You can check out the Election Day special to end all Election Day specials here.by KenSince, barring unforeseen developments, this is my last post before Election Day -- but lucky me, I'm gonna hafta find something to say in the rubbble of the Day After -- and even if I have anything more to say on the subject I don't see any point in trying to say it, I'm going to go with my favorite election envoi, as pictured above.Now I want to stress that this doesn't constitute a promotion for or endorsement of Opera Depot, which offers roughly a zillion classical (mostly operatic, of course) live performances. As it happens, I've been pretty happy with the stuff I've bought from them, but that's not why we're here today. We're here because I couldn't resist this special promotion running through Tuesday, linking Election Day to Götterdämmerung -- Twilight of the Gods, the culminating opera of Richard Wagner's cycle The Ring of the Nibelung. And on offer at the same time is a free download (Opera Depot offers more or less weekly free downloads; yes, of complete operas!), of the 1961 Bayreuth Festival performance of the opera.
(It's conducted by Rudolf Kempe, in his second summer conducting The Ring at Bayreuth, with Birgit Nilsson as Brünnhilde, Hans Hopf as Siegfried, Gottlob Frick as Hagen, Thomas Stewart as Gunther -- and an interesting frill, Régine Crespin as the Third Norn. I had actually ordered this performance from OD, partly to hear Crespin. I'm still dreaming of hearing a soprano sing this super-challenging role as fully and freely as it's clearly meant to be sung.)
SO IS THIS HOW THE WHOLE SYSTEM COMES CRASHING DOWN?Here's the final scene of Götterdämmerung from the video recording of the 1976-80 Bayreuth production staged by Patrice Chéreau and conducted by Pierre Boulez, with Gwyneth Jones as Brünnhilde, Jeannine Altmeyer as Gutrune, and -- at the end -- Fritz Hübner as Hagen and Norma Sharp, Ilse Gramatzki, and Marga Schiml as the Rhine Maidens Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde. The section we know as Brünnhilde's Immolation Scene begins at 3:10. Feel free, though, for our immediate purposes to advance directly to the end of the world order as we've known it -- at, say, 17:10.BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS --There are some really good people running Tuesday, and a fair number of pretty good people -- whose election would leave us better off than their defeat. And then there are some unimaginably horribly people who ever so urgently need to be defeated.#