What a week to view the greatest operatic saga of the end of the gods and redemption of the world! If that's your choice, here is the news.
The entire Ring Cycle (4 operas) will be shown over four consecutive days/nights starting March 25th - by Metropolitan Opera in New York. Warn your diary - Das Rheingold is the (relatively) short one. This is your chance to view the infamous Met Ring Cycle with the multi-million dollar "Machine" representing the World in its various ups and downs. Not a bad metaphor for the present.
Just go to https://www.metopera.org/ and it's waiting for you to Play Now.
NOTE: the current Met Opera schedule is here. Times are given as EDT: in Australia, operas are available morning of the following day. Rheingold starts 6.30pm Wednesday 25th March EDT and that's 7.30a.m. Thursday 26th March our time.
Bryn Terfel stars as Wotan but as you know if you've read our previous blog on the Ring, Das Rheingold is only the beginning - the other main characters in the saga are still to come in later operas.
Here's our 2016 webpage on Rheingold.
Opera North offers a splendidly statistically illustrated Ring in a Nutshell.
New to this Blog? Please go back two posts, to "Time on your hands?" - our announcement of the Opera North Ring available online. Follow the links to our pages on Wagner.
Many of us watched this Met Ring Cycle live on HD and my judgement is that the unmissable opera of the four is the one coming up next, Die Walküre. Eva-Maria Westbroek and Jonas Kaufmann are the ill-fated twins, and their performances brilliant. Deborah Voigt's Brünnhilde is (unexpectedly) superb. Bryn's Wotan is much debated but extraordinary in portraying the god's crucial weakness.
And of course in that opera, you get at last the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ (‘Walkürenritt’), thrilling multiple layers of orchestration bringing the eight valkyrie sisters in to prepare for the transportation of fallen heroes to Valhalla. Brünnhilde is still to come, pursued by the furious Wotan because she rightly sensed his wishes. Yes, family in the gods is complicated.
So here's your chance to get down to some serious Wagner scholarship, since the Opera North production, totally different, is currently still on (bless them, they're leaving it up.)
Wagnered out? As the previous post explained, the Met is rolling out productions daily. NOTE: their schedule is here. Had enough drama and misery? (If so, pass on Dialog of the Carmellites.) Hang in there - the next really good laugh from the Met comes up at the end of the month. . Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia will show in Australia on Wednesday 1st April. (Rossini would have enjoyed the date.) This wonderful, wickedly funny, hummably musical opera has a great cast: Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez, and Peter Mattei, conducted by Maurizio Benini. Yes, there'll be a blog post about that gem.