Me and Richard

Before this goes much further, I want to say a thing or two about being a Wagner fanatic. 'Cause I obviously am one, otherwise I'd never be going on this trip; and if anyone is reading this you either a) are a Wagner fanatic or b) know Wagner fanatics and are probably a little curious and a little more suspicious about why we're so weird.

I fell under the spell of Wagner twice, once when I was a little kid, and again when I was an adolescent. If it hits you that early, it's hopeless; you're a lost cause. When I was 8 or 9, it was the stories, the characters and their cool names, and the sound of the music--especially the orchestra--that did it to me. I got hooked on the RING when the Chereau Bayreuth production was telecast in the US, back in the early 80s; and I had a recording with orchestral excerpts which I loved, and a big picture book of watercolors by Ul de Rico, which I still think are amazing and powerful.

When I was a teenager, it happened again...this time it was the Met telecast, in 1990, and a more adult experience of what's so remarkable about these operas--Wagner's unique fusion of words and music, where the sound is the story and vice versa, and the two are meaningless without each other.

Since then, the RING has never been far from the center of my life. I came to work at Seattle Opera because the RING is the company's signature piece; I've now worked through four RING summers at Seattle Opera (and two Februarys producing my children's adaptation of the RING's first opera), translated the entire thing for English captions, taught classes on it up one side and down the other, and I still always find it beautiful and fascinating. I'm greatly looking forward to hearing and seeing a production of the RING this week in the new Copenhagen opera house, Det Kongelige Teater. (Check out the link to learn more about the production.)

By the way, Wagner wrote some non-RING operas which are nothing to sneeze at, either. I came to those later, and to the bizarre story of his life, which (if you don't know it) is a wildly entertaining opera in itself. As a Wagner fan, all of this is important to me; but it's my relationship with the RING which makes me a fanatic.