Nothing has made me feel pure awe like Wagner's Ring cycle has. Is there anything that comes close to these 4 operas?
Someone once recommended me the Lord of the Rings as a similar work. Fun book trilogy but not exactly what I was looking for. None of the pathos and drama you find in the Ring cycle.
I need something truly epic, in the old sense of the word.
=)
Did you see the Met or ROH production?
Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered should fit the bill. There's pathos and drama aplenty as well as some awe-inspiring passages. I suspect that chivalric romances as well as renaissance lit in general might be for you though I'm rather poorly read in them. Romantic lit of course is pathos come books but perhaps it's a bit different kind of pathos that you are looking for?
Try Paradise Lost or the Iliad, OP.
If you like opera OP try Manon or Rigoletto. Not German but popular for a reason.
fedora
Manon’s especially fantastic.
Berlioz’s Les Troyens is particularly brilliant too.
Wagner actually fucked up the legend a lot, did you know? Completely butchered it.
the ring cycle is so powerful because the characters are almighty gods and the fate of the entire world is at stake. are there any similarly high-stakes works?
I feel like other user's have said something along the lines of Wagner being just as great a poet as a composer.
Are his librettos actually good enough that they could be read on their own like a Shakespeare play?
>Nothing has made me feel pure awe like Wagner's Ring cycle has.
>spells it wrong
It's "Der Ring der Nibelungen"
I watched a 2hr20min production of it (I know it’s just one part not all of it). I liked it a lot but found it more interesting as a clear origin for Tolkien. If not directly then based off the same lore. Good stuff.
God no
Where should I start with opera? I was thinking of watching The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro, then Tannhäuser.
Is Wagner a man at all? Is he not rather a disease? Everything he touches he contaminates. He has made music sick. A typical décadent who thinks himself necessary with his corrupted taste, who arrogates to himself a higher taste, who tries to establish his depravity as a law, as progress, as a fulfilment. And no one guards against it. His powers of seduction attain monstrous proportions, holy incense hangs around him, the misunderstanding concerning him is called the Gospel,—and he has certainly not converted only the poor in spirit to his cause!
I should like to open the window a little:—Air! More air!
The strat is Carmen - Marriage of Figaro - Das Rheingold
The Middle High German version of the myth is good if you read a verse translation.
The Song of Roland comes close in sense of heroism.
Try some Menschheitsdramas like Goethe's Faust and Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound".
They are pretty good. I can't bear the operas themselves because of the female voices, but the librettos function as full-fledged plays that can stand on their own. I've never seen the operas, and only listened to the suites made out of them, yet I share OP's sentiment based on the librettos alone.
>because of the female voices,
You gay dog the female voices are the best part.
Which video recordings of Carmen and Das Rheingold (preferably the entire Ring Cycle) should I start with?
Met version with Elina Garanca for carmen and for the ring cycle the 1990s Met Version. New ones are god awful. If you really ready I'd recommend a Met on demand subscription. It will have the ones I said. Figure out all the operas that look interesting to you and get a month subscription and try to watch as many.
What’s the best translation of the Nibelungenlied?
>Fun book trilogy
LOTR is one novel, not a trilogy.