The Ring Cycle

For those not in the know, Wagner’s The Ring Cycle is one of the most famous operas ever written. It tells the tales of German and Scandinavian legends – of Gods and Rhine maidens and magical rings and features the famous ride of the Valkyries.

It is arguably the biggest Opera ever conceived. It is certainly the longest. In its entirety, the full cycle – made up of 4 separate ‘operas’ - takes 15 hours to perform over 4 nights.

It is a hugely expensive production and is very rarely performed. Opera lovers will plan over seas travel to see it. Opera companies staging a production need additional millions to put it on and start promotion at least 18 months out. If you need to find enough Opera buffs who are keen to put themselves through 15 hours of intense Wagnerian Opera, paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the tickets to attend – let alone get to the host city – you need a start asap!


As far as I can tell, The Ring Cycle has only been performed in Australia three times. In Melbourne in 1913, in Adelaide in 2004 and now again in Melbourne in 2013!

Opera Australia are staging the full 15 hours in November / December 2013. Tickets go on sale in late 2011 and I am pre-registering because I am super-keen to see this magnificent work in its entirety once in my life. It is sure to be spectacular.

These are some of the stats from the Opera Australia website:

• Rehearsals will begin a year in advance.
• The orchestra will include more than 100 players.
• 350 singers, dancers, designers, costume-makers and backstage staff will be involved
• The Ring Cycle features 34 principal roles.
• The set is expected to take 14 months to build.

For a look at what The Ring Cycle is like, check out my favourite Looney Tunes cartoon of all time.

Dear Harry Potter

Dear Harry Potter,

I'm only on page 13 of the 5th volume of your selective biography and already you are pissing me off.

Please stop being an annoying tosser and help me to enjoy the book in a way I failed to the first time around.

Regards,
B

Our amazing world

This is just a really cool info graphic. I can’t post the image itself in this blog because it’s just too damn long. This charts the Earth’s highest to lowest point with various human-made and natural markers in between. Some of them really surprised me; like just how high up some cities are, how deep a sperm whale swims and how deep the Deepwater Horizon drill penetrates. All sounds obvious, but somehow the graphic really hit it home.

I watched Labyrinth the other night!

David Bowie's pants are, as ever, completely amazing. In a terrifying way.

Seriously, this movie. I saw it for the first time when I was 10 or 12, and I desperately wanted the princess-dress the main character gets to wear. I also didn't understand why she turns the Goblin King down at the end. Who wouldn't want to live in a magical kingdom where you presumably get to dress like an 80s cross between a RenFaire addict and a glamour model, and everyone breaks out into saxophone-riddled musical numbers at any available opportunity?

Now that I'm older, I appreciate it slightly differently; Jennifer Connelly was only 14 when the movie was filmed, so watching a 39-year-old David Bowie confessing his undying love to her adds a whole extra layer to the whole thing...

Whatever, though. The movie's still rad, and my DVD has an absolutely amazing "Behind the Scenes" thing about all the sets and puppets that's almost as intriguing as the film itself!

I wish I was avant-garde enough for this.

It's a chandelier made out of the guts of a piano.

But I'm not and I probably never will be.

And I just have to live with that.

Photo courtesy of Lost in E Minor.

B re-reads Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

I started reading this book on a weekend away in Melbourne. For more details, see Chuck’s tumblr.

I almost didn’t take the book with me. After all, I had da little bit of Philosopher’s Stone left over and I wasn’t planning on doing too much reading over the weekend. Thank god I did take it because I devoured it!

Chamber of Secrets is one of my least favourite HP books. My levels of love for the HP books goes something like this:

Adore: Prisoner of Azkaban / Half-blood Prince
Love: Deathly Hallows
Have a crush: Goblet of Fire
Date: Philosopher’s Stone
If you asked me out I’d be really mean about saying no: Chamber of Secrets / Order of the Phoenix

So I was only really reading Chamber of Secrets because it’s part of the series but it was so much more than that! In my head, issues like the school being horrible to Harry run through the whole novel like a bad analogy, ruining it for me. However, it’s all drama, drama, drama and so exciting! The Harry-hating actually isn’t too bad. I must have been feeling very sensitive the first time I read it. The giants spiders are terrifying, the basilisk is super-scary and Fawkes is a Legend.

When I read the books, in my head the characters are not replaced by their movie counter-parts. Harry is still my imagining of Harry, not Daniel Radcliffe as Harry. Same with Hermione, Hagrid, Dumbledore – almost all of them. Some pick up characteristics. Snape sounds like Alan Rickman because I want him to and Professor McGonagall looks more like Dame Maggie Smith than she did before. However, Professor Gilderoy Lockhart has completely morphed into Kenneth Branagh. The hair, the smile, the creepiness – it’s all there in my head now, winking at me unpleasantly.

On the topic of the movies, it is delightful to be re-reading the books and seeing how faithful the early movies were. Any changes made were done for the purposes of movie-making and do not impede on the story telling at all. So very rare in a movie adaptation.

Chamber of Secrets was so much better than I was expecting it to be and I am so happy to have re-read it now and enjoyed every minute. Time to read: 3 days

The trustworthiness of beards

Another sweet info-graphic (because who doesn’t love info graphics), this time on the trustworthiness of beards. I’m not sure I agree with all of it but I think it is pretty accurate. Especially the placing of the neck beard in ‘threatening’, because neck beards are manky and indicative of certain laziness and lack of self-care.

If you have a bearded man in your life or you are thinking of inviting one in, please take a look at this helpful chart to gauge just how trustworthy they are and perhaps take the necessary precautions.