Saw Seattle Opera's 'Ring' Cycle last week. All four operas in six evenings.

[Aristus]

What a triumph of the collaborative arts: music, vocal, acting, directing, set design. It was amazing.

Seattle is justifiably proud of its 'green' Ring, basing a number of sets upon the mountains and lush forests of the Pacific Northwest.

A once-in-a-lifetime experience I'll never forget...

[regnaD kciN]

1. I so wanted to see this...

Unfortunately, I had vision problems that required surgery, which couldn't be done until well afterwards, so I had to pass up the opportunity. It's a shame -- I caught the first two stagings of the Ring here (the 1970s-1980s original production, and the more-experimental one from the early '90s), and really wanted to see a new production that was more about presenting the work than seeing what some hotshot "visionary" director could do to it, but I wouldn't have been able to see it well, even if I had been able to go. Sadly, odds are that any future version will be more along the lines of the avant-garde-wannabe interpretations I personally can't stand. I suspect I'll just stick to audio recordings and imagining what my ideal production would be like from now on.

[Aristus]

2. In the Q&A with Seattle Opera General Manager Speight Jenkins after each opera,

there was a great deal of discussion as to whether to make the next staging along the lines of the current, very popular, 'green' Ring, or to try another approach.

The consensus seems to be that Seattle fans, and the hundreds of Ring enthusiasts who come to Seattle from all over the world, would like to see the 'green' Ring again.

There was a great deal of resistance to the idea of doing an avante garde Ring, like the current production at Bayreuth, which has received critical scorn.

And if you want something really awful to compare the Seattle Ring to, go on YouTube, and keyword search "Rheingold, Bulgarian National Opera." It won't be long until you're thinking that someone is playing a very bad joke on you. It was terrible...

[regnaD kciN]

3. Hopefully, that means the next production will be somewhat similar...

There are far too many Ring productions nowadays where it just seems like the director wants to show how "clever" he can be in turning the work into something different. I saw the beginning of the LePage/Met version, with its "machine" set, and all I could think of was a paraphrase of the line from The Princess Bride, "Wagner lay dead by the Machine."

[Aristus]

4. I actually liked the Met Ring very much.

If the 'machine' had just been a gimmick for the sake of a gimmick, it would not have impressed me very much. But I think it became an important integral part of the staging. It certainly impressed my wife, who had never seen or even listened to the Ring before. She was expecting to hate it, and was just watching it to please me. Turns out, she loved it. She was hooked from the moment, only a few minutes into the pedal E major chord of "Rheingold", when the machine starts to undulate gently to represent the Rhine river. She shouted "Oh, COOL!" and was hooked...

[sir pball]

5. YOU NAZI PIG

Kidding, but I have caught flack for loving Wagner. Most recently for being annoyed on Facebook that I missed the New York Metropolitan Opera doing the Nibelungen - I have a lot of bleeding-heart friends who literally called me a Nazi for it.

Fuck that. Wagner was a disgusting pig, but god DAMN the man could write.