Word: wagner
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People have read everything from Marxist philosophy to Jungian depth psychology into Richard Wagner's operatic cycle Der Ring Des Nibelungen. Not least among the difficulties of untangling its 16 hours of music and text are the contradictions which Wagner, bursting with knowledge in many fields and expert in none, wrote into his own libretto. Yet Wagner always insisted that his "poetry" was the important thing and that his music existed only to serve...
...happening. They can tell the giants from the dwarfs, and maybe, after a couple of operas, they begin to realize the importance of that little gold ring. But unless you're willing to put in the time to read the entire libretto--and to study the leitmotif structure Wagner used to organize his music--the most you'll get out of the operas is a few gasps at the brilliance of the musical climaxes in between a lot of boredom. The subtleties Wagner took pride in disappear...
...English National Opera (ENO) has been plying a high-quality brand of Wagner-in-translation for almost a decade to combat this problem. Using Andrew Porter's excellent modern translation, the English singers under Reginald Goodall's direction have gained an international reputation for their production. They've also been recording the operas, one by one, from live performances, and with the release last month of their Gotterdammerung (in translation, Twilight of the Gods), the entire cycle is now complete, in English, on record...
...words without the libretto, translation or no translation. Whether it is the over-resonant, mediocre engineering of the recording, the imperfect diction of some of the singers, or simply the nature of operatic singing that is responsible, the words are three-quarters unintelligible. Porter's skillful imitation of Wagner's alliterative verse style never has a chance. The translation works best in the long narratives, during which the characters stop to repeat parts of the story in new musical contexts...
Goodall's conducting is in the expansive, slow-paced tradition of men like Hans Knappertsbusch. He has a touch for bringing out the counterpoint in Wagner's score, particularly in the popular orchestral segments like "Siegfried's Rhine Journey"; but often it's hard to tell just what he's doing with his orchestra, because the recording is so muddy...