// Ringy Ringy Ring. /

Some articles!

- The Ring and Rings.  A New Yorker piece on Tolkien's Ring, Wagner's Ring, myth, and music.

- Wilhelm Furtwängler: Genius Forged in the Cauldron of War.  A really long and very interesting article on the conductor behind the Wagner recordings (Ring & Tristan) that have most moved me.  His quixotic style really stands out and excites me at a spiritual level.  Hans pointed out to me that there's another edition reputed to be of better audio quality.

- Reviews and rankings of various renditions of Wagner's Ring Cycle.  Resources like this have been very useful to me.  There's a lot of general agreement amongst vocal Wagnerites about which constitute the top tier renditions, and by comparing my personal ranking opinions as I work through them with the far-more-studied-than I reviewers, I'm able to figure out which school of opinion I tend to fall into, and can also then sometimes derive words for what I know only as emotions and sensations of the spirit.

- I'm currently working through the Boulez Bayreuth Ring Cycle, which features absolutely the best acting I've seen in a Ring yet.  This may be related to the fact that the director hails from a theatre rather than Opera background, a la Baz Lhurmann's Boheme.  The Barenboim Ring Cycle will hopefully be the next one we check out.

- I'm also looking to explore Krauss.  Since I have heard neither Parsifal nor Krauss, I may start with the pairing thereof.

- It's a year and a half away, but I'm already foaming with excitement over seeing my Opera-crush Greer Grimsley play Wotan in Seattle's 2009 Ring