The Wagner Experience is a past tense term that has been used to denote an individual's personal "clicking" with the works of Richard Wagner. To be more specific, it means the point where a neophyte to Wagner's music becomes irreversibly immersed in it.

My first serious encounter with Wagner's music occured in the spring of 2007, with Der Ring Des Nibelungen. I purchased the James Levine-conducted dvd set, along with a book/concordance by Barry Millington entitled "Wagner's Ring". During my first full viewing (four day's worth) I was overwhelmed and intimidated by the scope of the piece. I even watched it following the libretto, which I see now only hindered my inward absorption. After that first viewing, I walked away having been very moved by the "highlights", but feeling very small and lost in the face of such towering genius. The music at times seemed impenetrable to me, and made me feel dumb.

That same year the Kings of Metal, Manowar, released their ground breaking heavy metal cd, Gods of War . This cd was obviously heavily influenced by Wagner's Ring, and bassist/main songwriter Joey DeMaio publicly confessed his own Wagner Experience. That cd spurred me on to renewing my study of the Ring, after nearly 8 months of timid avoidance.

This time, the prelude to Das Rheingold floored me, and spurned me onto being more open to the piece as a whole. The initial scene with the mermaids and Alberich sets the musical stage for much of the rest of the opera, so clicking with that helped me alot with the rest of the tetrology.

As a sidebar, many Wagner "newbies" utilise what is termed a "bloody chunks" method, trying out the preludes and overtures of his works first, kind of like dipping one's toes into a hot bath before full immersion. This approach can be very helpful. But I wanted to start out with the full experience.

I got much more out of the Ring the second time, but I still felt like I was missing alot. It was obvious to me that this work was a real milestone: its scope and depth were apparent from the very first listen. I later likened this deeply felt intuition to a spiritual experience: it was as though I could inwardly intuit how much of an impact the Ring would have on my life.

I became committed toward having a deeper appreciation and understanding of the Ring, and Wagner overall.

I learned that the greatest studio recording (by popular concensus) of the Ring was conducted by Georg Solti . So I devised a course of action: buy each part of the Ring Quadrilogy, one cd set for each month. That way I could immerse myself completely into each set per month: Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, etc.

It worked. My main problem before had been a misunderstanding in how I should approach the music. I kept expecting compact, consistently resolving melodies along the lines of Mozart (at the time I was very much under the spell of the movie "Amadeus").   Due in part to my further reading, as well as my more willfully focused listening approach, I now understood how Wagner often wouldn't use conventional (I-V and I-IV-V) melodic patterns, since those tend to be complete within themselves. That is, they couldn't be continually expanded upon (as in the case of a psychological epic) without turning trite and repetitive.  Popular and folk musics tend to rely on conventional, predictably resolving melodies to the virtual excusion of any others, since they are perfect for folks that mostly love music to "jam out" or dance to (nothing wrong with that!).

When one listens intently to Wagner's music, especially keeping in mind the themes in the more "popular" parts of his operas, one can understand how he worked. Wagner liked to have large, sprawling melodic forms in order to keep a broad scope. He would often take what would later be described as "germ motives" from the more accessible melodies in his operas, and elongate, invert, retime and implode them. It just takes more attentiveness and patience to unravel the intricacies.

I must add here that Wagner had several instances of what could be termed non-melodic, at least borderline recitative parts in all of his later operas. This was almost always due to the fact that he would begin working on his operas as prose works, and then only marginally edit the text when setting to work on the actual music composition. That is, he'd often try to write the music to fit the existent words. Obviously, this resulted in some unmusical sections in his dramas, but they are easy to identify and forgive. Often their placement adds to the overall dynamics of the piece.

In any case, I learned from my experience something that could be likened to a "spiritual truth": to fully absorb something above and beyond one's preconceptions, one must empty one's self. The only resistance I was experiencing was just that: the "I". I had to learn a whole other musical language, had to put aside the "but that's not right!" sensibility. Wagner's accomplishment in terms of personal expression is amazing, but a person might only be capable of fully ansorbing it through the discipline described above, a discipline that's been a part of learning since...well, probably since learning itself.

Here is an excerpt from a review I wrote concerning the Metropolitan Opera's performance of Der Ring Des Nibelungen on dvd (James Levine conducting); I include this here to help the beginning Wagnerian pick a good first Ring cycle:

"There are two dvd sets that are generally considered the most valuable among Ring performances: this one (the Levine), and the one conducted by Pierre Boulez. I personally started with the Levine, and I'm glad that I did. It might just be personal preference, but I think that if I had started my Wagner experience with a non-traditional staging of the Ring, like Boulez's I would have been very put off. Seeing this traditional performance first helped me alot with setting my mind right with the work itself.

However, this Metropolitan Opera performance of the Ring has its share of problems. The middle section of Das Rheingold, as well as the majority of Act I of Gotterdammerung, are seemingly conducted through molasses. James Levine, obviously an accomplished conductor overall, seemed to fall asleep during these sections, which is extremely unfortunate considering the fact that they are two sections most in need of conscientious conducting. The outstanding performances of singers James Morris and Crista Ludwig can only shine so much when led by a sleepwalker. On the good side, Mr. Levine seems to get swept up and inspired by the rushing, "heavy metal" parts of the Ring, resulting in some wildly exciting times. He seems just plain disinterested during the parts that require more care, subtlety. The exceptions to this general rule are both the excellent awakening-of-Brunnhilde scene in Act III of Siegfried, as well as the better-than-average Siegmund and Sieglinde scene of Die Walkure.

James Morris' perfomance as Wotan steals the show here, he is by far the most impressive Wotan in recent history. His voice has certain idiosyncracies that refine the role and make it his own, not to mention his tall, imposing physical presence. As a basis of audio/video comparison, Donald McIntyre (from the Boulez Ring) is very close in overall quality to Morris from both a singing and acting standpoint, but the former just can't compete with Morris' less anonymous vocal delivery, not to mention his physical presence. Morris makes the Wotan role HIS in quite the commanding way. Siegfried Jerusalem makes a very good Siegfried here, though his acting sometimes puts a "duh" veneer to the character that wasn't Wagner's intent. That is, at times Jerusalem's portrayal tends to veer from the "brash, arrogantly ignorant" portrayal of Siegried meant by Wagner, to an outright dolt. This applies only to certain points in his performance, Jerusalem mostly does a really good job. Hildegard Behrens' Brunnhilde is quite good as well, she only falters when she tries too hard. That is, at times she seems to be straining, and not just during the super high notes.

However, both Behrens and Matti Salminen (as an outstanding Hagen) make for an powerful, quintessentially metallic Gotterdammerung Act II. In fact, this act is easily worth the price of the dvd set by itself. One has to see it to believe it. In fact, this might just be the best performance of this act in filmed history.

Bottom line: the Levine/Metropolitan cycle is the best you can do for traditional staging of the Ring on dvd. I'm personally really grateful I started out with it. Don't hesitate to pick this up if you're new to the Ring, or Wagner. I must reccomend also to the neophyte the Georg Solti-conducted cd set for the best overall studio performace of the Ring (it's at least the most Metallic recording). And you'll eventually want the Boulez-conducted Bayreuth Ring dvd set as well, not just because many of the faults existent on the Levine aren't on the Boulez, but because the Boulez is an often superb performance dvd on its own. This multi-experience is important for fully understanding and absorbing the piece.".

The next part of my journey involved the Horst Stein-conducted Bayreuth Parsifal dvd . Parsifal's prelude completely blew me away, and after three or four listens of the entire opera I was officially a raving Wagnerite.

I didn't check out Wagner's opera "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" until after his other four late-period operas. I would like to reccomend Die Meistersinger especially to people that have started out listening to (and loving!) Classical period Art Music like Mozart and Joseph Haydn. Die Meistersinger, though a long opera, is full of great and easily followed melodies, and is overall a rousing story. It's very much like Wagner's "Le Nozze Di Figaro" with its bright, diatonic sounds and inspiring story. I heartily reccomend it to the "Wolfie" fanatics out there, even just for its amazing, happy and triumphant 1st act. The Horst Stein-conducted Bayreuth dvd of this opera is excellent, but James Morris is also amazing in the James Levine-conducted performance from the Met. Don't miss either one.