June 19, 2011
Triumph of Der Ring des Nibelungen
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The Ring on Record
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Francesca Zambello’s production of Richard Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Nibelung’s Ring), years in the making and never completed at Washington National Opera, has finally had a full production at San Francisco Opera. Magisterially conducted by Donald Runnicles, the company’s much-loved former music director, with a mostly stellar cast that delivers a powerfully integrated dramatic whole, it’s a triumph for Zambello, the cast, and the company.
The current publicity materials do not call the production the “American Ring,” but Zambello’s essay in the program discusses her use of American, and specifically Californian, imagery in the production and as a source of inspiration to her. She states as her overarching themes the quest for power, the destruction of nature, and, of course, the intense family interactions that drive so much of the story.
What her notes don’t say is that this Ring is also explicitly feminist. Brünnhilde, redeemer of the world, is the hero of the story, as she is in any complete Ring cycle. Zambello stages the fiery climax of Götterdämmerung to add several other female characters to the redeemer, or perhaps rebuilder, role. In addition, she locates her Ring in specific, identifiable eras of human history rather than in the mythic past of Wagner’s libretto, from the recent past to a dystopian near-future.
How well does all this updating and interpretation work? For the most part, quite well, though some of the anachronisms and additions are unnecessary or overly heavy-handed, or shift the tone away from that set by the music. We get Zambello’s point about despoiled landscapes by the second or third video covering a scene change, so the fourth and fifth pall. The TV remote used twice during Hagen’s Watch induces audience giggles during what should be a shiver-inducing encounter. The Norns are green-clad clean-room technicians handling a jumbled mass of computer cabling, a visually distracting contrast to their gravely beautiful music. And does the athletic, teenaged Brünnhilde really need to be carried around piggyback by her mighty father?
Zambello’s Rheingold opens in the mid-19th century, during the California Gold Rush. The dwarf Alberich — the titular Nibelung, here a miner in overalls — is played by Gordon Hawkins, an African-American bass-baritone. At a panel for music critics during the first cycle, Zambello mentioned that the majority of the Nibelungs over whom Alberich rules are played by African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-America children. In casting an African-American singer, the director’s intention is to draw parallels between Wagner’s racial hierarchy, where the gods, giants, dwarves, and humans occupy different social strata, and America’s shameful history of slavery.
By the second scene of Rheingold, we’ve arrived in the early 20th century. Wotan, king of the gods, is a plutocrat who has hired the giants Fafner and Fasolt to build his fortress. His fellow gods and goddesses are frivolous and fun-loving, the giants none-too-bright working men, and Loge, the demigod of fire, is Wotan’s fixer, or perhaps lawyer. At the end of the opera, the Rheinmaidens, who were previously dressed in bright-gold costumes, are clothed in ragged, brown gowns, reflecting the loss of the gold and their process of maturation.
Judging by the costumes, particularly the Valkyries’ flight suits, Die Walküre is set in the 1920s. Valhalla is the skyscraper we glimpsed in a projection at the end of Rheingold, and much of Act 2 takes places in a conference room. This isn’t the first Ring to focus on capitalism and its effects, but there’s little explicit about this aspect of the production after Walküre, other than the decay of the natural landscape.
Certainly, some dramatic oddities result from the updating, because there’s simply no way to get away from the sword Nothung and Wotan’s spear, which are fundamental to the story and associated with specific musical themes. Hunding’s house is full of guns, but he and Siegmund still fight with swords.
Siegfried the Most Unified Opera in the Cycle
To my surprise, because it’s so widely considered a “problem opera,” Siegfried stands as the most unified and dramatically satisfying opera of the production. Placed in an urban setting, instead of in a forest, Siegfried wears its eco-awareness lightly. We feel oppressed by the junkyard where Siegfried and Mime live, in a trailer under looming power lines, and by the decaying warehouse where Fafner the dragon sleeps and Alberich lurks, though the production doesn’t underline these points.
Siegfried also contains a pair of Zambello’s most delightful and telling details. Nothung’s shards are wrapped in a remnant of the turquoise dress Sieglinde wears in Walküre. After Siegfried reforges the sword, he wears the fabric as a scarf, a veritable talisman of his mother, and one that creates a powerful visual connection from Walküre to Siegfried to Götterdämmerung. Charmingly, the Forest Bird is incarnated as a young woman, singing directly to Siegfried from a catwalk, observing him, and finally leading him from the decaying city back to nature and to his intended bride.
When we come to Götterdämmerung, we find the Gibichung siblings living in a modern, glass-and-steel house, through the glass walls of which we can see only industrial equipment and a sickly, polluted sky. Zambello takes an unusual tack with Gutrune, sister of Gunther and half-sister of Hagen, Alberich’s son. Rather than the typical earnest innocent enamored of the heroic Siegfried, Zambello gives us an ambitious, apparently none-too-bright, blonde beauty in a seductive dress. It works, and, combined with Gunther’s weakness, emphasizes the extent to which Hagen dominates the family.
Götterdämmerung’s wedding and oath scenes, both in Act 2, are stunningly staged, in a hangerlike structure and with a show of militaristic might from the family’s vassals, all under Hagen’s direction. Zambello has said that movies greatly influenced the visual tropes of the production, including Citizen Kane and James Dean’s films. This scene, with its black-clad vassals, looks as though it came straight out of Star Wars. The hunting scenes of Act 3 put Siegfried, Hagen, and Gunther in safety-orange uniforms, with the vassals in camouflage. Again, the anachronisms strike: Why have we seen plastic bottles, car parts, and automatic weapons when Siegfried is killed with a spear and hauled back to Gibichung Hall on a wheeled pallet? Doesn’t the family own a Hummer, or at least a pickup?
The Immolation and the close of the opera are staged in a problematic fashion, because Zambello invents a great deal of action and spells out far too much for the audience. Brünnhilde and Gutrune, united in love for Siegfried (and both victims of Hagen’s plotting), hug and become allies. They’re joined by the Rheinmaidens, who emerge from the river to dump Siegfried’s body after dousing it with gasoline, and then by all of the vassal women. Instead of dragging him under, the Rheinmaidens smother Hagen with a plastic bag. At the very close, a young girl emerges from the river and plants a sapling at the front of the stage.
Wagner’s Music and Libretto Alone Can Carry the Day
In the abstract, I like the idea of all women as redeemers, but in the context of the Ring cycle, it’s just too much Kumbaya for me. We don’t need the sapling to show us the rebirth of the world when we have Wagner’s music, in which we hear the redemption motive for its second and last time. We don’t need a great deal of invented action, either, because Wagner’s libretto provides sufficient action to cover the long orchestral coda.
All this said, the strengths of the production far outweigh the quibbles. Zambello’s direction of the
principals is, by and large, psychologically acute; the cast is dramatically strong, and so is the preponderance of the singing. The orchestra, marred in Rheingold and Walküre by occasional flubs in the brass, played like gods for the last two operas. Donald Runnicles provided masterly pacing and balance and the greatest care for the singers, never drowning them for the sake of volume; the orchestral interludes were thrilling and, when needed, overwhelmingly powerful (as in Siegfried’s funeral march) or delicate (Forest Murmurs).
We’ll never see a more scene-stealing, sly, and brilliantly sung Loge than that of Stefan Margita, who got the biggest hand at the close of Rheingold. Elizabeth Bishop’s complex, wounded, and beautifully sung Fricka stands far above the mass of one-dimensional shrews. Mark Delavan’s Wotan was still a work in progress as of the first cycle, the bass-baritone’s first complete account of the role and understandably sung with some caution. He was at his best in Siegfried, and was very good indeed. Gordon Hawkins’s soft-grained voice seemed unable to express Alberich’s malevolence, and his portrayal was comparatively flat as a result, though it, too, improved over the course of the cycle. Gerd Grochowski sang and acted well as Donner and Gunther.
In his role debut as Siegmund, Brandon Jovanovich showed immense promise, only intermittently realized. His voice is absolutely the right weight and timbre for the role, and perhaps for Siegfried as well, but he shouted for emphasis far too often, marring the line when he should have just been singing. Anja Kampe was a lovely and fragile Sieglinde. Andrea Silvestrelli’s tender Fasolt and scarily dominant Hagen were highlights, while Daniel Sumegi’s constricted and buzzy bass was among the few weaknesses in the cast. Melissa Citro looked great as Freia and Gutrune, but her acid upper register was out of character for both roles. David Cangelosi was a vivid Mime. Kudos to the fine Rheinmaiden trio of Stacey Tappan (who was also the wonderful Forest Bird), Lauren McNeese, and Reneé Tatum, and to Norns Ronnita Miller (also a resonant Erda), Daveda Karnas (an outstanding Waltraute), and Heidi Melton.
The production lucked out in its Siegfrieds, with Jay Hunter Morris taking the younger and Ian Storey the older. Morris is right for the part in much the same way that Nathan Gunn is right for Billy Budd. He has a loose-limbed openness and joy that keep the character from becoming tiresome, and he sings the role in a wonderfully lyrical style, never shouting or forcing. Storey’s darker voice suited the older Siegfried well and he sang the role ably, with a fine heroic ring. The two tenors are remarkably similar in height and build, making a seamless transition from Siegfried to Götterdämmerung.
Above it all, Nina Stemme triumphed in her first complete Brünnhilde, turning in a passionate and remarkably athletic portrayal sung with a ruby-toned sword of a voice, transforming herself before our eyes from the youthful warrior maiden of Die Walküre to the shy lover of Siegfried and the wise world-redeemer of Götterdämmerung. She got the first bow, alone, at the end of Götterdämmerung, and deserved every bit of the long standing ovation that followed.
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Comments
GOOD GOD..WHO IS LISA HIRSCH???? DID SHE SEE THE SAME OPERAS THAT THE REST OF US SAW. ONLY DIE WALKURE WAS WORTH SEEING...AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.. A TRIUMPH ALL AROUND..SIEGFRIED AND GOTTERDAMMERUNG WERE SIMPLY AWFUL AND SO HEAVY HANDED AS TO BE INSULTING TO THE AUDIENCES. THE ENDING OF IT ALL WAS SO BAD AS TO WARRANT ONE TO SIMPLY CLOSE YOUR EYES AND LSITEN TO THE MUSIC...INCREDIBLE THAT WE COULD SPEND THIS KIND OF MONEY IN OUR SAD FINANCIAL STATE AND GET THIS TRASH. THE CONCEPT OF DESTRUCTION OF THE INVIRONMENT WAS A LAUDABLE ONE, BUT THE FINAL PRODUCT WAS JUST PLAIN UGLY AND STUPID. THERE IS NO DOUBT IN ANYONE'S MIND AFTER SITTING THROUGH THE WHOLE THAT WE WILL FORTUNATELY NEVER SEE ANY BUT DIE WALKURE AGAIN..THANK GOD!!!
My tagline above says it all: I'm presently a technical writer. My academic background is entirely in music. I've been reviewing for SFCV since 2004.
I'm sure I saw the same operas you did. :) People disagree all the time! You disliked the production greatly, I see. What did you think of the singers and the conducting?
I think Lisa's review is fairly accurate. I only saw the production premiers of Siegfried and Götterdamerung. Stemme was fabulous and I enjoyed Morris more than Storey, to be honest. Give Morris a little more heft and I think he will be more than memorable as a Siegfried. Runnicles was more focused than he was in the SFO season performances of Rheingold and Walküre and the occasional bobbles in the brass were a quibble on the otherwise sublime orchestration.
Traditionalists will always complain about contemporary productions, but if you paid attention to the production in the context of Wagner's libretto, Zambello did a wonderful job. As Lisa points out, some of her humor detracts from dramatic points in the opera and some of the costumes left me scratching my head. But the moral vacuousness of the characters was in razor sharp focus.
I was still thinking about Act III from Götterdamerung days later...
For anyone interested in reading a wide range of views, the Opera Tattler has
a media roundup page for cycle 1.
It's hard to seriously value the aesthetic judgment of anyone who whines in ALL CAPS! For internet beginners, note that doing so is the equivalent of screaming in a small room.
Lisa's take was smart and judicious. If Anonymous wasn't so hysterical, I'd be curious to know what Anonymous they think is an acceptable "Ring" staging.
It's also hard to take seriously ad hominem personal attacks, especially when they fail in the grammar department. I'd be curious to know "what Anonymous they" means. But it's nice to know that Ms. Hirsch has a knight in shining armor coming to her defense.
I am always interested in what others think and would be happy to hear the first commenter's more specific thoughts on the production, as well as his or her thoughts on the other aspects of the performances. Ditto for the second anonymous commenter. (Impossible to tell whether you're the same person, of course!)
Well, I saw Jovanovich in the second cycle and I thought he showed way more than "promise" as Siegmund.
I also thought that Delavan was terrific in Walkure. (Less so in Rheingold. I wondered if he was kind of holding back on the pyrotechnics to save something for Walkure. Two nights in a row as Wotan has got to be daunting. I'm sure he's glad for the break before Siegfried.
I confess to a nostalgic fondness for SFO's old Ring production, with the sets inspired by romantic German 19th century painting, but as updated productions go, this made a lot of sense, and was very effective visually.
Overall, so far, it's been an exciting ride. I'm really looking forward to Siegfried and Gotterdammerung.
Hirsch is perhaps just a bit too kind to Ian Storey, who accepted the role of Siegfried in the SF Ring although he wasn't quite ready for it. First he backed out of Siegfried so as to focus his efforts on Götterdämmerung. Then he all but lost his voice at the end of Act II in the first Ring cycle and was reduced to marking his way to the end. After the general manager announced Storey's indisposition just before the Act III curtain, the tenor rallied to hang on till his death scene. Storey appears to need better advice on the pacing of his career, since his Götterdämmerung Siegfried was less than heroic. If Storey's not careful, future Rings will simply call on Jay Hunter Morris, who may be growing into the role more successfully.l
People in the balcony were lustily booing Zambello when she took her bow at the end of the first cycle, but much of her conception worked okay for me. I did think that Siegfried's body was tossed into the land fill (along with black plastic trash bags!) just a little too unceremoniously. I thought the personification of the Forest Bird as a lovely young woman was cute but diminished the impact of Siegfried's supposedly "first" encounter with a woman in the next act.
Hi, Zeo - I heard the full story of what was up with Storey - he was sick and had gotten dehydrated. He sounded much better in Act III than II after getting hydrated.
In the orchestra section, there were random boos for Zambello but far more applause.
MM, I take it Jovanovich sang more and shouted less in the second Walkuere, from your comments. I, too, remember the Lehnhoff Ring affectionately. Hope you enjoy Siegfried and Gotterdaemmerung!
According to the SFO Press Department, Ian Storey went through several months of illness that left him with insufficient time to master the role of Siegfried in Siegfried. Hence he backed out, and Jay Hunter Morris replaced him in that opera. It is possible to read other things into this announcement, but my discussion with Press Department head Jon Finck suggests that the official story is in fact the truth.
While Storey sang very well, and with noticeably greater volume than Jay Hunter Morris, in the stand-alone Götterdämmerung premiere of June 5, he was suffering from a stomach ailment on June 19. If you want the gory details, he awoke with diarrhea, and appeared onstage severely dehydrated. By Act II, his condition took a toll on his voice. That he bounced back was due to medical intervention, specifically, major hydration.
At the same time, Jay Hunter Morris, who to these ears sounded less-than-heroic at the May 29 premiere of Siegfried, noticeably beefed up his sound in Cycle 1. He was sounding rough and grainy in Act II, but rallied to sing very well in the final act.
Vociferous booing can be deceptive. At the stand-alone Siegfried of May 29, one man in the orchestra decided to loudly boo two of the performers when they appeared for bows. I for one haven't a clue as to why he was so adamant in his distaste. I heard the booing for Zambello at the end of Götterdämmerung, but it again felt like it came from a small, isolated segment of the audience. Personally, I find the cheers from obvious claques of friends that greet some local artists at opera performances far more embarrassing.
Many of us who attended and reviewed Cycle I for various publications look forward to reader reports of the two subsequent cycles, including how Morris and Storey fare. I'm returning to Die Walküre on June 29 so I can hear Heidi Melton's Sieglinde, and get one final taste of the great Stemme. Having now heard her Immolation Scene twice, the sound of her voice still resounds in my head.
I had the distinct impression that only the audience was supposed to know that the Forest Bird was really the soprano, dressed like a regular human, but making very birdlike gestures. It seemed clear to me that when Siegfried looked at her, he was seeing a bird (as opposed to a chick.) I noticed that when Stacey Tappan had to engage in more obviously human physical actions (sitting down, climbing onto the backhoe...I mean, Fafner), she did so with a kind of trouser-role vibe. In fact, her costume hinted at that as well -- the boots, tights, and long coat that almost looked a frock coat. Even the little wave she gave Siegfried when she first walked on looked more curious than flirtatious, something you'd expect a well-intentioned bird to do. I didn't detect a hint of sexual chemistry between them, so having her on stage didn't weaken the impact of Siegfried's first sight of Brünnhilde for me.
I just completed my 3rd ring cycle over a span of 25 years, at SF Opera today. I mostly agree with Ms. Hirsch. I was amazed at how quickly Siegfried went by and how charming Morris played it. It is a long opera with few people on the stage at any given time but the lovers really pulled it off on my night. Stemme never disappointed and was truly remarkable in Siegfried. I was very pleased with the production until Gotterdammerung. The cable theme just confused me and it is true, I now realize, that it overshadowed the music as I tried to interpret the set and/or meaning instead of listening. I thought the child/ tree planter at the end was pretty silly and the music was again diminished from it. Brunnhilde's horse was another thing, besides swords and spears, that didn't translate to the 20th century interpretation and I missed Grane. I do think that the environmental theme was overplayed, especially in the end. This is an intensely psychological opera, evil can exist and threaten without industrialization. Still, overall it was worth the bucks and great time commitment it takes to go through a ring cycle.
Missed Siegfried, alas, so can't comment on that production.
I thought Gotterdammerung (second cycle) was really well done. The five hours plus went by so fast!
I wasn't crazy about the green hazmat suits for the Norns or the bright yellow plastic bags the Rhinemaidens were hauling around, but they were minor flaws in an exciting production. (I liked the little girl with the potted plant, which I know a lot of people didn't like, but I thought it was a nice touch.)
Although everybody sang well, clearly this was Nina Stemme's triumph. Don't think I have ever heard a better, more exciting Brunnhilde. (Jane Eaglen, I remember, sang beautifully in the last SFO Ring but by necessity remained mostly stationary.)
The audience was mostly wonderful, very quiet -- an experience marred only by the woman a few rows behind me in the dress circle whose cell phone went off not once, but TWICE during Act I. Her excuse, when people started yelling at her during the intermission? She claimed she had set the thing to "Silent," but it was some kind of alarm which she hadn't realized she also had to turn off. She and her friend kept saying it was a "new" device with which she was still unfamiliar. (My thought: if you can't figure out how to manage your electronic devices, leave them at home, dammit. Or check them before the performance.)
Nice touch at the end to bring everybody on stage for the curtain calls including the entire orchestra. The audience loved the whole thing. I heard NO boos.
Nice that I was finally able to hang around for the curtain calls since it was Sunday afternon.
I think SFO really needs to rethink its performing times. I felt really bad leaving Walkure as soon as the curtain went down. But with the Civic Center garage closing at midnight and the last BART at 12:20 p.m., anybody who's not sure of being able to speed walk has to make tracks. Seven p.m. for Walkure was too late to start, IMO.
I'm speaking here as a Ring neophyte, and giving only personal feelings, not universal assertions.
Though wonderful in ways, I found the production itself -- mixing machine guns, and modern city-scapes with swords and spears -- to be muddying. Maybe the director is trying to make this more relevant for: us, and to now. But seems too on the nose, even presumptuous in ways, and potentially diminishes an allegory that might best be left in a completely fabled time and place.
As much as anything, I went to this hoping to discern any allegorical intent Wagner might have had in mind, and particularly ideas connected with his personal ideology (in response to his time and place). I failed in this, and instead came away with many fragments, but no coherent overarching concepts, if you will.
I suspect there are as many symbolic interpretations to the Ring Cycle, as their are critical writers who've surveyed it. I even imagine that Wagner himself may have, over the course of decades that he spent on this, being a man changed over the course of time, produced a work (amazing though it is) that did not necessarily embody what he set out to do.
I'd be interested to hear others' impressions regarding the production itself, or the Ring in general...