Wagner’s middle stage output began with Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman, 1843), followed by Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1850). These three operas are sometimes referred to as Wagner’s “romantic operas”.[154] They reinforced the reputation, among the public in Germany and beyond, that Wagner had begun to establish with Rienzi.
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Yappa Ding Ding: The Rape of Brunnhilde
I came to Houston today to see a new production of the opera Siegfried by the Houston Grand Opera. It was stunning – breathtaking – especially the final act, when Brunnhilde (Christine Goerke) is awakened by Siegfried (Jay Hunter Morris).I have wr…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: The Rape of Brunnhilde
I came to Houston this weekend to see a new production of the opera Siegfried by the Houston Grand Opera. It was stunning – breathtaking – especially the final act, when Brunnhilde (Christine Goerke) is awakened by Siegfried (Jay Hunter Morris).
I have written before about my fascination with Wagner’s fascination with the subjugation of women (Musings on Love and Freedom in the Ring Cycle; Hail, Isolde). It comes up again and again in the Ring Cycle and Tristan und Isolde: women are forced to marry men against their will, resulting in the repeated rape and slavery of the woman.
I don’t see any social commentary in this – these are tales of Norse gods and Celtic healer-princesses, not radio talk show hosts – and I don’t see anything of interest on the more general topic of free will. This obsession with female subjugation is more in line with Wagner’s [lesser] interest in incest (twins; an aunt and her nephew). It seems to be emerging from some moral ambiguity in Wagner’s psyche, and as I’ve written before, it feels like an itch he has to keep scratching.
In the production I saw tonight, Goerke’s voice was so inhumanly glorious that I lost myself in it for a while: I entered a state of concentration where I absorbed everything and can remember it perfectly, but at the time I had no conscious thought. When I emerged, I had the clearest sense that this was a woman who was desperately trying to stop a man from having sex with her. (And her last line in the opera, as she succumbs to Siegfried’s sexual advances, is, “Laughter in death!”)
I don’t want to do some analysis based on rereading the libretto; what I’m writing about is an emotional reaction.
In bad productions of Siegfried, the final act can drag terribly. There must be 45 minutes of Brunnhilde waking up and meeting Siegfried. In most productions I’ve seen, Brunnhilde is coquettish, or needs some time to make up her mind. In this production, she is fighting him off. But I’d like to see a production that dealt with the matter even more blatantly: Wotan has magically forced her to become the slave of any man who can break through the fire that surrounds her. She fights against that, appealing to Siegfried to not force her. When he refuses, she must succumb. This should be a brutal scene: he should manhandle her; he should, against her will, remove enough of her clothing to be disturbing; she should become humiliated; and her final acceptance should be Stepford-wifish, or something along those lines.
That would make Gotterdammerung make more sense. Brunnhilde cheated in her subjugation: she knew that her nephew Siegfried would be the one to find her, and welcomed it. So when she succumbed to loving Siegfried, Siegfried quickly set off on a new quest, leaving her alone, and later was tricked into transferring the subjugation to another man who she truly loathed.
I don’t particularly like Wagner’s repeated plot lines of female subjugation, but I’d like to see a production that handles it head-on – that does it justice.
Correction: This is not a new production. It was first performed in 2007-2008 for the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, Spain.
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: The Rape of Brunnhilde
I came to Houston this weekend to see a new production of the opera Siegfried by the Houston Grand Opera. It was stunning – breathtaking – especially the final act, when Brunnhilde (Christine Goerke) is awakened by Siegfried (Jay Hunter Morris). I have written before about my fascination with Wagner’s
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Friday Musical Interlude: Dramatic Soprano Style!
The singing year has started for me as well as the Arbourist. My teacher and I have set two goals for this year: That I will develop good practicing habits That I will finally let my big voice out at its full size In furtherance of these goals, she’s assigned
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Musings on love and freedom in the Ring Cycle
Wagner’s Ring Cycle is about a curse on a ring, but in another (even larger) sense it’s about a curse on women. Four women in the four operas are forced to marry and submit to a man against their will. The first we encounter is Freia, who is Wotan’s sister-in-law.
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Hail, Isolde
After Richard Wagner had been working on the Ring Cycle for about ten years, he took a break for two years to write Tristan und Isolde. With Tristan, he did something that seems unbeleivable: he took the plot of the last opera of his unfinished magnum opus (the libretto was
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