Music and theater and opera and art and the whole damn thing.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Punch drunk after the Kirov Siegfried

Casual conversation overheard in one of the dimmer recesses of my own mind:

“I went to a performance of the Ring in Fingenbüttel, Ruritania.”

“What was that like?”

“Same old same old. Gods in powdered periwigs, silk waistcoats and knee-breeches, the ladies in panniers with bare breasts; Sieglinde as a waitress in Hunding’s restaurant, serving Siegmund at the one (candlelit) table (Hunding dressed as a maitre d'); valkyries as scantily-clad Ziegfeld girls descending a staircase in excessively elaborate headdresses. The bear danced a tango with Siegfried; then when he tried it with Mime, Mime screamed and the bear ran off stage. The twilight of the gods was sort of a video game with lots of space aliens shooting down deities.”

“How was the dragon?”

“Chinese New Year -- lots of people in lots of colored paper. Nothing special.”

“I’ve never seen a Ring with a really good dragon.”

“Siegfried lay underneath it and shoved his sword upwards, tearing the paper.”

“Cute.”

“And for the Rhine, they somehow managed to project a film of a tank full of tropical fish, and the Rhinemaidens sort of interacted with it. No idea how that worked.”

“But could they sing?”

“Well … the Alberich was okay ….”

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