Definitely
Underdog. Tomorrow afternoon. We knew we had to see it when we saw the “Give the dog your food!” line in the teaser.
Archive for 4th August 2007
Time For Wagner
The finale of Die Walküre, Wotans Abschied (farewell), in my not so humble opinion, the greatest section of the whole Ring, and certainly Wotan’s finest music (out of a great deal of fine music). For you non-Wagnerites, Brünnhilde has disobeyed Wotan, her father, who was going to kill her for her disobedience. She softened his heart, and he is removing her divinity (making her mortal) and putting her to sleep with a kiss and surrounding her with the Magic Fire (that’s why we get the extremely well-known Fire Music at the end — Loge hör!), until the man brave enough not to fear Wotan’s spear wakes her (that would be Siegfried, in the next opera of the Ring cycle). It’s also a great moment in the Ring because it makes no difference if the Brünnhilde can sing the part or not (usually, they can’t). It can also be a not so great moment for a bass-baritone who doesn’t have the stamina to have sung for almost four hours straight before getting to this point, but this isn’t a problem with this production. Loge (Loki) is the God of Fire.
Met 1991, James Morris and Hildegard Behrens. We saw the same cast, also in 1991, sing the Ring Cycle at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House.
