The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania > Comments > "Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania"
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Commenter Profile
- Amy O'Leary
- Username: amyoleary
- Location: Brooklyn, New York
- Joined PRX: Oct 03, 2003
Piece Information
- "The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania"
- Summary: "The Ring and I" is a story about the love affair between hundreds of thousands of people and one, colossal, controversial and awe-inspiring piece of work, Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung.
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Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
Amy O'Leary
Posted on April 21, 2004 at 07:27 AM
The ideas in the work (and this piece) are so many, and so varied, that they do that job for you. In perhaps in the strongest testament to Wagner's musical genius (or the piece's editing?), the ideas are held tightly together by the promise of the music itself, deftly interwoven through key musical passages. The disparate interviews (talking about Food, Jung, Zeppelin, Incest, Answering Machine Messages) and music work together to give a resounding, if impossible to summarize, answer to that nagging question radio listeners everywhere must ask about a piece: "so what?"
A fast overview of the Ring at the beginning might have been nice -- but probably also impossible. This thing is too big to digest in any less time. And the ending is exactly right. Well worth the hour.