Wish Me Luck!

[JSngry]

Tomorrow afternoon, I am going where a few years ago I would have never even thought about thinking about going.

Jaap van Zweden CONDUCTS

Simon O'Neill TENOR (SIEGMUND)
Michelle Deyoung MEZZO-SOPRANO (SIEGLINDE)*
Jongmin Park BASS (HUNDING)
Kyle Albertson BARITONE (WOTAN)
Heidi Melton SOPRANO (BRÜNNHILDE)
Christa Mayer MEZZO-SOPRANO (FRICKA)
Karen Foster SOPRANO (GERHILDE)
Elaine Mckrill SOPRANO (ORTLINDE)
Catherine Martin MEZZO-SOPRANO (WALTRAUTE)
Nicole Piccolomini MEZZO-SOPRANO (SCHWERTLEITE)
Erika Wueschner SOPRANO (HELMWIGE)
Blythe Gaissert MEZZO-SOPRANO (SIEGRUNE)
Krysty Swann MEZZO-SOPRANO (GRIMGERDE)
Edyta Kulczak MEZZO-SOPRANO (ROSSWEISSE)

WAGNER

Die Walküre (Complete opera in three acts)

(Sung in German with English surtitles)

As a special event during the Farewell Celebration Season, Music Director Jaap van Zweden will lead the DSO and world-renowned soloists in complete performances of Wagner’s Die Walküre.

Performances will feature two intermissions: a 45-minute intermission following Act 1 and a 25-minute intermission following Act 2. Patrons may pre-order a dinner through the Meyerson and dine during the two intermissions. 

 

Downbeat's a 2, I've been told to expect to leave around 7:30. I think I'd rather have done this with Tristan, but this is what's available.And I'd probably prefer a real staging, but first, just let me hear it like this.

Brenda has made it clear that she will not go to an opera with me, any opera, ever, probably never. And yet I persist.

No idea if this is going to really work for me or not, so...wish me luck.

[Brad]

Well, good luck. I’ve never been to an opera but should try it sometime (bucket list, I suppose). Hope it’s a great experience. 

[T.D.]

Good luck. I agree that a staged version would be preferable, but that's probably a rare event in your area.

I've attended two complete live Ring cycles.

Probably too late, but it might be useful to acquire a libretto and read it before going (could also bring it to the event).

[soulpope]

9 hours ago, JSngry said:

Tomorrow afternoon, I am going where a few years ago I would have never even thought about thinking about going.

Jaap van Zweden CONDUCTS

Simon O'Neill TENOR (SIEGMUND)
Michelle Deyoung MEZZO-SOPRANO (SIEGLINDE)*
Jongmin Park BASS (HUNDING)
Kyle Albertson BARITONE (WOTAN)
Heidi Melton SOPRANO (BRÜNNHILDE)
Christa Mayer MEZZO-SOPRANO (FRICKA)
Karen Foster SOPRANO (GERHILDE)
Elaine Mckrill SOPRANO (ORTLINDE)
Catherine Martin MEZZO-SOPRANO (WALTRAUTE)
Nicole Piccolomini MEZZO-SOPRANO (SCHWERTLEITE)
Erika Wueschner SOPRANO (HELMWIGE)
Blythe Gaissert MEZZO-SOPRANO (SIEGRUNE)
Krysty Swann MEZZO-SOPRANO (GRIMGERDE)
Edyta Kulczak MEZZO-SOPRANO (ROSSWEISSE)

WAGNER

Die Walküre (Complete opera in three acts)

(Sung in German with English surtitles)

As a special event during the Farewell Celebration Season, Music Director Jaap van Zweden will lead the DSO and world-renowned soloists in complete performances of Wagner’s Die Walküre.

Performances will feature two intermissions: a 45-minute intermission following Act 1 and a 25-minute intermission following Act 2. Patrons may pre-order a dinner through the Meyerson and dine during the two intermissions. 

 

Downbeat's a 2, I've been told to expect to leave around 7:30. I think I'd rather have done this with Tristan, but this is what's available.And I'd probably prefer a real staging, but first, just let me hear it like this.

Brenda has made it clear that she will not go to an opera with me, any opera, ever, probably never. And yet I persist.

No idea if this is going to really work for me or not, so...wish me luck.

No luck required .... some deepened impression guaranteed ....

[Teasing the Korean]

Break a leg!

[ghost of miles]

They'll be using the Kenton band's arrangements, right?

[JSngry]

12 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

They'll be using the Kenton band's arrangements, right?

Actually......no.

Truth be told, it was a very intense night. Being in the same room with this tale of a fuckhound god, an incestuous would-be half-god/half-mortal power couple, the revenge of a jealous/vengeful god-wife being sub-contracted out to a god-daughter who may or may not have some kind of weird bond with her father, all of that would be enough, but the music...wow, the music...I heard a few people talking about how if you know what all the motifs are, it's easy to folly, but even at/with that, the tonalities keep shifting, and keep shifting and STILL keep shifting, it is actually unsettling. And with the story going on, unsettling. And the band was...in a zone.

At the end of Act 1 people, including myself, were ecstatic, but jeezus, what is it that has just made us feel this way? I can only imagine what a full staging would be like.

I had heard records, watched DVDs, boradcasts, etc. and had thought that Wagnerin the 21st Century had become "safe". Well...

Actually......no.

[Brad]

Sounds like it was a heck of an experience. 

[JSngry]

It was, and it's the kind of thing I could well have gone through life not getting for all kinds of reasons.

What I am learning is that operatic vocals do not tend to be as oppressively "loud" in person as they've mostly seemed to me on records. On records, it's just the wrong kind of "intense", if you know what I mean. But in person, unmiked, filling the hall with just voice...intense in the good way, the right way.

Never mind that this particular opera has an overdriven intensity built into it. But everybody's ready to laugh at it (and perhaps rightly so), the "go kill the rabbit" thing and all the fat ladies in Viking helmets, but.. pop culture does us a disservice sometimes (to put it mildly). At the beginning of Act 3, you get the familiar March, and the 8 Valkyries all going at it, and, yes, you can find comedy in that, especially if the performances are in any way off. But these were not, and frankly, it was a little spooky, in all kinds of ways. I wasn't about to laugh at it.

Oh well, it was a good night, thanks. And I'm thinking that if I'm ever going to "get" Mozart, it's going to be through a comic opera like Don Giovanni, with lyrics projected so you can look, listen, and read all at once. That's going to be the ticket for me, following the stories as they unfold, not from study beforehand, but as it happens.

[Larry Kart]

For a possible Mozart opera "conversion" experience, I'd recommend this DVD:

https://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Barenboim-Roschmann-Kammerloher-Chausson/dp/B0000TSRCY/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1526915258&sr=1-1&keywords=cosi+fan+tutte+barenboim

My favorite Mozart opera "story," very convincingly dramatized (with subtitles) in modern but not obtrusively modern dress, excellently sung, acted, and played.

[soulpope]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

Actually......no.

Truth be told, it was a very intense night. Being in the same room with this tale of a fuckhound god, an incestuous would-be half-god/half-mortal power couple, the revenge of a jealous/vengeful god-wife being sub-contracted out to a god-daughter who may or may not have some kind of weird bond with her father, all of that would be enough, but the music...wow, the music...I heard a few people talking about how if you know what all the motifs are, it's easy to folly, but even at/with that, the tonalities keep shifting, and keep shifting and STILL keep shifting, it is actually unsettling. And with the story going on, unsettling. And the band was...in a zone.

At the end of Act 1 people, including myself, were ecstatic, but jeezus, what is it that has just made us feel this way? I can only imagine what a full staging would be like ....

As predicted :-) .... infectious music for sure ....

[T.D.]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

...At the end of Act 1 people, including myself, were ecstatic, but jeezus, what is it that has just made us feel this way?...

That's the eternal dilemma I wrestle with re. Wagner...

Glad you enjoyed it.

[JSngry]

9 minutes ago, T.D. said:

That's the eternal dilemma I wrestle with re. Wagner...

Glad you enjoyed it.

for sure...words like "infectious" and "enjoyed" seem a little bit, uh...casual in this context. Part of me kept thinking, all the way to the end, evil, genius, evil genius, and maybe so. But then again, what do you have to fear except yourself, and if you're bothered by mythology, then why, what's inside you that you can't be objective about this, it's "just" a story, right? But on the other hand, if you don't want to upset/disorient/whatever people, why write such masterful/masterfully disruptive music? It's not "just a story", not the way I heard it.

It is a dilemma, and I'll be damned if Woltan (as portrayed here, anyway) didn't remind me in too many ways of a certain Person Who Must Not Be Named Lest There Be Political Controversy, and it was like, whoa, disturbing enough in the abstract, extremely disturbing to contemplate any real manifestation of it. Couple in the Siegleid/Sigmund "this is our time NOW, all else be damned" thing and, whoa, I'm seeing this shit everyday, it seems like, NOW.

I guess there will always be a place for Wagner. Whatever shit he's able to stir up is probably an eternal part of the human condition, so...beware humans, I guess, all of us.

[Simon Weil]

On ‎21‎/‎05‎/‎2018 at 3:04 PM, JSngry said:

if I'm ever going to "get" Mozart

The Requiem got me.