Re: USCHO Music Thread: We All Have A Crush On Shirley Manson
Siegfried.
I was not looking forward to this one because it is wall to wall mahem, and violence in our tv and movies is so boring. But Siegfried is perfectly cromulent. We have only the one new character, the offspring of Sieglinde and Siegmund's coupling in Die Walküre. But we get the band back together from operas 1 and 2 with Mime, Wotan, Alberich, Fafnar, and Erda, as well as Brunhilde in Act III. We also get a bear (briefly) and a magical songbird GPS.
There's lots of skullduggery I won't go into but the upshot is Siegfried is a strapping ute with his mother's looks and his father's brains, neither of which is a recommendation. He spends his days alternately murdering animals or asking them who his real parents are. Mime, the dwarf from Das Rheingold who forged Tarnhelm the magic helmet and the one ring to rule them all, has raised Siegfried after Sieglinde died in labor. Mime's plan is to get Siegfried, grandson of Wotan and a "man with no fear", to fulfill the prophesy and kill Fafner (now a dragon) and recapture the ring to, and he actually says this verbatim, Rule Zee Vorld!
Wotan has a plan, too. He had spun off S&S as his human henchmen to slime out of his deal with the giants. Apparently, humans aren't bound by Divine Contracts Law. Remember,
all of this goes back to Wotan stealing the ring Albrich stole from the Rhinemaidens so he could pay off the general contractor who built his castle. The entire Ring Cycle is a shady real estate deal that blew up. With both S&S dead, Wotan thinks their progeny will do the trick, allowing him to ultimately pocket the ring and stave off the death of the gods.
Alberich is also lurking about, thinking that if he warns him about Mime's plot Fafnar might give him the ring back in gratitude. This is ridiculous, even by the convoluted schemes that make up operas, but no time to worry about that because here's Siegfried to slay the dragon. Dying Fafnar, restored to giant form after he loses Tarnhelm to Siegfried, learns his killer's name and warns him to look out for Mime. This doesn't make much impression on Siegfried who I may have mentioned is enthusiastically imbecilic, but when he accidentally tastes dragon blood it allows him to (1) understand bird talk (because... okay?) and (2) hear Mime's thoughts. This Deus ex machina is
just in time because Mime is sneaking up behind him. Mime then steals the opera with an outstanding comic soliloquy telling Siegfried everything's fine while telling us in gleeful asides how he's gonna kill big, dumb Siegfried -- asides which of course Siegfried can hear every word of because he has dragon ESP.
We get our chuckles; Mime gets it in the neck.
The songbird then tells Siegfried follow me, I'm gonna fly to where there's a hot sleeping beauty waiting for your wake up kiss or you know whatever. He meets Wotan who gets so disgusted with Siegfried as a representative of humankind he decides f-ck it,
let the gods die. An hour of Brunhilde and Siegfried negotiating their first kiss later, curtain.
Siegfried isn't terrible. The music is forgettable -- this is the only Wagnerian opera I will say that about. It's mostly repeating leitmotifs from the prior operas like an over-the-hill band cranking out their old hits on a retirement tour. In fact, the whole opera is an obvious set up for the big Götterdämmerung blow out finale. Wotan actually plugs it, by name, in a speech near the end. Siegfried is a dim-witted and repellent character without even the charm of the villains and rogues of the prior works, so I doubt this is anybody's favorite opera. But it isn't a disaster and it has some bright spots. Call it a 5.
Just one more to go now:
Code:
10 Tristan und Isolde
7 Lohengrin
5 Tannhauser
2 Parsifal
9 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
4 Der fliegende Holländer
8 Das Rheingold
6 Die Walküre
5 Siegfried
Götterdämmerung
