Wagner's Cosmic Family Drama

Each of the operas (okay, "music dramas) of Richard Wagner's “Ring Cycle” has a certain focus and nature of music characterization. “Das Rheingold” is a fairytale of gods and mythic figures in which mortals figure hardly at all. “Siegfried” is a coming of age story about a boy becoming a man through struggle and realization, communion with nature and an encounter with a woman; “Götterdämmerung” is a tragedy that begins in brief hope and darkens finally into global conflagration. “Die Walküre” is the most human--its focus is an extended family whose success or dysfunction, reconciliations and conflicts begin as domestic squabbles. 

In a house that was never really paid for, after a business deal with giants, who are informed they didn't read the fine print and sets in motion abduction and murder, a family is under siege. The types are universal: a father who is both loving and unfaithful , a wife , both jealous and malicious with whom he endlessly argues; a daughter headstrong and rebellious; rival siblings - the whole nine yards of the most popular television drama raised to cosmic conflict. At the heart of the drama is a dispute about the fate of a young couple, Siegmund and Sieglinde. They are in love , but she is already married (and they may be more than kissing cousins...)  and the question that all the world argues is is love stronger than tradition, than contracts and oaths, familial obligations. Fricka, the wife says no, Wotan the husband says yes, but tradition and law dictate that this cannot be. In the balance hangs the fate of the whole world.

For many opera lovers and concertgoers this is the most beloved and familiar of all Wagner's works. Its melodies, leitmotifs and theme-complexes are the stuff of cartoons, radio advertisements, orchestral renditions and piano transcriptions, movie music and recital encores. A stormy orchestral prelude sets the scene, then in rapid succession comes “Winterstrume wichen dem Wonnemond” and “Du bist der Lenz”; the “Ride of the Valkyries”; the pleading “War ist so schmalich,” and finally the piece du resistance, "Wotan's Farewell.” 

 

Leb'wohl du kuhnes herrliches Kind!

Du meines Herzens heiligster Stolz!   

Leb'wohl! 

Farewell, you dauntless, glorious child!

You the chief pride of my heart.

Farewell!

For daring to disobey him, Brünnhilde is deprived of her immortality and put into a deep sleep, but as an act of pity and love, Wotan surrounds her with a ring of fire which only a great hero can breach. Will they ever be reconciled? Will the lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde find true love? Will the heroine Brünnhilde ever escape her prison of fire and be rescued by a handsome Prince?

  

To find out, please tune in this Saturday at 11 a.m. to the Metropolitan Opera's presentation of Wagner's “Die Walküre,” here on KPAC and KTXI.

--Ron Moore

Submitted for your approval...

To anyone lucky enough to be in or passing through New York City in the early nineties it was a scene worthy of Rod Sterling: Tout Manhattan, dressed nattily or casually and counting such luminaries as Charles Rosen and Susan Sontag (and my modest self) were crowded into subway trains filled to the breaking point on a Sunday afternoon and emptying in of all places, Brooklyn. People who probably rarely ventured south of Tribeca were rushing to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a space about the size of the Houston Grand Opera. The hottest ticket in the operatic western hemisphere was to be the revelation of a series of baroque operas, heretofore heard only on records. William Christie and his Les Arts Florissants had come to uncover a musical revelation, so successful and memorable were these performances that an anniversary performance of Atys was repeated decades later.

Decades before the musically precocious and Francophile Christie had left Yale and headed for France and more specifically Versailles.There he had access to ensembles and libraries of scores and all the early instruments a man could dream of. Recordings began to appear of Handel, Rameau, Lully, Charpentier, Campra and others.The problem then was, despite all these preparations, was where in New York could you put on these works? The Met, glorious though it is ... well, a barn - historically speaking. It is a product of democratic-aristocratic intentions circa 1880's and then 1960's: we Americans missed the Versailles part. The dream of a piccolo-Met, discussed for over thirty years has as far as I know never come to light. Works like Strauss' Capriccio and the whole world of chamber and baroque opera are almost impossible in such a space.These operas with nuanced and subtle instrumental sound was dwarfed in the Mets vast space and all those theorbos and harpsichords lines and melodies dying long before they reach the high seats. I know, having over about thirty years sat all over the Met from nose bleed section to the exalted orchestra seats. Once as a gift from a singer I was so close to the orchestra for the Ring that I could see the beads of sweat on Maestro Levine's brow. 

Christie's grounding breaking, exquisite and critically acclaimed presentations had to be put on at alternate venues. In the early years we were treated to Lully's Atys (perhaps the greatest operatic- ballet performance I have ever seen) Purcell's King Arthur and Rameau's Castor et Pollux. Some of these were stage versions put on in Lincoln Center spaces. To cap it all off we were offered as a finale an evening of all Charpentier (Marc Antoine,1643-1704) and his ravishing motets and cantatas.

The fanfare for the upcoming "pastiche", The Enchanted Isle, must be a kind of solution to the baroque opera in the Met problem. I keep hearing the terms like extravaganza and grand. Perhaps this combination of baroque masters in the aggregate, Handel, Rameau and Lully, let alone the Shakespeare plot might have ramped up the scale. Either way, the music will be glorious. Please tune in to the Met this Saturday at noon and hear what William Christie and his magicians have in store for us all. 

by Ron Moore

 

Enchanting at the Met this weekend!

Joyce DiDonato

The Enchanted Island received its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera (heard Saturdays at noon on KPAC & KTXI) on New Year’s Eve and runs through the end of this month. It is a pastiche: creative use of leftovers, a "Franken-opera" formed from other operas by Vivaldi & Handel. It stars Joyce DiDonato, David Daniels and Plácido Domingo.

The live HD screening of The Enchanted Island is this Saturday January 21st (locally seen at Cielo Vista 18, Fiesta 16 Theatres, & Cinemark McCreeless Mall) at 11:55am. Joyce DiDonato, Sycorax, is joined by Luca Pisaroni who plays her son, Caliban, to answer a few questions from a class in Utah:

Here is the trailer for The Enchanted Island:
And from the second act of The Enchanted Island with Joyce:

The Don a hit!

Did you go see it this weekend? What other productions do you plan on catching? Let us know in the comments!
The Met: Live in HD continued its sixth season Saturday with a live transmission of its new production of Don Giovanni, starring Mariusz Kwiecien, with an estimated attendance of 107,000 in North America earning a gross of $2.3 million. It was seen live on more than 850 screens. An estimated additional 109,000 people saw it live on 625 screens in 42 additional countries; 28 in Europe, nine in Latin America, and Russia, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, and the Bahamas.
Delayed showings in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and encore performances in North America and Europe, are expected to boost worldwide attendance of Don Giovanni to 265,000. The encore screening of Don Giovanni in the U.S. is on November 16; the Canadian encores are December 17 and January 9.
The new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, by Tony Award winner Michael Grandage, was conducted by Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi in his Live in HD debut. In a dramatic offstage twist, star Kwiecien was injured in the final dress rehearsal of the production on October 10 but underwent back surgery and a rigorous physical therapy regimen so that he would be able to return to the Met stage in time for this performance. The other stars of Don Giovanni included Mojca Erdmann as Zerlina, Barbara Frittoli as Donna Elvira, Marina Rebeka as Donna Anna, Ramón Vargas as Don Ottavio, Luca Pisaroni as Leporello, Joshua Bloom as Masetto, and Štefan Kocán as the Commendatore.
The live transmission, hosted by soprano Renée Fleming (who vists San Antonio this March with the San Antonio Symphony!), was directed by Barbara Willis Sweete.
The Met: Live in HD, the Met’s award-winning series of live transmissions to movie theaters around the world, has expanded its worldwide distribution to more than 1,600 theaters in 54 countries, the largest global audience the initiative has ever reached. In addition to Russia, Italy and Israel, new countries joining the Live in HD network this season include China, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Morocco, Slovenia, and the territory of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Don Giovanni was the second of 11 live transmissions to be shown this season. The next transmission will be the new production of Wagner’s Siegfried on November 5, the third installment of Robert Lepage’s new Ring Cycle at the Met.