Wagner and Cap
Aug. 25th, 2011 11:29 amToday's sacrifice for art involves listening to Tannhäuser in Bayreuth at 35° Celsius. In case you're unfamiliar with the conditions, the opera house Wagner cajoled out of Ludwig II and other supporters to produce his own music dramas in has fabulous accoustics, but partly because of that only the most basic of airconditioning. (Anything else would spoil said accoustics.) This is why the musicians, whom other than the conductor the audience cannot see due to the Bayreuth orchestra being cunningly hidden beneath the stage, always show up in t-shirts. (This is true, and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shezan will vouch for it because we demonstrated it to her.) The audience, of course, does not have this option and shows up in formal dress. My Aged Parent has threatened to leave his tie at home this time, though.
Incidentally, and speaking of Wagner, yesterday I got around to watching Captain America, and there is inevitably (inevitably given the WWII setting and the fact the main villain is German) a scene in it in which Wagner is played. To be precise, Siegmund's "Ein Schwert verhieß mir der Vater..." from the first act of Die Walküre. While listening to it, I wondered whether someone in the production team was trying to be clever, because here's what Siegmund actually sings in case you're not familiar with Die Walküre, only slightly shortened: "My father promised there'd be a sword for me in my hour of greatest need. Well, given that a man who hates my guts has locked me up without weapons and threatened to kill me in the morning, and given he's an abusive jerk to his wife to boot and I think I fancy said wife who seems strangely familiar anyway, I'd say this is it. Down with abusive bullies! Damn it, Dad, where's that sword?" Spoiler for Die Walküre: he does get the sword, but it fails him and breaks, and Siegmund dies, partly because Dad is actually Wotan/Odin/Mr. Wednesday and involved in a big time supernatural powerstruggle. Anyway, given this bit of Wagnerian music plays when the main villain demonstrates the effectiveness of the superweapons with which he hopes to conquer the world (as supervillains do), I thought it might have been meant as ironic foreshadowing. Or not. Probably not.
The film itself was entertaining and far easier to take than I'd feared re: WWII setting, because we're so firmly in not-touching-any-reality fantasyland as soon as the action transfers to Europe, and it did the most important thing, making you care about its characters, especially the main one. It was a smart decision to let the audience spend not just a few minutes but a sizable part of the film with Steve Rogers pre transformation, i.e. scrawny-kid-from-Brooklyn Steve who tries and tries against the odds, had to learn how to think on his feet because he doesn't have size or brawn to protect him, and throughout demonstrates that fundemental core of decency that stays with the character through the decades and is so hard to get across in films without coding characters as either wooden or hypocritical. ( Spoilery observations follow. )
shezan will vouch for it because we demonstrated it to her.) The audience, of course, does not have this option and shows up in formal dress. My Aged Parent has threatened to leave his tie at home this time, though. Incidentally, and speaking of Wagner, yesterday I got around to watching Captain America, and there is inevitably (inevitably given the WWII setting and the fact the main villain is German) a scene in it in which Wagner is played. To be precise, Siegmund's "Ein Schwert verhieß mir der Vater..." from the first act of Die Walküre. While listening to it, I wondered whether someone in the production team was trying to be clever, because here's what Siegmund actually sings in case you're not familiar with Die Walküre, only slightly shortened: "My father promised there'd be a sword for me in my hour of greatest need. Well, given that a man who hates my guts has locked me up without weapons and threatened to kill me in the morning, and given he's an abusive jerk to his wife to boot and I think I fancy said wife who seems strangely familiar anyway, I'd say this is it. Down with abusive bullies! Damn it, Dad, where's that sword?" Spoiler for Die Walküre: he does get the sword, but it fails him and breaks, and Siegmund dies, partly because Dad is actually Wotan/Odin/Mr. Wednesday and involved in a big time supernatural powerstruggle. Anyway, given this bit of Wagnerian music plays when the main villain demonstrates the effectiveness of the superweapons with which he hopes to conquer the world (as supervillains do), I thought it might have been meant as ironic foreshadowing. Or not. Probably not.
The film itself was entertaining and far easier to take than I'd feared re: WWII setting, because we're so firmly in not-touching-any-reality fantasyland as soon as the action transfers to Europe, and it did the most important thing, making you care about its characters, especially the main one. It was a smart decision to let the audience spend not just a few minutes but a sizable part of the film with Steve Rogers pre transformation, i.e. scrawny-kid-from-Brooklyn Steve who tries and tries against the odds, had to learn how to think on his feet because he doesn't have size or brawn to protect him, and throughout demonstrates that fundemental core of decency that stays with the character through the decades and is so hard to get across in films without coding characters as either wooden or hypocritical. ( Spoilery observations follow. )
