Word: wotan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Sometimes the speed of the brush is important -- it leaves frayed edges, something like the speed lines in cartoons, but in other paintings, like the impressive Wotan, 1950, nothing moves or is meant to. The big rectangle anchored by one edge to the top of the canvas has a massive presence and thickness of paint, and its blunt authority looks forward to what American minimalists would be doing a generation later...
Wagner singers of any sort being rare treasures, impresarios tried to persuade him to take mighty roles. If he wanted to, he could be singing Wotan in the Ring cycle all over the world. But Terfel has another quality: intelligence. He aims to conserve his voice for a long career, so for now it is Figaro and Leporello and a few comparably medium-weight roles. He also loves to sing lieder and other nonoperatic works. Conductor Claudio Abbado remembers the "beautiful vocal subtlety and understanding" that he brought to their recording of Schumann's difficult Faust...
...know Wagner well may feel cheated that this Wagner parody doesn't even try to lampoon his scores. There are few pauses in the breakneck pace and very little in the way of real invention. Still, to any survivor of a real Ring cycle, it's refreshing to hear Wotan yell to his old enemy Alberich at the end, "Are you fryin' or drownin...
...Deutsche Grammophon has released the complete home-video version, on both VHS and Laserdisc, as well as a new recording of Siegfried, the final installment of conductor James Levine's separate CD Ring. With largely the same star cast, including Hildegard Behrens as Brunnhilde and James Morris as Wotan (Reiner Goldberg sings the role of Siegfried on the CD, while Siegfried Jerusalem plays Wagner's hero on the video), the twin projects stand or fall on Levine's contribution, and the Met's longtime music director rises to the occasion. Levine views the Ring through a glass, darkly; the music...