Sunday, March 18, 2007

Wagner and The Valkyrie



Listening notes:
(time line through the second opera of the Ring cycle)

9:40 Begins with the luftwaffe taking off on a bombing mission. Lost my place cos I was to busy making myself a pot of tea. I need some sort of sustainance to listen to over 3 hours of Wagner.

9:45
Robert DeNiro sheds a tear in his own private operabox at the sweetness of it. Young lovers gaze rapt into each others eyes. She is married, and he's her brother but the music is so lush you just know they are going to get their jollies off.

10:00 Completely lost. Wotans sword, bloodshed, tears, courage, seems to be the gist of want is going on, and nookie is spread thick of the toast of inscest.

10:10 Track 8 and I have found my place. Each track o the CD is marked with a number inside a small square and this is placed convieniently on the lyric sheet.

10:15 A sword is stuck in a tree trunk. A mountain ash, or to you and me a rowan tree, such a wicked pagan tree, and anyone who manages to pull it out is worth to be a hero. Hold on didn't king Aurthur have the rights on this story. He should get his lawyers on the case and sue the arse off Wagner. This is plain plagarism.

10:25 Second round of tea and toast.

10:35 Siegfried get his name and pulls the sword out of the tree. That is bad cos god himself should be the one who gives new names Jacob to Israel, Saul to Paul. It is a case for the lawyers once again.

10:40 End of First CD

10:42 Helicopters start up their engines and it is American gunship over the jungles of Vietnam, and we are all loving the smell of napalm in the morning.

10:45 The Gods are pissed off. Wotan's wife Fricka is giving him a hard time, over the fact that he is doing damn all to stop his kids from having it off with each other. Spouts something about the sanctity of marriage.

10:47 Unholy I consider the vow that unites without love is Wotan's comeback to her.

10:48 Fricka comes back at him If you grant respectability to adultery then you will have no trouble accepting the incestious fruit of the liason between thes twins.

10:50 Wotan and Fricka have a real old ding dong, just like all married couples do. It becomes apparant that Wotan has screwed around and put a mere human in the club. She gave birth to twins who are now about to have it off with each other. Bad Wotan Even the Gods reap what the sow.

11:15 Heavy philosophy, twisty twisty explainations, justifications to soothe a guilty conscience.

11:30 Brunhilde another of Wotan's kids is given the order by Wotan to kill Siegmund, becasue Fricka's honour has been besmirched. If you ask me none of them has any honour at all. They are all selfserving despots who can justify any action they make as being right no matter how wrong it is. They definately have severe personality disorders these Gods.

Break.

12:30 3rd CD in the slot and it is slow slow slow slow, much talking between Brunhilde and Siegmund, heroes getting into Valhalla and all that. Knowing what Wotan and Fricka are like I don't think I would want to be a hero and join them in Valhalla. Boring save for the magic sword. Swords are always good especially if you can be a real hero and threaten to use it to kill your sister who you have made pregnant.

1:15 Wotan kills his son Siegmund. Fricka will be pleased. Wotan breaks the magic sword. I think J.R's lawyers should get on the case. I mean to say the next thing you know some elf or a dwarf will be mending it, and it will be used to kill a dragon or some such rubbish. Brunhilde grabs the pregnant girl Sieglinde and gallops off into the sunset. Wotan having killed his son likes to keep his hand in and kills Hunding as well. In opera terms the couple of killings are over in a couple of lines. No explainations, no arguments, no tempers raised, no pleading, Wotan just whacks them both.

1:20 Ride of the Valkyries, choppers giving it large, rocket launchers red-hot Hoyotoho Hoyotoho is the sound of to rotor blades spinning

1:30 Lots of hoyotohoing as the nine Valkyries swoop in formation over the vietcong. Black clouds on the horizon, delirium everywhere, Valkyries twittering like freaked fairies at the approch of Wotan the War-father the Battle-father, who is well pissed.

1:38 Wotan curses Brunhilde. Fathers can be so unkind to their daughters. If they are not busy killing their sons then they curse their daughters. The curse that the daughters seem to hate the most is to sit by the fire and spin. Knitting woolly sweaters or cooking up a stew for a wimpy husband is the worst punishment out, especially if all your life you have been flying a helicopter gunship. Wotan is a god who pushishes his offspring. If you are a daughter you get cursed, if you are a son forsaken then killed. Period.

2:15 Brunhilde avoids becoming a domestic and cuts a deal with Wotan who lays her out on a rock and puts her in a deep sleep and surrounds her with the fires of hell. This is what she wants, her reasoning being that, it would take a true hero to brave the fires of hell and awake her with a kiss. Hey Walt Disney's lawyers should get on Wagners case, for he has obviously stolen the Sleeping Beauty story from Walt.

2:30 Ends with magic fire music





1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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