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.
The idea of doing an hour-long radio piece on The Ring automatically gets high marks. This piece will be loved by those who already know the music, and I suspect it will pique the interest of those who listen to classical music but not very much Wagner. This is definitely a piece you want to hear on the radio just before the Ring cycle comes to town.
Wow! This is a FANTASTIC hour of radio. Smart, creative, exciting, complex, surprising, sound rich, thoughtful.
The only drawback, for all you program directors out there, is that the piece was made for New York at a particular point in time... so you can't just put this hour on your radio station wholesale. But, you should listen, because this is hot, cutting edge, fantastic radio, and if more public radio sounded like this, no one would be able to turn it off!
The piece addresses two questions: What is Wagner's Ring Cycle? And why does it continue to inspire people? And to answer those questions, the host takes listeners on a journey across NYC - to a class a Julliard, to a restaurant... I won't spoil it by telling you all the places you get to go and the minds you get to meet.
If you can find an hour to listen to this, do. You will be rewarded with inspiration, and images and thoughts that will keep coming back to you long after you're done.
(And don't think you need to know anything about opera or Wagner to love this piece. I knew embarrassingly little about either... and now I want to know so much more).
I've heard the future of public radio and this is it. Jad Abumrad has lots of obvious talent and WNYC is smart to be pushing him to help brand the station. He sounds, to this reviewer anyway, to be where public radio wants to be heading after the defenestration of Bob Edwards; that is to say he's young, he's smart and incredibly engaging to listen to. What Jad accomplishes in this piece is not easy -- boiling down something as daunting as Wagner's Ring Cycle into an hour of exciting, smart, entertaining, edgy radio. It's layered with music, with terrific expert types to explain this thing to us neophytes and with Jad's own journey to understand this paragon of high culture which takes him from Brooklyn to Broadway to Hollywood by way of a Manhattan supermarket and from Marx to Tolkien. We're along with him for the ride and he doesn't disappoint. The production is flawless, the timing and pacing are perfect, the music illustrates, punctuates and stimulates the piece. At the end you feel as though you've learned something important at the hands of a new young master of the radio craft and you're ready for more!
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.
Attention-grabbing from the start, The Ring and I explores a little-understood musical aspect that almost unknowingly impacts American life across social and economical levels. From cartoons watched by impovished children to Met performances "graced" by the presence of debutantes, virtually all here have heard at least a segment of Wagnerian opera.
It is also honest in its presentation, including openly addressing Wagner's anti-Semitism.
The presentation is sufficiently broad-ranged to enrapt adult listeners (including professional musicians), yet is simple enough to warrant presenting to children as young as pre-teens. It achieves this by relating the music and story to modern music stories, especially the Ring Trilogy in the movies.
The gift of this presentation is that however stereotyped opera and especially Wagner's opera is in our minds, we are lifted beyond our prejudices to explore the possibilities his music has to enrich all our lives.
Jad is one of the best young producers in public radio and this program demonstrates his talent handily.
Most attempts by producers to cover the arts have all the excitement of watching water boil. Those pieces often contain too much polite reverence to offer anything unique or interesting; others come off as didactic or exclusive. In this piece, the producer takes one of classical music's warhorses back to the egg. The results are fresh, engaging, insightful, funny, and fantastic radio. The piece makes one of the most well known works of opera seem new and exciting--which is an off-the-scale accomplishment.
While some classical blue bloods will grimace at the less-than-pious treatment of Wagner's masterwork, others will appreciate its unusual (yet credible) take on a (heretofore) stale and tired subject.
This is one of those pieces that you have to ask why a station (news or classical) wouldn't air this, rather than why it would.
WNYC also deserves accolades for not only supporting this great piece of work, but for providing two (not one, but two!!) promos for stations to get the word out to listeners about this fantastic program.
There is nothing not to like here. The interviews are fun and insightful, great characters everywhere. Intriguing settings -- I'm particularly fond of the slightly out-of-tune piano and the behind-the-scenes at the Met stuff. My only complaint is that the program itself is Wagnerian as defined at the end: knowing the task is impossible, the Valiant Producers still pursued this particular grail (oops! wrong opera!). In sum, Bravo!
Comments for The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
Produced by Jad Abumrad and Aaron Cohen
Other pieces by WNYC
Rating Summary
9 comments
Hawk Mendenhall
Posted on January 14, 2009 at 05:47 PM | Permalink
Fabulous!
I hate opera, really hate it...But yet this is the only radio documentary I have on a CD and revisit regularly. This is GREAT radio.
Regis Smith
Posted on January 02, 2007 at 05:37 AM | Permalink
Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
The idea of doing an hour-long radio piece on The Ring automatically gets high marks. This piece will be loved by those who already know the music, and I suspect it will pique the interest of those who listen to classical music but not very much Wagner. This is definitely a piece you want to hear on the radio just before the Ring cycle comes to town.
Emily Hanford
Posted on November 20, 2005 at 05:40 PM | Permalink
Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
Wow! This is a FANTASTIC hour of radio. Smart, creative, exciting, complex, surprising, sound rich, thoughtful.
The only drawback, for all you program directors out there, is that the piece was made for New York at a particular point in time... so you can't just put this hour on your radio station wholesale. But, you should listen, because this is hot, cutting edge, fantastic radio, and if more public radio sounded like this, no one would be able to turn it off!
The piece addresses two questions: What is Wagner's Ring Cycle? And why does it continue to inspire people? And to answer those questions, the host takes listeners on a journey across NYC - to a class a Julliard, to a restaurant... I won't spoil it by telling you all the places you get to go and the minds you get to meet.
If you can find an hour to listen to this, do. You will be rewarded with inspiration, and images and thoughts that will keep coming back to you long after you're done.
(And don't think you need to know anything about opera or Wagner to love this piece. I knew embarrassingly little about either... and now I want to know so much more).
Emon Hassan
Posted on April 25, 2005 at 11:56 AM | Permalink
Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
One of the best radio pieces ever made! Everyone should listen to this documentary, opera lover or not. This is radio at its finest.
Mary McGrath
Posted on June 01, 2004 at 06:16 AM | Permalink
Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
I've heard the future of public radio and this is it. Jad Abumrad has lots of obvious talent and WNYC is smart to be pushing him to help brand the station. He sounds, to this reviewer anyway, to be where public radio wants to be heading after the defenestration of Bob Edwards; that is to say he's young, he's smart and incredibly engaging to listen to. What Jad accomplishes in this piece is not easy -- boiling down something as daunting as Wagner's Ring Cycle into an hour of exciting, smart, entertaining, edgy radio. It's layered with music, with terrific expert types to explain this thing to us neophytes and with Jad's own journey to understand this paragon of high culture which takes him from Brooklyn to Broadway to Hollywood by way of a Manhattan supermarket and from Marx to Tolkien. We're along with him for the ride and he doesn't disappoint. The production is flawless, the timing and pacing are perfect, the music illustrates, punctuates and stimulates the piece. At the end you feel as though you've learned something important at the hands of a new young master of the radio craft and you're ready for more!
Amy O'Leary
Posted on April 21, 2004 at 07:27 AM | Permalink
Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
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.
Don "Orfeo" Rechtman
Posted on April 15, 2004 at 09:18 AM | Permalink
Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
Attention-grabbing from the start, The Ring and I explores a little-understood musical aspect that almost unknowingly impacts American life across social and economical levels. From cartoons watched by impovished children to Met performances "graced" by the presence of debutantes, virtually all here have heard at least a segment of Wagnerian opera.
It is also honest in its presentation, including openly addressing Wagner's anti-Semitism.
The presentation is sufficiently broad-ranged to enrapt adult listeners (including professional musicians), yet is simple enough to warrant presenting to children as young as pre-teens. It achieves this by relating the music and story to modern music stories, especially the Ring Trilogy in the movies.
The gift of this presentation is that however stereotyped opera and especially Wagner's opera is in our minds, we are lifted beyond our prejudices to explore the possibilities his music has to enrich all our lives.
Eric Nuzum
Posted on March 22, 2004 at 07:06 AM | Permalink
Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
Most attempts by producers to cover the arts have all the excitement of watching water boil. Those pieces often contain too much polite reverence to offer anything unique or interesting; others come off as didactic or exclusive. In this piece, the producer takes one of classical music's warhorses back to the egg. The results are fresh, engaging, insightful, funny, and fantastic radio. The piece makes one of the most well known works of opera seem new and exciting--which is an off-the-scale accomplishment.
While some classical blue bloods will grimace at the less-than-pious treatment of Wagner's masterwork, others will appreciate its unusual (yet credible) take on a (heretofore) stale and tired subject.
This is one of those pieces that you have to ask why a station (news or classical) wouldn't air this, rather than why it would.
WNYC also deserves accolades for not only supporting this great piece of work, but for providing two (not one, but two!!) promos for stations to get the word out to listeners about this fantastic program.
Jackson Braider
Posted on March 17, 2004 at 04:59 AM | Permalink
Review of The Ring and I: The Passion, The Myth, The Mania
There is nothing not to like here. The interviews are fun and insightful, great characters everywhere. Intriguing settings -- I'm particularly fond of the slightly out-of-tune piano and the behind-the-scenes at the Met stuff. My only complaint is that the program itself is Wagnerian as defined at the end: knowing the task is impossible, the Valiant Producers still pursued this particular grail (oops! wrong opera!). In sum, Bravo!