By Guest Blogger Jeff Nytch
Well, friends, I'm ready to head to the airport and begin my journey to San Francisco for this week's production of the Ring. I thought I'd begin by thanking Taminophile Blogmeister David Browning for inviting me to share my experience with all of you as I take in one of the great monuments of operatic culture (if not Western culture in general).
I was speaking with a friend last week who wished me "courage" as I embarked on my first, full, Live, Ring production. At first I thought that was a curious sentiment, but the more I thought about it the more I could understand where he was coming from. At somewhere in the neighborhood of 14-15 hours in length (not counting intermissions, and depending on the tempi of the conductor) and taking four nights to traverse, a complete performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen is indeed a huge undertaking. But more than its size is its emotional heft, the sheer vastness of its canvass -- physically, emotionally, dramatically, spiritually. Indeed, it is not for the faint of heart.
Still, as I prepare for my journey and look ahead to tomorrow night's Rheingold (which Wagner called, "A Preliminary Evening to the Festival Play"), I'm feeling more giddy excitement than anything else. I can't seem to get Ives's song about the opera, the first of his "Two Memories," out of my head. If you don't know it, it's sung at a breathless pace and captures the joy of a little kid (or, in this case today, an adult) anxiously awaiting the curtain:
We're sitting in the opera house,
the opera house, the opera house,
We're waiting for the curtain to arise
With joy and wonders for our eyes,
A feeling of expectancy,
A certain kind of ecstasy,
Expectancy and ecstasy,
Expectancy and ecstasy,
EXPECTANCY AND ECSTASY...
Shhhhhh......
See you tomorrow in San Francisco!
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