The Ring of the Nibelung is a series of 4 operas written by Wagner over a period of 28 years beginning 1848! The first libretto to be written was Siegfried Tod (The Death of Siegfried) and the second was Der junge Siegfried (The Young Siegfried) and these were later incorporated into Götterdämmerung (Twilight of Gods), itself later prefaced by Die Walküre. Then Wagner wrote the Das Rheingold (Rhine Gold) as a general preface to the 3 works. It was after writing these 4 librettos, called "poems" by Wagner, that he actually went about writing out the whole of the 4 operas. Very roughly, the story is about a ring made by a dwarf Alberich (Nibelung) from gold which he stole from 3 maidens who guarded it in the depths of River Rhine. Later the ring was given by the god Wotan to the 2 giants Fafner and Fasolt who helped him build Valhalla, the magnificent palace for his gods. As Fafner wanted to keep the ring for himself alone, he murdered Fasolt (the subject matter of the first opera Das Rheingold). Because Wotan's mortal son Siegmund committed incest, Wotan sent his immortal daughter Brünhilde to kill him but she could not bring herself to do so. To punish her, Wotan wanted to strip her of her status as one of the immortal Valkyries but relented after she begged him not to. He then sent her instead to a mountain of fire from which she could only be rescued by a true hero (subject matter of the second opera Die Walküre). She was later rescued by Siegfried, Siegmund's son( subject of the 3rd opera Siegfried) who remade his father's broken sword and killed Fafner (now turned into a dragon the better to guard the gold ring) and then went on to the fiery mountain to rescue Brünhilde with whom he fell in love. He gave her the Ring as a protection when he left for more great deeds but soon, Waltraute arrived and told her that she must return it to the Rhine Maidens because Wotan had a dream in which he was convinced that only the return of the Ring to them could Valhalla avoid the curse upon its destruction. But she refused to do so. With the help of the gods, Siegfried, taking the form of Gunther, the King of the Gibichungs (the son of Hagen who himself was a son of Alberich with a mortal woman) then retook possession of the Ring to return it to the Rhine Maidens but was murdered at the bank of the river by Hagen . After the death of Siegfried, the gods fought each other to get the ring (subject of the final opera Götterdämmerung (Twilight of Gods)) in the middle of which Brünhilde arrived and claimed it back, promising to return it to the Rhine Maidens. She then built a funeral pyre ostensibly for Siegfried but when it was done and the fire lit, she jumped right into it. As she did so, the waters of the Rhine River swelled and destroyed Valhalla and The Ring was buried deep in the swirling flood waters, never to be found again. It's a long and complicated story and each of the operas would last at least 3 hours if performed in full. It's the longest suite of operas ever written, a literally monumental work. But Maazel condensed the wandering music Wagner originally wrote into something extremely dense, lasting only just an hour and a quarter but without the librettos. It was a magnificent summary, preserving all the highlights like the famous Walküre. We are so lucky to be able to hear Maazel conducting it in person with the help of the excellent HKPO which turned out in full force, filling the stage with more than a hundred players and all kinds of instruments including 3 sets of timpanis and 4 lyres! it was an unforgettable experience. I really admire Maazel, who conducted without any score. He remained standing valiantly throughout the entire performance of more than an hour, only needing to support himself from time to time with his left hand on the metal railing of the conductor's podium. Simply glorious! Special thanks are due to the percussions and the brass section without which the grandeur of Wagner's music could never be fully brought out. The winds too were marvelous, providing the atmosphere, doing the leads in and certain very delicate passages by the flute. So are the lower strings which brought out the underlying tension of the music. I wonder if we're ever going to hear it again in Hong Kong or for that matter, anywhere else. I felt so blessed.
2013年11月3日 星期日
Lorin Maazel's The Ring Without Words of Wagner (洛林. 馬捷爾的華格納「無言的指環」)
Saturday nights for me always arrive with a certain expectancy and excitement. It's concert time. This Saturday was no exception. Two big names: Lorin Maazel ( earlier this year he played Mozart No.41 and Brahms No. 2 with CSO when it arrived in HK in January) and Richard Wagner. However, unlike other Saturday nights, the concert did not begin at the concert hall of the Cultural Centre but at its ground floor lobby. Yes, the lobby! There, 83 year-old Paris born American conductor, composer and violinist of Russian-Jewish origin conducted our first piece of the evening: Wagner's Siegfried Idyll. It was a very special piece of music for Wagner. It was written specially for Cosima, Wagner's second wife, in celebration of the birth of their son called Siegfried on 11th June 1869. Early on Christmas Day morning in 1869, Wagner arranged for a small band to appear on the staircase outside Cosima's bedroom at their home by Lake Lucerne and played this piece of music. It was Comisa's birthday. We had a dozen of choice musicians from the HKPO to do the same for us at the staircase of the hall's lobby. It was a unique and most intimate experience to be able to listen to that piece of music not 10 feet away from the conductor. Almost all the themes of this short piece came from Wagner's opera of the same name. It's first theme came from Act III of that opera about Brünhilde's awakening and its second came from Brünhilde's slumber in Die Walküre whilst a third came from a German folksong Schlaf, mien Kind.(Sleep, my baby)
The Ring of the Nibelung is a series of 4 operas written by Wagner over a period of 28 years beginning 1848! The first libretto to be written was Siegfried Tod (The Death of Siegfried) and the second was Der junge Siegfried (The Young Siegfried) and these were later incorporated into Götterdämmerung (Twilight of Gods), itself later prefaced by Die Walküre. Then Wagner wrote the Das Rheingold (Rhine Gold) as a general preface to the 3 works. It was after writing these 4 librettos, called "poems" by Wagner, that he actually went about writing out the whole of the 4 operas. Very roughly, the story is about a ring made by a dwarf Alberich (Nibelung) from gold which he stole from 3 maidens who guarded it in the depths of River Rhine. Later the ring was given by the god Wotan to the 2 giants Fafner and Fasolt who helped him build Valhalla, the magnificent palace for his gods. As Fafner wanted to keep the ring for himself alone, he murdered Fasolt (the subject matter of the first opera Das Rheingold). Because Wotan's mortal son Siegmund committed incest, Wotan sent his immortal daughter Brünhilde to kill him but she could not bring herself to do so. To punish her, Wotan wanted to strip her of her status as one of the immortal Valkyries but relented after she begged him not to. He then sent her instead to a mountain of fire from which she could only be rescued by a true hero (subject matter of the second opera Die Walküre). She was later rescued by Siegfried, Siegmund's son( subject of the 3rd opera Siegfried) who remade his father's broken sword and killed Fafner (now turned into a dragon the better to guard the gold ring) and then went on to the fiery mountain to rescue Brünhilde with whom he fell in love. He gave her the Ring as a protection when he left for more great deeds but soon, Waltraute arrived and told her that she must return it to the Rhine Maidens because Wotan had a dream in which he was convinced that only the return of the Ring to them could Valhalla avoid the curse upon its destruction. But she refused to do so. With the help of the gods, Siegfried, taking the form of Gunther, the King of the Gibichungs (the son of Hagen who himself was a son of Alberich with a mortal woman) then retook possession of the Ring to return it to the Rhine Maidens but was murdered at the bank of the river by Hagen . After the death of Siegfried, the gods fought each other to get the ring (subject of the final opera Götterdämmerung (Twilight of Gods)) in the middle of which Brünhilde arrived and claimed it back, promising to return it to the Rhine Maidens. She then built a funeral pyre ostensibly for Siegfried but when it was done and the fire lit, she jumped right into it. As she did so, the waters of the Rhine River swelled and destroyed Valhalla and The Ring was buried deep in the swirling flood waters, never to be found again. It's a long and complicated story and each of the operas would last at least 3 hours if performed in full. It's the longest suite of operas ever written, a literally monumental work. But Maazel condensed the wandering music Wagner originally wrote into something extremely dense, lasting only just an hour and a quarter but without the librettos. It was a magnificent summary, preserving all the highlights like the famous Walküre. We are so lucky to be able to hear Maazel conducting it in person with the help of the excellent HKPO which turned out in full force, filling the stage with more than a hundred players and all kinds of instruments including 3 sets of timpanis and 4 lyres! it was an unforgettable experience. I really admire Maazel, who conducted without any score. He remained standing valiantly throughout the entire performance of more than an hour, only needing to support himself from time to time with his left hand on the metal railing of the conductor's podium. Simply glorious! Special thanks are due to the percussions and the brass section without which the grandeur of Wagner's music could never be fully brought out. The winds too were marvelous, providing the atmosphere, doing the leads in and certain very delicate passages by the flute. So are the lower strings which brought out the underlying tension of the music. I wonder if we're ever going to hear it again in Hong Kong or for that matter, anywhere else. I felt so blessed.
The Ring of the Nibelung is a series of 4 operas written by Wagner over a period of 28 years beginning 1848! The first libretto to be written was Siegfried Tod (The Death of Siegfried) and the second was Der junge Siegfried (The Young Siegfried) and these were later incorporated into Götterdämmerung (Twilight of Gods), itself later prefaced by Die Walküre. Then Wagner wrote the Das Rheingold (Rhine Gold) as a general preface to the 3 works. It was after writing these 4 librettos, called "poems" by Wagner, that he actually went about writing out the whole of the 4 operas. Very roughly, the story is about a ring made by a dwarf Alberich (Nibelung) from gold which he stole from 3 maidens who guarded it in the depths of River Rhine. Later the ring was given by the god Wotan to the 2 giants Fafner and Fasolt who helped him build Valhalla, the magnificent palace for his gods. As Fafner wanted to keep the ring for himself alone, he murdered Fasolt (the subject matter of the first opera Das Rheingold). Because Wotan's mortal son Siegmund committed incest, Wotan sent his immortal daughter Brünhilde to kill him but she could not bring herself to do so. To punish her, Wotan wanted to strip her of her status as one of the immortal Valkyries but relented after she begged him not to. He then sent her instead to a mountain of fire from which she could only be rescued by a true hero (subject matter of the second opera Die Walküre). She was later rescued by Siegfried, Siegmund's son( subject of the 3rd opera Siegfried) who remade his father's broken sword and killed Fafner (now turned into a dragon the better to guard the gold ring) and then went on to the fiery mountain to rescue Brünhilde with whom he fell in love. He gave her the Ring as a protection when he left for more great deeds but soon, Waltraute arrived and told her that she must return it to the Rhine Maidens because Wotan had a dream in which he was convinced that only the return of the Ring to them could Valhalla avoid the curse upon its destruction. But she refused to do so. With the help of the gods, Siegfried, taking the form of Gunther, the King of the Gibichungs (the son of Hagen who himself was a son of Alberich with a mortal woman) then retook possession of the Ring to return it to the Rhine Maidens but was murdered at the bank of the river by Hagen . After the death of Siegfried, the gods fought each other to get the ring (subject of the final opera Götterdämmerung (Twilight of Gods)) in the middle of which Brünhilde arrived and claimed it back, promising to return it to the Rhine Maidens. She then built a funeral pyre ostensibly for Siegfried but when it was done and the fire lit, she jumped right into it. As she did so, the waters of the Rhine River swelled and destroyed Valhalla and The Ring was buried deep in the swirling flood waters, never to be found again. It's a long and complicated story and each of the operas would last at least 3 hours if performed in full. It's the longest suite of operas ever written, a literally monumental work. But Maazel condensed the wandering music Wagner originally wrote into something extremely dense, lasting only just an hour and a quarter but without the librettos. It was a magnificent summary, preserving all the highlights like the famous Walküre. We are so lucky to be able to hear Maazel conducting it in person with the help of the excellent HKPO which turned out in full force, filling the stage with more than a hundred players and all kinds of instruments including 3 sets of timpanis and 4 lyres! it was an unforgettable experience. I really admire Maazel, who conducted without any score. He remained standing valiantly throughout the entire performance of more than an hour, only needing to support himself from time to time with his left hand on the metal railing of the conductor's podium. Simply glorious! Special thanks are due to the percussions and the brass section without which the grandeur of Wagner's music could never be fully brought out. The winds too were marvelous, providing the atmosphere, doing the leads in and certain very delicate passages by the flute. So are the lower strings which brought out the underlying tension of the music. I wonder if we're ever going to hear it again in Hong Kong or for that matter, anywhere else. I felt so blessed.
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