A few frustrations today, not the least of which is the continued absence of my luggage.
(Wagner would not be happy with whoever is in his parking spot)
Resting place of Richard and Cosima.
Resting place of Wagner's dog, Russ. (No, I am not joking, Wagner loved dogs).
I swung by Maisel's brewery, but seems tours aren't until 2pm. That's cutting it a little close to Siegfried, if I want to see Wahnfried, Wagner's house and resting place, and currently a Wagner museum. .
Unfortunately (as I knew ahead of time) Wahnfried is being renovated and is closed. So I was able to see the exterior and the Meister's grave (also his wife and dog), but not the interior or the museum.
I also swung by the Markgrafliches opera house, the largest in Germany until the Festspielhaus house was completed, and one of the most ornate in Europe. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me, this was also closed to renovations until 2017 and I was not able to see it. Here's what I missed:
Finally Siegfried was musically impeccable, but its staging was quite a bit more frustrating than Die Walkure. I had previously said the producer seemed to have no idea what made the works great. Now I think maybe he does, and is actively trying to fuck with the audience. The production seemed to consistently introduce random, inexplicable, and intrusive elements at the moments of greatest emotional tension. When Siegfried and Brunnhilde are falling in love, the stage dims to highlight a chalk outline of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao (there is no possible socialist interpretation of this scene). At the climax of the Siegfried/Brunnhilde duet, the emotional high point of the opera, there are inexplicably multiple robotic alligators on stage, one of which eats the Woodbridge, an offstage role than the virginal Siegfried inexplicably copulates with in the previous act. It seemed like a big, and intentional "fuck you" to opera fans.
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