Customer Reviews

Reflections on Wagner's Ring

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There are few better suited to reflect on the Ring Cycle than John Culshaw. An instrumental figure in the titanic Solti Ring, Culshaw's Ring Resounding offered a clear, bright view on Wagner's phenomenon, a 16-hour opera cycle that has been regarded, with the Chartres Cathedral at Notre Dame, as one of Western art's pinnacles. Reflections does the same: it shows Culshaw's personal yet often virtually universal thinking.

This book was drawn from Culshaw's lectures, in the intermissions, which appeared on the Met Opera broadcast of the entire Ring Cycle some years back. Essentially this is a volume printed by popular demand. Reflections is a "middle ground" to read. The book's character analysis tends to be concise yet much more meaningful than the general pages and pages of review, and the same applies for the rest of the volume. The connections forged by this book between Wagner's Ring and general humanity are strong, and Reflections is certainly a good companion to the Ring for those who seek to find a greater awareness within Wagner's work. The photographs and illustrations are in the style of Wieland Wagner's famous Bayreuth productions. They seem, to me, a perfect choice for the book. John Culshaw's words are designed to get the reader thinking about Wagner's meaning: Wieland's sets and lightings are likewise very open to interpretation.

This little book compiles with minor revision four intermission talks from the Metropolitan Opera in 1975 and is some of the best Wagner writing out there. Father Lee made reference to these talks nearly 15 years later when he gave a similar set of talks at the Met that were brought together in the book "Turning the Sky Around." Both authors had a wonderful sense of Wagner and the Ring and were able to give real insights in into these immensely interesting operas in a very short space. I would recommend either book for anyone (whatever their experience with Wagner) interested in the Ring. The Culshaw book however looks to be out of print and available only as used copies -- the good news however is that these lectures can be accessed (as of Jan 2011) at the following sites: [...]. If these don't work, hopefully some searching for Wagner, Ring, Metropolitan Opera, Intermission, Culshaw, etc. will get you to these wonderful talks.

UPDATE: sorry but Amazon won't let me list the links in the review -- please try the google searching suggested words and you should hit upon downloadable audio versions of these great lectures