Die Walküre und Mich

A view from the balcony of the Met

Tonight I was at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center seeing "Die Walküre" -part of Wagner's Ring Cycle. I am in no way this cultured. I only benefited from a ticket that my friend Ron gave me as he had to go to his uncle's funeral in Berlin. So there I was for a 5 hour performance after a 9 hour work day. The orchestra was wonderful and it was great to be at the Met to experience all that. It is amazing what gets done in 5 hours. Not much.

Let's just say 30 minutes could be spent singing about why you dropped a soup ladle or 45 minutes spent on what I am about to do to you. Having read the synopsis in advance to be prepared, there were many moments when I wanted to shout "Kill him already!" or "Banish her already!" Just my modern impatience, I guess.

But a lovely story nonetheless: Siegmund and Sieglinde are twin brother and sister, we and they, find out. Siegmund falls in love with his sister, takes her away from her husband and impregnates her. Their father is a god and he has cheated on his poor wife all over the place including having fathered a load of Valkyries. His fave is Brünnhilde. It turns out that Sieglinde's ex is going to try and kill her brother/new husband (wouldn't you?) and Brünnhilde wants to protect Siegmund. Dad wants to too, but his angry wife says he can't for her honor. (Has he tarnished the hell out of that already?!) so he doesn't and Siegmund bites it. Brünnhilde takes her half sister, Sieglinde (She must be since they share the same god dad, right? This is never discussed in song for 30 minutes, but if you do the math...) away and god/dad is pissed for having been disobeyed. She is so going to get smited, I can feel it. Brünnhilde convinces Sieglinde that she must have her brother's child and then Brünnhilde faces god/pops and he is indeed pissed. She is to be put to sleep until some loser normal man wakes her up and then she has to obey his every command. This is like the worst for a goddess. So she bargains in about 25 minutes of singing to get dad to put her to sleep but surround her with fire that only a hero can break through and her plan is that hero will be her 1/2 brother and sister's incestuous bastard child. So auntie will then hook up with her bastard/incest nephew. The end. Sweet.

I sat next to a musicologist from Poland who was in the US for the first time. I asked him if American audiences were different from those in Europe and he said that in Europe people do not leave until the end. (I wanted to explain the "Two Minute Warning" thing we have here and people were indeed booking it as Brünnhilde lay surrounded by flames.) He also said that encores go on for 20 - 30 minutes in Europe unlike the 3 minutes here. I wanted to explain to him that we are a busy people.

I saw Barbara Barrie who played the mom in one of my fave movies of all time "Breaking Away" leaving the opera. I wanted to yell BRAVA, Barbara, BRAVA!!!

So it is the sights, the sounds, the people watching, the European musicologists and a good filthy story of forbidden sex and carnage that livens up Monday nights here for me.