Hollywood Indifferent to Opera's Lord of the Rings

The movie industry can give 17 Oscars to 10 hours of movies about a magic ring, but they'd rather not pay attention to 19 hours of opera about a magic ring.

That's one lesson of the Ring Festival L.A., an elaborate, wide-ranging arts festival that's now taking place in Los Angeles with the participation of the theater, music, art and academic communities -- but scant notice from Hollywood.

LACMA is involved, and MOCA, Getty, the CTG, the Geffen, the Griffith Observatory, the LA Conservancy, UCLA and USC and many more.

But not Hollywood. Where -- just to name one obvious oversight -- are the screenings of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" with a discussion of the ways in which J.R.R. Tolkien mined the same Teutonic myths that Richard Wagner drew upon for his massive cycle? (The public library in La Verne did a discussion, but not screenings.)

The Ring Festival was designed to supplement the Los Angeles Opera's presentation of the four operas in Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelungen," the most monumental undertaking any opera company can mount and the first in the history of L.A.

It's a significant (if controversial) cultural event that should be reaching a peak as the opera company wraps up the first of three complete cycles of the operas. The L.A. Opera's general director, crossover icon Placido Domingo, calls it "the largest, most significant cultural festival in Los Angeles since the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival."

So what is the movie business doing this month to celebrate the culmination of this massive effort?

Well, the American Cinematheque is showing "Apocalypse Now Redux." Because, after all, Robert Duvall's Lieutenant Kilgore blares "Ride of the Valkyries," from ring opera number 2, "Die Walkure," during a four-minute helicopter attack.

And the Los Angeles Film Festival is showing 1913 silent film "The Life of Richard Wagner" on June 20 at REDCAT.

That's it.

Read the entire story at theWrap.