vailian

Well, I managed to get through yesterday more or less in one piece... did some practice early in the morning, but not too much because we had such a marathon day ahead of us. The first opera in the cycle is Das Rheingold, then comes Die Walküre (with the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" number, featured in "apocalypse now"). Anyhow millions of notes, we started at 10 a.m. and finished at 10p.m. And that is only half of it, the second part ("Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung" (Twilight of the Gods) starts today at 10 a.m. and will finish at about midnight, to thundrous applause no doubt.
People come from all over the world to see this spectacle, but they are a very special sort of Wagnerians, they all know every note and all the text, often planning their year around various productions of Wagner operas. They are often somewhat wierd and fetishistic, but always interesting. They have no inhibitions about booing singers they don't feel are adequate to the roles, but so far our singers have been spared this treatment (we will wait and see how today's marathon goes). In any case the orchestra has been given an enthusiastic response after every act.It is good that we know the operas so well-- I doubt that there is any orchestra in the world that has played as much Wagner as we do. I am not counting the orchestra at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, which only does Wagner-- that is a special case, a festival whose orchestra is made up of the best Wagner players in Germany (many come from my orchestra).

After the show last night, the Ossie and I ran over to the Radio Building, because a friend of mine was doing a concert there. Bruce is a violist and very old friend of mine, he has worked in a number of european orchestras but is originally from Seattle.I managed to talk my way past the doorman (the concert had long since begun, and in theory we should have not been allowed in) and we caught the last 2 numbers in his program.
By this time I was really starving, and suggested we go to a local brewery which has good beer and Wurst. We sat down there and waited for the others to come, but then my friend came in and said apologetically that the conductor of the orchestra had refused to go to a brewery and wanted to go to the fancy restaurant next door to the Radio Building. So, grumbling, we released our table and went with him. A big mistake: the waiters at the restaurant were unfriendly (they didn't like us pushing tables together-- we were a party of about 15) and the place is overpriced and (worst of all) the kitchen had shut down already. So: no Wurst, and an overpriced beer after a whole day of Wagner. Luckily the Ossie had some noodle soup at home.