Richard Wagner

The Ring Without Words.

That’s all I need to write.

The Ring Without Words.

I’ll add the time and dates as well. Friday, February 28th and Saturday, March 1st, at 8:00 pm and Sunday, March 2nd, at 2 pm. The location is the Jacobs Music Center.

That should be enough to get anyone, with a pulse, excited. In case it isn’t, I’ll beat the drum a little bit.

This version of the Ring was put together by Lorin Maazel and this is the West Coast premiere. In this version, there are four selections from Das Rheingold, five selections from Die Walkure and Siegfried, and six selections from Götterdämmerung.

The length of the piece is about an hour and 15 minutes. We can compare that to the 15 hours of the entire Ring and realize this is a bargain.

There will be no singing in this concert and that is no problem. Wagner was influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer and attempted to create emotion and drama with the orchestra.

We can think of it this way, the voice was just one more part of the orchestra for Wagner. The orchestra does not accompany the singers in The Ring, the singers almost accompany the orchestra.

Therefore, the lack of singers is not a big deal and, truth be told, is probably a bonus for most concert-goers. Let’s be honest here, folks.