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OPERA REVIEW
Die Götterdämmerung--Twilight Bodes Well As 1st Ring Cycle Ends
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By Thomas Grey
In the closing scene of the current San Francisco Opera
Die Götterdämmerung, Wagner's elaborate stage directions for the conflagration
and inundation of the Gibichungs' Hall--Hagen's desperate plunge into the
flooding Rhine, and the collapse of Walhalla--are about as meticulously
observed as one could hope for. There are those, of course, who would not
especially hope for all of that. Anyone inclined to reject the
basically traditionalist/realist approach of the Lehnhoff/Conklin San
Francisco production will find plenty of grist for his critical mill in the
busy, even laborious apocalypse, as revised in this revival by Andrei Serban and John
Coyne that debuted last Wednesday.
Be that as it may, the shifting images of Brünnhilde and the funeral pyre, the burning Walhalla,
the rushing waters of the Rhine, and gradual sinking of Walhalla's
ruins below the horizon provide an appropriate visual analogue to the
hyperkinetic welter of musical motives, textures, and timbres unleashed in
this grandest of all Wagnerian finales. Coy or arch visual commentary
(like Harry Kupfer's disaffected cocktail party-goers viewing the
apocalypse on multiple television screens) is sorely out of place here. Other
production approaches that opt for a more or less static stage image at the end,
leaving the orchestra to do the scene-painting, may get away with it,
thanks to Wagner's orchestra, but leave the audience feeling somewhat
shortchanged. Faced with those characteristic modern alternatives, I tend
to come down on the side of the present production, whatever its
imperfections.
One reservation: clever as it may be to have the
Rhine-maidens' rocks transform back into C.D. Friedrich's original heap of
ice-floes for the final frozen tableau, bearing Alberich as the lone,
hapless survivor, what is the point here? The production hardly points us
toward any thoughts about a post-nuclear winter as a consequence of
Walhalla's demise. And what about love, humanity, redemption, and all that?
Here as elsewhere, a production that eschews "concept" on the larger level
generally has trouble injecting it into the details.
Fortunately, despite initial trepidation over Wolfgang Schmidt's
return as Siegfried and despite an announcement that Jane Eaglen was
suffering from a "bad cough," the musical results of this last installment
in the first cycle were by no means laborious. Only during the first
minute or two of her scene with Siegfried in the Prologue did Eaglen's
Brünnhilde seem a little subdued. Brünnhilde does also have some
opportunity to dampen her vocal expression toward the end of Act 1 and
during the ill-fated nuptial ceremonies of Act 2. For the rest, Eaglen
seemed to rise to the challenge in close to top form. Beyond that, she did
more acting, vocally and otherwise, than we've seen up till now (for
example, her indignant response to Waltraute's entreaties).
As in the preceding Siegfried Schmidt did not disappoint. When
allowed to sing upstage, as at the end of
the big duet in the Prologue, his voice rang out strong and clear. His
pitch problems as Tristan last Fall, occasionally evident in Siegfried, were
minimal by now. On the other hand, when Schmidt was less advantageously
positioned, as for Siegfried's final narration to the hunting party in Act
3 (supine, and about half-way to the back of the stage), he was not always
ideally audible. But even by the end of the evening he was able to deliver
his final address to the absent Brünnhilde affectingly and without strain.
Earlier, when pledging his fidelity to (a likewise absent) Brünnhilde in Act
1 ("Vergass' ich alles"), Schmidt presented a light, attractive, and
sincere tone.
Other performances were consistent with previous evenings of the
cycle, but by no means predictably so. A welcome surprise was Eric
Halfvarson's outstanding Hagen. Up until now we either heard Halfvarson
muted by Fafner's Giant-apparatus in Das Rheingold or amplified as the
Dragon-Fafner in Siegfried. The latter was more satisfying than the
former, but best of all was Halfvarson's own unencumbered voice as
Hagen--full, deep, resonant, and able to project the text with great
clarity. This Hagen was wholly plausible as the master force behind all
the action of Die Götterdämmerung. Even amidst the choral and orchestral
hubbub of the wedding preparations in Act 2 he remained the central,
commanding presence he is meant to be.
On the other hand, Marjana Lipovsek fared slightly less well as Waltraute than
as Fricka in Die Walküre (which
does not mean a poor performance, by any means). She mustered a passionate
intensity for Waltraute's efforts to persuade Brünnhilde of impending
peril, but the upper end of the range had a steely, somewhat harsh quality
that seemed less suited to this part.
Elena Zaremba's First Norn impressed me more forcefully than her
Erda had, perhaps owing in some part to more interesting staging. Even
before the Norns sing in the Prologue, the broad sweeping motions they
describe with their loosely draped, pale nun-like habits create an
arresting match to the welling-up of the darkened "Nature" motive and the
diminished-seventh meanderings of the "Cord" figure that evolves from it.
The three Brancusi-style sculptures around which the Norns arrange their
cord, resembling bleached whale bones or elephant tusks, are
uncharacteristically abstract for this production. Apparently the Norns,
along with Erda and her totemic head-sculpture (which also puts in an
appearance here), are absolved from the representational constraints that
apply to the rest of the cast.
As Norns two and three, Catherine Cook and
Kristine Ciesinski were less satisfying than Zaremba, both tending just
slightly toward instability and shrillness here and there. The
Rhine-maidens made a strong return in Act 3 (the first time we heard
Elizabeth Bishop as Wellgunde in this first cycle). I didn't detect
anything like the outsized wobble of Suzanne Ramo's Woodbird in her
Woglinde here, suggesting that it was somehow (mis)conceived specially for
that earlier part. Tom Fox's Alberich remained a pleasure to the end, and
together with Halfvarson's imposing Hagen made the uncanny nocturnal
dialogue that opens Act 2 everything it should be.
The newcomers to the cast at this point were Alan Held as Gunther
and Kristine Ciesinski as Gutrune (double cast as the third Norn).
Held is the
more impressive singer of the two, but Ciesinski brought to her vocal
performance--a wholly adequate one in any case--a lively and supple stage
presence. In Acts 1 and 2 her Gutrune nicely reflected the girlish mood
shifts (timid, eager, jealous, gay, and vulnerable) of a character whose
only real failing is a certain lack of emotional and intellectual maturity.
Nervously anticipating the return of the fateful hunting party, her
Gutrune flits about the darkened stage in an elaborately layered, flowing
night-gown reminiscent of Isadora Duncan, to a choreography that mixes
anxiety with traces of youthful, flirtatious vanity. (Gutrune only rises
to tragedy when she is finally silenced by Brünnhilde.)
Alan Held's performance as Gunther bodes well for his Wotan in the upcoming
third cycle. His tone is firm and strong, and his intonation nearly impeccable.
Held's portrayal of the weak-willed Gunther gained in stature consistently
as Gunther's fortunes declined. When he finally gets up to join the great
"revenge" trio in Act 2 (having moped at length over Brünnhilde's cast-off
wedding garments), he flares up with a startling intensity. By the time of
his final show-down with the treacherous Hagen following Siegfried's
murder, Held's Gunther is driven to distraction; in this state of
near-madness he's at last (almost) a real match for Hagen--but too late.
The (evidently revised?) settings for the scenes at the Gibichung
Hall adopted an Empire style, presumably intended as Roman, not Napoleonic.
This, like the tall rectangular columns in both scenes, seemed to draw one
more on Chereau, who depicted the Gibichungs as affluent sophisticates
against Siegfried's rugged, guileless child-of-nature. The terraced stage
in Act 2 allowed Siegfried to stand a step of two above Gunther much of the
time (a counterproductively transparent ploy). With its range of
free-standing decorated columns it made an effective venue for the great
gathering of vassals, who along with the orchestra made the walls ring.
In a few other places, too, Runnicles seemed to take pleasure in
unleashing the full force of the brass: at the close of the
Siegfried-Brünnhilde duet in the Prologue, in the curse motive following
Hagen's "greeting" to Siegfried in Act 1, and in Siegfried's Funeral Music,
where the whole orchestra was given free rein to show its stuff.
Whether what appeared to be bronze turkeys atop the columns where intended as some
joke at the expense of the Gibichung clan, or whether they had some other
iconic significance, I was not quite sure. Nor could I say what was the
idea behind the ruined walls and burnt-out riverbank setting for Act 3,
scene 1 (retained from the original 1985 production). It would seem more
appropriate to a Götterdämmerungsequel, post-apocalypse. At least the
setting does help to generate an atmospheric frisson when the lights dim
over Siegfried's slain body and dark-robed figures congregate to carry him
back to the Gibichung hall. Similarly effective is the black night sky
against which the events of the last scene unfold, illuminated only by two
smoking torches. The night-time setting of Gutrune's brief soliloquy is
maintained through Brünnhilde's closing address. This not only underscores
the solemn grandeur of her valedictory moment, but also makes an effective
foil for the coming conflagration.
The orchestra, on the whole, sounded better than ever. Die
Götterdämmerung is surely among the most grueling assignments facing an
opera orchestra, but even by the time of the Funeral Music and the closing
pages of the score (both of these high points of Wagnerian orchestration)
the playing was spectacular. The horn section redeemed itself for a few
rough patches earlier on in the cycle with a beautifully smooth, rich
rendition of the canonic "sunrise" music that opens the second scene of Act
3 (marred only by a diabolically orchestrated crescendo of coughing in the
audience). All the woodwinds made outstanding contributions to the Act 3
Prelude, with its airy, "spatial" polyphony. Whatever it is that
the end of Götterdämmerung augurs for the future of the Ring's world, the
end of this first cycle at least bodes well (musically) for the next three, also
for the last San Francisco Opera season of the millennium next Fall,
and, one assumes, for a few more beyond that.
(Thomas Grey is Associate Professor of Music at Stanford University. He is author of Wagner's Musical Prose: Texts and Contexts, and editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Opera Handbook on The Flying Dutchman as well as the Cambridge Companion to Wagner.)
©1999 Thomas Grey, all rights reserved
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