Zurueck vom Ring!

[muckefuck]

As others have said: Quickest 18 hours of opera ever! I will now start returning your phone calls, getting my work done, doing my laundry, and generally returning to normal life. (That is, as soon as I get back from New York City.)

I certainly can't do justice to the experience with my poor descriptive capacities. Instead, I'll just give y'all a single telling anecdote: This afternoon, as I was eating a late lunch, I started reading through the programme. When I came to a passage in a performer's bio about how the work demonstrates the power of redemption through love, I began to tear up. (See! There's Romanticism in this cynical shell yet!)

Many thanks to bunj and Nuphy for sharing the delight, answering my stupid questions, and generally being my faithful companions. They made the experience twice what it would've been otherwise. My heart goes out to everyone involved in the production, tutti bravi, who put themselves through hell (or at least Nibelheim) for the sake of several hundred well-heeled opera buffs.

I'm going to be riding this kick for a while, so if you've been wanting me to do some research for you on mediaeval Germanic folklore and literature, this is your opportunity!

Comments

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

How is your 17th century German? f8n_begorra's late lover was a Teutonophile and translated a large number of private material, letters and diaries, of William of Orange. The translations were lost in a theft, but apparently the original letters are still available.

Why the interest? It seems that William of Orange was the first to celebrate that fabulous Dutch holiday the Queen's Birthday. In effect, all those July 12 marches are really Ireland's first queer pride parades.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Mediaeval, honey, mediaeval. That's before the Renaissance, much less the Counter-Reformation! What is someone born in Den Haag who ruled England doing writing in German anyway?

Still, I love a challenge. Is there a particular letter or passage you need translated?

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Yes, I recognize the difference in periods, thank you. But back when I was an undergrad German major I was made to study several different periods of German literature, and not in those nifty little modern Hoch Deutsch translations put out by Reclam.

Apparently German was spoken in Den Haag because the Dutch monarchy of the time, like the Dutch monarchy today, had more than a little German in them. That Book of Gotha appears to have been more effective than anything by Debrett. German monarchs were simply everywhere.

I do not have the material currently. All the translations and in fact copies in the original German disappeared in that storage theft a few years back. It's a question of finding precisely which library in Ireland holds papers, probably Cork, and then heading from there. I fear it's probably more work than it's worth (maybe might wean a chapter title and footnote or two out of it) as it's not the focus of my dissertation.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

In that case, you're probably far more qualified than I. One of the reasons I chose not to double-major in German and Linguistics was that the reading list was extremely heavy on Early Modern works and I found anything Schiller and earlier (especially Kleist!) tough going indeed. Besides, by the time you get to Corc, drink yourself into a stupor, stumble upon the library, wrestle the curators for the documents, figure out how to get them photocopied, sober up, and come back home, my kick will have long since evapourated and I'll have moved on to Revived Cornish or Burmese or Manchu folklore or some other such nonsense. I'm a magpie in more ways than one!

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Or dilettante?

I gave up on German after the Polish/Dutch fiasco. I was doing a double major in German and Russian and each department required a year of a related language so I was forced into P&D. Only after completing the single year did each department tell me that on account of my double language major the requirement was waived. Sigh.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

But, hey, you came away from it all with the ability to order a Trappist in Antwerpen and a Żytnia in Gdańsk, right?

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

You know sometimes it's just easier to point and then mimic drinking. That's especially effective near the Mannekin Pis.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it works well in the leather bars, too. "Yes, I'll have what he's having."

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

There was a wonderful Dewar's profile of Henry Geldzahler and his art-twink du saison some years back. Henry seated comfortably in the wingback chair, art twink standing, leaning in what can only be called a feminine pose. At the end of the profile the Dewar's interview would ask the subject "How do you like to drink your Dewar's?" Art-twink's answer, "I'll have whatever Henry's having."