On the other side of music
Dec. 26th, 2024 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adepslanaeRipping MP3s from my opera CDs led me to listen to some of said operas again, in particular Wagner. Which means, for me, Der Fliegende Holländer, Die Walküre and Siegfried. I have Das Rheingold too, but I'm currently not particularly interested in that (though I have a very fond memory of buying the Solti Rheingold before Japanese class in my third year =D). I technically also have a box set with live recordings of various operas from Bayreuth...but I put that in a bigger box and sealed that box before I decided to start ripping MP3s (I so wish I had that set right now!).
I won't go into much detail, but let's say I'm not a big fan of the mittelhochdeutsch Nibelungenlied, so I wasn't a fan of Brünnhilde and I wasn't much of a fan of Siegfried when I first listened to Wagner (I never listened Götterdämmerung precisely because it has the Hagen and the Gunther etc.). Then I stopped listening to opera. Then came my years in Tolkien fandom, during which I listened to Siegmund heiß ich, und Siegmund bin ich!, which is one of my favourite pieces of music EVER, on one occasion only.
Going back to Der Ring after Tolkien, and after a couple personal tragedies, I am appreciating the story and some of the characters A LOT more.
I can also see more clearly how much Tolkien "stole".
So uh, yeah, I'd have a lot to say about how much I LOVE Siegmund and Sieglinde (and always have), and realising how big of an MVP Brünnhilde is in Die Walküre, and my very strong feelings about the divine father-daughter clash>confrontation>understanding ,_, etc.
I still hate both Fricka and Hunding, Fricka is just unbearable for me! I've always thought that Wotan should have just handed her over to Fasolt and Fafner, LOL. Fuck you and fuck upholding Hunding's rights as a rapist-husband.
I also want to rank Siegmunds in the above-mentioned aria (and also in the cry of Wälse x2).
> At the same time, I discovered the whole old singers vs contemporary singers thing.
Which means that I now find some (most??? Ugh) Vivaldi singers quite unbearable. (That nasality, and the potato-in-mouth effect, jfc.)
And resulted in me finally listening to some Italian singers and (bits of) operas, including Mario Del Monaco.
Imagine my surprise and my delight when I found out that he even sang Siegmund once! I bought a recording of that yesterday and yeah, sure, his German is not perfect by any means, and he probably had no idea what exactly he was singing, but I personally enjoyed his performance a lot (he's just a bit too fast for my taste in The Aria). And now I wish he had sung more Wagner! I can't help but imagine how he would fared as Siegfried in the re-forging scene. *sigh*
The main thing I wanted to say in this post is actually that I watched a video where MDM listened to Siegmund heiß ich while singing along and acting it out and his enthusiasm is one of those things that shine like a Silmaril in this opaque atom of evil that we inhabit. It is super precious and I want to hug him and thank him!
> While I'm getting used to listening to different Siegmunds, I still struggle a bit with Siegfrieds. Siegfried Jerusalem (ah!) I think was my first Siegfried and I still like him very much, the second Siegfried I've gotten used to is Windgassen. I listened to Hopf once but he didn't blow me away. I've been listening to Max Lorenz while writing this, but it's a 1938 recording where the singers can just barely be heard and the orchestra drowns them while sounding far from clear, too. I've briefly tried Treptow (sp?) then I went back to René Kollo (Janowski), but he didn't do it for me rn either. Jess Thomas in the Von Karajan recording is not that great in that his voice sounds small and completely lacks any brawn (he sounds more like a prim schoolboy than a wild kid with un-human strength, LOL), but the forging scene works for me because Von Karajan takes it slooooow and it ends up sounding much more menacing...foreboding. Also the hammer strikes are booming and limpid. (Okay, one "Hoho" at least sounds more like Santa than Siegfried. AHAHAH).
I won't go into much detail, but let's say I'm not a big fan of the mittelhochdeutsch Nibelungenlied, so I wasn't a fan of Brünnhilde and I wasn't much of a fan of Siegfried when I first listened to Wagner (I never listened Götterdämmerung precisely because it has the Hagen and the Gunther etc.). Then I stopped listening to opera. Then came my years in Tolkien fandom, during which I listened to Siegmund heiß ich, und Siegmund bin ich!, which is one of my favourite pieces of music EVER, on one occasion only.
Going back to Der Ring after Tolkien, and after a couple personal tragedies, I am appreciating the story and some of the characters A LOT more.
I can also see more clearly how much Tolkien "stole".
So uh, yeah, I'd have a lot to say about how much I LOVE Siegmund and Sieglinde (and always have), and realising how big of an MVP Brünnhilde is in Die Walküre, and my very strong feelings about the divine father-daughter clash>confrontation>understanding ,_, etc.
I still hate both Fricka and Hunding, Fricka is just unbearable for me! I've always thought that Wotan should have just handed her over to Fasolt and Fafner, LOL. Fuck you and fuck upholding Hunding's rights as a rapist-husband.
I also want to rank Siegmunds in the above-mentioned aria (and also in the cry of Wälse x2).
> At the same time, I discovered the whole old singers vs contemporary singers thing.
Which means that I now find some (most??? Ugh) Vivaldi singers quite unbearable. (That nasality, and the potato-in-mouth effect, jfc.)
And resulted in me finally listening to some Italian singers and (bits of) operas, including Mario Del Monaco.
Imagine my surprise and my delight when I found out that he even sang Siegmund once! I bought a recording of that yesterday and yeah, sure, his German is not perfect by any means, and he probably had no idea what exactly he was singing, but I personally enjoyed his performance a lot (he's just a bit too fast for my taste in The Aria). And now I wish he had sung more Wagner! I can't help but imagine how he would fared as Siegfried in the re-forging scene. *sigh*
The main thing I wanted to say in this post is actually that I watched a video where MDM listened to Siegmund heiß ich while singing along and acting it out and his enthusiasm is one of those things that shine like a Silmaril in this opaque atom of evil that we inhabit. It is super precious and I want to hug him and thank him!
> While I'm getting used to listening to different Siegmunds, I still struggle a bit with Siegfrieds. Siegfried Jerusalem (ah!) I think was my first Siegfried and I still like him very much, the second Siegfried I've gotten used to is Windgassen. I listened to Hopf once but he didn't blow me away. I've been listening to Max Lorenz while writing this, but it's a 1938 recording where the singers can just barely be heard and the orchestra drowns them while sounding far from clear, too. I've briefly tried Treptow (sp?) then I went back to René Kollo (Janowski), but he didn't do it for me rn either. Jess Thomas in the Von Karajan recording is not that great in that his voice sounds small and completely lacks any brawn (he sounds more like a prim schoolboy than a wild kid with un-human strength, LOL), but the forging scene works for me because Von Karajan takes it slooooow and it ends up sounding much more menacing...foreboding. Also the hammer strikes are booming and limpid. (Okay, one "Hoho" at least sounds more like Santa than Siegfried. AHAHAH).