Marian Schedenig

Sold.

Every time. Always broken at the same spot on every player. Two Sonys, one Samsung, and an external computer drive. From what I remember, I've had it happen with The Departed, Wall-E, Cloud Atlas, CE3K, and now OuaTitW. Some basically break down altogether at some point in the film, other go all stuttery and garbled for a while (so that the player software hangs and only reacts to button presses every 10 seconds or less). With CE3K I had to skip several minutes, OuaTitW has at least half an hour that's unplayable. There was another one I can't remember now. And who knows how many that I haven't discovered yet…

I'm getting increasingly unhappy about spending money on Blu-rays since more and more of mine have been dying. The latest was Once Upon a Time in the West. Always in the middle of the film - must be either related to the layer change or to the radial distance of the affected part. I keep spending tons of money on films only to randomly have them fail in the middle of watching them (sometimes with friends).

That is correct.

But at least you can tell that it's not the original title (because it's not in English).

Yup. That's German titles for you. Sometimes nowadays the German titles are even in English, but still different from the original English ones. For example, Taken is called 96 Hours in German. Took me years to figure out they're the same film (I've never seen it).

Wikipedia lists that under "The following songs were recorded during the same set of concerts and later released as B-sides". The album is compiled from two (!) concert tours, so while the album is pretty much maxed out for a single CD release at 76 minutes, there's bound to be lots of stuff from the tours that wasn't included, even if it was released separately. As Fart mentioned, your best bet for getting more of those is probably one of the full live concert releases - they have tons of those, so many that it's become hard to keep track, but they're usually (? or at least often, I've lost track) worth it. My father had the Four Flicks DVD box that contains four separate full concerts, all from the same tour, and while there's naturally lots of overlap between them content-wise, they're still worth having. As for Flashpoint, the list of separately released tracks also includes Gimme Shelter, presumably with Lisa Fischer (she's listed on the album for backing vocals), and those are usually outstanding. Several full concert releases include the song with Fischer (and I'm lucky to have caught one myself in Vienna back in 2014), but I'm not sure now if there's one on CD?

The Flashpoint album has two extra non-live tracks, but aside from that, as Fart explained, it's compiled from live performances of existing songs. Of course, with the Stones, you could always add multiple discs of extra tracks from live concerts or discarded studio material, but as far as I'm aware, the album as presented is in no way "incomplete".

No, the suite takes about 20-30 minutes, depending on the version and performance. Having not listened to it in so long: What's wrong with it, specifically?

One of the suites, I suppose? I still need a full recording - I know I asked for recommendations here some time (probably years…) ago, but I still don't have one.

Maybe. There's certainly some sympathy for Alberich (I don't remember noticing much for Hagen), at least initially (yes, his "origin story" is relatable). But despite that, they ultimately seem to come across as "evil" (however justified or not their motivations may be), while Wotan, despite all his failings and twisted actions, seems more "tragic" than "evil". There may be some "I'm not antisemite, but…" component in that, or not. Much of the Ring certainly deals with shades of grey rather than black and white, and how they are intended and perceived isn't necessarily clear. And in any case, it leaves enough room for presentations to leave out whatever specific connotations there (intentionally or unintentionally) may be. Which I guess is more complicated with those final lyrics in Lohengrin and Meistersinger.

I suppose a good deal of the potentially antisemitic content is about things that we today still tend to consider "bad", but which also have a history of being attributed to Jews. Given Wagner's background, that might well have been intentional, even if the broader aspects he criticises about them still ring true with us today. He does get rather explicit in his wordings at least at the ends of Lohengrin and Meistersinger though, even if it may seem authentic for the time the operas are set in. But contemporary implications of his stories and lyrics are hardly accidental with Wagner.

Good question, because I've been meaning to ask the same thing. I grew up with Karajan & Berlin and always liked that, though it must be 20+ years since I last listened to it. Apparently it doesn't have a good reputation. In the early 2000s, I got Rattle & CBSO, which was considered one of the best back then. I haven't listened to that in years, either.

In any case, the pointing thing is adapted from the original Nibelungenlied, where Siegfried's wounds begin to bleed when Hagen approaches (apparently a standard proof of guilt at the time - similar to the Gottesgericht in Lohengrin I guess). Wagner transfers it to Siegfried raising his hand (the one with the Ring, I suppose; if the printed libretto in DG's Karajan box is complete, Wagner doesn't actually specify that, but at least I've seen it staged that way). Whether that's because of some inherent power of the Ring of just a "natural" reaction of the dead is maybe up to interpretation. Apparently, there's an antisemitic background to the whole concept, too…