Opera tales (not quite serious)

[Sieglinde]

I only saw Götter from the Met Ring, and parts of Rheingold, but it was so...

Absolutely worth it for Morris, Salminen and Ludwig, but the costumes are so ragged. Traditional is ok, but why can't they sew things normally?

And yes, you need a Brünnhilde who can command the stage and has a really awesome voice to make the Immolation Scene interesting. I like to listen to it and sing along while washing or cooking...

For a good Ring I'd say Chéreau or the Copenhagen one, but both have weak Siegfrieds and (vocally) weak Hagens. Nothing is perfect... (Although the Danish version's Hagen is Moff Tarkin's long-lost twin and he acts so good you almost forgive the lack of his voice.)

I'd so like a version where everyone can sing... especially Siegfried. It's not good when you're like: "die already!" during his final solo.


My favourite "dragon" was in the Copenhagen version - Fafner didn't change at all, he just has an under-stage lair and a lot of voice modifiers and their cables looked like some eldritch abomination's tentacles. And then Fafner is revealed in his hidden lair, and he was just an old man in white... but Siegfried stabbed him in the back before realizing it. What a jerk.

[mamascarlatti]

I've ordered the Copenhagen version and am looking forward to it, if Moviemars gets their act together which they have spectacularly failed to do so far. As long as the Brunnhilde is ok....

[Sieglinde]

Iréne Theorin is a good one. And they have a fantastic Loge too. He totally steals the show. Hope that young man would move toward English repertoire... he has the voice for it.

Oh, and Stephen Milling makes a great Fasolt and Hunding. Maybe the scariest Hunding I've seen.

[Chi_town/Philly]

Originally Posted by mamascarlatti

I kept wanting to say "Don't talk to your adoptive father like that, you snotty-nosed little creep". Kind of didn't sit with the whole hero thing.

O.K.: which "Siegfried behaving badly" moment bothers you the most?

a) the abuse and eventual slaying of Mime?
b) the meancing, threats, and sword-strike on Wotan?
c) the 'ungentleman-and-a-procurer' abduction of Brünnhilde?

In spite of Hagen's libation, I'm much more bothered by 'c)' than by the other two. The Mime treatment disturbs me the least. I've spoken at length elsewhere on that issue. Here's your turn...

[mamascarlatti]

Originally Posted by Chi_town/Philly

O.K.: which "Siegfried behaving badly" moment bothers you the most?

a) the abuse and eventual slaying of Mime?
b) the meancing, threats, and sword-strike on Wotan?
c) the 'ungentleman-and-a-procurer' abduction of Brünnhilde?

In spite of Hagen's libation, I'm much more bothered by 'c)' than by the other two. The Mime treatment disturbs me the least. I've spoken at length elsewhere on that issue. Here's your turn...

Well, being new to the Ring, it was the abuse of Mime which got me to start with. After all Mime had looked after him for 17 years. At that point I completely lost respect for the character so the rest seemed pretty much to be expected. But you are right, c) is the most immoral action as Brünnhilde is completely innocent.

[Despina41]

Originally Posted by mamascarlatti

Well, being new to the Ring, it was the abuse of Mime which got me to start with. After all Mime had looked after him for 17 years. At that point I completely lost respect for the character so the rest seemed pretty much to be expected. But you are right, c) is the most immoral action as Brünnhilde is completely innocent.

Well, in the case of Brünnhilde, is he working under the influence of some potion? MAYBE you could make that argument.
The Mime business bothers me so much because it's racially driven.

For example: Siegfried Act 1, scene 1:

Siegfried:
As soon as I set eyes
on you,
I see that all you do
is evil:
when I watch you standing,
shuffling and shambling,
servilely stooping,
squinting and blinking
I long to seize you
by your nodding neck
and make an end
of your obscene blinking!


(Seh' ich dir erst
mit den Augen zu,
zu übel erkenn' ich,
was alles du tust:
seh' ich dich stehn,
gangeln und gehn,
knicken und nicken,
mit den Augen zwicken:
beim Genick möcht' ich
den Nicker packen,
den Garaus geben
dem garst'gen Zwicker! -)

So Siegfried can't help but hate Mime because he knows he is evil (because he stoops and squints??). He knows he is not his father -- or related at all -- just by instinct.

Or as Wagner himself wrote in 1850:
"The Jew—who, as everyone knows, has a God all to himself—in ordinary life strikes us primarily by his outward appearance, which, no matter to what European nationality we belong, has something disagreeably foreign to that nationality: instinctively we wish to have nothing in common with a man who looks like that..."

[Chi_town/Philly]

Originally Posted by Despina41

So Siegfried can't help but hate Mime because he knows he is evil (because he stoops and squints??).

Or maybe this is the instinct part.

Originally Posted by Despina41

He knows he is not his father -- or related at all -- just by instinct.

One can't deny the role of observation in this conclusion...
Again from Siegfried- same Act, same Scene:

Wie den Jungen den Alten gleichen,
has hab' ich mir glücklich erseh'n.
Nun kam ich zum klaren Bach:
da erspäht' ich die Baum'
und Thier' im Spiegel
Sonn und Wolken,
wie sie nur sind,
im Glitzer erschienen sie gleich.
Da sah' ich denn auch
mein eigen Bild;
ganz anders als du
dünkt' ich mir da:
so glich wohl der Kröte
ein glänzender Fisch;
doch kroch nie ein Fisch aus der Kröte

That the young look like their parents
I've luckily seen for myself.
When I came to the limpid brook,
I glimpsed trees and beasts
in its glassy surface;
sun and clouds,
just as they are,
appeared in the glittering stream.
And then I saw
my own likeness too,
quite different from you
I thought myself then:
as like to a toad
were a glittering fish,
though no fish ever crept from a toad.

I realize this next may veer us even further off-topic... but I must add-

There is a vocal school of commentators who are forever finding Jewish caricatures in Wagner- Mime (they say), or is it Beckmesser... or is it Mime & Beckmesser? They take great umbrage at the apostrophization of German art at the end of Die Meistersinger. (Imagine any other great composer making any similar comment about any country other than Germany... would the reaction be as strong?!)

I just think that, typically speaking, there's a predisposition to finding what's being sought out (present or not), and that such 'discoveries' say more about the observer than that which is observed.

[Despina41]

I object to Siegfried feeling a need to wring Mime's neck for no apparent reason other than he is of another race. Maybe this is an instinct of the human race to resent that which is different, but do we need to glorify it?

Originally Posted by Chi_town/Philly

Or maybe this is the instinct part.One can't deny the role of observation in this conclusion...
Again from Siegfried- same Act, same Scene:



I realize this next may veer us even further off-topic... but I must add-

There is a vocal school of commentators who are forever finding Jewish caricatures in Wagner- Mime (they say), or is it Beckmesser... or is it Mime & Beckmesser? They take great umbrage at the apostrophization of German art at the end of Die Meistersinger. (Imagine any other great composer making any similar comment about any country other than Germany... would the reaction be as strong?!)

I just think that, typically speaking, there's a predisposition to finding what's being sought out (present or not), and that such 'discoveries' say more about the observer than that which is observed.

[mamascarlatti]

Originally Posted by Despina41

Well, in the case of Brünnhilde, is he working under the influence of some potion? MAYBE you could make that argument.

I thought the potion just made him forget who Brünnhilde was? It doesn't say (I think) about removing moral sense - ie seeing that capturing an innocent woman and delivering her unwillingly for rape within marriage is wrong.

[Chi_town/Philly]

Siegfried did not arrive at a false conclusion concerning Mime- and that's why, even if one finds Siegfried to be an felonious pretense of a hero-figure, the death of Mime is no more troublesome (to me, anyway) than a 'criminal-on-criminal' slaying...

(...though I understand that some will have a contrary perspective.
It has much to do with why I asked the question.)