Mira again spotted the box-set operas tonight, and then she noticed that four of the double discs sets were actually in a single box… excitedly, she jumped at the shelf yelling ‘Daddy!!! big one big one BIG ONE!!!!’. Little does she know that in that box is the music that she already will recognize as ‘Kiwl the Wabbit’. Of course, it is none other then Wagner’s Ring.

I have the Karl Böhm Bayreuth Festival recordings from 1967. Buying a complete Ring cycle is a special thing… costly on the one hand, and on the other there isn’t a perfect one you can find. Now, I would certainly look for it on DVD, but fifteen years ago a CD set was still the way to go. I researched for a good few months and asked numerous people what they thought, and eventually chose this set for two reasons… it was a live recording, shaped by a masterful conductor, and Birgit Nilsson’s ‘throat of steel’ was singing Brünnhilde. I’ve listened to this set twice, and the coughing and ambient audience noise really doesn’t bother me. The performance is great, and doesn’t feel as flat to me as the Solti studio recordings do (which seems to miss the overall arch at times… I believe these are more production errors then Solti’s, but the problem is still there).

While I am sure I will probably spend the next week going through these recordings again, I am also thinking it might be time to go through the process again and see what else I should listen to and to see what is available these days on DVD. I can’t imagine just playing these pieces straight through for the girls to hear for instance. More and more I regret spending so much money on opera CDs and wish that opera DVDs had been around in the mid-90s (or even DVDs really for that matter), but I think that is especially the case with The Ring. On top of that, though I don’t watch much TV I don’t think our little tube will cut it for watching The Ring. So I probably really just need to wait a little longer until we can afford something a little bigger and for BluRay to really take off. I just need patience… Wagner isn’t going anywhere.

Celia finally got into the box set act tonight as well, and pointed to the Ella Fitzgerald / Duke Ellington ‘Côte d’Azur’ eight disc set. A wedding present from our friends Bryn and Colin, this CD out of all our discs may be the one I will miss the packaging of the most. There are 4 two disc sets in jewel cases with different bright colors, and imprinted on the clear cases and the CDs underneath are male and female figures that, when aligned, embrace each other. The box itself is slightly off-white and doesn’t let on to art underneath. And as beautiful as the packaging is, the music in the set is even more beautiful. I probably won’t get to rip it tonight (I am ALMOST done with ‘Götterdämmerung’) but I look forward to playing it over the next couple nights after we get home with the girls.