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OPERA REVIEW
Die Walkuere Puts Ring Into High Gear
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By Thomas Grey
Wagner's Ring cycle moves into full gear, musically and
dramatically, with Die Walküre, the first official music drama of the
cycle, following the "prologue" of Das Rheingold. With the combined forces of Deborah Voigt, Jane Eaglen, and James Morris (as close to a Wagnerian dream team for the 1990's as one is likely to find), and the top-flight contributions of Donald Runnicles and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, this production likewise moved into high gear.
Marjana Lipovsek stepped into the role of Fricka for this first Die Walküre performance after having ceded the Rheingold Fricka to understudy Elizabeth Bishop. Strong as Bishop was in that part on Wednesday, Lipovsek proved to be in another league altogether. Fricka's single scene in Die Walküre, at the opening of Act 2, offers excellent material for dramatic character portrayal. In her confrontation with Wotan over the fate of the incestuous adulterer Siegmund, the imperious, indignant, injured wife Fricka really comes into focus as a character.
Lipovsek brought to the central "aria" of the scene ("Oh, was klag' ich um Ehe und Eid") a dark-hued and beautifully shaped vocal line, while the surrounding exchanges with Wotan achieved a level of ferocity that was a true match for Morris's commanding Wotan, without ever risking caricature or ugly exaggeration. (Outrage is not dead in Valhalla!) Dressed in a tight-fitting black gown with cape of dark green and purple tones (wholly unlike the Klytemnestra-like excess of Fricka's costume in Das Rheingold), her appearance is at once slinky and severe in a way quite apt to the character, both a dignified queen of the gods and a shrewish, embittered bourgeois matron.
Voigt and Eaglen were both true to their reputations as the leading
Heldensopranos of their generation. Deborah Voigt has somewhat more
assurance as an actress and stage-presence than Eaglen. The role of
Sieglinde allows her (or really requires her) to establish herself as a
dramatic character before she can carry the day with sheer vocal power.
Her solicitous attentions to the exhausted Siegmund in the first scene and
the narration of her unhappy history made a quietly luminous prelude to the
full-blown ecstasy of the act's conclusion and the vocal-dramatic razzle
dazzle of her hallucinations in the second act.
Voigt's "Hehrstes Wunder" (the big phrase with which she responds to the news that she will bear Siegmund's son) was a high point, as it should be-- memorable enough to stay with the listener until the phrase returns in Brünnhilde's immolation scene at the end of the Ring.
As Brünnhilde, Jane Eaglen gets to start right off with her strong suit,
tossing off the Valkyries' signature battle-cries with seemingly effortless
exuberance. Eaglen can be a moving singer too, as she demonstrated
in the "Annunciation of Death" scene, where she attempts (in vain) to
reconcile Siegmund to his divinely-ordained doom, and in the final scene or
the opera, where she pleads on her own behalf with Wotan, eloquently and at
length.
The Valkyries were a solid group -- impressive in their intonation and ensemble, never shrieky or wobbly (as can all too often happen when one has to cast eight Brünnhilde wannabes). If Morris's Wotan seemed a little too sleepy and/or world-weary in Das Rheingold, here he was truly awake to his situation. Wotan may be, de facto, the leading figure in Das Rheingold, but it is only in Acts 2 and 3 of Die Walküre
that he acquires his full moral and musical stature. The infamously
drawn-out "monologue" in Act 2 never drags, however slow and quiet it may
be.
Morris makes the most of the great dramatic outbursts that serve as
pillars, of sorts, supporting the whole extended structure of the
monologue. The vehemence of Wotan's first, self-pitying eruption
("Endloser Grimm! Ewiger Gram!"), on one end, and of his ultimate
nihilistic epiphany, on the other end ("nur eines will ich noch: das Ende,
das Ende!") provide an energetic force-field that seems to reverberate
throughout the entire long intermediate speech.
In between, Morris applies his characteristic dramatic sotto voce delivery at some length. Surely it's justified in this scene, if anywhere. But there was just a bit too much of it, to my mind. Even hearing it at close range, I felt that Morris was swallowing a few too many of the words (and notes), while spitting out occasional consonants like watermelon seeds. (Heaven knows, there are still enough opera singers around who would stand to inflect their vowel-and note-driven performances with a little dose of these mannerisms!) But all in all, this (as well as his recorded performance with James Levine) remains the most compelling monologue I can think of (Hans Hotter's included).
And Morris's intensity scarcely flagged, whether as the angry
"storm-father" at the end of the act (or chastising Brünnhilde in Act 3),
or in his triumphant rendition of the "Farewell" to Brünnhilde at the close
of the opera.
Not surprisingly, Mark Baker as Siegmund could scarcely measure up
to these Wagnerian superstars (or even to Lipovsek as Fricka -- admittedly
as less demanding role than his). Visually and dramatically, he makes a
reasonably convincing case as the embattled Wälsung hero. His opening
scene and the lengthy narrations were managed with confidence and style.
The repeated outcry "Wälse! Wälse!" (as Siegmund implores the aid of his
unknown father), which some tenors insist on bellowing out interminably
like a fire alarm, was instead delivered here with a more modest but
perfectly appropriate level of heroic distress. But by the middle of the
act, Baker was sounding a little over-taxed.
His sudden, effusive response to Sieglinde, "Heil macht mir dein Nah'!," was notably hoarse, and from the Spring Song to the end of the act Baker was operating at slightly less than ideal strength. All the same, he seems to know his voice and its limits, and to be able to pace himself accordingly. He rallied himself sufficiently for the (fortunately less demanding) scenes 3 and 4 of Act 3, where he is paired against Voigt and Eaglen, respectively, and in the end, he met his fate at the hands of Hunding (and Wotan) in the closing scene as something of hero.
The role of Hunding gave Reinhard Hagen a much better opportunity to shine than did that of Fasolt in Das Rheingold, where his voice
and body alike were encumbered by John Coynes' giant puppet-figure. Here
he was a slim and swarthy Hunding with a dark and nicely focussed tone to
match--less weighty and growly than the bearish Hundings of Matti Salminen
or Marti Talvela, but very imposing in his own way. Costume designer Bob Ringwood's cossack-like black fur-and-leather outfits for Hunding and his silent henchmen (one of several touches evidently borrowed from Chereau)
complemented Hagen's version of the character nicely, a kind of
gangster-barbarian with a flair for style.
The Lehnhoff/Conklin production (seemingly less updated in the current version than the one for Das Rheingold) provided a workable, often effective background for all of this, if without provoking much interpretive thought from the audience. Siegmund enters in Act 1 from a misty fir-woods reminiscent of several Caspar David Friedrich
backgrounds (especially his wintry Chasseur in the Forest), and the
mottled, complexly layered sunset behind Wotan's monologue also recalled
some of Friedrich's more abstract nature canvases of sea, land, and sky.
(It was far from clear why Wotan stormed off stage after his
monologue-where again he is the angry "storm-father"-into a suddenly
tranquil, light blue dawn.)
The Act-1 "hut" had more the dimensions of a warehouse loft, but at least it left Siegmund and Sieglinde plenty of room in which to maneuver. André Serban seemed to have paid fairly close attention to Wagner's quite specific stage directions for the first scene, and so the space was well used. It seemed at first perverse that the spring breezes, rather than blowing open the door to the hut (which remained firmly bolted), blew down the walls altogether. But once we realize the aim is to transfer the re-united sibling lovers into a purely natural setting, the result was satisfying. (Lighting and projection worked a series of beautiful transformations on the Friedrichian fir-woods here.)
The act 2 settings are minimal but attractive, although the Schinkel-style,
neoclassical portico for the first scene was (from my perspective) at an
oddly expressionistic angle. Act 3 borrows from Patrice Chereau's Bayreuth production (again) in using the contours of Böcklin's famous Isle of the Dead for Brünnhilde's rock, sans cypresses and surrounding water. But again, it was rather unclear how the massive Renaissance portals framing the stage were meant to fit in anywhere. Their presence in the forest outside Hunding's hut gave the impression that the action was taking place in some post-apocalyptic context: a tribal culture springing up in the ruins of some "higher," extinct civilization--not a bad concept, but surely not intended here.
Conducting and playing remained on the high level of the first
night (again a few gaffes in the horns came at unfortunately central
points). Some of the evening's most memorable moments resulted from bold
rhetorical pauses: after Sieglinde asks Siegmund if "he is truly called
Wehwalt?" and between the first and second of Wotan's annihiliating "das
Ende"s (Morris takes a similarly drastic pause with Levine at this point,
too).
Fleet tempos and clean playing, without hurrying the more solemn,
ritual, or meditative passages, made for satisfying broad musical outlines
to the drama. A beautiful rapprochement between these two poles was
achieved where the motive of Brünnhilde's "Justification" sweeps through
the orchestra prior to Wotan's "Farewell." Runnicles creates a noble and
expansive gesture with no hint of bloating or bombast. This is precisely
the kind of treatment required by Act 3 of Siegfried, so one awaits that with high hopes.
(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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