"Promising start for 'Ring' OPERA"
- ENO
With our Guest of Honour at the Society's Wagner
birthday lunch being Ms Rita Hunter, the news that the
English National Opera is to start a new Ring takes on
a special significance. Indeed as Clark points out, it
is "more than 20 years since Wagner's Ring was last
performed in English before a metropolitan audience"
- when Ms Hunter starred. Clark notes that "ENO proves
it has the raw vocal material for The Ring". The
cast includes: Matthew Best, Wotan, Andrew Shore, Alberich,
Tom Randle, Loge,Linda Richardson, Christine Rice and
Rebecca de Pont Davies, Rhinedaughters, and Mark Richardson,
Fasolt.
ENO is workshopping its new Ring over 18 months, using
semi-staged performances to prepare for a full staging,
directed by Phyllida Lloyd in 2003. The ENO production
uses Jeremy Sams' new translation, which Clark calls "surprisingly
mild-mannered, emphasising clarity over street cred. Sams
favours rhyming couplets, dispenses with Wagner's alliteration,
and is marginally less faithful than Andrew Porter's hallowed
version...it is true to the comic, conversational tone
of the dialogue..". Clark's reservation was the conductor:
"The Rhinegold sounded a little monotonous - as if
[Paul] Daniel was beating his way through it rather than
shaping it into a cumulative drama".
Financial Times; Jan 30, 2001
By ANDREW CLARK
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