Word: nibelungelied
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Last week Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera completed a Ring of the Nibelung cycle, thereby accomplishing for the ninth successive year one of the greatest mechanical labors required of the stage. The four full-length Ring operas lasted a total of 14 hours, required 18 complete changes of scene, 34 major singers, a large chorus, 80 stage hands and technicians, an orchestra of 114, ten full beards, one horse. Richard Wagner's masterpiece contains practically every theatrical trick except Eliza crossing the ice-swimming Rhine maidens, a roaring dragon, a rainbow, galloping Valkyries, a Nibelung forge going full tilt...
During the 26 years that Richard Wagner brooded over The Ring of the Nibelung, no one character caused him greater anguish than his heroine Brünnhilde. Time & again he flung down his pen and paced the floor. He recalled in his autobiography that once "my courage failed me completely, for I could not help asking myself whether the singer had yet been born who was capable of vitalizing this heroic female figure."* The stiffest test in all grand opera is the Brünnhilde of Götterdämmerung. That rôle made big news in Manhattan...
...other performances came nowhere near paying their own way but the Wagner matinees sold out to the doors. This week a new Wagner cycle begins with subscriptions topping last year's. This week's opera is Tannhauser. Next week The Ring of the Nibelung begins, the four operas to be given at weekly intervals through March...
...long did Wagner take to write The Ring of the Nibelung...