Reports of the Death of Opera....

I think Chiara Bottici has been roundly spanked on the internet for the silliness of this article, which has been reprinted all over the online world

I suppose that there is a more serious question to be asked here, ahinton. Why should politicians, for example, be embarrassed to admit their interest in serious culture, including opera? A football match is fine, but a night at the opera? Forget it, Neil McGowan! According to Charlotte Higgins, writing in her 'Guardian' Blog, there is a continuing little squall over at the Telegraph's Mandrake column about the fact that chancellor George Osborne, culture minister Ed Vaizey and education secretary Michael Gove apparently bunked off work in September to attend performances, beginning at 4pm, of the Ring at the Royal Opera House, as guests of Tony Hall.



Guardian - Michael Gove and George Osborne love Wagner. So why doesn't passion turn into policy?

Now, kleines c happens to think that this was a really good idea for the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer. Let me explain why! The Ring is, in one sense, a dodgy real estate deal which goes horribly wrong, a little like the current and ongoing global financial crisis. The plot revolves around a magic ring that grants the power to rule the world, forged by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich from gold he stole from the Rhine maidens in the river Rhine. With the assistance of Loge, Wotan — the chief of the gods — steals the Ring from Alberich, but is forced to hand it over to the giants, Fafner and Fasolt. Wotan's schemes to regain the Ring, spanning generations, drive much of the action in the story. His grandson, the mortal Siegfried, wins the ring — as Wotan intended — but is eventually betrayed and slain as a result of the intrigues of Alberich's son Hagen. Finally, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde — Siegfried's lover and Wotan's estranged daughter — returns the ring to the Rhine maidens. In the process, the gods and their home, Valhalla, are destroyed.

Begun in the Revolutionary Years of 1848 and 1849, and occupying Wagner for a quarter-century, the Ring is one of the most extended of all artistic creations. Wagner binds this structure of over fifteen hours' duration with a complex web of Leitmotive (in English, leading motives). Each Leitmotif is a brief musical idea (usually a bit of melody but sometimes a harmonic or rhythmic idea) which stands for something in the drama often a character, but just as often an event, memory, or abstract idea. Through thematic transformation, the important players and events of the drama take on new guises and implications. For instance, in just the first scene of the first opera of the four, the all-important motif of the Rhine Gold, a joyful and sparkling song when first heard, transforms itself into a baleful denunciation of love and a symbol of evil power when dominion is gained over it by a character who denounces love. The idea of world-controlling power is extended to the well-intentioned world of the Gods at the end of this scene, when it is transformed again into the noble theme of Valhalla, their castle above the Rhine.

The basic conflict in the Ring cycle occurs between Alberich, a dwarf who has gained dominion over the power of Gold. With it he can gain control of an army of slaves who can manufacture the weapons and wealth that will make him invincible; he can rule strictly through power and money. Thus he seeks to overthrow the existing world order, headed by the god Wotan, who rules through the power of honour, that is, the keeping of contracts. All the contracts of the world are symbolically impaled on the shaft of his spear, which he cut from a magic tree called the World-Ash Tree after sacrificing one of his eyes for it in order to gain the hand of the goddess Fricka. Alberich and Wotan are, thus, mirror images of each other, the one having sacrificed love itself to gain unbounded power; the other having sacrificed to gain love and to rule in a power that both controls and is bound by the idea of honour. Fricka, for her part, is the goddess of marriage, enforcing that contract in her own right. Wotan could never really be trusted to pay for his mighty fortress, Valhalla. The dwarf Alberich, no relation of kleines c, renounces love and steals the Rhinegold, from which he forges a magic ring. Meanwhile Wotan, chief of the gods, has built his mighty fortress Valhalla with the help of the giants. But in order to pay them back, Wotan in turn needs to steal the Rhinegold back from Alberich. And so with this double theft Wagner sets up the theme of love versus power that reverberates throughout all four dramas of Wagner's epic Ring cycle. In my opinion, George Osborne could not have spent his free time better last September!

It might at least in theory serve so to remind them, but I'm sadly not about to hold my breath. The excellent value that you mention should set a good example to the country as a whole, but I'm far less certain that the attendance of these two at that astonishing work is likely to do so. I note that no one thought to invite Dave - but then as someone who's reported to have answered "I'm not sure; Elgar, was it?" to the question "who composed Rule, Britannia?" probably wouldn't know a Rhinemaiden from a rhinestone, I doubt that there'd have been much point, really...


No! Really?! (and, by the way, I no more have a soothsayer than I have a Babbitt - just thought that I'd mention that en passant)...


Intriguing as your proposed title is, it might be hard to repeat ten times in succession after a couple of glasses of the Roederer Cristal with which the two abovementioned Tories doubtless sought to drown their Ringed sorrows lately; perhaps, given this self-determined "death of classical music" mantra, Hangmen Also Die! might work...

Reports of the death of Klinghoffer, on the other hand oops! - wrong thread! (and I was only joking anyway)...