Monday April 25, 2011 – I went to The Met box office the day after tickets for the 2010-2011 season went on sale and tried to get seats for the new productions of RHEINGOLD and WALKURE. The man at the ticket window informed me that all the RHEINGOLDs were already sold-out; I was lucky to get tickets for a WALKURE, and by the time I got back home and went on line The Met website showed all the WALKUREs had sold out also. Fortunately my friend Lisette was able to get me a ticket for the RHEINGOLD dress rehearsal (in which she was singing Woglinde); actually I was really lucky because right after she’d picked up her pair of seats for the dress The Met decided to close the rehearsal because the production was experiencing technical difficulties. So only a very limited number of people were in the House.
The chance to see a new production of the RING Cycle here in New York City comes but rarely and ticket demand was high; despite not liking the RHEINGOLD much and wishing some of the roles in WALKURE could be re-cast, I was really excited about seeing this second RING installment: WALKURE is one of my top-five operatic scores and it’s the Wagner opera I’ve seen most often.
Reports from the premiere of WALKURE indicated that the stage machine was functioning far more smoothly than it had for the Autumn RHEINGOLDs. Musically, the news that James Levine was able to conduct after health concerns forced him to renounce several recent engagements was a major plus. A mid-opera cast change – Margaret Jane Wray stepping in for debuting Eva-Maria Westbroek as Sieglinde after Act I – and a slip-and-fall from the Brunnhilde (Deborah Voigt) were among the first night news items.
Metropolitan Opera House
April 25, 2011
New production
DIE WALKÜRE
Wagner
Brünnhilde..............Deborah Voigt
Siegmund................Jonas Kaufmann
Sieglinde...............Eva-Maria Westbroek
Wotan...................Bryn Terfel
Fricka..................Stephanie Blythe
Hunding.................Hans-Peter König
Gerhilde................Kelly Cae Hogan
Grimgerde...............Mary Ann McCormick
Helmwige................Molly Fillmore
Ortlinde................Wendy Bryn Harmer
Rossweisse..............Lindsay Ammann
Schwertleite............Mary Phillips
Siegrune................Eve Gigliotti
Waltraute...............Marjorie Elinor Dix
Conductor...............James Levine
I must say right off I was glad that James Levine was on the podium tonight, especially in view of the likely alternative. Maestro Levine has been dealing with major health issues in recent weeks, forcing him to miss some Met performances and to give up his position at the Boston Symphony. He was back at The Met for a tremendous WOZZECK earlier this month and he and his orchestra seemed in fine fettle tonight. The great score was laid out with grandeur, passion and tenderness and the individual players shone whenever solo moments cropped up. Levine unleashed voluminous waves of sound at times and let the singers fend for themselves; elsewhere, as in the opening minutes of the Todesverkundigung, the maestro had everything under solemn, finger-tip control.
Now that we’re half-way thru this RING I must say, the enterprise seems a colossal waste of money. The reported outlay of $20 million for the production plus the small-change invoice of another half-mil to reinforce the stage floor to bear the weight of The Machine seems the height of theatrical vanity. The RING is basically a series of dialogues; there’s very little ‘action’ really. As a setting, you basically need to create something that is pleasing to the eye without intruding on the drama and hopefully come up with a bit of excitement in those well-spaced-out moments when a visual coup is desired.
Flywires, mechanicals and the occasional stagehand are visible from time to time in the Lepage setting, preventing an illusion of magic. The planks rise and fall and fan out to modestly interesting effect, but placing the action on a bare Wieland Wagner disc would have been equally convincing and cost a hell of a lot less.
The basic setting of grey planks is both innocuous and dull. Absolutely nothing happens on the back panel in terms of lighting, film or other effects: it’s deep blue throughout most of Act I of WALKURE (with snowflakes falling) until the moment when Siegmund annouces the arrival of Springtime when it turns…green! How thrilling! I could have provided that idea for a coup de theatre for 99 cents.
The singers are left to their own devices (M. Lepage ‘doesn’t do character work’ reportedly) and so we have Siegmund collapsing on the dinner table when he first barges in, and Sieglinde producing various dishes and utensils from her kitchen cabinets conveniently installed under the lower of the two panels. When she fixes the sleeping-potion for her husband, she decides an extra dose of herbs will do the trick. (Why didn’t she simply poison him? That would have spared her and Siegmund a world of troubles.) The pulling of Nothung from the tree is a non-event though one can imagine Sieglinde thinking “My, what a big weapon you have!” as she fondles her brother’s blade.
Act II has lava flowing just under the surface of the rocky terrain as Wotan greets Brunnhilde. Fricka appears in a ram-drawn sedan chair and seems tethered to it. During Wotan’s monolog, a plastic ‘eye’ appears on which are projected dim shadows that have no relationship to anything. Brunnhilde is intrigued by this but it disappears as inexplicably as it appeared. It looks really cheap, by the way.
The appearance of Brunnhilde to summon Siegmund to Valhalla should seem like a dream, with the Valkyrie hovering in the mist above the ill-fated lovers. Instead Brunnhilde simply walks on from stage right and gives out her unhappy tidings. The fight scene is badly botched: Brunnhilde and Wotan appear too ‘humanly’ on the scene, and Hunding’s spear-thrust is so lame and contrived that I laughed aloud. Hunding’s death-fall is replaced by his swoon into the arms of his henchmen (who have watched the fight with their decorative lanterns: a not unpleasing effect). The sudden fall of a black curtain negates Wotan’s rage.
The Ride of the Valkyries has been staged elsewhere on flight-wires, on a carousel, as a bungee-cord and trampoline fest, or with Earth-bound warrior maidens dragging the naked bodies of fallen warriors hither and yon around the set. Mssr. Lepage places each of the eight sisters on a separate plank of The Machine and they ride ’em like bucking broncos. This ludicrous idea trivialized the scene and was simply one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen on any stage. Luckily the girls sang lustily. Then they slid down to the surface where they picked among the bones and skulls of a few dead men strewn on the abandoned battlefield.
As Brunnhilde told Sieglinde to escape into the forest with her unborn child, I signaled to Dmitry that it was time for us to escape also. I suppose it would have been amusing to see Brunnhilde roasting upside- down during the Magic Fire Music, but I’d had enough.
Of the singers, Bryn Terfel’s Wotan took top honors. After years of having a basso-oriented Wotan (James Morris) it was a pleasing change to have a higher-lying sound in this music (no disrespect to Morris, he was superb in the role in his prime years). Bryn was in fine voice and made the monolog an absorbing stretch of singing, with beautfully modulated phrasing and a dynamic range from whsper to thunderbolt. He did what he could physically on the silly set. I would love to have heard him sing the final scene but I didn’t think I could endure any more of Deborah Voigt’s unpleasant vocalism.
The other capital singing of the evening came from Hans-Peter Konig as Hunding; with his authentic Wagner-basso sound, Konig scored every single vocal moment to rich effect. If he looked more like a genial Santa Claus than a mean-spirited thug, that was not his fault.
Eva-Marie Westbroek was neither here nor there as Sieglinde; the voice has a vibrato – a not altogether unpleasant one – and there were many attractive phrases. But there’s no individuality of timbre and the top does not bloom and billow in a way to make the character’s music as thrilling as it should be. The soprano seemed vocally tired in Act III but since she has apparently been ill, we should give her the benefit of the doubt.
Good looks and convincing movement were plusses for Jonas Kaufmann who sang well as Siegmund (where did he get that Mithril shirt though?) but his vocalism for the most part was all of one colour. It’s a lyrical sound – though darkish – and he has enough volume to be heard at all times but the memories of Vickers, King and Domingo – and even of the younger Peter Hoffmann – in this music set a high standard to which Kaufmann seemed only a handsome but overall merely serviceable contender.
As Fricka, Stephanie Blythe, generous of voice and of derriere, tried to do more with text and shading than she had in the same role in RHEINGOLD but her mostly loud complaints and her frumpy figure made Wotan’s wanderings understandable. He must have wondered if she was worth losing an eye over, perhaps thinking Freia with her tasty apples might have been a better choice for a wife.
Deborah Voigt’s Ho-Jo-To-Ho was some of the worst singing I’ve ever heard at The Met. Terfel goosed her with his spear, perhaps to create an excuse for her screechy top notes, some of which were flatter than pancakes. Through most of the evening Voigt wore a smug little smile on her face; she’s never been much of an actress but now she just coasts along – do the job, collect paycheck, repeat.
However, at the start of the Todesverkundigung – singing in mid-register at medium volume – Voigt reminded us of the beauty and warmth her voice once possessed and of the promise that she once held of being a top-flight Isolde and Brunnhilde, a promise dashed by her absurd genuflecting at the altar of The Black Dress. As the scene progressed, she had to start applying more volume and venturing high, and the annoying metallic shrillness reappeared. But in those few minutes Voigt and Jonas Kaufmann made some beautiful music together, wonderfully abetted by Levine and the orchestra.
The Valkyries sang so well – notably Molly Fillmore and Wendy Bryn Harmer – that one regretted the foolish staging of their Ride all the more.
Although the performance was sold out, an increasing number of empty seats appeared with each intermission. It’s usual for a few people to drift away during Wagner nights but if the production was all it’s cracked up to be, you’d think people would be riveted to the stage. I suppose we will be stuck with this RING for the rest of my lifetime and probably beyond. How amazing that they can find this kind of money to throw away.
View a page of production photos here.
Oberon's Glade 