Wagner Ring journey

Over the past three weeks, I’ve been going through the 19-LP, 15-hour recording of Sir George Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic playing the full Ring Cycle. Tonight, I started opera number three, Siegfried

Here is the set I own:

It’s an amazing recording. Check out this background.

Like all Wagner, it’s beautiful, loud, sometimes boring, bombastic, and just exhausting. But I can’t help but be overwhelmed by it’s scope and majesty. Once you start hearing the different character’s liermotifs, it’s hard to go back just listening to the “songs” such as they are in Wagner.

All that musical foreshadowing and throwbacks that John Williams peppers his movie scores with? Wagner perfected that.

And try listening to the slow build up at the opening of Dad Rheingold with the appearance of the Rhine nymphs. It’s just an amazing gradual audio reveal.

Supposedly the wait for tickets to Bayreuth is over a decade. I’m signing up.

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Podcast hint: Stephen