Andrew, that’s a lovely sentiment. I send links to music to my daughter (Overture to Lohengrin last time). She’s 27 and wouldn’t wear a Valkyrie outfit). That first comment on your post was from a troll.
I must have heard hundreds of performances of this scene in my long life but this remains for me the most sublime and devastating of them all. No other singer has impressed me as Wotan more than Sir Donald McIntyre. The power, beauty and dynamic range of his voice is remarkable but more than that his dignity and natural gravitas make Wotan utterly believable and utterly human. Boulez doesn’t put a foot wrong in his tempi and Gwyneth was at the height of her powers. Every time I watch it I find myself in tears. It truly is one of the greatest performances of any music drama I’ve ever seen and we are so fortunate that it has been captured so successfully on film.
I am even sure that this production - Pierre Boulez - Patrice Chéreau - Richard Peduzzi has not yet been surpassed and will unfortunately take a long time to be.
Donald Mcintyre always gives the impression that he's singing casually. No pushing, straining, forcing, not even "Loud" singing. Just saying the words on pitch in a beautiful tone. Truly what Wagner would have wanted I think. He doesn't even sound like a very large voice. Just a voice that's full and the right colour for Wotan.
Nobody with a heart to break could be immune to this, surely the most humane and profoundly human of Wagner's creations. This production and all these artists, including Boulez and his players, created something so theatrically true and musically perfect that subsequent renditions always pale by comparison. As for Dame Gwyneth and Sir Donald, Gods really did once walk the stages of the world and how we miss them.
Jones and McIntyre really capture the father/daughter relationship of these characters. People always pity the Wälsungs but for me this scene is infinitely more powerful than their plight
The first time the singers were perfect but also marvellously beautiful. Like an epic movie. Gwyneth Jones, Peter Hoffmann, Siegfried Jerusalem, Manfred Jung… all perfect.
Patrice Chereau's production remains unrivaled. It is the measure of all things. I saw this production as a teenager. After that I loved the music and work of Richard Wagner
fue mi el primero de todos . Lo vi en televisión en 1983 . Habia oido muchas veces la tetralolia pero nunca la había visto . 40 años después sigo viendo esta representación de Pierre Boulez cada vez que oigo la tetralogia en cualquier voz
Macintyre es una joya !!! Acá tenemos un Wotan maravilloso !! Acá tenemos a un gran baritono !, voz espectacular!. Por qué ya no existen estos cantantes? Donde han quedado ?? Qué pasa?? Ya no hay estas voces😢😢😢
This was the first full Ring I've seen, and I'd definitely recommend it as a first to anyone. It's a beautiful production with a great cast that still holds up to this day. (It's strange to think this used to be "scandalously modern" back then.)
The Magician of Bayreuth at his psychologically and philosophically most powerful, expressed with titanic emotional power. Ever since my childhood, I have called her Rachel von Wagner, because only a person who is womanly at heart can command such stratospheric emotional and psychodynamic insights. The flattering "von" connective is a mocking hint at Wagner's supreme artistic confidence, or plain vanity, or naked conceit. A not uncommon property amongst 19th Century Germans, especially post-unification. To protect the daughter he most loves from punishment of death, the chief of the gods must, somewhat paradoxically, strip her of her divinity. No amount of well placed argument and accusations of hypocrisy put to her father by Brunhild can stop this. Instead of destroying her, Wotan surrounds her by an emblem of his ceaseless love, a fire that only a man who knows no fear can penetrate. Dazzling! When Wotan kneels with his arms round her waist and, in essence, asks, with all the power of his love, “why must I do this, why can I not put it aside?” it is heart-breaking. Also, when he pronounces that only one man may win my daughter ("one who is freer than I who am a god"), not only is he referring to: (i) one who is unbound by his promises to uphold the law, and unenmeshed in the curse of the Stolen Rhinegold; but also to (ii) a man who can love her as Brunhild’s equal. One who is unconstrained by, shall we say, the limitations of bourgeois morality between a daughter and father. Since Wagner sets up this dilemma and then embroiders it with melody and orchestration expressing at maximum generosity and nobilimente precisely this desire, our hearts are dismantled by this Yes-No-Yes seesawing. What is it that a god and a divine daughter-goddess cannot do, yet a fully human woman and a man can? The language Wagner puts into Wotan’s mouth to express untrammelled love for his daughter is very redolent and very touching - she is a tomboyish delight to his eyes; a fearless bearer of heroes she has awakened from death in battle (by fucking them, le it be recalled); a young woman whose beauty he endlessly admired; one who brought him solace in his torment, etc etc. Wagner is quite daring and dangerously revelatory in making explicit that women are (probably) looking at men on three dimensions simultaneously - as protective fathers whom they worship, as adult lovers, and as children-teenagers whom they have to nurture, educate and often reprove. Likewise men (probably) look at women as mothers whom they adore and to whom they surrender, as adult lovers, and daughters whom they have to protect and play with. There are of course too frequently other shadier elements from which the realism of French psychologically does not look away. In fact, since Wagner is often “more Freudian than Freud”, it is openly to be admitted, and highly significant, that daughters and fathers are forever rehearsing and approaching the transcendental union typically found in romantic-erotic congress between women and men. Wagner is using the music to state without boundaries that Brunhild wakens young virile heroic men killed in battle, by making love with them, and carries them, as do her other sisters, on horseback (astride stallions) to become guardians of her father’s heavenly defences. Both she and her father wish they could sit as divine lovers and co-regents of heaven, displacing Wotan’s wife, who is a repellent, utterly banal, and tedious bourgeois-Mutti, and one of the few female figures whom Rachel Wagner conjured up with the express and sole purpose of being truly loathsome. Thenceforth B & W would reign as co-regents, with the hallowed and erotic splendour of the exploding sun, and to moreover rule beneficently forever over all the goddesses and gods and all humanity. “Those radiant eyes.” Well, it could be 1900s Vienna, with Klimt working on his Beethoven Frieze, and Adele Bloch-Bauer and Siggy coming round for coffee cakes and conversation 🤣. The fact that Wagner is at once so emphatic about and so fascinated by the daughter-father version, rather than the son-mother side, shows how feminine-oriented is his imagination. Or perhaps he is just more explicit about analysing one side, and expects his audience to casually and comfortably knowledge the other 👨👩👧. Oedipus May be King, but Richard is the true Empress and Mistress of insight into our psyches. It is a chucklesome moment when, surrounded by the mists and flames of the Magic Fire Mountain, Wotan sings “No one who fears my spear point shall ever penetrate the fire.” Totem of majesty, edict of law, protective cordon, and phallic symbol, to the max! It is also highly relevant to the Great Drama of the Ring that Brunhild regains her life with Siegfried by first returning the gold to the Rhine Maidens, and then stepping into the Flames that destroy both Valhalla and her ego. She and Siegfried are then reunited in the world-consciousness - more familiar to the audience as The Rhine. This is where Dr Wagner shows his Buddhist credentials. It is a pity that the Magician was so distracted by building Bayreuth that he did not write his opera “The Seekers”. Furthermore, it says a great deal about Wagner’s sensuous invention, and our our deeper psychology, that the most complete and adult romantic bond in the Ring is between Brunhild and Wotan. As another commentator (Manoli S) puts it very well: “People always pity the Walsungs for their predicament, but for me this scene is infinitely more affecting than their plight.” Many things about this very French production (Pierre Boulez, Patrice Chéreau, Richard Peduzzi, Jacques Schmidt, André Diot) are captivating. Especially on the grinding alienation suffered by women and men, even in the sphere of love, in a burgeoning capitalist consumer economy. The Rhinemaidens, for instance, have three jobs at the hydroelectric plant - guarding the gold, teasing fools like Alberich, and earning money in the erotic services industry 🤔. This production also turns full-on Wagner’s “blowtorch” contempt for the cultural and psychical superficialities and degeneracy of mid 19th C European capitalism. As is evident, in, for instance: the fag-end neoclassical architecture; the mock romantic follies of rugged mountains; the banker´s costume of Wotan; the trashy bourgeois dress of even the goddesses and gods (befitting some Nazi era kitsch Berlin chorus line); the French Ancien Regime rip-offs; and the costume of Brunhild that looks like something from the worst provincial theatre. A perfect résumé, one might say, of 1870s Victorian London culture 😁. Embryonic Primark, suckled on steroids. Singing and acting, of course, in this performance are just ..... supreme. Love andrea
Motifs (some of them). Many of them are heard as orchestral underscoring.... The numbers in brackets are those used in Robert Donington's Appendix of Music Examples in "Wagner's Ring and Its Symbols", pp 278-307 Abbreviation: B =Brunhilde and W=Wotan 1:20 Magic Sleep (W: "I shall enclose you in deep sleep") (16) 2:28 Siefried's Heroism (78), as B pleads for "only the most fearless hero" to awaken her 3:32 Fire motif (21) (Loge as the embodiment of primal energy) underscoring as B sings "Let flames flare up" - stunning descending chromatic work, also used when W summons Loge later (21). And at 5:51, underscoring for W's "Let the glow of fierce flames" . 4:10 Valkyries motif (47) in brass underscoring as B finishes her plea to W. And straight into his grief. 6:13 Siegfried's Heroism motif, for "Only one shall win the bride" 6:47 underscoring (as W finishes singing) is Love as Fulfilment (90c) . This continues fortissimo as she walks away 8:30 onwards The heartbreaking string phrases undercoring W's farewell later morph into the Innocent Sleep motif (30). His sung melody, counterpoints against the underscoring, from "Those radiant eyes", partly deploys the Wotan's Grief at Parting from B motif (82) 11:00 motif of Renunciation (76) after W says her eyes will "close forever" 11:40 as W kisses away B's godhead, the Magic Sleep motif is heard (16) and gives way at 12:13 to Innocent Sleep as W picks her up and carries her (30). This is overlaid, as he lays her on the couch at 12:20 with the melody of W's Grief at Parting from Brunnhilde (82) 13:38 ending the instrumental interlude, as he lays his head on her, is the three notes, in quiet low brass, of Destiny (78) 14:02 Trombones carry the descending scale motif of Wotan's Spear (73) 14:38 Fire motif (21) as W summons Loge 16:00 replaced by Innocent Sleep (30) and overlaid with W singing his last line, using Siegfried Heroism motif (78) at 16:05
This is excellent analysis and very helpful, dear zephyr755. What you have to say, for instance, about 3:32 and the symphonic-thematic-chromatic combination of: (i) the Loge-energy (not unlike the power of Shakti in Hinduism); (ii) Brunhild's appeals to Wotan for a transcendental protection of her sensuous-romantic-erotic self ("if I am no longer to be a goddess then let my protecting energies still honour me with the dignity and splendour befitting the divine"); (iii) the psychodramatic prefiguring of Siegfried (a character I cannot stand, due to his cardboard cut-out, laddish, would-be jocular, one-dimensionality - all quite incompatible with any true heroism), as the hyper-masculine redeemer-lover without fear; is spot on. Again, what Wagner is compelling our conscious psyches to grasp, but more thoroughly also our unconscious faculties, from 6:47 onwards, is deliberately beyond consistent sensuous-comprehension. It is outside even the wildest boundaries of coherent "feeling-knowing". The chromaticism is Wagner's harmonic equivalent of emotional-conceptual complexity attaining just such an uncontainable depth and tension. Though one can hear it said in many classical authors, and it is very strongly present in Dante and parts of Shakespeare, and of course is an almost tiresome idee fix in Nietzsche, I feel that Wagner is the first supreme Western High Art creative spirit to accept full-on that the world politically, emotionally, moral and psychodramtically is inherently contradictory. Without thereby falling into cheap expressionist hysteria, and still retaining faith in the redemptive power of love. A view-point utterly unacceptable to Enlightenment rationalists who still infest the empirical sciences, and any number of utopian political projects. Thanks and love, andrea
L'un des sommets de l'opéra !....Il y en a bien d'autres chez l'insurpassable Wagner !!! Comme toujours ,emploi judicieux des "leitmotive "! Par ailleurs ,excellente interprétation !!!!
Can you believe that in 1976 (the first of 5 five years of this production) people were actually collecting money to stop this production?? There were so many protests here in Germany because people thought that the production was too modern 😧
In my angst, I can't find the conductor's name and don't feel like looking it up. I'm in the mood to prejudge a baton yielding bum and hate it before I hear it. Boulez - I'll listen to it Bohm - I'll listen to it vK - I know it's done right before I start. Solti - again, I know it's done right before I start Maazel - a bum Mehta - a useless bum Levine - a useless, talentless bum, but then again, so's Mehta. Lenny - a genius but hit and miss.. but when he hits.. boy does he hit. Barney - perfect oh lahhh dee dah
@@leoh3616 I was lucky enough to listen to Siegfried and Götterdämmerung under his baton in Bayreuth. And to Lohengrin under Thielemann. How the same orchestra can sound so different in a matter of days still puzzles me. And I heard Thielemann's Ring in Bayreuth before. Still a true mistery.
True indeed. And an eternal moral puzzle. A ruthless egomaniac, and petulant vicious, bitchy, nasty, utterly untrustworthy triple faced fraudster. Yet irresistibly seductive to half the educated women in Europe. And a transcendental musical, political, philosophical, psychoanalytical genius. Male geniuses in particular are often half-devils and half dazzling visionaries. The shattering contempt for stifling bourgeois convention often goes hand-in-hand with complete dismissal of any accountability to any collective moral norms; or indeed anything higher than the expression of their ego-perspective, albeit one of supreme brilliance. Love andrea
