You Never Forget Your First Time

I've discovered that the old adage of 'You never forget your first time' is true for many things. Most recently for me, it's true for Wagner.

I wasn't raised in a Wagner household. I'm not even sure my parents were overly enthusiastic opera lovers; they usually preferred theater and the symphony. But when I was eight, old enough for my first grown-up night out on the town, they made the mistake of taking me to see an English translation of Carmen. And I've been hooked on opera ever since. Mostly French and Italian operas, but occasionally there's the odd English opera or German Mozart opera mixed in the bunch. But I've managed to avoid, in sixteen years of attending the opera, going to any German operas. The fat ladies with fake armor and horned hats just couldn't compare with the sweet, slight women who, as Mimi, gave a voice to the meaning of melancholy, or to the Carmens who flirted and smiled their way in ecstasy to their eventual deaths, with devastation in their wakes.

Still, not being one to refuse opera tickets under any circumstances, I gleefully accepted a pair of seats at the Metropolitan Opera's performance of Die Walküre. For nearly five hours, I listened to an acclaimed cast of Deborah Voigt, Lisa Gasteen, Clifton Forbis, Michelle DeYoung and James Morris take the demanding score and wrangle it to the ground with a force and authority that Wagner would have admired.

People generally have one complaint about German opera, namely the language. German sounds choppy and harsh compared to the soft, flowing librettos in Italian and French. But this cast managed to smooth out the rough edges to the point where you hardly noticed the language at all.

The costume designer went to town with the armored suits, but held back with the horned helmets. The sets were the greatest deficiency in the production, so dark, and with such poor lighting, that any character not standing downstage couldn't be seen even with a key light.

It's a very beautiful opera, and pop culture's affinity for 'Flight of the Valkyries' certainly speaks to Wagner's credit (though not necessarily to pop culture's). But my biggest complaint, I don't think any production could answer to my satisfaction. I am still wondering days after seeing the opera what the point is. I want to say it's something about family - but what about family? Incest? Filial duty? Infidelity? And what about these things? Are they good? Are they bad? A little guidance, please!

All this aside, I'm stuck in the moral quandary of possibly becoming a Wagner fan.

It's a little scary to think that I have something in common with Adolf Hitler.