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A love stronger than death:
Stuart Skelton and Nina Stemme in the title roles of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Photograph: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera |
The length is a little long-- 4 hours tonight.
That is about a double feature.
Every note a pleasure.
In my note book there are going to be many pages devoted to Wagner this week.
Arta
I didn't start till 11pm so I am only 2 hours in with 2 more too do!!! Lush lush lush
ReplyDeleteI just got home from work. Time to get the opera going!
ReplyDeleteI asked David if he wanted to join me and watch it. He could recall that it was at least three years ago when we went to it with Arta. I remember it being 7.5 hours, but the blog post of October 8, 2016 corrects me. Only 5.5 hours. Remember the signal stopped about 30 minutes before the end? David had toughed out most of it, and so he lamented that after all that we were being left with a cliff hanger. Luckily they got the signal back so we did get to experience the end.
ReplyDeleteThe show time is considerably less in the operas in the evening transmissions, since we aren't seeing them live. So take out the two 20 minute intermissions and then the 20 minute discussion about something in the opera that also came to us through the HD transmission, and the opera ends up being pretty short.
ReplyDeleteI don't recommend anyone seeing the opera if they haven't done just a little bit of homework -- something that will familiarize themself with what they are about to see. I have a notebook and tonight I wrote down the main characters names and their relationships to one another.
And I also did a synopsis of the story -- 7 points.
The Wagner opera tonight of Das Reingold is so stylized that in order not to laugh, a person has to take on some of the tropes, the leitmotifs, and the costuming of the day or there will be inappropriate laughter. Or maybe appropriate laughter.
And then for me there was the discomfort in tonight's show, that shock of hair over Wotan's eye since he had lost an eye in battle for the sake of Erda. I kept thinking, poor guy, he has to act with one eye which is going to give him some spatial problems. At least it would give me some.