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

 

Placido speaks

From Monday evening:

We'll see you tonight at the AT and T Center for San Antonio Opera's Con Amor a San Antonio!

Vocal Recital: Brahms

Unlike the symphony, the string quartet or the piano sonata which belong to phases of Brahms creative output his vocal work spanned his entire life. This arc of more than four decades is bracketed by two masterworks Liebestreu (opus 3, #1 - 1853/54) and Vier ernste Gesange (opus 121 - 1896). It was in fact this early song that so impressed the violinist Joachim that it led to Brahms introduction to the Schumann's. A hundred years later Joachim's granddaughter Irene, a great recitalist based in Paris, recorded Brahms vocal works and will also be featured among the singers in this program.

Celebrating the 175th anniversary of his birth we will hear music drawn from his lieder, ensemble, vocal cantatas and his vast choral production. Performers will include Fischer-Dieskau, Schwarzkopf, Slezak, Lehman, Kipnis, Ludwig, Souzay, von Otter, Bernstein, Barenboim, Norman, Ameling and many others. Please join us at 9pm, November 6th on KPAC & KTXI for Brahms Vocal Works.

Kathleen Ferrier, part two

We listened to a wonderful selection of our featured vocalist, contralto Kathleen Ferrier Thursday night at the Opera.

Part 2

Robert Schumann: Frauenliebe und leben

Bruno Walter, piano

English folksongs: Blow the wind southerly, Ye banks and braes

Bach: Mass in b minor, Qui sedes & Agnus Dei

Live in Norway 1949

Hugo Wolf: Verborgenkeit, Der Gartner, Auf altes Bild, Auf einer Wanderung; Jensen Alter

Benjamin Britten: The Rape of Lucretia: Lucretia, Lucretia and Last night Taquinius ravished me

Live in Amsterdam 1946

Gustav Mahler: Kindertotenleider

Vienna Philharmonic, Bruno Walter

Read about our first recital night here.

Join us for Wagner's Die Walkűre next Thursday night with your host Ron Moore. Read about the ongoing power struggle at Bayreuth Festival here.

Kathleen Ferrier, part 1

Playlist from Vocal Recital, August 7th on KPAC and KTXI, featuring contralto Kathleen Ferrier:
Stanford- The Fairy Lough
Parry- Love is a bable
Britten- O Waly, Waly
Warlock- O Pretty Ring-time
Bach- St. Matthew Passion: Grief for sin; O Gracious Lord
Gluck- Orfeo, Act I excerpt
Brahms- Two Songs for Viola, Piano & Voice
Mahler- 3 Ruckert Lieder
Brahms- 4 Serious Songs (orch Malcolm Sargent)
Excerpts from the Edinburg Festival 1949:
What the Edinburg Festival means to me; songs of Schubert and Brahms with Bruno Walter, piano

Coming up in September hear our focus on Kathleen Ferrier, part II, September 4th:
Ferrier CBC Interview 1950
More from the Edinburg Festival (live); British Folksongs; music of Brahms, Schubert, Wolf, Handel, Mahler, Bach and Britten!
Schumann: Frauenliebe und leben (complete) with Bruno Walter, pianist (live)
Works written for Ferrier: Songs by Lennox Berkeley and excerpt of Britten's Rape of Lucretia.

Be sure to tune in for Thursday Night at the Opera with Ron Moore, starting at 8pm on KPAC and KTXI.