A couple of years ago I decided to watch films of the four operas which make up The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner (1813-1883). I'd only heard chunks of it before on CD and I had absolutely no idea what they were singing about or what was happening in the plot. After watching a couple of the operas (I didn't get time to watch all four, because all four total up at 767,000 hours in length, actually, probably a bit more) I still hadn't really got a clue what it was about. Yet it was great to watch, even though my eyebrows were welded together in total confusion.
In Siegfried, the third opera in The Ring, there's a bird - hooray! This is what happens when the bird starts singing:
Siegfried arrives near the lair of the dragon Fafner. Before trying to kill Fafner, Siegfried falls asleep in the forest and is woken up by a singing bird. He has a go at calling back to the bird with his horn but instead wakes up Fafner, they have a big fight and Siegfried kills Fafner. Siegfried drinks Fafner's blood (obviously) and suddenly he can understand the bird's song, and the bird is telling him about a woman sleeping on a rock surrounded by magic fire.
It's all to do with destiny, I think. If I'm honest, I don't really know. The first video below is from near the start of Act 2, Scene 2 - the bird is singing on woodwind instruments. The second video (from a different performance) is Siegfried killing Fafner. The third video is from later in the scene after the dragon killing bit, and the bird's melody is now sung by a soprano offstage.
The music is astounding, everything else is completely insane.
In Siegfried, the third opera in The Ring, there's a bird - hooray! This is what happens when the bird starts singing:
Siegfried arrives near the lair of the dragon Fafner. Before trying to kill Fafner, Siegfried falls asleep in the forest and is woken up by a singing bird. He has a go at calling back to the bird with his horn but instead wakes up Fafner, they have a big fight and Siegfried kills Fafner. Siegfried drinks Fafner's blood (obviously) and suddenly he can understand the bird's song, and the bird is telling him about a woman sleeping on a rock surrounded by magic fire.
It's all to do with destiny, I think. If I'm honest, I don't really know. The first video below is from near the start of Act 2, Scene 2 - the bird is singing on woodwind instruments. The second video (from a different performance) is Siegfried killing Fafner. The third video is from later in the scene after the dragon killing bit, and the bird's melody is now sung by a soprano offstage.
The music is astounding, everything else is completely insane.
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