The Rinse Cycle - Unexpected Opera

[ahinton]

My first experience of Wagner was throwing myself in at the deepest of deep ends (folloiwng advice and recomendations) in the 1960s at Covent Garden with a Ring cycle conducted by Solti.

I had little idea in advance what to expect other than something obviously on a very large scale that surely had to succeed (or otherwise) on the basis of its ability to keep a narrative going - and going - and going by means of always engaging music. I do not recall being let down by a single semiquaver, except at the very end of Götterdämmerung where, notwithstanding the most moving music, it all seemed to end just too peremptorily, for reasons that I could not then figure out and have never really been able to figure out since.

But who needs these abbreviated Rings - other, perhaps, than those who seek a little bit of perfectly harmless amusement? I was not much more than a kid when I heard the real thing; I have no intention now to compromise any aspect of the effect of that experience...

[Nick Armstrong]

What 'Allo 'Allo references there were completely passed me by. I was really surprised when they were emphasised so much on the In Tune feature (which I only discovered after I'd seen the show).

Bert

Maybe that American lady's enthusiasm for that lamentable TV show inspired such a resonant Raspberry for the concept, that there was a re-write !

[Flosshilde]

I have fond student-days memories of what I always thought was the only Patisserie Valerie, the one in Old Compton Street. ... but the cakes are still good...

That was the only one for a long time, then they opened near the Brompton Oratory. Now they have spread like a rash - three in Glasgow! I disagree about the cakes - they are now rubbish, very plasticy tasting, no better than supermarket stuff, which is inevitable if you start mass-producing something like that, presumably in a central location & shipping them to the shops.

[Bert Coules]

But who needs these abbreviated Rings - other, perhaps, than those who seek a little bit of perfectly harmless amusement?

I think such things - serio-comic approaches such as this, and more straightforward attempts at one- and two-night cut-downs - do serve a very useful and valuable purpose as foot-in-the-water opportunities for audiences who have heard the odd extract and would like to know more but are deterred, for whatever reason, from jumping in at the very deep end.

My path to Wagner started with the pop chunks: the Ride of the Valkyries, the overture to The Mastersingers and similar, and progressed through highlights disks to complete recordings and then to stagings. If my first exposure had been a complete Ring in the theatre, would I still have been hooked? Possibly, but then again possibly not.

I once worked for a time in a gramophone library in Holborn. One day a lady borrower returned a disc of various operatic excerpts and enthusiastically said how much she'd enjoyed the final item: Wotan's Farewell with Hans Hotter Birgit Nilsson and George Solti. I asked her if she was familiar with the recording of the complete opera that the extract came from, and I've never forgotten her response: her face lit up in incredulous wonder and she said, "There's more? Fantastic!". If The Rinse Cycle had been playing then I would have urged her to buy a ticket without delay.

Bert