{"id":19,"date":"2004-05-01T16:05:58","date_gmt":"2004-05-01T16:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tompayne.wordpress.com\/2004\/05\/01\/the-never-ending-story\/"},"modified":"2004-05-01T16:05:58","modified_gmt":"2004-05-01T16:05:58","slug":"the-never-ending-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/2004\/05\/01\/the-never-ending-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Never Ending Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jennifer is a huge fan of opera. Over the years, Jen had dragged Tom to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metopera.org\">Met <\/a>to see a variety of classic works&#8230;The Marriage of Figaro, Faust, Carmen, etc. Jennifer gets a kick out of it when she catches Tom accidentally humming the themes from Tosca.<br \/>\nThis week has been the Met&#8217;s &#8220;Ring Festival&#8221;. The Ring is a series of 4 Wagnerian operas&#8230;about 20 hours in all. Over four days.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.paynecentral.com\/sfpg\/index.php?cmd=image&amp;sfpg=VG9tL1RyZW9QaWNzLypQaWN0dXJlMDQ2XzI3QXByMDQuanBnKjI1NGEzMzA4ZWQzYzhiNWE1MjkzMTgxMWY0MWRlZjJhYjgyZWQxNTg2MGFmMTEyZjdkMDlhNDc0MzFlNjc3Yjc\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.paynecentral.com\/sfpg\/index.php?cmd=image&amp;sfpg=VG9tL1RyZW9QaWNzLypQaWN0dXJlMDQ2XzI3QXByMDQuanBnKjI1NGEzMzA4ZWQzYzhiNWE1MjkzMTgxMWY0MWRlZjJhYjgyZWQxNTg2MGFmMTEyZjdkMDlhNDc0MzFlNjc3Yjc\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nSo, yes, that is the inside of the Metropolitan Opera House&#8230;looking out upon daylight&#8230;as these operas start at 6pm&#8230;and go to midnight.<br \/>\nTom must really love Jennifer.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nTom&#8217;s editorial:<br \/>\nOK&#8230;so I just spent 19 hours last week at the opera watching Der Ring des Nibelungen. To prepare for a night of opera, I usually read the synopsis of the story on the Met&#8217;s website&#8230;in case I fall asleep and miss anything. I was pretty amazed to finally learn the story&#8230;and see how familiar it was.<br \/>\nDas Rheingold: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metopera.org\/synopses\/rheingold.html\">http:\/\/www.metopera.org\/synopses\/rheingold.html<\/a><br \/>\nDie Walkure: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metopera.org\/synopses\/walkure.html\">http:\/\/www.metopera.org\/synopses\/walkure.html<\/a><br \/>\nSigfried: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metopera.org\/synopses\/siegfried.html\">http:\/\/www.metopera.org\/synopses\/siegfried.html<\/a><br \/>\nGtterdmmerung: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metopera.org\/synopses\/gotterdam.html\">http:\/\/www.metopera.org\/synopses\/gotterdam.html<\/a><br \/>\nSimilarities to well known stories include:<br \/>\nA cursed ring of power<br \/>\nA dragon protecting a ring<br \/>\nA wretched creature who obsesses about the ring<br \/>\nA hero with a magic sword&#8230;that is welded back together from shattered pieces<br \/>\nTwin brother and sister who are separated at birth<br \/>\n&#8230;who later meet and have romantic feelings<br \/>\nA bratty hero who never fails<br \/>\n&#8230;and is told he was borne by only one parent<br \/>\nA hero who is trained by a dwarf-like creature<br \/>\nA sword handed down from father to sun<br \/>\nA confrontation between family members&#8230;with only one of them knowing the relationship Special musical pieces are played whenever a particular character is referenced. A special theater had to be built for the new sound effects.<br \/>\nAnd these were all performed in 1874&#8230;<br \/>\nThe bad news is that this means Darth Vader is going to be turned to the dark side by having his memory erased. Pretty lame.<br \/>\nTom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jennifer is a huge fan of opera. Over the years, Jen had dragged Tom to the Met to see a variety of classic works&#8230;The Marriage of Figaro, Faust, Carmen, etc. Jennifer gets a kick out of it when she catches Tom accidentally humming the themes from Tosca. This week has been the Met&#8217;s &#8220;Ring Festival&#8221;. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paynecentral.com\/tompayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}