This week I had the extreme pleasure of seeing The Ring at the Seattle Opera. I'm not a big opera fan, mostly because the music isn't standalone...like a movie soundtrack, you have to hear it in its visual context, and I guess I've always disliked classical music which doesn't strive for that certain level of abstraction. (Like a pure mathematician genuinely pissed off when his theorems find application? A ridiculous reality-denying posture...)
The Ring however was an awesome blend of music, story, and visuals (aptly called by Wagner "Gesamtkunstwerk"--"total art work"). The special effects were amazing, from Siegfried splitting anvil and stump down the middle with the newly forged Nothung, to the towering dragon Fafner in part three, to the Rhinegold sisters suspended midair in their mermaid costumes. From our vantage point on the upper tier the visual trickery was often completely convincing: at the end of Das Rheingold, for instance, the characters walk down a wooded path, disappear over the hill, and then reappear as tiny figures in the distance as the path winds its way towards rainbowed Valhalla. Where the actual set ended and the screen behind began was impossible to tell.
If it hadn't been so enjoyable it would have made for a long week, as my week basically consisted of work, The Ring, sleep, work...nearly 5 hours of opera each night on 4 different nights.
(Please note that I'm taking an English translation for my title here, which is definitely not what my pretentious brother would have done. If you find yourself suddenly seized by a powerful desire to slog through the full German libretto you can do that here.)
Posted by Alan at August 21, 2005 07:41 PM