Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Saturday 14th June 2025, 10:30 — 12:00
Debunking Wagner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Richard_Wagner
?What myths have you heard about Wagner.
Ring:
‘Synopsis’
Royal Ballet & Opera video:
Rhingold ⬆️
Chapter 1: The Rhinegold
Chapter 2: The Valkyrie
Chapter 3: Siegfried
Chapter 4: Twilight of the Gods
Rhinemaidens:
Woglinde = Dance
Wellgunde = Music
Flosshilde = Poetry
Alberich – Elf, renouncing love
A representation of love: Stendhal‘s book titled Love
?What do you think about Alberich.
The following scenes in Chapter 1
Alberich’s repentance from sin. [Could Wagner be a Christian!?]
Wagner’s libretto — Stabreim
Groves Music Dictionary
Stabreim is a form of poetic verse
Iambic: Stress every second syllable
Shakespeare
Hamlet — “To be, or not to be: that is the question:”
Macbeth — “Double, double toil and trouble
Iambic Pentameter — 5 stress’ with a sentence of 10 syllables
e.g. Sonnet 18
Shakespeare & Goethe known to Wagner
Henry Cuyler Bunner, American novelist and journalist, on Goethe:
Shake, Mulleary and Go-ethe, poem
My poetry books:
- Soaring Higher
- The Tara Brooch
- Wagner’s Ring*
- Blazon
*Wagner’s Ring started. Not completed at the time due to Shakespearean Tudor anachronisms. However, someone said I “can still do it.” Decided on couplet paraphrase, instead — AA, BB, CC etc. Next, Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, publishes his couplet version of the Owl and the Nightingale. Took my copy to the stage production at the Southbank Centre.
Read my incomplete paraphrase of Wagner’s Ring, Chapter 1: Rhinegold, Ii
Open mic:
Nick
Angela
Closing small talk.
"From left to right by nature’s design
Flows continuously the ready river Rhine
Lighter turquoise evenly spread
Becoming darker towards the bed
Near the floor the water dissipates
Leaving an increasingly breathable state
This vaporous man-sized space
Moves continuously and at a pace
Across the floor of the riverbed
Where no man can naturally tread
Are rough rocks and undercurrent tides
And vertical caverns unimaginably wild."
Splashes of Ink 