The depressing story of current Israeli leadership and the West Bank

There was a good episode of Foreign Correspondent about this in October, just after the Hamas attack, telling the same story, but here is a gift link to David Ignatius writing about it at length in the Washington Post.   

There seems a very sharp divide between commentators who think we just have to forget about a two state solution now as being impossible to achieve (there was an interview with a former Australian ambassador from earlier this year re-played on Late Night Live recently, and he is in that camp), and those who still argue that it is impossible to see a resolution without some form of two state system that "works".  David Frum, for one, has a twitter thread up arguing there is nothing to be done other than work with the Palestinian Authority as the "security partner" for Gaza.  

On a side note:  whenever I see video of the West Bank, I am always pretty amazed at how arid and unappealing the land looks as a place to live.  It's surprising to me that anyone makes any sort of farming life out of it, but apparently they do.  I guess my "why does anyone - Jewish or Muslim - want to live there anyway??" reaction is even higher for the Arabian peninsula countries, but I see that the total population there is about 80 million, which is quite a few to suggest they would be better off moving...

 

The Chinese and architecture

For all I know, this Youtube channel may be operated by an "influencer" funded by the Chinese government.  (Certainly, the comments following the videos nearly all read like pro-China propaganda.)

That said, I am still pretty amazed at the modern architecture these videos display from China.   I will post two examples:

 

 This second one looks in parts like a CGI generated skyline - perhaps the high definition video helps with that impression. But it's (apparently!) all real, in part of Shanghai, even if part of this development is still not complete yet: 

 

Seeing these videos also made me think about examples of dramatic architecture from Singapore, and how it is mainly an ethnic Chinese place as well.   What has drawn China (and the Chinese?) to these very impressive feats of modern architecture?    

I see a post at a website from 2017 called "Chinese architecture - spectacular or eccentric?" includes this paragraph:

For years, China has been an architect’s playground, with lucrative funding and interest in foreign ‘starchitects’ giving rise to imaginative buildings. In 2016, China’s State Counceil released new urban planning guidelines. According to the document, “odd-shaped’ buildings” — or “bizarre architecture that is not economical, function, aesthetically pleasing or environmentally friendly” would be forbidden in the future. The document follows a 2014 call by Chinese President Xi Jinping for less “weird architecture” to be built.

I'm not sure that this call worked.  And it seems a pity, in that distinctive architecture is, generally speaking, awesome. 

I don't care for Bill Maher, but on this he's basically right

While it seems there is no doubt that Netanyahu long ago pre-emptively abandoned a two state solution, and as such has only made matters worse, I still think the points the irritating Bill Maher makes in this video are correct:  the Lefty "anti-colonial" quakery that ignores everything about history other than "but Palestinians were forced off their land" and pretends that a victory over Israel is a possibility, no matter how many times it has been tried and lost, is basically ridiculous and positively harmful to any resolution.   The decades of intense anti-Semitic brainwashing that has taken place within Gaza, such that young men can take joy in the killing of the innocent children, is routinely glossed over:

 

As someone in comments says after the video:

The problem is, at first, other big Arab nations like Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia gave hope to the Palestinians that they will support them in their fight to oust the Israelis from their land. When they realised that it wasn’t going to be possible, they withdrew their support. Now Iran has stepped in and has filled that vacant space, fighting the western order and especially the US, by proxy. If Iran also pulls its support, will the Palestinians finally realise their predicament? 11

All Rung out (and out of bad puns, too)

So, what did I think of Götterdämmerung at QPAC last night?

I think the staging was very, very good, and the performances fine; but out of the 4 operas, I think I found Siegfried the best in performance for both orchestra and voices.   

My previous summary of the plot (after going through it on Youtube) is pleasingly accurate: but I do have to say that I've firmed up in the feeling this opera is a bit of a cheat on Wagner's part, in that they only talk about Valhalla going up in flames, we don't go there to actually watch it.   I mean, I feel we ought to at least get a cameo of Wotan with his hair on fire; but no, he and the rest of his dysfunctional household burn up off stage.   

But musically, it's still pretty satisfying.   

Now what can I say about the whole experience of a Ring Cycle?   I was convinced to see it due to a radio interview I heard by accident with some guy announcing it 4 years ago.  (I assume it was someone from Opera Australia).  I still remember some comments he made - one being that people think it's a "heavy" experience, but it's not: he said he has spoken to audience members at the end who would say they could immediately sit through the whole thing again.   I think he's right about that - for a story that is peak operatic melodrama (and  basically a doomed love story, as I guess most opera is) it doesn't really feel depressing or tiring at the end.   If I were the idle rich, I wouldn't mind seeing at least a "highlights" reel again next week, from a different seat too!

The opera guy also called it a "life changing" experience.   That is a little over the top, but it is certainly a unique one, with plenty to think about, as my many posts have indicated.   And I am very happy to have experienced it.

As a coda:  one peculiar thing I haven't yet mentioned - I was sitting in short row of 4 seats on the second balcony, so naturally you do find yourself making some small talk with them.  The guy right next to me (I was at the end of the row) was previously from England, and used to go to Covent Garden a lot.  He indicated he had been a bit disappointed with opera choice in Australia, but he would sometimes go to Sydney to see one, and come back the next day.  He was probably  in his 70's, and while chatting I found out that he lives in a very expensive newly developed area on the river.  The other two guys were also older (well, maybe 60's and 40's- probably a gay couple I suspect.)  The odd thing though was none of these 3 ever applauded. 

Curious about his lack of applause, I asked the English guy (before the start of the second opera) what he thought of the first, and he said something like "well I had read all the hype, and was a bit disappointed.  But then I thought about it more and how difficult it is to sing this opera, and perhaps I was a little tough."  I said that my impressions from the reviews on line was that the first opera had the most mixed response, but reviewers appeared to increasingly like the other three as the cycle went on.  

He then left 20 minutes early at the end of Die Walkure (the second one) to catch the ferry home!  I found out last night that he had missed the third opera (yay, an empty seat beside me) because he had to go to Sydney for some work or other and was delayed in his return - he is presumably semi retired.   As for the other two dudes in my row - they left early during the 3rd opera to catch a train, so I got separately interrupted at the climatic part of not one, but two operas!   Last night one of them commented to me that "oh well, we probably didn't miss much, did we?"

And then last night, when most of the audience is on its feet - I swear that no one in my row of unduly disgruntled old blokes clapped for even a second!

This, I thought, is just rude.   I really felt like asking the guy next to me if he familiar with the phrase "whingeing Pom", and if Australian opera isn't up to his standards, he can shove off with his money back to London and I don't have to hear his nose whistle during quiet parts of a musical again.  (I haven't mentioned that yet, have I?)  

How did I end up sitting in the one, short, row in the theatre with what seemed like the only 3 audience members who appeared to be continually unimpressed/uninterested, but kept coming back anyway?  

I guess it goes to show that it is "not for everyone" - or just that annoying people can turn up at the opera.

Anyhow, apart from an update I will make for an earlier post, this should be the end of my Ring cycle posts.  Maybe.  :)

The ring singularity

Ha ha.  In this explanation of a paper that Sabine Hossenfelder seems pretty excited about, regarding whether or not black holes have to have a singularity at their centre, there's a diagram showing a "ring singularity".

I'm soon off to my own Ring singularity - Götterdämmerung - starting at 4pm, and ending at 10.40pm. Yes, seeing all of a Ring Cycle takes some commitment.

One minor point that I hadn't realised before - that Kerr of rotating black hole fame is a New Zealander - and still at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.   Huh.  I would have assumed he was from a famous British or US university.

This disgraceful episode in US history

I've said it before, but I really despise anyone who thinks Trump election conspiracies are in any way excusable, when they have and had such dire real life consequences for innocent people:

Ruby Freeman, a former Georgia election worker, sat in a federal courtroom on Wednesday and told a jury: “Giuliani just messed me up, you know.”

She was referring to Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was sitting a few feet from her, as she described how her life has been upended since Dec. 3, 2020. That was the date Mr. Giuliani, then the personal lawyer to President Donald J. Trump, directed his millions of social media followers to watch a video of two election workers in Fulton County, Ga., asserting without any basis that they were cheating Mr. Trump as they counted votes on Election Day.

The workers were Ms. Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss.

Ms. Freeman, who is Black, recounted what followed: a torrent of threats, accusations and racism; messages from people who said she should be hanged for treason, or lynched; people who fantasized about hearing the sound of her neck snap.

They found her at her home. They sent messages to her business email and social media accounts. They called her phone so much that it crashed, she said.

The harassment got so bad that the F.B.I. told Ms. Freeman she was not safe in the home where she had lived for years. She stayed with a friend until she felt she put that friend at risk after law enforcement officials told her they had arrested someone who had her name on a death list.

Ms. Freeman’s name had become a rallying cry across conservative news outlets, embodying a conspiracy theory that Trump supporters embraced as they tried to keep him in office.

“This all started with one tweet,” Ms. Freeman said on Wednesday, the third day of a trial to determine what compensation she and Ms. Moss deserve from Mr. Giuliani. Judge Beryl A. Howell previously ruled that Mr. Giuliani spread lies about them, intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them and engaged in a conspiracy with others as he led the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office.

And look at the idiotic lawyer for Giuliani:

Ashlee Humphreys, a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism who testified as an expert witness for the plaintiffs, told the jury that the price tag for repairing the damage done to their reputations would be between $17.4 million and $47.4 million.

Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, has said that size of damage award would be the civil equivalent of the death penalty — a description Judge Howell called “hyperbolic.”

So long, the Drum

The ABC has abruptly cancelled The Drum, a show which I would sometimes watch, mainly to marvel at how dull it could be. 

I feel mean for saying it, but of the hosts, I always found that Julia Baird (or should I say, Dr Julia Baird: it would seem she likes the title to be used) has a particularly dull and unappealing screen presence.  I always found something about Ellen Fanning much more likeable.  (She's also reading weekend news in Brisbane now, too.)

But the main problem with the show has been finding decent panel members.   Most were very, very ordinary, and without any particular expertise in the topics being discussed.  

It kind of surprises me that it has stuck around as long as it has...

The Ring effect

So I saw Siegfried (number 3 in the Ring Cycle) last night, and as you might guess, I have yet more thoughts:

*    some commentary I have read and posted before about viewing a Ring cycle indicated this, and I reckon it's clearly true:   it's a cumulative experience that feels a little like your brain being re-wired by music and light.   This might be a particularly true of this digital video heavy production, where the colour intensity is often very strong, and for the most part, pretty mesmerising.  I have never been bored or at risk of falling asleep, and the biggest physical effect on me was being really tired the day after Die Walkure.   

*    Is it because of that effect that I felt last night's performance, from both singers and orchestra, was particularly good?   My doubts about the orchestra disappeared, and I don't think I was alone - the applause at the end was the strongest and most sustained out of the three so far.   

*    Having said this - I still don't know that the dynamic between aunt and horny nephew in the last 15 or 20 minutes really makes a lick of psychological sense.   But the puzzle over whether the story makes sense is part of the fun - pondering whether it's just nuts, or hiding a deep psychological truth (and of whom - Wagner personally, society, Schopenhauer?) that's lurking beneath the lurid?   

More later...

Update:

On the matter of incest, from an interesting short piece in the New Yorker:

The “Ring” is more than a refashioning of myth; from the outset, Wagner intended an allegorical assault on modern capitalist society. In that light, taboo relationships assume a different character: they voice a defiance of bourgeois restrictions on sexuality. In a crucial scene in Act II of “Die Walküre,” which I discussed in an article for the magazine in 2011, Wotan debates changing mores with his wife, Fricka. The god has tried to create a freely acting hero who can win the Ring back from the dragon Fafner without violating prior contractual arrangements. Fricka argues that the union of the twins exposes the corruption of his scheme. Wotan replies: “Age-old custom / is all you can grasp.” He is undoubtedly speaking for the composer, who conducted scandalous affairs, had a fetish for satin, and welcomed gay men into his circle. Wotan’s defense of rebellious love in the face of cold morality resonated with listeners who had to suppress their natural urges and conform to norms, often by way of sham marriages. Early campaigners for gay rights considered Wagner an ally, if not one of their own.

The love of Brünnhilde and Siegfried carries a particularly forceful message. While the pairing certainly has its peculiarities—Lévi-Strauss says that Brünnhilde is a “supermother” to Siegfried, having protected him since birth—its depth of feeling stands in contrast to the calculated marriage contracts of “Götterdämmerung,” in which Brünnhilde becomes an object of exchange. Wagner was no feminist, yet he had many feminist fans, who took inspiration from such ungovernable female characters as Brünnhilde, Isolde, and Kundry, in “Parsifal.” The turn-of-the-century Wagner soprano Lillian Nordica, a campaigner for women’s rights, once said that the world of the stage was the “only place where men and women stand on a perfect equality where there is true comradeship.”

Update 2:   a good blog entry by someone from Melbourne summarising a whole book called Wagner and the Erotic Impulse.  More than you ever needed to know, like this:  

In the chapter titled Pathologies Dreyfus explores Wagner’s reputation for degeneracy of which his love of silk and perfume, which Dreyfus call fetishes, was considered a part. I’ve read before that he liked sumptuous silk and velvet clothing as well as expensive house-hold accoutrements but didn’t know the extent of it. Or how it influenced his music.

Wagner was first named as having a pathological condition in a widely read denunciation in 1873 in which he was accused of moral degeneration in both his use of language and his personal behaviour including his affair with Cosima von Bulow. He was accused of delusions of grandeur and moral insanity and an unnatural increase in sexual desire as evidenced by the erotic element in Tristan und Isolde where he glorifies adultery and Die Walküre where he glorifies incest. 

 Next came Nietzsche who having first been an admirer became increasingly vitriolic in his criticism of Wagner who he said represented the quintessence of decadence. The Wagnerian opera causes Nietzsche to break out in a disagreeable sweat as opposed to Bizet’s more agreeable Carmen which makes him feel happy, … patient, … settled. Nietzsche is particularly opposed to Wagner’s attempts to find redemption and his misunderstanding of love. He prefers Carmen which reflects the real nature of love which is the “deadly hatred of the sexes!” and where the act of murdering a gypsy constitutes the only conception of love … worthy of a philosopher”. 

Ha!   Good old, mad old, Nietzsche, hey?!

Anyway, back to degenerate Wagner:

The final section in this chapter looks at Wagner’s longstanding fetish for wearing and surrounding himself with soft fabrics, especially satin and silk, without which he found it difficult to compose music. Nietzsche knew all about this because he had been inveigled from time to time, when friendly with Wagner, to purchase such products. Wagner spent a fortune, mostly other peoples’ money, on pink textiles and rose scented fragrances. This first came publicly to light with the publication in June 1877, a year after the first Ring performance, of a series of letters to his Viennese milliner. These included his detailed requirements, including sketches, for pink satin dressing gowns with flounces, satin undergarments, silk quilts and upholstery and curtains and much more. He had rooms furnished completely in silk, including walls and ceilings. He also required warmth in his clothes so his pink dressing gowns were quilted. There is also evidence that he had women’s dresses made up for him. All of this was very important to his compositional process. And there are lots of references to flowers and pleasing perfumes in the works of which the most explicit are the Flower-Maidens in Parsifal.

Oh my.   

So, just how gay sympathetic was he?   As with everything about this strange guy, it's apparently complicated:

The final chapter, Homoerotics, considers Wagner’s surprising regard for same-sexual love; which also surfaces in his operas. Wagner was friends with many men and women who lived openly in same sex relationships; this in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He notes how Parsifal in particular was viewed as sympathetic to homosexuality.

Overall he contends that Wagner was also accepting of same sex relationships as well as deep friendships between men. Dreyfus then considers in detail the relationship between Wagner and his great protector King Ludwig II of Bavaria. This includes extracts from the passionate letters the King wrote to the composer and Wagner’s responses that were more muted in tone and passion but equally crammed with pretentious prose. Nevertheless he suggests Wagner was infatuated with the young King as indicated by a public poem dedicated to Ludwig that was published in 1864. Even allowing for poetic hyperbole Dreyfus finds that the correspondence between the two leaves an extraordinary impression of infatuated friendship.

However Wagner’s tolerance did not extend to the acceptance of carnal sodomy or pederasty. Their homoerotics – those of the Greeks – must be sharply distinguished from our homoerotics, and in this statement one can most likely detect the perfectly understandable line Wagner drew between his awareness of classical same-sex love and his own configuration of Freundesliebe.

Ambiguity as the key to analytical longevity

John said in a comment here recently:

I find that preoccupation as silly as the ongoing publications of Biblical commentaries. It's been 2,000 years. How much more can be written about it! The ambiguity and contradictions in the books of the Bible are among the first examples of postmodernist writing. 

But really, that's the great thing about ambiguity, isn't it? - it can be pretty "fun" trying to resolve it, no matter how many centuries it takes!

Which brings me back to Wagner.   I now know that the key to the never ending analysis of the Ring Cycle is due to its innate ambiguity, which is due to Wagner taking forever to finish it, and changing his favourite philosopher while doing so.

I thought this talk summarised it well.  Warning - spoiler alerts!  (Ha ha):

The Ring was composed between 1848 and 1874, and first performed as a cycle in 1876. By 1851 Wagner had planned a cycle of four operas, the first two bearing the titles they still have, followed by The Young Siegfried and Siegfried’s Death. The text for all four parts was completed in 1852 and privately published in 1853. Between 1853 and 1857, Wagner composed the first two operas and the first two acts of the third. Then he stopped, setting the entire work aside for twelve years. In 1869–after writing Tristan und Isolde (1865) and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868)–he took it up again, changing the ending to a tragic one. Instead of being taken to Valhalla by Brünnhilde, Siegfried is killed on earth, Valhalla is destroyed, and Brünnhilde ends her own life.

Wagner’s “muse” in the earlier compositional period was Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872). A strong influence on Marx, Engels, and other social revolutionaries, Feuerbach was a radical opponent of both class inequality and traditional religion. He defends a type of secular humanism, and views religion as a confused projection into the beyond of elements of human nature. Instead of remaining imprisoned by other-worldly thinking, we need a philosophy that focuses on human need and encourages the expression of love.

Wagner resonated strongly with Feuerbach’s social radicalism, which provided the work with its ending in early drafts. The loving couple end up in Valhalla, which is consumed by fire along with them – but the gods’ order is to be replaced by a human “world without rulers,” under the sway of love. Wagner ultimately discarded this ending; but there is still a lot in the Ring that is Feuerbachian: the strong condemnation of greed, the structuring contrast between greed/domination (Alberich, Hunding, Hagen) and love (Siegmund-Sieglinde, Brünnhilde). During the long compositional gap, however, Wagner steeped himself in the work of another philosopher whose ideas moved him powerfully, in ways totally opposite to the radical emancipatory vision of Feuerbach. That philosopher was Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), author of The World as Will and As Representation (1818), an eloquent work of extreme misanthropy that was all the rage in Wagner’s time.

For Schopenhauer, the world contains two forces that manifest themselves everywhere. One is “Representation,” through which objects appear to a perceiving subject. (Schopenhauer thought that we never attain knowledge of things in themselves, only of interpretations or representations of them.) That capacity is benign, and we can use it to study the world. But we are also driven, like everything in nature, by a dynamic erotic force that is often felt as desire, and that leads above all to the continuation of life. This force, which he called “Will,” is the cause of endless and unmitigated suffering. Influenced strongly by Buddhism, Schopenhauer thought that the only remedy for life’s pain was resignation, ceasing to want. We must resist all of life’s lures as so many fetters that bind us to pain. (He thought women were prominent among such lures, hence his intense misogyny.) The function of art, he held, is to make the hopelessness of life indelibly clear to us so that, grasping this truth in a calm moment, we can embark on the path of resignation. 

The rest of the essay explains in detail the Schopehauer influence on The Ring, as do many, many essays (and entire books).  

I have been reading so many links about Wagner lately that I'm not successfully keeping track, but I know I read one comment by someone that Wagner himself didn't really understand what he was trying to say, and I subsequently read an extract from one of his letters which was consistent with that -  he seemed to convince himself that he had unconsciously come to the right conclusion in the Cycle before understanding it.   

Must have a look for that article again...  

Does this case have some sort of curse attached to it?

Not that I am following it extremely closely, but once again I am amazed at how such a legal saga, starting with a woman found naked in parliamentary minister's office, has involved seemingly every single person involved in any way looking tainted in one way or another - on all "sides" of the matter,  including the media and journalists reporting on it, and up to and including the former judge inquiring as to what went wrong amongst other lawyers and police.

This post is prompted by the first link above - Samantha Maiden now passing on what Sky News publicised first - secret recordings from an "unknown" source eavesdropping on the Higgin's lawyer's conversation at a restaurant.   Oh yeah, "unknown person" - what are the chances that this is only because some political operative or other is financing a hunt for "dirt" on the Higgins side and told the private detective agency that they needed "plausible deniability" for the source.  ("So, outsource the job, and we don't want to know who did it.")

Also - yesterday, Higgins was complaining about a page of her diary appearing in the media again when it is obvious it was leaked to them by the police.

Of course, Higgins herself has had to admit to some lies as well, although as you can probably tell, I don't see how anyone with a brain would be feeling sympathy to Lehrmann, whose character is taking some major hits.   

But it is truly remarkable how it seems that absolutely everyone involved, right from the very start, seems to have stuffed up their response in one way or another.    

 

What a stupid creep

The recent gobsmacking adventures of Elon, via his platform:

 

Half Rung

So, I'm two operas done, two to go in the Ring Cycle in Brisbane.

I have thoughts!   Some, briefly, because I'm busy at work:

*   most famous person I have seen in the audience (and I was walking beside him on the way to the pub for an intermission dinner last night) - David Faulkner from Hoodoo Gurus.   I'm positive it's him, although he also seems to be in the company of  people who don't look at all like former rock people.   I don't know - I don't think I have ever been game to say hello to a famous person in public, even if I like their work and want to say something blandly nice like "love your work".   (I think it's a travesty that ACDC became the world famous loud guitar rock band from Australia over the Hoodoos, by the way.)

*  The staging:  very good for the most part, but a bit "fussy" in some bits.   But really - you're likely never going to be ecstatic about every artistic decision make over 15 or so hours of theatre.   

*  The singer's performances - seem pretty good to me, but I'm not an expert.

*  The orchestra's performance - from what I can gather, this is causing the most controversy, with some saying it's not "exciting" enough, but others perfectly satisfied.   Again, from a non expert point of view: I can see how there is a bit of an issue with this opera that it is easy to overwhelm the voices, and finding the balance between both is the trick, I guess.   For what it's worth, I think that the orchestra is doing well enough, but I think I can also see where some of the criticism is coming from, because in my (again, completely non expert opinion) the Opera North production which I have watched in full on Youtube did have a more dramatic feel to the performance.  I would be curious to see if the third cycle is the best for their performance, or if they will be exhausted by then.  

*  I have been reading about how Wagner created the operas and now understand a lot more about why so  much has been written about them - more on that in a separate post, I think.

*  The first opera didn't invade my dreams, but last night's Die Walkure did.  I forget the details, but there were swords, and confusion at work about Nordic names and how I had to fix errors in them.   Just what I need - Wagner invading one of those generic anxiety dreams that never seems to end!

 

Maybe I would rather not know?

This is the heading for an article in Science magazine:

What are farm animals thinking?

New research is revealing surprising complexity in the minds of goats, pigs, and other livestock

It's pretty interesting, even if the implications for eating meat are not so encouraging...

All about Alan

Wow.  Way back in 2006, near the start of this blog, and when I was much more conservatively inclined than now, I had some posts about Alan Jones and the Chris Masters book which publicised his unacknowledged homosexuality.    

This one indicates that I was very dubious of the "outing" as an unnecessary interference with privacy.

Subsequent posts over the years, though, show how Jones increasingly irritated me - and it is fair to say that I thought his behaviour and language towards Julia Gillard was absolutely appalling and transparently misogynistic in the worst possible way.    It was really a disgrace that he managed to keep within the Liberal Party club - and his job.

The other thing that has changed since 2006 is the Me Too movement and the very high number of media figures in all countries who were revealed as abusing their position to sexual harass, and worse.

So, yeah, I now have no sympathy at all for Jones regarding the report this week that he has acted the same towards underlings at work.   I mean, the accusations are basically being verified by other media figures:  it genuinely does appear that it is a case of an "open secret" that no one talked about because of fear of professional or legal repercussion.    And it makes the events noted in Masters book (especially the departure from his teaching position due to the apparent infatuation with one or more students) difficult to interpret in other than the worst way.   

I bet he does not sue over this, or if it does, it will be yet another massive self own of the Ben Roberts Smith/Oscar Wilde variety.

About to be Rung (and everything's connected)

Regular readers (all 3 of you - I think it may now be that low!) will recall that I have been preparing to see Wagner's Ring Cycle in Brisbane for about 3 years now - and finally, tomorrow night I get to see what all the fuss is about.

I'm going to the second in three runs of the cycle (so to speak) that Opera Australia is putting on at QPAC.   The first run has just finished [oh, my mistake - it finishes tonight], and the reviews are, for the most part, positive.

I have to say, I have been a bit disappointed in the lack of national media attention given to the production - I think it fair to believe the publicity that is a pretty massive undertaking, and I get the feeling that if it was being held in Sydney or Melbourne, more attention would be being paid.   I mean, I haven't even heard it being discussed on the ABC :(.  I guess bad news in the rest of the world does have a bit of a crowding out effect, though.

Anyway, here is a review of the entire set of operas in The Guardian with lots of pretty pictures.  The reviewer saw the dress rehearsals of all four, hence my earlier mistake.  I hope I have the same reaction:

After Das Rheingold’s gentle 155 minutes, the following three shows are much longer, but each have two welcome (and necessary) intervals. And yet across the show’s 15 hours, my alertness rarely flagged; the scale of the production and its sensory impact keeps it compelling, and the performances and pacing maintain momentum. As the Cycle headed to an apocalyptic conclusion in Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), I felt exhilarated – not only by Brunnhilde’s courage and wisdom to do what the power-hungry men couldn’t, but by the endorphin hit of reaching the finish line. (I even went back for the first two premieres, which took my cumulative time watching the Ring Cycle to nearly 22 hours across nine days.) 

My only concern is that I am sitting in a cheap, high second balcony seat, but in the side and forward section of said balcony, so closer to the stage.  I did check out the view from that part during the intermission in a stage show I saw there a couple of years ago, and I think it should be OK?   But it was a cheap seat, so I guess there must a reason for that, apart from the height.   Can I see the subtitles?   Would be a problem if I couldn't!

There is something else I want to talk about in this post - but I will have to come back later to explain...

 Update:  The other thing I wanted to add was that, given that I have reading about Buddhism lately, I Googled the topic "Wagner and Buddhism" just out of curiosity.   

It turns out (and in truth, I think I may have noticed this before somewhere on line, but didn't read much about it at the time) that Wagner was indeed interested in the religion, and in fact, started to plan an opera directly influenced by Indian Buddhism.

This essay - well, a lecture given by a Wagnerian scholar in 2013 - explains a lot, and is rather interesting in the more general picture it paints of German interest in Orientalism in the 19th century.  For example:

His interest in the east had been stimulated by his brother-in-law, Hermann Brockhaus who had married Wagner’s sister Ottilie in 1836. Hermann was an orientalist, and in 1848 he was appointed to the chair of ancient languages and literature at Leipzig University, specialising in Persian and Sanskrit. German, French and English philologists had discovered that Sanskrit – the liturgical and scholarly language of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – had much in common with European languages. All belong to the Indo-European linguistic family. Some scholars went further, arguing that there were also cultural connections via a common Indo-European ancestry.

In 1872 the Danish historian and critic Georg Brandes offered his own explanation for this sudden fascination with Indian culture. ‘It was not a surprise’ he wrote, ‘that there came a moment in German history when they – the Germans – started to absorb and to utilize the intellectual achievements and the culture of ancient India. It is because Germany – great, dark and rich in dreams and thoughts – is in reality a modern India. Nowhere else in world history has metaphysics bereft of any empirical research achieved such a high level of development as in ancient India and modern Germany.’

The American scholar, Suzanne Marchand, has written that the Germans were ‘the most important orientalist scholars between about 1830 and 1930, despite having virtually no colonies in the east’. The effect of this, she maintains, was that German orientalism, especially the study of Zoroastrian Persia, India and Mesopotamia, helped to destroy western self-satisfaction, and to provoke a momentous change in the culture of the west: the relinquishing of Judeo/Christian and classical antique models as universal norms.  

If this argument can be sustained, then it must be said that Richard Wagner made a noteworthy contribution to the process. During the last three decades of his life, he demonstrated a serious interest in the two great religions of India and, in a letter to Liszt of 1855 wrote admiringly of ‘the oldest and most sacred religion known to man, Brahman teaching and its final transfiguration in Buddhism, where it achieved its most perfect form’. He held the view that Christianity, although first appearing in the Greco-Roman world, had its distinguishing roots in India. One can find shared moral principles in the teachings of Jesus and the historical Buddha Shakyamuni who lived in the fifth century BC. In the same letter to Liszt, Wagner cited contemporary research suggesting that Buddhist ideas had flowed westwards after the spread of Alexander’s empire to the Indus in 327 BC, and had influenced Christian doctrine. Whether or not Buddhism did, in fact, have any influence on Christianity, all that matters for our purposes is that Wagner believed that it did, and this belief shaped his works, especially Parsifal.

Well, what a coincidence that I had, back in 2020, posted about the distinct possibility that Buddhism had reached Egypt (and other nearby places) well before Christ.     

Seems that all my interests of the last few years are colliding into each other.

Perhaps I've primed myself for a sudden religious conversion - except that my personality seems extremely adverse to sudden enlightenment on anything.