The Noisiest Women...

It's gotten awfully serious around these parts lately, so I thought we could all use a good laugh. To that end, here's one of my favorite bits of musical comedy: Anna Russell's hilarious summation of Wagner's Ring cycle of operas. There's actually a lot more to it than this - the full routine lasts more than 20 minutes, and is well worth a listen.



Russell was a classically trained singer living in Canada when she came to the difficult realization that her voice (which was quite shrill) was unlikely to lead her to a glorious operatic career, and she began to peddle herself as something of an educational speaker on music for adults, putting together quite the variety of routines as she did so. ("How To Enjoy Your Bagpipe" is a classic, as is her song for overly dramatic sopranos, Schreechenrauf.) Through sheer persistence (most audiences outside of her home city of Toronto had no idea what to make of her for a very long time,) she became a huge star all across North America, and her albums have never, to my knowledge, gone out of print. There would be other musical comedians after her - notably Victor Borge and Peter Schickele, both brilliant in their own ways - but in my opinion, no one was ever more simultaneously entertaining, informative, and welcoming to the world of this supposedly "serious" music than Russell.