Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 29 seconds

RANDOM THOUGHTS; LISTENING

Listening to a radio broadcast of the Los Angeles Opera's first-ever performance of Richard Wagner’s four-opera ring cycle, revealed there have been some modernizations. That includes an addition to "Siegfried" called "Siegfried & Roy" in which Roy sings that stirring theme "Oje! Meine Grosse Katze Hat Meinen Arm Gefressen." ("Alas, my big cat has eaten my arm"). Not surprisingly, this has led to an alternate saying about music that "It’s not over until the fat cat eats."

At the work's end, the well-known Wotan’s Farewell is now followed by Roy’s Farewell in which he laments "Dreck, Ich werde nie wieder Arbeit Vegas." ("Crap, I will never work Vegas again.") In the first opera in the cycle, Das Rheingold, the dwarf Alberich angrily confronts a Miller Lite distributor who is attempting to move into Germany and sternly lectures him in "Zurück in das Pferd."("Put it back in the horse.") There's a country version planned in which the roles of the Rheingold maidens are played by the Dixie Chicks while Wotan and the other gods flee from the ice giants in a '56 Chevy. (Working title, Rings and Pistons). Meanwhile the Ring Cycle has been issued in shorter version, the "Wash, Wring and Rinse" cycle, for American audiences. As a matter of historical interest, scholars have found the inspiration for the name of the final opera, Gotterdamerung, was not based on Norse mythology as long-believed, but instead taken from the words Wagner yelled when the movers dropped his new piano on his toe. Actually, he dropped the idea of using his first reaction as unprintable. ... And some musicians had it rough at home, Schubert’s wife was always nagging him. "You never clear the garage and when are you going to finish that symphony?"

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