Das Rheingold (Entry of the Gods into Valhalla) 

Thank you to your father for having a hand in these productions of all ages and backgrounds can experience! I watched the full operas with my sister and mother who both, not being really opera buffs themselves, could appreciate the story and drama unfold with the great music, a really emotional and profound experience.

Incredible!

Awesome!

Your father was a wonderfful artist. I will never forget his gorgeous Tannhauser. A classic!

💙💙💙

Leave your politics out of this high culture.

I like your idea!

and Trump...... it’s all fake music

Add to that the Rhinemaidens = Florida’s river wildlife (alligators, manatees, etc.)

A modern staging has no place in the fine arts world

For me Wagner impersonate the german people strugling across the history: a powerfull and proud nation

@@sorinichim4737 Now lost

Wonderful memories u must have of the Ring Cycle! Thank you for sharing.

@@ianmangham4570 How so?

@Schuyler Bacn A spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of Schuyler Bacn

It is so good. Hollywood has tried to copy this kind of thing in a mote commercial setting and never quite got there.

I disovered Wagner's work in my late 20. What a great experience to discover this at 5 :o

I wonder if PBS could do that now without some hamfisted political messaging.

@@thursoberwick1948 no way no how

@@thursoberwick1948 The singers would have to wear 19th-century suits and ties or military uniforms. They would have to sit in plastic chairs and drink Coca Cola. There would have to be prostitutes and sexual violence. Siegfried would be dressed like Elvis. There would be pictures of Che Guevara and Marilyn Monroe on the walls. The meaning would have something to do with postmodern critical-theory standpoint epistemology, of course.

@@thursoberwick1948 - It's always had some hamfisted political messaging, right from the start. Wagner's politics were hardly subtle.

@@Pstephen Wagner's messages were not subtle, but they were not hamfisted either, because he was a skilled artist. Unlike some of those who adapt his work.

Sometimes old-fashioned is the BEST! This is how you do WAGNER!!

I've been making plans and working on conceptual artwork in designs for the entire cast of the Ring Cycle in a more traditional, "Nordic" look. The gods will have a sort of rainbow motif to their clothing and eye colors: Donner=Red, Loge=Orange, Freia=Yellow, Froh=Green, Wotan=Blue, and Fricka=Indigo and Violet. Wotan, Brunnhilde, and the valkries will have their classic winged helmets and armor, Siegfried his wild animal loincloth, Erda and the Norns in dark veils, the giants will be primitive and Neanderthal-looking, the Rhinemaidens and Freia will all be nymph-like with flowy diaphonous gowns and flowers in their hair(water lilies for the Rhinemaidens and apple blossoms for Freia), and Alberich will look like he popped right out of Arthur Rackham's work!

@@Jakegothicsnake sounds interesting :)

@@noeldunsky Oh yes! And if I ever do any drawings with backgrounds, Valhalla will look more like of those stave churches, but with a colossal mead hall, towering spires, shields for roof shingling and all in shining gold! Also, almost everybody is going to be good-looking! Fricka will look like a proper queen with a voluptuous figure, Brünnhilde and the Valkyries will be built like Amazonian super models, and Wotan and Donner will be Uber mensch with Herculean bodies and long manes and beards that’ll put any metal head to shame! Erda, and the Norns, will be pretty too, but they’ll look like total insomniacs with baggy eyelids. The only ones who won’t be very attractive are Hagen, Hunding, the Giants, and the Nibelungs.

@@Jakegothicsnake Sounds like a Valhala of a plan! I wish you manage to realize it one day on the grand opera stage and also hope we have the singers to match this grand scale of a production...:)

Mike Zhai I miss the old productions. Now it’s all about the director. And how absurd he can be.

@@trishbenedict6588 Robert Lepage's 2011 production at the Met was very decent by today's standards. Have you seen it?

@@davidbastardo4154 Defenettly it's good, i have seen worse. But at the end this new production does not justice as Maestro Wagner music and epopey.

Even in the neew production at least the live broadcasted the orchestra performance was not so good as this one. Something happened with Mr Levine.

how cringe inducing are American productions of Vagner

Loki Shrugged!

@@VallinSFAS Bravo!

That's Loge, not Loki.

Aren't there different spellings in different languages? @@AllenJones-w3p

Loge is based on loki ​@@AllenJones-w3p

Hollywood is the realization of the _gesamtkunstwerk_ Wagner foresaw. He hid the orchestra below the audience, and was also the first to put the audience in the dark. Much like cinema.

This is not a simple rainbow. It is the bridge between Asgaard and Midgaard, called Bifröst.

It was certainly great, and I saw it in live performances about three times. But I also liked The Machine production too. Very different, and a little gimmicky, but still very thrilling for the audience.

@@wotan10950 I also was very impressed with Lepage's The Machine, I have it tattooed on my left arm...

I loved the old ring, but I also like the new one.

To the castle leads the bridge, light yet sure to your foot. Easily you can tread its danger free path.

Unfortunately, it has. Several times. And their armies suffered the same fate as the gods.

I believe this was among Christa Ludwig's final performances

@@andrewkochis9450 The great Ludwig actually continued to sing Fricka until 1993, and Klytemnestra until 1994. She still had five years of opera performances after this Met telecast.

@@wotan10950 I saw this live and the announcement was made over the P.A. system. Maybe this was her final performance in NY. I'll bet she was wonderful as Klytemnestra.

Further proof that singing Fricka is often a thankless job. That the great CL made the role so much her own is a testament to the art of this great singing actress.

Janet Miller First you madame have a gorgeous taste, second .... Did they laugh???, for real???

Amazingly, my wife and I were students at the UW at that time and also went to the 1978 cycle. I’ll never forget going into the Opera House on a nice summer evening and coming out hours later totally amazed that such music existed. I also remember the director of the house announcing before each evening’s performance that we weren’t to allow our seats to squeak, and if they did that we were to report them to the staff so they could be oiled before the next performance. Funny, if you think about it.

Wenn es doch nur avantgardistisch wäre. Es ist eigentlich immer dasselbe: Alles ist schrecklich, die Welt ist grau, alle sind neurotisch und letztlich entspricht dies grundsätzlich nur der Sichtweise von Regisseuren, die scheinbar alle mehr oder weniger ähnliche Traumata zu verarbeiten haben. Mich langweilt das auch nur noch und deshalb meide ich Oper nach über 650 Vorstellungen, die ich live erlebt habe :-)

I think they may have retired this production...sadly. I can’t stand any other productions, chareau, kupfer, lepage, all just pretentious.

I saw the Walkuere of that cycle and totally agree with you.

Agree. Even at Bayreuth, built for Wagner himself, they do shitty productions, only modern stuff.

The old ring was beautiful,but I like the new ring,

I want it played at my resurrection!

That is because they’re stupid.

Whaaat! That article is fake news! I'm 25 years old and I have fallen in love with Opera recently. I have always heard a few songs when I was a young child but never paid much attention because most of what I was exposed to was boring Musicals that I was forced to sing or watch while in school. Although, I dislike "modern opera" and "modern singing" immensely (includes the presentations of such epics) in this aspect the article is correct.

David was a pseud, Das Rheingold doesn't have act divisions. It's bugged me about that film ever since.

Its actually from Prometheus ;)

*Das Rheingold, Scene 4. And orchestral version is meaningless btw.

@@Krapoutchniek I'm just quoting a movie.

@@72ibises No. _Alien: Covenant_ is the sequel to _Prometheus._ There's a Michael Fassbender-looking android to go with the other Michael Fassbender-looking android. The one (David) impersonates the other. This is revealed at the end of the movie in the scene that I quoted.

Jesse Norman and Hidegard Behrens were also in the cast.