It was on this day in 1869 that the opera “Das Rheingold” by Richard Wagner premiered on the stage at the National Theatre Munich, Germany. It is 150 minutes long and is the first of an epic four-part drama known as Der Ring des Nibelungen. Rheingold, although it is the beginning of Wagner’s famous cycle, Rheingold was the last of the texts to be written. Wagner didn’t want any of the Ring to be performed until all the parts were complete. King Ludwig II of Bavaria thought otherwise and ordered the staging of Rheingold in 1869. It wasn’t until 1876 that the entirety of Ring was performed at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Bavaria. These days, Bayreuth still stages the entire Ring epic each year, a total of four operas that add up to about 18 hours of stage time. Other opera houses tend to stage the Ring over the course of a few years.
Although I recognize some of the music instantly,
I didn’t have a clue what The Ring is all about. The plot is EXTREMELY complex and begins with the theft of gold that is then made into a magic ring Lots and lots of Norse gods and goddesses; truly I didn’t even know there were that many. In the end, Brunhilde (who had been a goddess but was stripped of her immortality) returns the ring but not before Valhalla and the gods are destroyed.
Now that I know more about The Rheingold and The Ring, it doesn’t increase my desire to ever see it. Certainly not 18 hours of it. I’m not a particularly big fan of opera to start with but that much plot to keep track of might make my head explode?
Do you like opera? Have a favorite?
Trail Baboon 
I enjoy opera.
While working at the Minot Air Force base, PBS showed the entire Cycle over a week. My fellow worker and I watched it all in the evenings. Whenever we get together, we recollect Brunhilde’s demise.
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Happy Autumnal Equinox!
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No.
But in my decades-long quest to discover the identity of the photographer of my set of European images from 1904, ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/billinmn/albums/72157622733362984/ ) I noticed that several of the images were sites related to classical composers — Liszt, Beethoven, Wagner, etc. — and the travelers obviously lingered in Bayreuth because there were several images taken there and a proof of one of the images is held in the city archives.
On the chance that they were there for the Wagner Festival, I asked my correspondent there to have a look at the registration of foreign visitors to the Fest for 1904 and he did but couldn’t find any likely suspects.
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Among my favorite pieces of classical music are parts of operas, but operas as a whole not really. Attended two over 50 years ago but found them both overwrought. Sandra was more appreciative than I, but was not bothered we did not attended any more. She liked hearing operas on MPR.
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I’m not a big opera fan, but like Clyde I like sertain pieces. PBS used to run Die Fledermaus on New Year’s Day, with Kiri Te Kawana. I remember a couple of times I worked on sewing projects with that as background music.
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I have 3 Kiri Te Kawana CDs. She was a favorite of Tom Keith’s.
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As Wes said yesterday, bad spellers untie. It’s Kiri Te Kanawa.
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Quite right. Finger fumble.
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I’m with Clyde and Linda. Not a big fan of attending operas, but I enjoy a LOT of opera music. Only two I’ve seen are Carmen (excellent!) and Tales of Hoffmann. I’m an overture fan, so operatic overtures are among my favorite pieces.
Chris in Owatonna
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
My question is this: Is “Hamilton” considered an opera. I would say yes. And I think it is brilliant. I am into No Kings, so I posted a clip below. But does this opinion matter? Probably not. Classical opera selections I like, especially the duet “Little Flowers”. I also enjoy comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan. But I do not enjoy sitting through a classical European Opera.
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i love the voices and the chops in the euro operas puccini mozart rossini verdi monteverdi
i like jesus christ superstar and hamilton
classic like madam butterfly the barber of seville the marrige of figero latraviata la mama morta in philedelphia blew me away . anything marie callis
bryn terfel is a treasure
always pissed me off that my son didnt go into it
he has that voice
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maybe my favorite duet
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Well, The Who’s Tommy is considered a rock opera.
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I do like some Gilbert and Sullivan. Having costumed Pirates and Pinafore for high school productions, we saw those each several times. A local D’Oyly Carte (sp?) group performs, or did perform, annual G & S performances and we attended several.
But I don’t consider G & S opera. For one thing, the operettas don’t employ operatic voices, which I personally find insufferable.
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Yes, G & S is considered “operetta”, I think.
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Correct. I only know this because Nonny was in Naughty Marietta when she was in high school and I’ve seen the photos.
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I may have brought this up before:
The Stagehands Ring Cycle. It’s pretty old now, but it is fun.
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Saturday October 18 will be the first ‘Met in HD’ opera movie. I hate 95% of opera’s. Some are funny, some are in English and are interesting, but mostly, it’s just to eat popcorn, and take a nap, and see the huge sets and fancy costumes and watch the backstage stuff.
The Met did a Ring Cycle version several years that was just… some opinions were that it was all about the scenery, and lost the focus on the music. Well, everyone has an opinion.
Sometimes a designer has too much money, and creates this HUGE, yet, pretty cool concept, and you have to wonder. But it was cool. And there’s a movie about his ‘dream’ of creating this.
It was like Cirque du Solei, meets opera.
And there’s been few opera movies I left at intermission. All I can think is “Oh man, just kill each other and let me go home already!”
Not every opera ends in bloodshed, but a lot do. I keep notes on them, there’s a few I don’t need to again. And some I do.
‘Barber of Seville’ is a comedy, Bugs only touched on part of it.
‘Marnie’ is a murder / mystery in English, it’s pretty good.
‘Dialogues des Carmelites’ was a good PRODUCTION with lots of cool shadows and a WONDERFUL death bed scene by Mother Superior.
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Interestingly I tend to like more modern operas (good story, emotional music) including some done by MN Opera. There was a recent beautiful broadcast via TPT-Passport was Florencia en el Amazonas- one of the 1st Spanish language operas at the Met. I love Carmen, most Puccini and some operettas (Grafin Mariza by Kalman). But not into baroque or German opera I’m afraid.
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I really should have known Der Ring… by name, but didn’t until now. (thanks, VS) I grew up hearing select operatic pieces that my mom practiced at the piano. The Delibes above is one… Here’s one of my favorites:
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We saw daughter’s best friend sing the female lead in Die Fledermaus as an undergraduate at NDSU. She also sang the role of the mother in The Bartered Bride when she was at North Texas State getting her MFA. We couldn’t get down there to see her, though.
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I can’t believe nobody else has put any of these up today!!
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Waiting for you!
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The true source of opera for any kid of the 50s and 60s.
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Where these shown on TV?
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You bet they were.
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Looney Tunes were repeated on Saturday mornings through some sort of syndication deal all through the 70’s and into the 80’s. The Rocky and Bullwinkle shows were rebroadcast repeatedly too. If you saw the cartoons when you were a kid, you could relive that experience over and over as a teenager and a yound adult.
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When I hear the Barber of Seville, I can’t hear it without the skidding sounds Bugs and Elmer Fudd make when they are retreating from each other in the finale.
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Then again, there is Schwanda the Bagpiper. I often have the Polka and Fugue from that as an ear worm. I played it in college band. I have never seen the opera.
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I think Schwanda is a 20th century opera.
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I listened to a lot of opera when I was younger, starting with the Met Opera live radio broadcasts on Saturday afternoons. They were nice background music to do homework, and I liked the intermission features of interviews and quizzes about opera. In 12th grade, my humanities teacher gave students an opportunity to purchase tickets to see the Met perform on tour at Northrup Auditorium. I was the only one to take him up on it, and watched Aida from the second-to-last row. It was thrilling. I think Leontyne Price sang the lead, but my memory is foggy. About the same time, I saw Ingmar Bergman’s excellent film version of The Magic Flute. It’s still one my favorite operas, and is a good one to start with: simple plot, hints of humor and a happy ending.
I stopped listening to the Met Opera broadcasts after my kids were born (too much of a time commitment), but have watched occasional productions on PBS and have been to several productions at the MN Opera. My favorites are Mozart, especially Magic Flute and Marriage of Figaro, but I also like most of the opera of the 19th and 20th centuries.
I think I’d consider Hamilton an opera, like Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar.
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I saw Aida in Rome when I was just out of high school and in Europe with America’s Youth In Concert. It was held in the open in some ruined amphitheater. I loved the live horses and elephants on stage.
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I’m laughing out loud… just turned on the tv in time to catch the 1-800 cash now commercial!!
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I love opera. Like most people, I suppose, I was familiar with the better known arias from operas such as La Boheme, Carmen, Rigoletto, The Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni long before I had any idea that they were fragments of much larger pieces of music. Keep in mind, this was before the advent of TV, so to me opera was a listening only proposition. At the time everyone knew who Jussi Björling and Maria Callas were, and I was transported by both their voices.
Prior to going to Moscow in 1964, I had seen only one opera, The Pearl Fisher, on black and white TV. The first opera I saw live was Boris Godunov at the Bolshoi Theater, and man oh man, that changed everything. That performance remains one of the most spectacular theatrical experiences I’ve ever had. Three other operas I saw at the Bolshoi that year were Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, and Ruslan and Lyudmila. I was familiar with neither the music nor the story lines of any of them, and it didn’t matter. The music, the voices and the staging conveyed so much drama and emotion, that it didn’t matter that I had no idea what it was all about.
During the pandemic a few years ago, The Metropolitan Opera made a large number of their recorded operas available for free viewing. I took full advantage of that. I’m not sure how many of their productions I viewed, but it was at least fifteen. I discovered then that having English subtitles of what being sung actually detracted from the pleasure of listening.
Tosca may be favorite opera.
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If memory serves, the first baboon “outing” I participated in was a performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, H.M.S. Pinafore, at the Guthrie. This would have been in the fall of 2011. Anyone else remember that?
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Yes, I do, PJ – I felt so lucky to be able to see it, and it was wonderful!
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I was there too! It was the first time I had been to the new Guthrie.
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Another one of my mom’s favorites:
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Had to look it up, but here’s Schwanda… https://youtu.be/zsStqAiYhDI?si=BquC5ITVU0s-cgDl
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I forgot about rock operas like Hair, Tommy, and JC Superstar. Lots of good music in those shows. Musical theater evolved from opera, so they’re closely related, although musical theater has much more music-less dialogue than does opera, which is sung virtually 99% of the time.
Chris
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