Calendary Music – July – “Di tu se fedele”
July 10, 2009 at 10:14 pm | In Calendary music, Music, Opera, The Course of the Year | Leave a CommentThe Boyfriend and I are packing up to go away for a week to his family’s cabin by the north sea for a week, and I’m looking so much forward t relaxing for a whole week, going for walks and reading books and drinking tea by the open fire! I’ve started working on my dissertation now, and between that and my part-time job, I’ve been slightly stressed out, so a break is more than welcome.
But there’s no internet connection at the cabin, so that means that things will be quiet in here for the next week. I’ll see you all next week!
In the meantime, here’s my choice for my Calendary Music project this month: “Di Tu Se Fedele”. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve associated the month July with the sea and sailing. My family and I would go on the ferry between Hundested and Greenaa (between Sealand and Jutland) every summer, and I remember standing on the deck of the ferry while the sun warmed the top of my little head and the wind blew through my hair, impressed and almost overwhelmed by the vastness of the sea and by the sensation of the ferry cutting through it at full speed, and I held onto my mother who would lift me up and helt me tight so that I could lean over the rail and gaze down at the waves below while she sang songs to me about the sea. “When the sun is buried in the North Sea,” she sang, “It will rise again in the Baltic the next day”.
“Di tu se fedele” the faux sea shanty from Un Ballo in Maschiero has always reminded me of that feeling. It’s got an air of salt water and wind and sailing to it, and an air of optimism and indomitability that makes it a perfect aria for the month of July. Especially in the below version where it’s sung by Jussi Björling (in Swedish!) whose voice always sounded like a beautiful Scandinavian light summer night.
Calendary Music – April – Arabella: “Aber der Richtige”
April 4, 2009 at 12:37 pm | In Calendary music, Gender, Music, Opera, Photos, The Course of the Year, youtube | Leave a CommentSorry for my long absence! I’ve been incredibly busy lately. Since my last entry, Spring has come to Copenhagen. The weather is absolutely lovely; mild and warm and sunny with clear blue skies during the day and soft, pastel night skies full of warbling blackbird. Here’s a picture I snapped riding my bike home after having introduced Bo Holten’s brand new opera The Visit of the Royal Physician:
Arguably not a very good picture from a photographer’s point of view, but that sky, and that light? Le sigh.
I’m on cloud nine because of this beautiful April weather, and I thought I’d celebrate by doing a Calendary Music entry. I’ve picked Arabella’s and Zdenka’s duetto from Strauss’ Arabella which has always reminded me of this time of the year.
I do love Arabella. Despite the fact that I truly dislike the title character. I find her to be incredibly vain and conceited, and I always kind of try to bear with her the best I can, but then when I get to the part where she’s at the ball and she’s graceously bidding her maiden life and her suitors goodbye, and I’m like ugh. Get over yourself already. I cannot for the life of me see what Mandryka finds so attractive about Arabella, but, hey, I suppose it’s true that rural life in the villages of Mandryka’s estate will probably be good for her, fetching water from wells and whatnot.
And I have a huge soft spot for androgynous Zdenka. She’s such an indearingly absurd character. She was raised as a boy just because she was a little wild as a child? And yet she never complained? She really is an outrageously selfless character, every bit as good and virtuous as her sister is spoiled and annoying, and I like that. It’s so rare that women in operas are selfless like that and get away with it. Usually they get stabbed by hitmen or decide to stab themselves because their beloved is in love with an icy princess and things like that.
And I find the duetto between the two very different sisters to be so beautiful. Mostly because of the music which is gorgeous, but also because of the dramatic effect of the very different POVs of Arabella and Zdenka clashing in the lyrics. Arabella is all wrapped up in her own dream of erotic fulfillment, while Zdenka is all about making Arabella happy, even if that means that she’ll get married to the man that Zdenka loves and that Zdenka will have to go about wearing trousers and looking like a scrawny dude with huge manboobs for the rest of her life. “Sie ganz im Licht, und ich hinab ins Dunkel.”
I’m not sure why the piece reminds me so much of the month of April. It’s possible that I simply heard it for the first time in the month of April, but I suppose you could also postrationalize it and say that there is something spring-like about two young women singing about their dreams and hopes of love, and that there is something sunny about the light timbre of two sopranos singing together. Here it is at any rate – I’ve chosen a version with Lisa Della Casa as Arabella and Anneliese Rothenberger because I think their voices compliment each other sublimely, and the acting is quite touching. I actually find Arabella to be kind of cute in Della Casa’s interpretation, beaming and rubbing her hands together while fantasizing about The Right One:
Calendary Music – February – “Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow”
February 20, 2009 at 9:34 pm | In Calendary music, Music, The Course of the Year, youtube | Leave a CommentMy birthday was last week, and The Boyfriend’s present for me was tickets for a great theatre concert based on Nick Cave’s songs at a Copenhagen theatre. It was a really fantastic performance and in celebrating of that and because it’s been snowing for a week and a half here in Denmark now, I thought I’d make this month’s Calendary Music entry about “Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow”.
I love how the snow motif is used here. There is something so quietly desperate about it that reminds me a little of the glass bell jar that deperssed Esther Greenwood feels like she’s living underneath in The Bell Jar. And the repeated minor key piano riff in Cave’s song brings out this sentiment, too, chillingly ice-cold as it sounds.
Here are the lyrics:
Where is Mona?
She’s long gone
Where is Mary?
She’s taken her along
But they haven’t put their mittens on
And there’s fifteen feet
of pure white snow?
Where is Michael?
Where is Mark?
Where is Mathew
Now it’s getting dark?
Where is John? They are all out back
Under fifteen feet of pure white snow
Would you please put
down that telephone
We’re under fifteen feet
of pure white snow
I waved to my neighbour
My neighbour waved to me
But my neighbour
Is my enemy
I kept waving my arms
Till I could not see
Under fifteen feet of pure white snow
Is anybody
Out there please?
It’s too quiet in here
And I’m beginning to freeze
I’ve got icicles hanging
From my knees
Under fifteen feet of pure white snow
Is there anybody here
who feels this low?
Under fifteen feet of pure white snow
Raise your hands up to the sky
Raise your hands up to the sky
Raise your hands up to the sky
Is it any wonder?
Oh my Lord Oh my Lord
Oh my Lord Oh my Lord
Doctor, Doctor
I’m going mad
This is the worst day
I’ve ever had
I can’t remember
Ever feeling this bad
Under fifteen feet of pure white snow
Where’s my nurse
I need some healing
I’ve been paralysed
By a lack of feeling
I can’t even find
Anything worth stealing
Under fifteen feet of pure white snow
Is there anyone else here
who doesn’t know?
We’re under fifteen feet
of pure white snow
Raise your hands up to the sky
Raise your hands up to the sky
Raise your hands up to the sky
Is it any wonder?
Oh my Lord Oh my Lord
Oh my Lord Oh my Lord
Save Yourself! Help Yourself!
Calendary Music – January – “Der Leiermann”
January 4, 2009 at 10:19 am | In Calendary music, Music, The Course of the Year, youtube | Leave a CommentHappy New Year!
I’m sorry that I’ve been such an inactive blogger during the past month, but December was an unusually busy month for me, studded with university paper writing, getting settled in the apartment that is now my home, Christmas preparations and celebrations, recovering from a nasty cold and fever, and celebrating New Year’s in a lovely derelict farm with friends. But it was a lovely December – and I hope that my readers enjoyed the month and the holidays, too.
My first entry of 2009 shall be a “Calendary Music” one. As I’ve stated before, I hate the month of January as I find it to be a most unpleasant, bleak and dark month. And Schubert’s “Der Leiermann” from Winterreise goes perfectly with this atmosphere, I think. Here it is, in Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s interpretation:
So bleak, and yet so beautiful. Incidentally, a triple cd with Fischer-Dieskau singing Die Schöne Möllerin, Winterreise and Schwanengesang was among my Christmas presents. I also got Pique Dame, part of which I’ve previously featured in a Calendary Music entry. So I plan to live my January melancholy to the fullest this year!
Calendary Music – September – Max Avery Lichtenstein’s “Tarnation”
September 27, 2008 at 3:20 pm | In Calendary music, Music, The Course of the Year, youtube | Leave a CommentLast year The Boyfriend introduced me to the following piece from 2003 documentary Tarnation, and I immediately dubbed it “The September Song”. It’s hard to put into words exactly what it is about it that reminds me about September: The inclinating movement of the notes and the melancholy atmosphere of the melody simply sum up for me perfectly that crystalness that embues the air this time of the year, the September skies and their warm, orangy shade of blue, the gilded, falling leaves, and the lowering sun of a September afternoon:
The piece is written by Max Avery Lichtenstein. It’s nice to see from the video that I’m not the only one who’s inspired by it with visions of images and landscapes. And although the youtube poster states that the content of the video is merely “random junk thrown together”, the number of images of setting and lowering suns to make me think that I’m not alone in deriving a pleasant, melancholy feel from the music. (Interestingly, the image of the setting sun is also in another video dedicated to the song).
/marie
Calendary Music – June – Georg Riedel: Little Ida’s Summer Song
June 8, 2008 at 11:26 am | In Calendary music, Music, Television, youtube | Leave a CommentWhen I think back on my childhood summers, if there’s one thing that’s inseperately linked with the season it’s my brother. The rest of the year was socially dominated by my little friends and classmates, but in childhood when summer came and school closed, it meant spending time with my older brother.
My family would go away on vacation, just the four of us, and my brother, this wonderous creature living under the same roof as me all year; older, wiser, quicker and physically superior to me would suddenly be available to me, to play with, to laugh with, to have petty little fights with, to be an ally against our parents in arguments about bedtimes or between-meal snacks, to sing along with me on children’s songs during those long hours in the warm backseat when we were going away, our car filled with suitcases and stuffed animals and maps and tickets for a ferry that my parents were stressed out about not reaching in time.
“Stress” – back then in the early summer, sitting in that backseat, sandals on my feet, my sunburnt, funny and smart brother next to me, it seemed such a nonsensical word to me. Surely nothing in the big, wide, bright summer needed to be stressed. Massive phenomena such as beaches and sun and dunes lay ahead of us, ancient landscapes that I had heard described in old Danish folk songs, spreading out eternally, waiting for us to take them in. My brother would giggle at me conspiratorially while our parents argued in the front seats about how to read the maps and which highway to go by, and then he and I would pick up our old battery-run tape recorder and listen to one of the audio books we always brought on car trips.
One of those audio books was Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren’s Emil i Lönneberga - “Emil of Maple Hills”. My brother and I absolutely loved the Emil stories, and no doubt this was brought on at least to a certain degree by the identification we felt with two of the main characters; Emil and his little sister Ida. My brother, white-haired and energetic as he was in childhood, reminded me so much of the involuntarily mischievous protagonist, and I easily identified with his mild-tempered, well-behaved and girly little sister, and I was deeply touched by the bond I registered the two characters. In the Emil stories, Emil was always trying to do well by the grown-ups, but his childish attempts at succes always backfired and he was misunderstood by the rational adults as mischief, and one of his only allies was Ida, who always saw past his failures and doted on her older brother. To me, this was the main focus of the story; the bond between a brother and a sister and the childish world they shared, that was invisible to the rational grown-ups in their lives.
Besides from a dramatization of the Emil stories, the audio book contained a number of songs that had originally been written for the 70s Swedish television adaptation of Astrid Lindgren’s books. The songs were written by composer Georg Riedel, and he had really managed to capture the atmosphere about a boy in rural Sweden at the beginning of the 20th century. The figurations and arrangements of the songs had a distinct and very appropriate folklore sound to them, and the melodies had all the beauty of a child’s world.
My favourite among them was “Little Ida’s Summer Song”, which I’d like to share with you:
I could only find it in a German version on youtube, but thankfully the song is still in the original Swedish language. The images of Emil and Ida walking through a summer landscape together (they’re bringing a basket of coffee and treats to their family’s field hands) just break my heart; they remind me so much of me and my brother and our childhood summers. The simplistic beauty of the melody, the magic scheme of things expressed in the lyrics and the little girl actor’s sweet and not-quite-perfect way of performing the song: All is such a wonderful tribute to a childhood and early summer. Here are the lyrics, translated into English:
You mustn’t think that it will be summer
unless someone starts it
and makes everything summerly;
then the flowers will be here soon!
I make it so that the flowers bloom,
I make the whole pasture green
And now summer has come
for I have removed all the snow.
I make it so that there’s lots of water in the creek,
so that it jumps and rushes
I make it so there are lots of swallows
and mosquitoes for the swallows to have
I make it so that there are new leaves on the trees
and little birds’ nests here and there
I make the sky beautiful in the evenings
because I make it absolutely clear
And I make wild strawberries for the children
because I like for them to have those
And other fun little things
that children should have when they are young
And I make amusing little places
where children may run about;
then the children will be full of summer
and their legs full of running!
/marie
Calendary Music – January – “Una Furtiva Lagrima”
February 1, 2008 at 7:51 am | In Calendary music, Music, Opera, youtube | Leave a CommentMy exams being over (yay!), I’m back and ready to post on a regular basis again. But I am one day late for my Calendary-January post – I apologize for that.
Being in my usual gloomy January mood, I’m going to post a song that got me through one of my gloomiest Januaries ever, a January when I was a very young girl and suffering from what I perceived to be unbearable heartache. The song was aria “Una furtiva lagrima” from L’elisir d’Amore sung by Luciano Pavarotti. Except I already posted a video of Pavarotti singing the aria once on this blog (when the great tenor passed away in October), so instead you get Rolando Villazon:
The aria has admittedly become a little trite, featured on many an Opera Highlights album , but I don’t think it has managed to ruin it. The tune is so January-like, irresistibly mournful, and it adds a crucial depth to the otherwise slightly buffo character Nemorino, I think. And it brought solace my wounded heart back then, in that bleak January when I was young and needed solace, as I’m sure it has to many a young, wounded heart throughout the years.
Rolando Villazon has, apart from his training in classical singing, attended Clown School, and I think this shows in this particular video. He may not be wearing actual over-sized shoes and a red nose, but the shoes and the nose, they’re there in spirit, especially towards the end where he stares dreamily into middle distance, striking that infantile, dorky pose. And that actually turns me off the clip somewhat. His singing is sublime, and I can definitely see why one would choose to depict Nemorino as a clownish simpleton, but in the end I just really don’t like clowns at all, and I don’t want them in my operas, thankyou. Furthermore, I think that this aria is actually the one point in the opera where Nemorino transcends his own clownish tendencies and becomes a man; a man worthy of being loved by a woman – by Adina.
But the aria is still a near-perfect composition. And anything that can make me remember January and a case of youthful heartache fondly deserves an honourable mention.
/marie
Calendary Music: December – “We’re Walking in the Air”
December 5, 2007 at 2:59 pm | In Art, Calendary music, The Course of the Year, youtube | Leave a CommentOk, I am now six months behind on both my literary and musical calendar, and I’ve decided that it makes more sense for me to simply skip the past few months and go directly to the month we’re in now; December. In all likelihood there will be another year in 2008, and I can cover the not-yet covered month then.
But right now it’s December, and I love December. I love it because it’s the month of Christmas, but I also love it for another reason: I love that it’s so dark and so bleak, and that it’s the last month of the year.
Because this is the darkest month of the year, the days grow darker and darker until winter solstice on December 21, the trees stand stark naked and skeletal without their leaves, but I always thought there was something so life-affirming and pure about that. It’s as if the whole world reaches its absolute zero in December and is ready to start anew, and therein lies so much potential. I always take care to look out the window on the early mornings in December, and the dark blue night still hovers over the dawning day, like a rabbit crouching before a jump, all its muscles tense with anticipation.
For my music calendar I have therefore chosen a song that I think holds all the expectation and purity of December. The song is “We’re Walking in the Air” from Raymond Briggs’ masterpiece The Snowman.
I think it’s an absolutely beautiful tune, at once comforting and bleak with its minor key and simple lyrics, and the pure, poignant sound of the boy soprano’s voice, and the song never fails to bring tears to my eyes. I hope you’ll like it, too.
Happy December!
/marie
Calendary Music – June – Peter Heise: King and Marshal
October 6, 2007 at 10:52 pm | In Art, Calendary music, Music, Opera, The Course of the Year | 1 CommentAs confessed to in my calendary literature post, June makes me sentimental and patriotic to the point where I will ride my bicycle around, singing patriotic hymns like some distasteful ad for a ghastly nationalistic, xenophobic political party. June is also the only month of the year where I think seriously about taking up family history research.
In short, I resort to Romanticism. And there’s an opera that’s perfect for that particular mode, namely Romantic Danish composer Peter Heise’s historical, dramatic opera King and Marshall (“Drot og Marsk”), which is usually to be found on my mp3 player well through June.
The Regicide at Finderup Barn by artist Otto Bache (1882)
This opera really kind of has it all when it comes to midsummer sentimentalism. It’s based on an medieval Danish legend (which, in turn, is loosely based on historical facts) so there’s the whole patriotic nostalgia, it’s got some truly gut-wrenchingly beautiful music paired with some high-strung lyrics, so there’s plenty to get sentimental about, and there’s lots of high drama, too.
The story of the opera is this: King Erik of Denmark (1259-1286) is a bit of a libertine who isn’t above seducing his valet Rane’s innocent sweetheart, charcoal burneress Aase. His childhood friend and Marshall Stig Andersen, however, trusts him with his life and leaves his beautiful wife Ingeborg in the King’s protection as he’s about to go off to fight a battle. Scarcely has Stig left for battle before Erik falls in love with his friend’s wife, and he seduces her, too, by pulling a kind of amputated version of King-David-and-Bathseba on Stig’s ass; telling Ingeborg that Stig has died in combat and asking her to be his mistress. Ingeborg conquers, no doubt at least somewhat enamoured by his charming majesty, but is appalled when her beloved husband returns, very much alive. She confesses her crime to Stig, blaming the deceitful Erik and a heart-broken Stig takes off to the King’s court immediately. The King and the nobility await him here, ready to celebrate the marshall’s victorious battle, but Stig ends the party abruptly by saying in front of everyone that gee, the King might have found a better way to pay him back for his loyalty than by raping his own frickin’ wife dammit!! The King hems and haws at this, without much to say for himself, and the marshall succeeds in winning the sympathy of quite a large following. They meet up in private and it turns out that Stig’s not the only person who feels violated by the King’s autocratic power. The conspiracy against the King plot to kill him.
Meanwhile, Erik is filled with dread after the ugly scene between himself and his old trusted friend. He ominously recalls having set fire to a moor once, the fire quickly consuming all living things on it before his eyes. Rane, who is part of the conspiracy, convinces the King to go hunting, and the desperate and confused King happens upon Aase, who was crushed when the King ruthlessly discarted her upon meeting Ingeborg and fled out into the woods to live there again. In his desperation to escape from his gloomy thoughts, the King tries to seduce Aase once again, not recognizing his old flame. Aase flees, but she is very much of a Gilda to Erik’s Duca, and she warns him against a crowd of men disguised as monks – the conspiracy in disguise. The King leaves with Rane, and Aase realizes to her horror that he has left his sword by her, and she dutifully rushes after him to bring it to him.
Rane leads the King to the town of Finderup and into a barn where he encourages the King to take shelter for the night. Erik is plagued by nightmares of a meeting with a vengeful Ingeborg, and is terrified as he hears the noise of the conspiring men outside the barn. He pleads Arne vainly to defend him, to no avail. The monk-clad conspiracy enter, and Stig corners Erik and stabs him to death, amid maledictions from the dying King. The conspiracy sets the barn on fire and flees, and soon people are summoned to the King’s dubious mausoleum, among them the merciful Aase with his sword who was too late to save her love. People sing a requiem for the dead king, and Aase says a prayer for “every wayfaring soul”.
Composer Peter Heise
As you can see, the opera lacks nothing in terms of pathos, and as already said, the libretto suffers a great deal from a rather clichéd writing. In his excellent recent opera guide, Peter Dürrfeld calls it “hollow and limping”, which I think isn’t far off, at least in some places. ”Fair lily, bid my will!” sings King Erik cheesily to beautiful child of nature Aase, and sometimes it gets downright comical, as in this piece of dialogue in a duet between Stig and Ingeborg that always made me giggle like a dirty-minded 12-year-old: Stig: “Will not the king raise his victorious marshall?” Ingeborg: “Alas! He has raised plenty!” Hee.
But even so it’s a great opera. The libretto isn’t all cheese, and Erik’s angsty aria in the third act with the efficient and foreshadowing imagery of the burning moor is genuinely powerful. And the opera has a lot going for it, as regards storyline: there’s sex, lies, and politics, all in one opera, and it’s hard not to get sucked into a story like that. The gallery of characters is also nice and juicy with four really interesting main characters: The libertine king who’s not actually evil, but who hurts people through his endless hunt for pleasure, the dubiously moral Ingeborg who, rather like a Donna Anna, in one breath accuses Erik of both seduction and rape, the righteously indignated and faithfully loving Stig with the delicious streak of a murderous streak, and nature-child Aase with her good, forgiving heart who seems to embody the Danish landscape and nature and who gets the last word with her prayer of forgiveness and protection.
And then of course there is the music. Which was what I really wanted to talk about. The music is absolutely sublime and it is the music that lifts up the characters from the sticky soil of the limping lyrics. I regret that I am unable to share the music with you, but I very much recommend it: There is at least one version on the market, released from record company Danacord. The score illustrates beautifully the overall feel of the opera; the majestic solemnity of a fixed, hierarchic universe and the grousing feel of a grass-root, rebellious movement that threats it. There is no better example of this than the court dance of act I. Heise has obviously taken care to create a courtly medieval atmosphere with this piece, whose time and tonality lend brilliantly from the Danish folk ballad tradition. But instead of dwelling on these tendencies and make the music into a pretty little period piece, Heise makes sure to create a sense of drama within the frames of the medieval-harking royal dance: The forte and piano of the piece changes constantly and unpredictably, ensuing in the listener a sense of danger and empending conflict, rather than simply imitating the safe, steady procession of a courtly dance.
And to round things up nicely; this courtly dance is actually mentioned in the libretto as a St. John’s Eve’s dance! So it really does have it all when it comes to midsummer sentimentality. And like Midsummer it’s rich on both sentimental beauty, and the solstice menacing feel of being headed towards darker times. I recommend King and Marshall warmly for June sentimentality.
/marie
Calendary Music – May – Siegfried and the Forest Bird
August 13, 2007 at 8:18 pm | In Calendary music, Music, Opera, The Course of the Year | Leave a CommentWriting my May-entry for my Calendary Literature category, it occured to me that I could hardly think of any nightingales in operas. There is Stravinsky’s The Nightingale, of course, but apart from that, the nightingale doesn’t really make any appearances in operatic dramas, neither as a bird, nor as a metaphor.
There are other birds, however, (Papageno alone is good for at least half a dozen) and among the most notable is probably Siegfried’s Forest Bird, and I’ve decided that this bird is to be the subject of this year’s May entry.
The Forest Bird as seen in Kasper Bech Holten’s staging of Siegfried at the Copenhagen Opera, 2005
*************************************
This bird actually shares quite a few of the qualities found in Marie de France’s, Boccacio’s, or Keats’s nightingale: Pure of heart, it posseses a kind of godly insight that surpasses human intelligense and only through Siegfried’s new-found supernatural hearing (which he’s gained after the slaying of Fafner the dragon) is he able to process this truth as the bird sings it to him: “Oh, [Siegfried] mustn’t trust Mime, the unfaithful!/Listen carefully to the traitor’s hypocritic words” it says as it urges Siegfried to see behind the treachery of human relations and listen to the intuitive voice of truth. Rather like John Keats’s persona, Siegfried can achieve the ability to appreciate the forest bird’s song only by submitting himself to fancy and imagination (Siegfried must drink a slayed dragon’s blood where Keats’s persona spoke of ‘hemlock’), but once he’s achieved this ability, the forest bird’s beautiful singing brings him a knowledge that surpasses that of human rational thinking.
And Wagner does great justice to the bird song through his composition; the Forest Bird’s small part is beautifully written and is striking in the context of the Ring cycle. It’s a soprano part, but a lyrical one, very much in contrast with the heavy dramatic sopranos of the opera, and with lots of trills to contrast the massive, legato tonality to be found in the rest of Wagner’s work. Finally, the orchestration that backs up the trilling soprano voice is minimal. Nothing but piano violins back up the merry warbling. In a Wagner opera, a composer so partial towards the volumnous brass (Siegfried’s leitmotiv, for instance, is written out for the horn) this musical slimness is startling: One gets the feeling that the whole orchestra, and thus the entire extra-diegetic sphere, listening intently to the slim, playful voice of the diegetically singing Forest Bird. It is the sound of sunbeams playing with the downy light-green leaves of beech forests in May, and it’s almost too beautiful for a coarse, unrefined man like Siegfried.
Touched by the Forest Bird’s singing, Siegfried (Stig Fogh Andersen) embarks on an almost artistic pursue of the refined and beautiful.
********************************************
The part of the Forest Bird and its light-weight, thralling contrast to the rest of the music in this five-hour-long Wagner opera is too striking to be ignored, I think. I’m thinking that Wagner was as fascinated by the paradox of the songbird as the likes of Marie de France and John Keats were before him. Despite being small and insignificant, the songbird may serve as the voice of nature to us, and if we hold our breaths open our ears, we may be able to perceive the infinite beauty of this voice, despite being coarse, primitive and mortal humans. That’s what I hear in Wagner’s music for the Forest Bird anyway. And that is why I can always hear the trilling soprano playing within my inner ear when strolling through a downily clad spring forest in May.
Bless you, Wagner 
/marie
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