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OPERA REVIEW
August 8, 2005
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By Robert Commanday
SEATTLE — The Seattle Opera turned its Wagner Ring a remarkable 180 degrees on the night following a promising but problematic opening. Die Walküre was stirring to the end. It was as if a different orchestra and conductor had moved in to take the proper and powerful musical lead, directive support and commentary that had been inconsistent and discontinuous in Das Rheingold. Acoustics were suddenly no longer in question as the orchestral sonority came out full and balanced. Robert Spano was now a presence, and in charge.
Empowered by this, the exceptionally gifted singers in this cast realized their vocal potency and the drama in the bold vision of Stephen Wadsworth. With three powerful sopranos in principal roles, Wadsworth brings the women into greater prominence as determining force in the drama. The Fricka of Stephanie Blythe continued the dominance set in Das Rheingold. For the first time in my experience, Fricka not only has the upper hand all through her argument with Wotan over Siegmund's fate, she is convincing, even sympathetic. Later, at the end of Act II, Wadsworth brings her back as a witness to Wotan's dispatching of Hunding as he sings, not rhetorically this time, “Kneel before Fricka!”
This is consistent with a portrayal of Wotan that brings on his anguished awareness of his self-deception and the inevitable end of the Gods earlier and more inescapably than customarily played. Greer Grimsley develops the growing despair in the mounting intensity of his self-revealing narrative to Brünnhilde (Act II). That sets up their final engagement in which, after the towering rage when he condemns her to a future of helpless mortality, he finds himself unable to face her. As their extended conflict continues, he is shown looking away always, seated far apart from her, his head half-bowed, already defeated in spirit.
Again the power of woman and love prevails, no small wonder given the soprano power and this time, the emotional suasiveness of the incomparable Jane Eaglen. Of course, that voice, that all-enveloping beam carried everything before it, Wotan, Valkyrie sisters, Siegmund and everyone out front. Then Wotan's relenting — usually coming unprepared, as if by sudden impulse — made more dramatic sense. Wotan's “Farewell” (to Brünnhilde) by Grimsley was as moving as it ought to be, punctuated at the end by a ring of real fire surrounding Brünnhilde's rocky terrace. The final vision of the devastated Wotan slumped over, stopped in his departure, was a stab.
 Richard Berkeley-Steele (Siegmund) Jane Eaglen (Brünnhilde)
Moving backwards through the opera, the preceding scene of the Valkyries was thrilling, for all its familiarity, all eight vocally brilliant. Again, Wadsworth's direction was unerring right through the revelation to the rescued Sieglinde of her pregnancy, telling, all in the timing and style. Margaret Jane Wray's Sieglinde was independent and impassioned, sturdy enough in Act I to hold its own in the stand-off triangle with two dominant performers. Her singing was penetrating, the voice warm and lyric in “Du bist der Lenz,” but sheathed with a metallic surface, a bit harsh in the dramatic going. Richard Berkeley-Steele, her Siegmund, has a tenor that is darker than usual for this role and its type, but he sustains the power all the same and it carries broadly. In the transition he makes from despair to rapture (in the love recognition and consummation) to heroic resolve, he runs the gamut and wins. The Hunding, Stephen Milling, has simply the largest and dominant bass voice of the world's Ringers and as with his Fasolt, the night before, was a towering force.
Returning to the conducting of Robert Spano, in Die Walküre he took command, produced a strong and expressive response from the orchestra, led and supported the singing persuasively. Somehow, he doesn't always draw the power when needed — the opera's shattering storm prelude was more a summer shower — but then later, for the battle and the Valkyrie, he pulled out the stops. The startling contrast with the performance of Das Rheingold? Perhaps inadequate rehearsal of that opera and the orchestra's greater familiarity with this one. Thomas Lynch's sets, if naturalistic, are theatrically complex and striking. Hunding's hut, standing at the right of a dense, twisted forest, is a psychologically compressed enclosure, the great ash tree dominant center and back, leaving just room enough for the circling of the three protagonists. In Act II, Wotan and Bruennhilde, and later Fricka, are discovered there in that same scene for their confrontations, instead of on the more customary Valhalla terrace. No problem. It gives Fricka something to do, looking curiously around the scene of the Siegmund-Sieglinde love-discovery while Wotan goes on and on defensively, trying to counter her arguments. (Again, in this interpretation, he is put on the defensive early on, and clearly has lost the battle almost from the beginning). The lovers' flight is in a mountainous setting, a flat clearing before a great cleft between towering rocky slopes, a zig-zagging trail down at the right for Bruennhilde's entrance to Siegmund's impending death to him, and for Hunding's appearance for their battle. Act III is a rocky granite fastness with a broad ledge on which the Valkyrie and Wotan-Bruennhilde action takes place, with a cave-like opening, and sharp dropoffs from which the flames spurt at the end. It was what might be envisioned, what is called for. As was this Die Walküre.
(Robert P. Commanday, senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)
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Richard Berkeley-Steele (Siegmund)
Greer Grimsley (Wotan); Jane Eaglen (Brünnhilde)
