Unlike others, I have waited to form my overall assessment of the new Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera until I actually saw it. The Cycle is an entirely different experience from each separate installment (remember Wagner furiously refusing to cooperate with Ludwig’s premieres of Rheingold and Walküre in Munich?), though that didn’t stop Alex Ross and others from condemning...
The re-entry of a particular theme at the end of Götterdämmerung — heard only once before, in Act III of Die Walküre — has moved listeners and puzzled analysts since 1876. The entire Ring Cycle closes with this theme, in D-flat (the same key as Wotan’s greeting Vahalla in Das Rheingold). Early commentators labeled it […]
The Richard Wagner Society of New York is the largest Society in North America. For years it has offered U.S. Wagnerians opportunties “to learn, to teach, to share,” as its motto goes. Now it has established a site on YouTube that permits Wagnerians around the world to delight in some of its many offerings. The site […]
Has anyone seen the Ring end this way? VASSALS AND WOMEN TOGETHER: Wotan! Wotan! Ruling god! Wotan, bless the pyre! Burn hero and bride, Burn the faithful steed: So that free of wounds and pure, All-father’s free companions, Valhalla can greet them United in eternal bliss!
The final installment in new Met Ring Cycle was musically impressive but oddly not very gripping. There was much to admire but little to melt from.
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