lamentable is open to question. At any rate, though, I think this theme of the displacement of the old gods and beliefs is a profound and important one. But even so, I keep wondering: does the bloody thing really need to go on for as long as it does? Does it need to go on for fifteen or sixteen hours? A grand theme is a grand theme and obviously all themes should be given fitting treatment, but even so the Ring stretches one's tolerance. Tchaikovsky apparently said leaving the first production of the cycle at Bayreuth in 1876 was like being released from prison. And I've always liked Edgard Varse's comment on Parsifal, which can easily be extended to any of Wagner's other works: "Some of it is so grand, so strong, but it goes on and on." Don't know about anyone else, but it cost me a reasonable amount of effort to steel myself for the Ring, to force myself to even listen to the last two parts one disc at a time with a break in between each one. The slowness with which the drama proceeds is a good part of the problem as well for me. Other than Alberich and Mime in Siegfried, I don't think anyone else in the Ring gets to sing at a speed even approximating to normal conversation. Obviously opera is not designed to approximate conversation, of course, even I know that opera is about singing and not speaking. But Wagner's verse (not sure if it can be dignified with the name "poetry") reads to me like it has a sort of conversational quality, by which I mean it could be declaimed on stage as dialogue if you removed the music. It reads like people speaking rather than singing songs. But when united with the music, however, things are slowed down immeasurably. At times I feel like it's taking ages for anything to happen, possibly because it is. Combine this sluggishness with the artifice inherent in all opera (and which occasionally becomes monstrous in Wagner's case), and all that grandeur and strength can become somewhat crushing. It takes an...
