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.
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.
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
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.
Wagner is generally regarded as the great exponent of bombast, but in fact his great appeal and uncanny aptitude is his ability to convey vulnerability, intense yearning and cherished memories. I’m an only child, I adored my dad and this poignant drama evokes for me deep emotions of love and loss.
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.
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
Oh good gosh - impossible to remain dry-eyed. SO moving - and they are both SO good. I remember watching this on TV back in the 80's, when my children were small. Esepcially interesting as I was at the Royal COllege of Music at the same time as Gwyneth Jones - though I have to say her intonation was always a bit iffy at times. But Donald Macintyre is superb.
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.)
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😢😢😢
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
The Magician of Bayreuth at her psychologically and philosophically most powerful, expressed with titanic emotional power, and rarely matched orchestral brilliance. Ever since my childhood, I have called her Dr Rachel von Wagner, because only a person who is womanly at heart can command such stratospheric emotional and psychodynamic insights. The half-flattering "von" connective is a mocking hint at Wagner's supreme artistic confidence, or plain vanity, or naked conceit. A not uncommon characteristic 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 put to her father, and accusations of hypocrisy by Brunhild can stop this. Instead of destroying her, Wotan surrounds her by an emblem of ceaseless love, a fire that only a man who knows no fear can penetrate. Dazzling idea! 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 Rheingold; 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? I'm a radical feminist-Marxist woman who is WHLW (women who loves women), and a caustic critic of boring heterosexuality and monamoury and petit bourgeois domesticity. For those reasons, I'm acutely conscious of the woman-constricting heteronormativity and artificiality of some of the psycho-emotional symbols, motifs and dilemmas that Wagner artfully constructs. Nonetheless, few can deny that 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 whom she has revived from death in battle (by fucking them, let it be recalled); a young woman whose beauty he endlessly admires; one who brought him solace in his psychical and moral torment, etc etc. Wagner is quite daring and dangerously revelatory in making explicit that supposedly we women are (according to heteronormative and patriarchal ideology) looking at blokies on three dimensions simultaneously - as protective patriarchs whom we worship; as adult lovers; and as children-teenagers whom we have to nurture, educate and often reprove. Likewise blokies (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 other hotter psychodynamic elements, both Electra-like and Oedipal, from which the realism of French psychology does not look away, even if English hypocrites and shopkeepers blush in faux incomprehension. Since Wagner, avant la lettre, is often “more Freudian than Freud”, it is openly admitted, and highly significant, that daughters and fathers (at least in bourgeois familial modes of social being) are forever rehearsing and approaching the transcendental erotic union typically found in romantic-erotic congress between women and men. Or so it is said by heterosexual apologists. The celebrated passage from 5:29 - 8:31 expresses with striking veracity how much Brunhild and Wotan are discussing, all be it at one projective remove, their yearning to consummate their mutual adoration and affections by transcendental shakti erotic ecstatic congress; yet also the arguably dubious ethical-political ramifications of doing so. Particularly by their joint and frankly conspiratorial contemplation of a ferocious ring of fire that only this "one who is freer than he who is a god" (ie her father) can step through. "Cowards shall flee from thy rock" declares Wotan with none too subtle innuendo, as he embraces Brunhild's hips and nuzzles his god-face into her divine Mons Veneris! At 6:18 . The true (though implicit) dialogue is - "Let me step into your sacred shakti infused Yoni, my dearest daughter! Let my sacred Yoni and vagina embrace your phallocratic godhead, my beloved father!" For instance , as I said above, Wagner is elsewhere using the music of "The Ride of the Valkyries" to state, both on stage and to our consciousness, without boundaries, that Brunhild reawakens dead young virile heroic men killed in battle, by making love with them, and carrying them on horseback (astride stallions), as do her other sisters, to be love-offerings to their titanic father. To become legions of guardians of their father’s heavenly defences. And, most explicitly, so these sister-daughters and Papa can all make love with each other in polyamorous pansexual erotic transcendence, perhaps with the stallions thrown in to the mix! Thus in Rachael von Wagner's fullest portraiture, both Brunhild and her father wish they could sit, as divine lovers and co-regents of heaven, and of course displacing Wotan’s wife. Who is a decidedly loveless, repellent, utterly banal, tedious bourgeois mutti (Angela Merkel in her most characteristic moments). One of the few female figures whom Dr Wagner conjured up with the express and sole purpose of being truly loathsome. Thenceforth "Their Highnesses B & W" would reign as co-regents, bathed each morning in the hallowed and erotic splendour of the exploding sun emerging from the vagina of the Nile Valley goddess Nut, amidst showers of the goddesses amniotic fluids and blood! To rule beneficently forever, over goddesses and gods and all humanity and all pan-psychical reality. Quite a tempting and revolutionary erotic-political project! “Those radiant eyes!” It could be 1900s Vienna, with Klimt working on his Beethoven Frieze, and Adele Bloch-Bauer and Siggy Freud coming round for coffee cakes and conversation 🤣. The fact Wagner is at once so emphatic about, and so fascinated by, the daughter-father version of classic Greek anti-bourgeois erotic transgression, rather than the son-mother variant, shows how oriented to elevation of feminine-majesty is her imagination. Or perhaps she is just more explicit about analysing one side, and expects the audience to casually and comfortably acknowledge the other 👨👩👧. Fat chance in 1860s Munich, or London even in 2024. Oedipus May be King, but Rachel is the true Empress of insight into our womanly psyches! Or so the Magician of Bayreuth might contend. By kissing and worshiping our sacred Yoni, every blokie is bespeaking and venerating the origins and portal of his existence. Our sacred pussies, clitorises, vaginas, cervixes, wombs and fallopian tubes and ovaries, and great monthly cycles and crimson tides - these are the true goddess faces and engines of life! It is a chucklesome moment when, surrounded by mists and flames of the Magic Fire Mountain, Wotan sings “No one who fears my spear point shall ever penetrate the fire.” A totem of majesty, an edict of law, a protective cordon, and hyper phallic symbol, all to the max! It is also highly relevant to the overarching Great Drama of "The Ring" that Brunhild regains her coexistence with Siegfried by first returning the gold to the Rhine Maidens, and then by stepping into the Flames that destroy Valhalla and her ego. She and Siegfried are thus reunited in the world-consciousness - more familiar to the audience as "The Rhine". This is where Dr Wagner shows echt Buddhist credentials. It is a pity the Magician was so distracted by building Bayreuth that she did not write the much projected opera, “The Seekers”. Furthermore, it says much about Wagner’s sensuous invention, and our depth psychology, that the most completely expressed and satisfying adult romantic bond in "The Ring" is between Brunhild and Wotan. As another insightful commentator (Manoli S) puts it very well below: “People always pity the Walsungs for their predicament, but for me this scene is infinitely more affecting than their plight.” Many things about this Parisian-French production (Pierre Boulez, Patrice Chéreau, Richard Peduzzi, Jacques Schmidt, André Diot) are thoroughly captivating. Especially on the grinding alienation suffered by women (and no doubt men), even in the sphere of our WHLW love, in a burgeoning patriarchal-capitalist consumer economy. The Rhine maidens, for instance, have three jobs at the hydroelectric plant, just to get by - valiantly 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; mock romantic follies of rugged mountains (send for Byron); banker´s costume of Wotan; trashy bourgeois dress of even the goddesses and gods (befitting some Nazi-era kitsch Berlin chorus line); French Ancien Regime rip-offs; and the costume of Brunhild like something from the worst Bavarian provincial theatre. A perfect résumé, one might say, with a Parisian accent, of 1870s Victorian London culture 😁. Embryonic Primark, suckled on laudanum! Singing and acting, of course, in this performance are supreme. Love andrea
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
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
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.
For any father with daughters this has to be among the most moving pieces of music - and this is a glorious performance.
❤
Why? Do you dress them up as Valkyries and have them sing to you?
this so true!
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.
Pñl
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.
Morris Behrens is close
James Morris and Hildegard Behrens , Mets 1990 ring is my favorite.
I cannot do otherwise but agree with @Cavaradossi10. "Every time I watch it I find myself in tears." Magnificent!
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
Música sentiente, música poetica. Maravillosa creación humana, de las más humanas. Sublime.
My god…. Utterly, utterly sublime
McIntyre sings this so darn beautifully....what a voice
McIntyre doesn’t have a huge voice but he brings the crucial Wagnerian vocal acting to the role. Moving.
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.
Saw it at Bayreuth three times - still the best, the most human, the most moving Ring I have ever seen
Wagner is generally regarded as the great exponent of bombast, but in fact his great appeal and uncanny aptitude is his ability to convey vulnerability, intense yearning and cherished memories. I’m an only child, I adored my dad and this poignant drama evokes for me deep emotions of love and loss.
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.
And Donald Mc Intyre. Perfect ages and makeup to be the impersonation of Wotan
It really is unfortunate that this was my first Ring. Nothing but downhill
Rest in peace, Peter Hoffmann.
GREAT ARTISTRY! One of the most moving scenes of opera ever!
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
I agree ☝️.
La mejor escena de la historia de la ópera , sin duda .
Absolutely sublime. I love Gwyneth Jones she is absolutely captivating
Born two miles from my home in Pontnewynydd, South Wales.
Oh good gosh - impossible to remain dry-eyed. SO moving - and they are both SO good. I remember watching this on TV back in the 80's, when my children were small. Esepcially interesting as I was at the Royal COllege of Music at the same time as Gwyneth Jones - though I have to say her intonation was always a bit iffy at times. But Donald Macintyre is superb.
This is one of the most beautiful performances i found on this piece. Thank you for uploading 🙏🏻
Y la entrada de los dioses al Valhalla y el funeral de Sigfrido
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.)
Que belleza
Quelle merveilleuse version de ce chef d'œuvre absolu ...❤❤
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 dawn of modernity.
This is really tearful moment
武坦告別愛女，焚火烈焰這場吟唱樂曲，總會讓我戚然淚下❣️
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
The Magician of Bayreuth at her psychologically and philosophically most powerful, expressed with titanic emotional power, and rarely matched orchestral brilliance.
Ever since my childhood, I have called her Dr Rachel von Wagner, because only a person who is womanly at heart can command such stratospheric emotional and psychodynamic insights. The half-flattering "von" connective is a mocking hint at Wagner's supreme artistic confidence, or plain vanity, or naked conceit. A not uncommon characteristic 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 put to her father, and accusations of hypocrisy by Brunhild can stop this.
Instead of destroying her, Wotan surrounds her by an emblem of ceaseless love, a fire that only a man who knows no fear can penetrate.
Dazzling idea!
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 Rheingold;
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?
I'm a radical feminist-Marxist woman who is WHLW (women who loves women), and a caustic critic of boring heterosexuality and monamoury and petit bourgeois domesticity. For those reasons, I'm acutely conscious of the woman-constricting heteronormativity and artificiality of some of the psycho-emotional symbols, motifs and dilemmas that Wagner artfully constructs.
Nonetheless, few can deny that 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 whom she has revived from death in battle (by fucking them, let it be recalled); a young woman whose beauty he endlessly admires; one who brought him solace in his psychical and moral torment, etc etc.
Wagner is quite daring and dangerously revelatory in making explicit that supposedly we women are (according to heteronormative and patriarchal ideology) looking at blokies on three dimensions simultaneously - as protective patriarchs whom we worship; as adult lovers; and as children-teenagers whom we have to nurture, educate and often reprove. Likewise blokies (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 other hotter psychodynamic elements, both Electra-like and Oedipal, from which the realism of French psychology does not look away, even if English hypocrites and shopkeepers blush in faux incomprehension.
Since Wagner, avant la lettre, is often “more Freudian than Freud”, it is openly admitted, and highly significant, that daughters and fathers (at least in bourgeois familial modes of social being) are forever rehearsing and approaching the transcendental erotic union typically found in romantic-erotic congress between women and men. Or so it is said by heterosexual apologists.
The celebrated passage from 5:29 - 8:31 expresses with striking veracity how much Brunhild and Wotan are discussing, all be it at one projective remove, their yearning to consummate their mutual adoration and affections by transcendental shakti erotic ecstatic congress; yet also the arguably dubious ethical-political ramifications of doing so.
Particularly by their joint and frankly conspiratorial contemplation of a ferocious ring of fire that only this "one who is freer than he who is a god" (ie her father) can step through.
"Cowards shall flee from thy rock" declares Wotan with none too subtle innuendo, as he embraces Brunhild's hips and nuzzles his god-face into her divine Mons Veneris! At 6:18 .
The true (though implicit) dialogue is - "Let me step into your sacred shakti infused Yoni, my dearest daughter! Let my sacred Yoni and vagina embrace your phallocratic godhead, my beloved father!"
For instance , as I said above, Wagner is elsewhere using the music of "The Ride of the Valkyries" to state, both on stage and to our consciousness, without boundaries, that Brunhild reawakens dead young virile heroic men killed in battle, by making love with them, and carrying them on horseback (astride stallions), as do her other sisters, to be love-offerings to their titanic father. To become legions of guardians of their father’s heavenly defences. And, most explicitly, so these sister-daughters and Papa can all make love with each other in polyamorous pansexual erotic transcendence, perhaps with the stallions thrown in to the mix!
Thus in Rachael von Wagner's fullest portraiture, both Brunhild and her father wish they could sit, as divine lovers and co-regents of heaven, and of course displacing Wotan’s wife. Who is a decidedly loveless, repellent, utterly banal, tedious bourgeois mutti (Angela Merkel in her most characteristic moments). One of the few female figures whom Dr Wagner conjured up with the express and sole purpose of being truly loathsome.
Thenceforth "Their Highnesses B & W" would reign as co-regents, bathed each morning in the hallowed and erotic splendour of the exploding sun emerging from the vagina of the Nile Valley goddess Nut, amidst showers of the goddesses amniotic fluids and blood!
To rule beneficently forever, over goddesses and gods and all humanity and all pan-psychical reality. Quite a tempting and revolutionary erotic-political project!
“Those radiant eyes!” It could be 1900s Vienna, with Klimt working on his Beethoven Frieze, and Adele Bloch-Bauer and Siggy Freud coming round for coffee cakes and conversation 🤣.
The fact Wagner is at once so emphatic about, and so fascinated by, the daughter-father version of classic Greek anti-bourgeois erotic transgression, rather than the son-mother variant, shows how oriented to elevation of feminine-majesty is her imagination. Or perhaps she is just more explicit about analysing one side, and expects the audience to casually and comfortably acknowledge the other 👨👩👧. Fat chance in 1860s Munich, or London even in 2024.
Oedipus May be King, but Rachel is the true Empress of insight into our womanly psyches! Or so the Magician of Bayreuth might contend.
By kissing and worshiping our sacred Yoni, every blokie is bespeaking and venerating the origins and portal of his existence. Our sacred pussies, clitorises, vaginas, cervixes, wombs and fallopian tubes and ovaries, and great monthly cycles and crimson tides - these are the true goddess faces and engines of life!
It is a chucklesome moment when, surrounded by mists and flames of the Magic Fire Mountain, Wotan sings “No one who fears my spear point shall ever penetrate the fire.” A totem of majesty, an edict of law, a protective cordon, and hyper phallic symbol, all to the max!
It is also highly relevant to the overarching Great Drama of "The Ring" that Brunhild regains her coexistence with Siegfried by first returning the gold to the Rhine Maidens, and then by stepping into the Flames that destroy Valhalla and her ego.
She and Siegfried are thus reunited in the world-consciousness - more familiar to the audience as "The Rhine". This is where Dr Wagner shows echt Buddhist credentials. It is a pity the Magician was so distracted by building Bayreuth that she did not write the much projected opera, “The Seekers”.
Furthermore, it says much about Wagner’s sensuous invention, and our depth psychology, that the most completely expressed and satisfying adult romantic bond in "The Ring" is between Brunhild and Wotan. As another insightful commentator (Manoli S) puts it very well below: “People always pity the Walsungs for their predicament, but for me this scene is infinitely more affecting than their plight.”
Many things about this Parisian-French production (Pierre Boulez, Patrice Chéreau, Richard Peduzzi, Jacques Schmidt, André Diot) are thoroughly captivating.
Especially on the grinding alienation suffered by women (and no doubt men), even in the sphere of our WHLW love, in a burgeoning patriarchal-capitalist consumer economy. The Rhine maidens, for instance, have three jobs at the hydroelectric plant, just to get by - valiantly 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; mock romantic follies of rugged mountains (send for Byron); banker´s costume of Wotan; trashy bourgeois dress of even the goddesses and gods (befitting some Nazi-era kitsch Berlin chorus line); French Ancien Regime rip-offs; and the costume of Brunhild like something from the worst Bavarian provincial theatre.
A perfect résumé, one might say, with a Parisian accent, of 1870s Victorian London culture 😁. Embryonic Primark, suckled on laudanum!
Singing and acting, of course, in this performance are supreme.
Love andrea
Magnificent singing, incredible.
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
Wunderbar!
Was für eine Oper endet so erschütternd ?
Quel opéra a un finale aussi bouleversant ?
❤
Genius
Sublime !
Gwyneth Jones and Donald McIntyre are vocally extraordinary❤
Mr. McIntyre played Hunding in Die Walküre of The Tokyo Ring production in 2002, Japan.
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 !!!!
@barney. The conductor is Boulez from the TV production.
For me, the yardstick will always be London and Knappertsbusch in this excerpt but McIntyre does very well indeed
BRAVA!
The Mets 1990’s Ring is magnificent. Designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen and Otto Schenk.
7:21
yup
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 😧
Un roman sa asculte Wagner. Bravo!
17.10 Wotan heavily sweating in front of the fire. Makes sense
McIntyre for ever!
Pick a note, any note....
Nilsson is the better sing but jones from 3:55 to 4:10 just goes to another place. wow
13:52
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
Levine is actually a very good conductor his Ring is the absolute best Ring that has ever been created.
If I'm not mistaken this should be Horst Stein and the Ring is from the 70s.
But I also wonder why you wouldn't put up Barenboim and Thielemann here? Not to forget Petrenko's Ring in Bayreuth?
@@hartobanuharp That one was insanely great, but sadly, few know about Petrenkos abilities with Wagner
@@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.
Richard Wagner: Lousy person, a great composer.
Why? Because he didn't like Jews? Wagner's granddaughter was friends with Hitler.
you really do need to move on
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
@@rphcomposer
Why, the man was an anti semitic? You don’t forget that.
and some say Wagner didn’t write any beautiful music!
4:09