10:30 PM. Gotterdammerung begins.
We’re at the stage where we begin to look backward to the day’s highlights, such as….
Siegfried captures a guy in a bear suit
Siegfried slays a wall with tentacles (Fafner)
Alberich turns into a six-inch long stuffed toy frog
Siegfried dons a chain-mail cocktail napkin for a hat
Siegfried smashes Wotan’s spear of duct-tape and tinfoil.
Of course, there’s great singing, and tons and tons of amazing music. None of us are bored yet, although the orchestra playing in episode 3 was perhaps not nearly as electrifying or colorful as the Bayreuth orchestra in 2 and 4, even if it was of a high standard. Siegfried (the opera) is the toughest nut to crack of the three no matter how you look at things. It probably needs the strongest sense of a point of view from both conductor and director, and both seemed rather lacking in this one- a bit “Wagner by focus group” for me.
Our biggest danger so far is our lack of judgment in the consumption of junk food. After a long day of fruit and veggies, water and juice, late in Siegfried and early in Gotterdammerung we all stumbled into the dark world of Doritos, Funions and, with particularly orgiastic disregard of consequence, two large bags of Donettes. Did you know the main ingredient in a Donette is sugar, followed by “animal or vegetable fat?” Even flour is only a bit player. There is more fruit, but we’re all too bloated to process it at this point.
Boulez’s interpretation of the Ring is one of the most analysed and discussed of all time. Watching it several decades after it took the world by storm, it’s a bit hard to see why it attracted so much controversy. Most of it is just really musically good. However, there places where Boulez seems to be making a point at the music’s expense, and his cold-blooded and badly rushed take on Siegried’s Funeral Music kind of ruins the whole thing for me.
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