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 As is to be
expected, Richard Wagner and his works are more than adequately
represented on the Internet. Here are just a few of the web sites I've
discovered.
I'll
start with one appropriately called Wagner
on the Web *, set up by Joe Erbacher and the P. Zazz Marketing
Corporation. When I last had a look-in, the main page was featuring a
discussion about whether you should buy the Solti original or the Solti
remastered Ring recording.
Apart
from that, there are many subpages, such as performance reviews, CD
reviews, books for sale, details on all Wagner's works and links to
other sites.
Useful
stuff, especially the reviews. And if you’re really keen, you can add
your name to their Internet mailing list and be automatically informed
of site updates.
Next,
very helpful for the utter Ring Cycle novice is A
Beginner's Guide to Der Ring des Nibelungen, which opens as
follows:
If
you've never heard the Ring before, and your experience of
Wagner's music is restricted to the Ride of the Valkyries with
helicopters in Apocalypse Now and some bits of Siegfried's
Funeral March, approach it very, very cautiously or you will be
unjustly disappointed. Here are some suggestions.
Then
follows some really good advice on how to ease yourself into the Ring,
from reading a synopsis to listening to some "bleeding
chunks". After that, you are advised to expand into longer and
longer scenes, followed by a video of any of the four parts, until, lo
and behold, one day you find yourself wanting to settle down with a
libretto and hear the entire thing. Common sense, really.
A
third site I recommend is the Richard
Wagner Archive, maintained (in English) by Hannu Salmi at the
University of Turku, Finland. You'll find information on his operas, his
other works, his aesthetic and political writings, his letters, and even
a section on the memorabilia and popular culture inspired by his
character. There is also a built-in search engine. By the look of it
this site is quite popular, having been visited over 60,000 times since
November 1995.
It's
good to see the Adelaide
Ring with its own web site, or more strictly a subpage of the
South Australian Opera's site. Here we are reminded that the Ring
is "the Olympics of the arts world", and the current Aussie
performances have required 36 solo vocal roles together with a
considerably enlarged Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and State Opera Chorus
(plus children), and, yes, three months' rehearsal. Over 90% of the
production's cast, including all understudies, is drawn from Australia
and New Zealand.
I
like the Quoteable Quotes the site offers. Here are two:
Is
there anything, in all the realm of art, to set beside Der Ring des
Nibelungen? This cycle of four immense music dramas, the vastest
piece of music ever conceived by the mind of man — what an experience
it is [to] discover, and then to spend a lifetime exploring, those four
parts, tracing their connective links, puzzling their meanings and
listening through in wonder and awe to their shattering conclusion! (M.
Owen Lee)
No
work of art has stirred the imagination of Western men and women more
widely or more profoundly than The Ring of the Nibelung . . .
what has [been] written or composed in the last hundred years is likely
to bear in some degree — can hardly have escaped — the influence of
the most influential drama ever created. (Andrew Porter)
It
was at this site that I first became aware of “the ultimate toy, the Ring
Disc . . . An Interactive Guide to Wagner's Ring Cycle . . .
a product unprecedented in the CD-Rom industry". If you get past
the hype you'll realise that this CD-Rom (for a true Intel Pentium
running Windows 95 or later, with a four-speed CD-Rom drive) is a real
pearl. It features the complete Vienna Philharmonic recording conducted
by Sir Georg Solti, 14˝ hours of digitised sound synchronised to the
full piano-vocal score, the German libretto with English translation,
plus a running analytical commentary. Comprehensive analyses, hypertext
links and powerful search functions (“find that leitmotiv”) are
provided, together with over 100 essays and a colour image database of
rare archival photos. More information may be found at the dedicated Ring
Disc site, or better still by ringing State of the Art
Publications on (02) 9630 7755. The all-inclusive price is $A175. I love
it.
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* Note:
Since this article was first published in 1998, Wagner on
the Web seems to have vanished from the Internet |
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