Royal Opera's Ring Cycles

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

Broadcast dates here:
when will I be able to see The Ring in the UK again (avoiding 10 days holiday and hotel bills to match).

Longborough in 2013?

[Stephen Smith]

Sorry - this is to the Intermezzo site, individual headings for each performance (amongst others):

http://intermezzo.typepad.com/

[MrGongGong]

I had to go to the ROH yesterday for work
so whilst sipping tea in the canteen on the roof
the show relay is playing more or less everywhere in the building
I hear fragments of Gotterdammerung (which I haven't been to a performance of)
it's extraordinary how my thoughts turn to magic gold at the leitmotifs in the half overheard music !

I reckon Pavlov and Wagner were bastard brothers

[underthecountertenor]

Judging by the silence on The Choir forum, the regulars there haven't yet tumbled to the fact that Choral Evensong on 24 October is to be replaced by Gotterdammerung. I wonder when the wailing and gnashing of teeth will start....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder when the wailing and gnashing of teeth will start....

Usually in the Prologue when the rope breaks.

[Simon Biazeck]

Judging by the silence on The Choir forum, the regulars there haven't yet tumbled to the fact that Choral Evensong on 24 October is to be replaced by Gotterdammerung. I wonder when the wailing and gnashing of teeth will start....

Perhaps I should commemorate it in my stage work - on second thoughts, perhaps not!

[underthecountertenor]

Simon: I'll be there, and will zoom in on you to see if you're mouthing the words of the Magnificat during the vassals' chorus!

[Simon Biazeck]

Simon: I'll be there, and will zoom in on you to see if you're mouthing the words of the Magnificat during the vassals' chorus!

I'll do my best - Octavi Toni with solemn mediation, of course, and Beatus vir. It is a wedding feast, after all!

[Prommer]

Well, the broadcasts start today so I thought I'd bump this thread unless we need a new one to discuss them, sound included? Anyone tuning in for the long haul?

Simon O'Neill has not been well, so the first question is whether he will be singing Walkure on Thursday. If not, who will sing Siegmund (is Placido around...)? When I attended the first cycle they already had microphones in place so I imagine they have the lot already in the can in case of cast illness problems... Not all broadcast live then, but at least as advertised in other respects.

[underthecountertenor]

There seems to be an awful lot of illness around at the moment. As I have tickets for this Cycle I am very definitely holding my breath and keeping my fingers crossed.

[Flosshilde]

Well, the broadcasts start today so I thought I'd bump this thread unless we need a new one to discuss them, sound included? Anyone tuning in for the long haul?

When I checked the schedules I was surprised to see that it's spread over two weeks, with Siegfried on Sunday as a matinee & Gotterdammerung on the following Wednesday (& surely if one is going to be done on a Sunday this would be the better choice, given that it's an early start which makes trhings difficult for people who are at work - whether they are seeing it live or listening on the radio)

Simon O'Neill has not been well, so the first question is whether he will be singing Walkure

Hmm - a counter-tennor singing Brunnhilde?

[Bert Coules]

Not the most immediately enthusiastic of responses, but maybe it was a result of the production rather than the music side. Though having said that, some of the singers (and in the smaller roles, too) didn't sound at their best by the end, and there was a fair bit of shouting elsewhere, too. But overall it went at a decent clip and the story and its conflicts came over loud and clear.

Amusing, I thought, that for all the cutting-edge theatricality and dramatic psychology on offer the mass of the Nibelungs are still by the sound of it being played by children. Why, for heaven's sake?

Bert

[Flosshilde]

presumably because children produce the sound that Wagner wanted?

Is there any information on whether Wagner used children or adults in his productions?

[David-G]

Well, I thought it was a very fine performance. Bryn Terfel and Sarah Connolly were excellent. In fact all were good. At one point I particularly admired Stig Andersen's Loge - he sounded very "Loge-ish" but quite different from singers I have heard before (such as Robert Tear).

One or two curiosities. The half-hour introduction seemed rather confused; Pappano seemed to recap the first part twice, but never made it through to the end. In fact, during the whole half hour, the very end of the story was not mentioned. Listeners new to the piece would have been unaware of the gods' procession to Valhalla over the Rainbow Bridge, or the Rhine Maidens wailing in the depths. Much was made of the large orchestra, including six harps(!!) In fact the BBC seemed to have a thing about the harps, because their sound predominated over the whole orchestra and Wotan during his presentation of Valhalla. This did not sound right, and I have never heard it like this before; were the harps separately miked, with the balance set too much in their favour? But it was a detail. Overall it was excellent. And the sound on the HD stream was simply magnificent. On my BC3s one could almost imagine one was there.

The description of various aspects of the production did make me rather apprehensive for my cycle in two weeks' time!

Incidentally, I am pretty sure that in the Goodall Ring at the ENO, the Nibelungs were not played by children.

[Bert Coules]

There are lots of photos of the 1876 Bayreuth Ring and I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one of the massed Nibelungs, all played by adults. As to what Wagner wanted them to sound like, there's nothing in the text to suggest that they should make any utterances at all: when Alberich threatens them with the Ring in the final scene they cringe and cower and run but nothing vocal is either mentioned or annotated. Wagner-the-director might well have had them scream in terror to add to the moment, but it could equally well be a later addition which went on to become a fixture.

The main reason why using children (another fixture in many stagings) is so wrong is that it's based on the half-baked notion that because the Nibelungs are dwarfs then short people should be employed to play them, which to most casting directors means means children (perhaps they think that there aren't enough genuine dwarfs around or that they'd be too much trouble to seek out). Of course a crowd of ten-year-old minions simply emphasises the awkward fact that Alberich and Mime aren't of limited stature.

Edited to add:

Damn, that'll teach me to think more carefully before posting. In scene two of Rheingold the Nibelungs "scatter in all diretions... with howls and screams". I can't believe that Wagner would have been happy with the massed squeals of schoolchildren for such an important moment.

Bert