Work, play, opera&real life

Since yesterday, I've been doing the work of 3,5 people, i.e. my own, the Ambassador's, Irene's and (still) half of Gerald's.
It's absolutely marvellous -- I've finally got something to do, and between accounting, writing political reports and dealing with consular stuff I'm happy as a pig in mud. Strictly speaking from my own POV, having lots to do is loads better; when I'm being busybusybusy I get a lot more done, and still have unused capacity.

Also, and I'm being a bitch here, going to work without Irene is *very* nice -- no early-morning irritation due to clucking, tsk-ing, hissing and almost-but-not-quite audible soliloquy. So I can go back to being her friend without having constantly to hold back some barbed comment. What a relief.

Play appears in this post in the shape of the new blu-ray player I bought on Sunday. My old dvd player went to meet its maker last Friday night; so on Friday and Saturday I watched M.A.S.H. on my laptop, and on Sunday after tennis set forth to the City Mall and got a nice, sleek black Samsung blu ray player. Am very happy with it, not least because the remote operates both the (Samsung, too) TV and the player. So, less juggling involved.

Yesterday, while busily accounting away, I was playing the first act of Wagner's "Valkyrie" in my head. (That's a very handy skill -- no earphones or loud music involved, and I can still enjoy)
I'd arrived at Sigmund's monologue explaining to his host Hunding and Hunding's unwilling wife Siglinde (who later turns out to be Sigmund's long-lost twin sister, which doesn't prevent them having sex) where he comes from; Sigmund is a sort of awkward guy who always gets himself into trouble, and so he doesn't go by is real name but introduces himself as Wehwalt (literalyy: yielder of sorrow). IMO, this is one of the most beautiful, haunting passages of this opera.
Wagner's libretti, which he wrote himself, aren't always masterpieces of literature, but introducing oneself by first saying how one is *not* called is a very clever twist:
Friedmund darf ich nicht heißen;
Frohwalt möcht’ ich wohl sein:
doch Wehwalt mußt ich mich nennen.

Friedmund (literally: mouth of peace) I must not call myself;
Frohwalt (literally: yielder of joy) I yearn to be:
But Wehwalt is my name.

Then he goes on a bit about having a twin sister and losing her when they were still small children (enemy attack on their homestead while the men were away hunting -- so much for traditional role models), him and his father living alone in the woods and making quite a reputation as fighters, until finally his father is killed (or so he assumes, because Dad is none other than the god Wotan, who simply decided that this was the right moment to leave the boy to his own devices, so he could grow up to save the world). He finishes with these lines (and, oh, the music...)
Wieviel ich traf, wo ich sie fand,
ob ich um Freund’, um Frauen warb,
immer doch war ich geächtet:
Unheil lag auf mir.
Was Rechtes je ich riet, andern dünkte es arg,
was schlimm immer mir schien,
andre gaben ihm Gunst.
In Fehde fiel ich, wo ich mich fand,
Zorn traf mich, wohin ich zog;
gehrt’ ich nach Wonne, weckt’ ich nur Weh’:
drum mußt’ ich mich Wehwalt nennen;
des Wehes waltet’ ich nur.

Now this is so intensely Germanic that a translation will be difficult, but I'll try:
Whomever I met, wherever I found them,
friend or maiden to court,
I was always despised:
Wretchedness was with me.
What I deemed to be right, others regarded as wrong,
What seemed evil to me,
others looked upon with favour.
I fell into feuds wherever I stayed,
Wrath struck me wherever I went;
Yearning for joy I only reaped sorrow:
This is why I must be Wehwalt;
only sorrow I wield.

The funny thing is, I got into opera while I was still very young. It sucked me in -- the music, the scene, the atmosphere. But, as I said, I was very young and therefore had a child's understanding of the plot and protagonists.
Wagner certainly wants our sympathies to rest with Sigmund and Siglinde: the separated, orphaned twins, he a square peg and rebel, she raised by strangers and married of to Hunding against her will. Hunding, OTOH, comes across as a great, hairy, pompous philistine (imagine a cross between Hagrid for size and Percy Weasley for pompousness). Even though I'm not especially a fan of Sigmund, I certainly never liked Hunding.
And yesterday, while mentally listening to Sigmund's monologue, it struck me that he's basically Gerald. Always unhappy, always taking it out on others, never a compromise, and always, always the victim of both other people and circumstances. This, however, made me think about Hunding and his hatefulness, as intended by Wagner: Hunding is an ordinary person in an ordinary world, with no great aspirations or expectations; he's a man who likes to live in the safety of a well-ordered society. And in comes this guy, making eyes at his wife and revealing that he's the culprit who, two days ago, slaughtered most of Hunding's relatives, because he felt he just *had* to soccour a girl asking for his help against her family, who planned to marry her off to a man she didn't like. So he called them out and struck them down, one by one, and in the end everybody's dead but the maiden, who isn't overly happy but weeps brokenly over her brothers' dead bodies.
Since I would rather classify myself as an ordinary person, who doesn't like everything about the system she lives in but appreciates the safety and comforts that come with it, I'm beginning to sympathize with Hunding, a little bit. While square-peg rebels are certainly necessary, they sure as hell are a pain in the butt. Besides, Sigmund isn't like Jesus or Gandhi, who certainly were square pegs and rebels but didn't go around killing people (or destroying the atmosphere at work, in Gerald's case); Sigmund (like Gerald) is basically a horrible egoist, who just wants everything to be his way -- while he's not even sure what his way *is* -- and if it isn't, doesn't go about it in a constructive, but in a throughly destructive way.
Which doesn't diminish the beauty of the opera by one jot, but it's always interesting when old, ingrained thinking patterns suddenly break apart and reconstruct themselves.