Das Walkyries

The best.

By night two the crowd was buzzing. Everywhere you stopped for a minute you could hear Wagnerian professors and musicologists comparing courses they teach and the best Ring cycle they have ever seen. A huge diagram of the Gods and the mortals and the half Gods and the Dwarfs sat on a stage on the second floor. Neophytes like us studied it between Acts. We were there for 5 hours.

I thought this: Wagner demands something of his audience that makes the whole experience more intense. He demands commitment, time, passion. Those of us there for the cycle have committed 18 hours of opera in 8 days. Crazy. It demands endurance, patience, and you are completely immersed in his music, his poetry, his myth. He takes over your mind.

It is hard to explain. But there is something about his deep dark chords that gets you on a level so deep it is hard to put into words. Wagner had special Bayreuth tubas made just to create his unique deep, dark sound. You can hear the characters in the music. You can hear the characters who are dark, the characters who are light, the characters who are evil, and the characters who are fighting, loving, and doomed. It makes you wonder: What would my leitmotif be?

But like an energy worker Wagner does get inside you. I believe he is shifting me in my darkest places. I cannot say it is completely pleasurable. But it is powerful, intense, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Jonathan is already preparing for our second Ring cycle.

He texted me yesterday: "San Francisco, Summer 2011?"

Will we become like the crazy British gentleman? Jetting around the world to see the Ring?

Who knows? It is a transformative experience.

And the transformation is not yet complete. Back to Seigfried on Thursday, and Gotterdamerung on Sunday.