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## Pugg

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am wondering, which recording of Tristan und Isolde I should hear tonight, Daniel Barenboim
> 
> View attachment 86044
> 
> 
> or Karl Böhm
> 
> View attachment 86046
> 
> 
> Which one do you like better?


I would go for Bernstein, but hey, who am I


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## SiegendesLicht

Pugg said:


> I would go for Bernstein, but hey, who am I


Someone who has more recordings in his collection than I do


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## Reichstag aus LICHT

Woodduck said:


> Among _Tristan_ recordings, more than honorable mention should go to Goodall, who has a majestic approach to the score and a very lovely, feminine Isolde in Linda Esther Gray.


Lovely and feminine indeed, and fiery enough when the role demands. It's such a pity that Gray's career was so brief; her Isolde was already quite something in the 1980s, and she could easily have gone on to be one of the greatest Wagnerian sopranos.

With Gwynne Howell's sonorous King Marke, John Mitchinson's impressive (if "acquired taste") Tristan, and Goodall's wonderful shaping of the score, this _Tristan_ is a particular favourite of mine.


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## Balthazar

Pugg said:


> I would go for Bernstein, but hey, who am I


Someone with impeccable taste. :tiphat:


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## Woodduck

Pugg said:


> I would go for Bernstein, but hey, who am I


You might be someone with a lot of time on your hands! Under Bernstein, the prelude to act one runs over 14 minutes. Furtwangler, whose tempos are pretty "central," takes just over 11. Lenny makes it excruciatingly beautiful, but it sounds less like a portrait of passion than like Romanticism's last will and testament. Mahler's Eleventh Symphony, perhaps.

Of course if anyone is in a real hurry they can listen to this hilarious "historically informed" atrocity by Roger Norrington:


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## DarkAngel

SiegendesLicht said:


> I am wondering, which recording of Tristan und Isolde I should hear tonight, Daniel Barenboim
> 
> View attachment 86044
> 
> 
> or Karl Böhm
> 
> View attachment 86046
> 
> 
> Which one do you like better?


I prefer Bohm Bayreuth in excellent live stereo sound, that is a really great cast overall, a strong "safe" recommend. For Barenboim Meier a very good Isolde, but perhaps I have seen too many wagner ring videos with Jerusalem and he doesn't get me too excited......

As DavidA mentioned above I really love the 52 Karajan Bayreuth Tristan (Modl & Vinay), ultra dramatic bold Technicolor performance with really great singers, I will never be without this..........


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## DarkAngel

Woodduck said:


> Among _Tristan_ recordings, more than honorable mention should go to Goodall, who has a majestic approach to the score and a very lovely, feminine Isolde in Linda Esther Gray.
> 
> To get the full measure of this opera we need to supplement our collections with some of the live 1930s recordings featuring Melchior and Flagstad in their glorious primes.* I have a Met performance from 1937 under Bodanzky*. We haven't heard singing like this since, Bodanzky directs with real-life passion, and the audience got many times its money's worth that night. There are other noteworthy live ones under Reiner and Beecham. There's also one with Melchior and Traubel, whose splendid singing nearly equals Flagstad's.


Duck got a great bargain on his rare 37 Tristan CD, but we mortals must be content with the expensive but nicely packaged 37 MET Tristan for IP label, I also really like Flagstad's 41 MET Tristan done just before leaving USA and returning to Norway....

















Also the famous 52 Tristan with Furtwangler has best sound ever in latest Pristine XR remaster, one of Flagstad's last complete wagner recordings and although the very highest notes are not there the other 99% is fabulous, her middle voice now has a warmer amber tone that really impresses and Furtwangler is almost certainly the finest orchestral version we have, his intuitive organic conducting style uncovers many musical insights others will never realize just playing the notes........


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## Barbebleu

DarkAngel said:


> one of Flagstad's last complete wagner recordings and although the very highest notes are not there the other 99% is fabulous


As most of us know this is the one where Schwarzkopf sang the high notes as I recall. This for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know this.


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## Barbebleu

Woodduck said:


> You might be someone with a lot of time on your hands! Under Bernstein, the prelude to act one runs over 14 minutes. Furtwangler, whose tempos are pretty "central," takes just over 11. Lenny makes it excruciatingly beautiful, but it sounds less like a portrait of passion than like Romanticism's last will and testament. Mahler's Eleventh Symphony, perhaps.
> 
> Of course if anyone is in a real hurry they can listen to this hilarious "historically informed" atrocity by Roger Norrington:


Should that not be more accurately described as "hysterically informed"? I would love to have heard what any poor soprano would have made of the liebestod sung at that pace.


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## Woodduck

Barbebleu said:


> Should that not be more accurately described as "hysterically informed"? I would love to have heard what any poor soprano would have made of the liebestod sung at that pace.


I gather the Liebestod was on the same recording, sung by Jane Eaglen at a fairly quick pace. For some reason it isn't on YouTube, and I'm not about to buy it out of morbid curiosity. For the morbidly curious, Norrington also tripped the light fantastic through some music from _Parsifal_. Had he performed the whole opera it would have beat even Boulez's record for the fastest ever at Bayreuth.






For those who hate funerals, Titurel's is over in a hurry.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT

Woodduck said:


> Of course if anyone is in a real hurry they can listen to this hilarious "historically informed" atrocity by Roger Norrington:


Historically informed? Are "langsam" and "schmachtend" thus consigned to the dustbin of history? 

I like Norrington, but that was ridiculously fast. I hope he never gets to conduct the Love Duet in a live performance - T&I would be completely shagged out after ten bars!


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## Woodduck

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> Historically informed? Are "langsam" and "schmachtend" thus consigned to the dustbin of history?
> 
> I like Norrington, but that was ridiculously fast. I hope he never gets to conduct the Love Duet in a live performance - T&S would be completely shagged out after ten bars!


Norrington should have confined himself to music written before 1830, where his lean and mean approach is at least plausible. He doesn't have a Romantic bone in his body. Truly authentic Wagner needs _flexibility_ of tempo, as Wagner explains clearly in his essay "On Conducting." Norrington exceeds even Boulez in his efforts to "cleanse" music of extramusical meaning, but this is the very opposite of Wagner who, more than any other composer, believed that music can express anything, and came damned close to proving it. Here's a fantastic review of Norrington's Wagner by Richard Taruskin:

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/28/a...erian-mists-and-mystiques.html?pagewanted=all


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## Barbebleu

Woodduck said:


> Norrington should have confined himself to music written before 1830, where his lean and mean approach is at least plausible. He doesn't have a Romantic bone in his body. Truly authentic Wagner needs _flexibility_ of tempo, as Wagner explains clearly in his essay "On Conducting." Norrington exceeds even Boulez in his efforts to "cleanse" music of extramusical meaning, but this is the very opposite of Wagner who, more than any other composer, believed that music can express anything, and came damned close to proving it. Here's a fantastic review of Norrington's Wagner by Richard Taruskin:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/28/a...erian-mists-and-mystiques.html?pagewanted=all


Thanks for sharing this. Excellent review of a piece of utter nonsense. Perhaps this disc was released on April First which would have made sense.


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