Ring sing.(comments on Richard Wagner, The Ring of the Nibelung opera cycle)

I USED to go regularly to the opera when I was young, mostly when I was very young. At age 13 I saw Wagner's Ring in London, and again the following year in New York. My sisters and I were slaves to the whole business and had the luck, at one Die Walkure, of having Arthur Bodanzky conducting, and, singing, Kirsten Flagstad, Marjorie Lawrence, Friedrich Schorr, and Lauritz Melchior. Beat that if you can. Well, the Met made a pretty good try on April 27 with James Levine and, singing, Placido Domingo, James Morris, Gabriele Schnaut, Lisa Gasteen, and Matti Salminen.

The Ring of the Nibelung is, of course, total-immersion time for the listener, which didn't bother Richard Wagner in the least. He was attempting, at mid-century, to immerse Europe in all his concerns, and we are reminded in the program notes that he was the single most conspicuous intellectual presence in Europe for 20 years. Die Walkure is the second opera in The Ring, and lasts about four hours. If you are bent on seeing the whole of the cycle, you will have to set aside 18 hours (excluding intermissions). Wagner wanted the whole of you for his extravaganza.

And it is not as if he had spared himself. It was nice to be reminded what the composer required of a symphony orchestra equipped to sound out his genius. There must be 16 first and 16 second violins, 12 violas, 12 cellos, 8 double basses, 3 flutes and a piccolo, 3 oboes and an English horn, 3 clarinets and a bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 8 horns (doing unusual things), a contrabass tuba, 3 trumpets and a bass trumpet, 3 tenor-bass trombones and a contrabass trombone, 2 pairs of timpani, a triangle, glockenspiel, snare drum, bass drum, tamtam, and cymbals, and 6 harps.

The duet at the end of Act I celebrates the lovers' identification of themselves (they are, actually, twin brother and sister, and proceed to beget Siegfried), and delivers all of the profound strengths of ...