# The best lecture-synopsis of Wagner's Ring Cycle, like, EVER!



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

This explains the entire libretto, names and demonstrates all the characters and their leitmotifs, a brilliant job.
Anyone know of any better?

Enjoy....


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Thank you so much for finding that! I heard that years ago and loved it so much! I agree it is the best lecture/synopsis of Der Ring EVER! I don't think there are any better ones (although Couchie might have a few things to say about it )


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

The lecture was pretty nice, but why do we need any extra explanations it if we can read Wagner's own libretto and get to know it the way he intended? That would be a time much better spent.


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## eorrific (May 14, 2011)

*SiegendesLicht*, I think the "lecture" was primarily meant to somewhat ridicule the Ring cycle. You can't do that while reading the libretto, etc.

She did another Ring routine latter in her life, and there are videos of them @YouTube.
Enjoy!


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Doh, here I was hoping for something really informative


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

emiellucifuge said:


> Doh, here I was hoping for something really informative


Hard to come by, but to avoid wasting time, here is a brief summary in a couple of minutes:


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Florestan said:


> Hard to come by, but to avoid wasting time, here is a brief summary in a couple of minutes:


Genius finding!!


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Pugg said:


> Genius finding!!


Many people don't realize the power of a simple Google search. That is the genius!

Besides, I could not help dragging up another years-old Ring thread.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Five year old thread. The Norns are starting to get tired of weaving.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Florestan said:


> Many people don't realize the power of a simple Google search. That is the genius!
> 
> Besides, I could not help dragging up another years-old Ring thread.


You are lucky you live in Michigan and can summon Google Search at will.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

hpowders said:


> You are lucky you live in Michigan and can summon Google Search at will.


That's right. It works much better when you are surrounded by giant freshwater lakes.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

hpowders said:


> Five year old thread. The Norns are starting to get tired of weaving.


:lol::lol::lol:


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Florestan said:


> That's right. It works much better when you are surrounded by giant freshwater lakes.


I voted for Trump because he promised to bring Google search to the Florida swamps. Until now, I'm using the Encyclopedia Brittanica for information.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

hpowders said:


> I voted for Trump because he promised to bring Google search to the Florida swamps. Until now, I'm using the Encyclopedia Brittanica for information.


And I thought Florida was a mess with all the gators running around taking small dogs, cats and worse, but now I see Florida is in much worse shape. Many seniors go there to escape winters and they are a generation that just is not into the web very much (they all brought their Encyclopedia Brittanicas with them), so there hasn't been much reason to bring the web to Florida.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Please Flo, I beg of you, no more resurrecting old Wagner threads. Life is way too short to read them all and some of us oldies are already doing ninety miles an hour down a dead-end street.:lol:


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## pokeefe0001 (Jan 15, 2017)

At the risk of offending some, I'll extend this old thread (which I just discovered) with a serious response.

Deryck Cooke's 2-CD work _An Introduction To Der Ring Des Nibelungen_ combined with Robert Donington's _Wagner's 'Ring' and its Symbols_ is an excellent introduction to the Ring cycle. Cooke does very good job of exposing the musical relationship - the very complicated musical relationship - among the many leitmotifs in the Ring. Donington explains the plot and shows how the leitmotifs are an integral part of the drama, providing details beyond that show by the action and words. Donington references 91 leitmofits found by Cooke (but Cooke may have found more after Donington wrote his book). Donington is pretty heavy on Jungian psychology in the book, but if you don't buy into that you can still appreciate how the music supports the story. (And Wagner was trying to express Schopenhauerian psychological ideas in the Ring so a psychological analysis is not exactly out of place.)


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

pokeefe0001 said:


> At the risk of offending some, I'll extend this old thread (which I just discovered) with a serious response.
> 
> Deryck Cooke's 2-CD work _An Introduction To Der Ring Des Nibelungen_ combined with Robert Donington's _Wagner's 'Ring' and its Symbols_ is an excellent introduction to the Ring cycle. Cooke does very good job of exposing the musical relationship - the very complicated musical relationship - among the many leitmotifs in the Ring. Donington explains the plot and shows how the leitmotifs are an integral part of the drama, providing details beyond that show by the action and words. Donington references 91 leitmofits found by Cooke (but Cooke may have found more after Donington wrote his book). Donington is pretty heavy on Jungian psychology in the book, but if you don't buy into that you can still appreciate how the music supports the story. (And Wagner was trying to express Schopenhauerian psychological ideas in the Ring so a psychological analysis is not exactly out of place.)


By all means, check out both works (especially Cooke's _Introduction_ for an invaluable analysis of the leitmotivs).

Still, it's worth noting that, in his sadly unfinished book _I Saw the World End: A Study of Wagner's_ Ring, Cooke himself says of Donington's book, "I am totally out of sympathy with the entirely introverted theories of Jungian psychology, and even more with the idea of applying them wholesale to a work with such manifest social implications as _The Ring_." Accordingly, Cooke concludes that Donington "does justice to none of the issues of _The Ring_, but only to the theories of Jung."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Cooke evidently had a bee in his bonnet. Donington's _Wagner's Ring and its Symbols_ approaches its subject explicitly from a limited point of view (Jungian psychology). This is not a fault. No study of a Wagner opera can be exhaustive, and a good essay will adopt a specific viewpoint and take it to the limit, testing the work's depth. The many-leveled _Ring_ passes such tests very well!

My thinking was powerfully stimulated by Donington's book decades ago, and I've found him more useful than any other writer in my efforts to make the greatest possible sense out of Wagner's most "psychoanalytic" and dreamlike work, _Parsifal._ Nearly everything I've said about that work on this forum in the last three years owes a debt to Donington's _Ring_ study.

To Donington's critics I would say only that it's best not to try to limit too easily what Wagner's operas are "about." We don't have to be doctrinaire Jungians or Freudians to find in their mythical symbols striking embodiments of such concepts as archetypes, the Oedipus complex, id, ego, and super-ego, the significance of dreams, the shadow, the anima and animus, and the self. Jung's psychological approach placed prime importance on the growth of consciousness and the processes of individuation and integration, and in my estimation the maturation of the psyche, or the progress of the soul (a more "spiritual" way of saying the same thing), is the most profound theme in Wagner's work, and one which sets him apart from nearly all other works for the lyric stage.

The psychological viewpoint helps us understand the social and political implications of the operas, but the reverse is not necessarily the case. I have a predilection for diving into the deep end of the pool!


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Cooke evidently had a bee in his bonnet. Donington's _Wagner's Ring and its Symbols_ approaches its subject explicitly from a limited point of view (Jungian psychology). This is not a fault. No study of a Wagner opera can be exhaustive, and a good essay will adopt a specific viewpoint and take it to the limit, testing the work's depth. The many-leveled _Ring_ passes such tests very well!


And to be fair, Cooke's comments on Donington are part of a lengthy introduction to his own book, in which he sets out to justify the need for yet another full-length study of Wagner's cycle. From that standpoint, it's understandable he would emphasize the limitations of his competitors. 

That said, I would recommend Cooke's _I Saw the World End_ for a very different approach to The Ring--largely an exhaustive analysis of how Wagner adapted his various sources. It's an indispensable study, even though Cooke passed away well before he had finished.


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## mchriste (Aug 16, 2013)

I know I'm necroposting, but this is the most compact overview to Wagner's Ring cycle I've seen... enjoy!






Hint: you can adjust playback speed in Youtube


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Nice word, necroposting.


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