Here’s a shameless advertisement (sorry, fellow WoC’ers…).
I’m a fan of all kinds of music – as long as it’s interesting and well-performed. I’m a big fan (disclosure: also a board member) of the Long Beach Opera, a regional avant-garde company that has done some incredible work in the last few years.
This year, they are putting on a “chamber Ring” – as in “Wagner’s Ring” not “the-VCR-that-kills-people-Ring.” This is the Birmingham Opera version, and it’s ten hours over two days (as opposed to fifteen hours over five days).
I’ve been to some rehearsals, and it looks and sounds damn cool. Our Siegmund stood in for Placido Domingo in the L.A. Opera’s Parsifal a few weeks ago, and got some great reviews.
It’s a full weekend of music – an immersion in fantasy – and you can read about it (and, more important, order tickets) at the LBO website.
Wagner’s music isn’t as bad as it sounds.
– Horace Rumpole
Orange County Performing Arts center is hosting the 3 day Ring as well in October: http://www.act1performingartstours.com/2006-oct-6-orange-county.html
Last time I saw it was in Chicago in 1990 and its one of those must see at some time in your life events.
I can’t listen to him any more without thinking of Apocalypse Now. Unlike my sweetie, however, I like Wagner. Then again, unlike my sweetie, I also like heavy metal.
Until Led Zep, Black Sabbath, and Metallica arrived on the scene to show us all the light, I suppose folks had to make do with something… 🙂
For those about to Ring, we salute you!
Rumpole was quoting Mark Twain.
I love Wagner’s music but I don’t have the sitzfleish to attend a full staging of the Ring. A performance of Die Meistersinger is about my limit.