Wagner Society in NSW Inc
Der Ring des Nibelungen Adelaide 6-12 December 2004 (3rd cycle) - Dr Jim Leigh
Australia can be very proud of its first homegrown Ring production. The only previous productions in Australia were the Quinlan touring company Ring in 1913 and the 1998 Adelaide Paris Châtelet import. This new production was well up to world class and equal to anything I've seen except at the major German opera houses like Berlin , Bayreuth and Munich and possibly Covent Garden in the 1980s.
Adelaide created a genuine festival mode with several Wagner exhibitions through the three cycles, introductory talks before each performance and a very interesting “meet the artists” recital, with the singers performing Wagner, Wagner related work and popular musicals in a smaller room of the Adelaide Festival Centre to the conductor Ascher Fisch's piano accompaniment. At the third of these we were also treated to a fun Fauré/Messager quadrille for piano four hands on themes from The Ring. Great to see the performers in mufti having some fun and Ascher Fisch came across as a really lively musician. I heard of this concert through the lady in charge of one of the subsidiary events, the Christine Rothauser Wagner memorabilia exhibition at the University of Adelaide Library . Her great grandfather played in the Leipzig 1877 Ring, the first outside Bayreuth .
My only general criticisms of the new production are that perhaps more could have been spent on key singers in major roles and less on technical production and that I never got the feeling that this Ring penetrated below the surface of the plot, even with numerous clever insights and illustrations designed to make the actual story as clear as possible. It was almost as if Elke Neidhardt, Director of the production, wanted to stay away from epic myth expressing German philosophy and produce a Ring more for the general public than for Wagnerians.
A further general criticism was the rather tacky US style marketing of tickets, clothing, souvenirs, spin off deals and the like. I also heard some criticism of the catering and the inflated prices around and I also had not realised before how poorly the seating in the Festival Theatre lined up in some sections. While there is good legroom, heads in front seem to obstruct a lot and over 15 hours in the same seat this gets irritating. However the sound in P row right was excellent.
General aspects of the production.
The idea of the blue-lighted outer proscenium to frame the entire work, except for one or two points where it was turned off briefly, tried to achieve the Bayreuth optical illusory effect of a much deeper stage and larger than life size characters. However it had an unfortunate side effect in diminishing the contrast in the surtitles, important even for those generally familiar with the text, and especially so in view of how good they were in carrying on the story for relative neophytes.
The use of fire and water, the representation of nearly all scenic transitions without closing the curtain, the clever use of character entry from the auditorium, the use of characters to open gauze curtains and as accessories and the use of off-stage musical effects was all outstanding. The central post 1950 Bayreuth style hydraulic double disc, crucial to the action, functioned smoothly and silently throughout. The set designer Michael Scott-Mitchell was in many ways the star of the whole enterprise. Oh why did we have to endure Strosser/ Châtelet in 1998? Costuming was variable and often quite amusing, a combination of Rosalie at Bayreuth in the late 90s and the current “grunge” Stuttgart plus original touches (costume design: Stephen Curtis).
The augmented Adelaide Symphony Orchestra was almost full Wagner Ring strength and played consistently well with barely a false entry and only occasional wobbly brass playing. Woodwind playing was impeccable. I had only a slight quibble with Ascher Fisch's Barenboim-like interpretation. He seemed to deliberately lighten the texture and dynamic in Rheingold and Walkure and beef it up in Siegfried and Gotterdammerung . He also drastically varied tempi eg rushed end of Walkure and Siegfried's funeral march and ultra slow Waltraute scene. He no doubt was trying to be kind to some of the weaker singers and the clarity and audibility of sung text was excellent but several big scenes went for nothing (eg Donner's hammer blow to dispel the mists, and even Wotan summoning Loge for the magic fire scene). Some important leitmotifs were skipped over or poorly phrased.
In 15 hours there were only a few minor stage management fluffs. A technician was slow to get off in one scene change in Walkure , some beer bottles were dropped off stage after Siegfried's narration in Gotterdammerung and there were some near entanglements with the moving hydraulic discs at several points .
Das Rheingold
The very opening of the Ring began in absolute pitch darkness. The musicians played from memory and only had a tiny laser light point for the beat. This would have been yet more effective (a) if the musicians had not tuned up beforehand and (b) if the audience had not been warned beforehand by an announcement (no doubt for health and safety reasons). However, the gradual emergence of the famous E flat chord of the nature or genesis motif still tickled the spine.
We then saw the much rumoured water curtain effect and very good it was too. The Rhinemaidens were dressed in tight diving suits with false breasts and their individual names on their sleeves. Zan McKendree-Wright, a big strapping girl was Flosshilde the responsible one and stood out. However all sang well (Natalie Jones: Woglinde, Donna-Marie Dunlop: Wellgunde). The teasing of Alberich was done very effectively around a sloping bank front stage (here representing underwater rocks), like the Friedrich Helsinki production with topless Rhinemaidens. John Wegner was an outstanding Alberich, not just in Rheingold , but also throughout the cycle. Indeed he outsang Wotan by a large margin and it was a pity he did not get his chance to sing Wotan for whom he was the understudy. He was not at all dwarflike or ugly, indeed quite the contrary. However he was lecherous. When asked to show what he had, he did a dirty old man raincoat flash. The gold was a near blinding light from a battery of lightsources behind the water curtain. After the renunciation of love, Alberich appeared black rather than red.
The transition to Scene 2 was managed without the curtain dropping although the cessation of water flow was rather audible. The gods, portrayed as effete lotus eaters in white, lounging on modern white plastic low lying chairs, were distinctly identifiable. The whole set slid silently on from each side.
Wotan (John Bröcheler) had red hair, a furred lined coat, and a wolf head image on his tee shirt, plus a white eyepatch on his left eye. Fricka (Elizabeth Campbell, ) had big Bronwyn Bishop hair, Freia (Kate Ladner) what looked like a 1950s cocktail dress or even a fancy nightie, as in the Bayreuth Flimm production, and both goddesses had false breasts. The golden apples were in a plastic shopping bag as in Neidhardt's Sydney Tannhäuser . Donner (Timothy DuFore)wore a boxing glove on one hand (as in Helsinki ) and carried a child's cricket bat in the other: a boastful sportsperson. Froh (Andrew Brunsdon) was a long haired dreamy 19th century poet. The giants, who were normal size, wore bright yellow-green safety overalls, reflective tape, safety and helmets and arrived on a little truck. Fafner (David Hibbard with Fasolt: Andrew Collis) had a metal claw on one hand as a presentiment of his later shape as a dragon. Loge (Christopher Doig) had a silvery suit on and emitted real flashes of fire from his hand. Unfortunately, I felt all the singers of the above roles except Freia were underpowered.
The transitions to and from Nibelheim were also done without closing the curtain. Nibelheim was a sloping 20th century attic where child labourers toiled. It had electric lights though that were turned on and off at times. Wotan and Loge entered via the roof and a ladder. Mime was sung and acted very well by Richard Greager. He was dressed in overalls and a jacket with a jeweller's lens over one eye. The transformations to dragon and toad were done in an amusing, incompetent magician way, with the dragon a Chinese dragon made by children above the attic and the toad a toy on a cable. Musically they were a bit subdued.
The curse was shouted rather than sung by Wegner. The giants re-entered from the auditorium. Erda appeared as the Willendorf Venus, with one large stylised floppy dark breast hanging out. (Wieland Wagner had used this image for the treasure covering Freia in his 1965 production.) She just waddled on stage with no mysticism whatever or suggestion of blue light. This earth mother was very well sung by Liane Keegan. The piling up of treasure to obscure Freia was done with Freia horizontal, possibly because it had to fit on a trolley to be taken off by Fafner when he had killed Fasolt by strangling with his claw. Donner's call was very weak and Froh's two little songs scarcely heard at all.
There was no rainbow, but Valhalla was effective as a white cubist building with approach steps allowing an effective procession, though feebly accompanied. The drum beats accompanying the off stage Rhinemaidens' lament preceding this seemed much too loud. In summary, effective staging but generally underpowered except for John Wegner.
Time 2 hours 35 min.
Die Walkure
Act 1 began with a thunderclap and then the stormy prelude. Sieglinde was seen on the front stage apron as a kept, unhappily married doormat and Wotan was shown explicitly placing the sword in a central pool tree stump or rock before the Act began.
His idea of the pool was clever as it symbolised the well of wisdom at which Wotan had given up his eye. The sword –in-stone and lady-in-lake recalls the Excalibur of the Wolfram / Arthurian legends. The hut was created by spears rising around the lake (carved from the world-ash tree and providing a link with Hunding's ash tree centred hut). The first drink offered by Sieglinde to Siegmund was a handful of water from the pool. Siegmund and Sieglinde both had red hair to denote their Volsung genealogy from Wotan and the singers actually looked like twins. Hunding had the now mandatory bunch of henchmen.
The spring night saw the whole hut vanish as its spear walls descended and an abstract flowery backdrop appeared [drawn across by Wotan –Ed]. Siegmund waded into the pool to extract the sword. Wotan was seen manipulating events as huge wall shadow play. The orchestra was very restrained in Karajan fashion, but some beautiful woodwind solo work and lower string playing could be heard. I was a bit disappointed in the restrained but clean singing of all principals (Siegmund: Stuart Skelton, Sieglinde: Deborah Riedel, Hunding: Richard Green). The whole act however sustained tension and dramatic flow without real passion.
Act 2 introduced Lisa Gasteen as Brünnhilde. She unfortunately muffed her opening Hojotoho's, but recovered after that. As is now standard, the scene was set inside Valhalla , rather than Wagner's “a wild rocky place in the mountains” and this introduced the first set to be applauded as it came sliding on. The dead heroes were clear plastic figures with helmets, a similar effect to that used by Keith Warner in his current Bayreuth Lohengrin for the live Saxon army in Act 1. Gasteen's acting and physical jerks were excellent. She mocked Fricka's “big hair” and rolled around on the stage. The later scenes took place around geometric beams containing fluorescent tube lighting which framed the actions brilliantly and precisely. Sieglinde's short nightmare was played out by Hunding's henchmen. The whole set began to remind one of a huge airship hangar with big items wheeled in from the back. The stage movements were beautifully smooth and silent, a feature of the whole production. The whole act, including Wotan's long central monologue, was tensely sustained and the orchestra started to sound a lot richer in texture. Wotan also was much better sung.
This is a crucial Act as it defines Wotan's dilemma: the need to regain the ring to stop Alberich doing so and destroying the gods, without breaking the contracts on which his authority is based. The concept of the free hero, who will do it uncontrolled by Wotan, and the differential role of the curse on those who use the ring for power as opposed to love are introduced.
Act 3 began with a tour de force of staging. Before the ride began a lone Valkyrie was seen knocking on the closed wall at the back of the stage. It eventually opened revealing another applauded set sliding forward. It was the Wunderbar, a nightclub bar with nine stools, nine bubbling cocktail champagne glasses and nine television monitors over the bar. The Valkyries made their various entrances from the auditorium looking for a drink after a hard day's dead hero gathering. No dead heroes or horses were seen. The girls drank a blue fluid out of beer glasses (blue blood of dead heroes?). The actual music was rather light, but all Valkyries sang and acted well especially Kate Ladner as Helmwige, Liane Keegan as Waltraute and Zan McKendree-Wright as Schwertleite. The scene of Wotan's arrival was monitored on the black and white TV sets, the inverse of the current Stuttgart production where Wotan is watching the Valkyries from a security video monitor camera. Just before he came in, though, the TV sets cut to the news in colour.
Wotan's farewell and the magic fire scene were beautifully realised. Two concentric hydraulic disks rose gradually à la Sydney Olympics and stage flame arose from outlets around the disks. There were only slight movement problems with some jerkiness and Lisa Gasteen nearly got her hair caught in the works. The actual summoning of Loge was a bit perfunctory. I thought the orchestra and Wotan became a bit ragged and the tempo was too fast. Sieglinde jumped the gun in O hehrstes wunder and the important “redemption through love” motif blurred in its effect.
Overall the effect of the Act and the whole music drama was very impressive and dramatically well sustained. One started to believe in the characters and get into the Ring as a story. However, power, love, Feuerbach and Schopenhauer did not yet impinge on the spectator's consciousness. (thr Valkyries: Gerhilde: Elizabeth Stannard, Ortlinde: Lisa Harper-Brown, Siegrune: Gaye McFarlane, Grimgerde: Jennifer Barnes, Rossweisse: Donna-Maree Dunlop). Time 3 hours 50 min.
Siegfried
Act 1 showed a rather messy Mime smithy with some more modern equipment mixed with a lot of junk. Wotan/ Wanderer was lurking behind the scenes even before the question and answer scene, as is now becoming standard ( Helsinki , Bayreuth ). There was a lot of funny Mime/Siegfried by-play. The bear was Siegfried with bear mask on. Mime used WD40, made Siegfried model planes and sculptures of egg cartons, threw SPAM tins around, rode a tricycle, did things with an egg whisker and generally hammed it up with good comic dancing and timing - and singing. The forest was spear/trees as in Walkure Act 1.
The Gary Rideout story is now folklore. Brought in at six days' notice and with no stage rehearsals to replace an ailing Timothy Mussard, he has mastered the role. According to such fanatics as our president who has seen all 3 cycles, he improved with time, rather than fading as is usually the case in this impossible role of Siegfried. He has a strong baritonal voice but can produce ringing high notes as well. He had the hammer-tapping down pat by the 3 rd cycle. Wotan sang much better and really looked aged. Mime's vision was portrayed by fire and steam. At one point Siegfried returned with a dragon shaped kite and balloons, indicating that he already knew of Mime's plotting. The question and answer scene went well and the orchestra began to enunciate motifs with much more authority. The importance of these narrative scenes in the Ring cannot be overestimated and all were done well throughout the cycle.
The Act 2 linden tree was balloons floating gently, replacing the Bayreuth rustling metal leaves. The Wotan/Alberich scene, often boring, was quite funny, as was the later Alberich/Mime scene. ( Siegfried is an opera entirely composed of two person dialogues and one duet). The off key cor anglais [for Siegfried's attempts to imitate the birds -Ed] was well done.
The dragon was just a huge claw poked out with independently moving fingers. Apparently Fafner in yellow overalls could be seen behind the scenes from some seats, but I'm not sure whether this was intentional or not. Siegfried had Volsung red hair and was dressed in a faded Mambo brand tee shirt in Stuttgart style. Gary Rideout acted the insensitive brash young man without fear very convincingly. The dragon's dying one finger salute of his slayer got a few laughs.
The Woodbird was a small child (sung in the high vibrato Chinese style by Shu-Cheen Yu, the singer of the Woodbird in the recent Sydney concert performance). She had bright red hair and the wolf symbol on her tee shirt, denoting her control by Wotan, still manipulating events when he should be observing only. This is now almost a cliché as well (Bayreuth Flimm). She wore green shorts and different coloured sandshoes on each foot and carried a big lip shaped balloon, obviously the lead up to Siegfried finding adult sexual love with the sleeping woman he is soon to awaken.
The dinner interval, coincided metaphorically with the famous 12 year gap between 1857 and 1869 when Wagner broke off Siegfried at the end of Act 2 to do a few other things like writing Tristan and Meistersinger , taking over Bavaria and Cosima and siring three children. When Act 3 commenced, we heard a new sound from the orchestra and a perceptible change came over the entire production. Everything seemed bigger and better.
Erda still did not come on with much fanfare, but the “bare” breast was gone. The glaring bright light used for the appearance of the gold was used to symbolise another great turning point. Wotan realises Siegfried was indeed his free hero and when united in sexual love as one with Brunnhilde would redeem the world, the turning point strongly marked by the first appearance of the “world inheritance “ or “ Siegfriedliebe” motif. The curtain did drop for the ascent through the fire. The disc came down for Siegfried to awaken and woo Brunnhilde but rose again at the end. A telling bit of business as Siegfried and Brunnhilde became one, and she, the raging man-eating drago,n was Gasteen seizing the sword herself from Siegfried and brandishing it. He still knew no fear. Lisa Gasteen was fabulous here, but Gary Rideout was drowned out in the final scene. Time 4 hours 5 min.
Gotterdammerung
Prologue/Act1
The Norns scene did not have the outer blue proscenium. This was to allow the image of the rope of destiny to appear out of the darkness. The Norns had masks painted on their faces. All sang strongly (1 st Liane Keegan, 2 nd Gaye McFarlane, 3 rd Kate Ladner). The disc on which Siegfried and Brunnhilde had spent their night(s) of love had sprouted red abstract flowers, suggesting possibly poppies or roses. The postcoital duet went as well as the precoital. The curtain fell for the Rhine journey, which was way too fast. Hagen drew open the curtain on the tragic events to come at the Gibichung palace. Hagen was powerfully sung by Duccio dal Monte. I felt however that he was rather one dimensional in his acting. He wore an abstract Star Wars tunic, as did his inner coterie of supporters. Much better acting and good singing too was provided by Jonathan Summers as Gunther who wore a military uniform resembling a UK paratrooper. Gutrune (Joanna Cole) was portrayed as a plain Jane cripple with a calliper, limp and spectacles. Other Gibichung hangers-on wore modern business suits, military uniform or just anything in the case of the Vassal chorus. The full depth of the Adelaide stage was used for the Gibichung palace, with an effect something like the Deutsche Oper Berlin time tunnel or the Bayreuth Kupfer production. The ribbed arches sloped away sideways in the distance and I was not sure what this was meant to mean. Hagen was groping Gutrune, suggesting a history of child abuse and a variant of the Gunther/Gutrune groping in Friedrich's Helsinki and Berlin productions.
The new Siegfried was Timothy Mussard who was cleaner than but not nearly as powerful as Rideout. He faded to inaudibility at times. When Siegfried was offered a cigarette he portrayed his lack of worldliness by starting to eat it. The power of the potion was exaggerated in that even the dowdy crippled Gutrune easily and instantly became an object of extreme passion. Gunther was very convincingly acted as the coward seeking approval. The Waltraute scene was slowed right down; this was risky as the scene can be difficult to bring off. However, it was carried off well by Elizabeth Campbell (better here than as Fricka) and Gasteen. This whole Prologue/Act 1 took 2 hours 5 min.
Act 2
The blue proscenium was on initially but irritatingly turned off just before the Alberich/Hagen scene at the start of Act 2. This confrontation between two of the best singers in the whole production did not go as well as in the 1 st two cycles from all accounts. There was some stage noise.
The altars to Wotan, Donner and Fricka were three metallic looking pulpits on the left of the stage. The Vassal chorus sang powerfully and the spear oath and conspiratorial trio were powerfully conventionally operatic in a Verdian or Meyerbeerean way, featuring the confluence of some of the best individual singers. The orchestra now came into its own. Even plain Jane Gutrune was made to look reasonable in her white wedding dress, but she retained her limp. Siegfried made several poorly timed entries in the Act, and at times was not heard at all. Lisa Gasteen was at her best in this dramatic Act, which fairly fizzed through.
Act 3
The Rhinemaidens were still on their bank (now on the surface of the river rather than under it) but sheltered under an umbrella from the sunlight, which had replaced the light from their stolen gold (Frau Sonne) . The opening horns were somewhat wobbly but the scene went reasonably well with Flosshilde dominating again.
The hunt rest break was fuelled by cartons of Coopers Pale Ale (the local South Australian brew). Siegfried's narration and death scene was sung from the central disk, slightly elevated. The funeral march was rushed musically but very effective dramatically at the curtain was up for most of it. As the parade of leitmotifs illustrating Siegfried's life passed majestically by, static visions were seen of Siegmund, his father (wehwalt motif), and Sieglinde, his mother (Sieglinde motif), and a moving Wotan anxiously seeing if his grandson was really dead and where was the sword (sword motif). Siegfried's body stayed on the disk for the return to the hall. Hagen now appeared with his loyal followers in Star Wars tunics while Gunther had his faithful paratroopers. Hagen ran Gunther unconvincingly through (always a weak bit of Gotterdammerung ). Hagen 's spooky followers started the revolution by restraining Gunther's men. Gunther initially tried to hide from Hagen behind his sister.
Gunther even had his own little funeral march, as four of his loyal men lifted him synchronously. Siegfried's arm did not rise of its own accord. Hagen and Brunnhilde jointly lifted his arm up and shrank from the ring. The bearing off of Siegfried to his funeral pyre was done by four of Hagen 's men taking his weight as the disk dropped away.
Flames rose up along the whole back wall of the stage as Brunnhilde took over proceedings. Here Gasteen began to develop a slight beat, but overall carried the finale off triumphantly, following Siegfried's body back into the flames. Valhalla was seen vaguely behind going up in smoke. The water curtain descended to cleanse the ring of its curse and the majestic Valhalla and redemption through love themes took over, not always well phrased. The test of orchestral clarity here is always whether you can hear the final Gotterdammerung motif (in strings and woodwind) over the main Siegfried motif before the last redemption motif and I could not. Listen to the Janowski recording for this. Solti also fails the test.
The final scene showed Erda and a new young world ash-tree centre stage as the new world order possibly begins to recycle. Thus we have the slightly optimistic ending finally chosen by Wagner after considering about nine alternatives. The musical hint for this possible new beginning comes when Brunnhilde,in her final peroration sings the word Ende to the nature (Erda) or genesis motif.
The Ring, however, is not just about love replacing power as the basis of a world system, but rather the interaction and incompatibilities of love and power, and how this must be accepted as the reality behind the historical necessity governing the world. How we wish for a serious production which really conveys this. Maybe in the new Sydney Proper Opera house in 2050 or maybe as a monumental film directed by Peter Jackson or Peter Greenaway.
Time of Gotterdammerung 4 hours 35 mins. Time of whole cycle 15 hours 5 min (slightly slower than Karajan (14.59), not as slow as Barenboim (15.31))
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