Last night, we saw a DVD of Wagner's opera Die Wakure (The Valkyries), second in the Ring trilogy. My only encounter with Wagner was an abortive trip to the San Francisco opera house for Meistersinger, his only comedy. We left after the first act. Music is wonderful, but there just isn't anything else going on. The singers tend to just stand there, and go on, and on, and on. All his operas are 4 or 5 hours of this. Well, not this one, at least not all the time. The Valkyries (Wotan's daughters, who swoop down from Valhalla to bear the heroes fallen in battle to sit at Wotan's feet) leap about in their armor and helmets quite a bit. Brunnhilda is the head Valkyrie, favored daughter of Wotan, and at the end of the opera, because she has disobeyed her father and a couple of other little rules that got Daddy's wife (not her mother) all pissed off, Wotan strips her of her immortality, puts her to sleep, and calls on Loge, the god of fire, to surround her in flames till a hero wakes her with a kiss. All kinds of paradigms going on here. Well, Wagner wrote his own librettos, and was certainly a hero, in his own mind. Anyway, it was dynamite, partly because Wotan was pretty hunky, and probably 20 years younger than Brunnhilde, not unusual. Singing Wagner is so difficult, most singers don't even try till later in their careers, to keep from blowing out their voices like old rubber. So, I almost feel like attempting the Ring cycle, sometime. Maybe.
On a brighter note, all is mended, plumbing-wise. At least for the present. Problem was roots in the line, which are (yay!) the landlord's expense and not mine, because it cost $253 to fix. Gone are the days when you could call Roto-Rooter and plunk down $60 for a little clean-out job. Sigh. But what a pleasure to not have to stand in a foot of water to shower, and to flush just once! It is amazing the things for which one can become grateful.
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