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The following report on the Manaus Ring Cycle last year has been submitted by Jan Bowen.
The proverbial pinch test failed miserably. No matter how much self-inflicted pain I administered to my bare arm, I couldn't believe that here I was, on the balcony of an Italianate opera house in the middle of the Amazon jungle, spending the interval break surrounded by flickering candelabra and gleaming silver, and consuming a potentially dangerously concentration-impairing banquet.
The city of Manaus in the remote northwest of Brazil , accessible only by air or a 16,000 km river journey, last year staged the first performance of the Ring ever produced in Brazil . As a committed Wagner groupie, I just had to go.
Manaus is situated at the ‘meeting of the waters' where the Rio Negro in Venezuela and the Rio Solimoes in Peru join together to form the mighty Amazon. Founded in 1669 by Portuguese settlers as a defence against any Spaniards foolhardy enough to venture up the enormous rapid-infested waterway and named after the indigenous inhabitants, the Manaós, Manaus was nothing more than a tiny isolated fort for more than 200 years until the 1890s rubber boom put it on the map.
For a status-seeking rubber baron what greater symbol of luxury and culture could there be than an opera house and one more than usually enterprising entrepreneur used his incalculable wealth to build the Teatro Amazonas. Wrought iron staircases were imported from England , crystal chandeliers from France , gilded mirrors from Italy and stone from Portugal . All had to be transported on barges up the river. The Italian Domenico de Angelis painted the exquisite ceiling panels, while the outside cupola was covered with 36 000 golden tiles, gleaming from the elevated site for miles around.
The opera house opened with a gala performance on New Years Eve, 1896, and for a few years, it attracted Europe 's leading singers. Even Caruso, it is said, was booked to perform, although he never actually made it. Then the Brits smuggled the rubber seeds to Malaysia , scientists developed synthetics and the Brazilian rubber economy went bust. The building stood rotting in the tropical heat for nearly 90 years.
A decade or so ago the civic fathers recognised its tourist potential, restored it and since its reopening in 1996, have held an annual opera festival unique in the world, including over four years, one Ring opera a year, culminating in the full cycle last year.
Most of us in this Opera Australia/Renaissance Tours group wondered how a remote Brazilian town, not small - population 1.8 million – but scungy industrial, where more than half the inhabitants are illiterate, could possibly come up with something even faintly comparable with Bayreuth, Berlin or for that matter, Adelaide.
Well, it certainly gave them a run for their money and enjoyment was by no means dependent on the exotic appeal of the location. British director Aiden Lang, veteran of Glyndebourne and Covent Garden , with imaginative effect, adopted an environmental theme appropriate to the threatened jungle surrounds. In Das Rheingold , the Rhine daughters cavorted in large see-through boxes holding DNA molecules. Siegfried had stylised molecular ‘trees'. In one memorable scene, Erda had to drag herself up a huge spiral ladder causing the audience to hold its breath in sympathy at the difficulty she must have had in actually singing at the same time. It all seemed a bit unnecessarily taxing until someone pointed out to the less scientifically literate members of the group that the double helix is the basic building block of DNA. The interference with nature theme was a little less successfully dealt with in Gotterdammerung which opened with Gunther bending over an unconscious Gutrune on an operating table. There were some suggestions in the press that he was performing a lobotomy but since he was consistently focused on the other end of her body some kind of reproductive procedure seemed more likely. The hospital setting fitted rather better with the memory drugs given to Siegfried but it must be said that the full meaning of the metaphor eluded most of us.
By and large though it was a thought provoking production that worked well. Few could disagree with the basic premise that unless our leaders, represented by Wotan and his gods, act more decisively to save the world's natural resources such as rainforests, the crumbling of Valhalla will be as nothing compared with the environmental apocalypse that will occur.
And I must say that the super trad Ring I saw in Seattle a few months later cured me forever of wanting to see another literal production. Sylvan glades and fire-breathing dragons are fine, probably essential, to establish a benchmark and I was lucky in that my ‘first Ring' was the now discarded Met production. But the reason the Ring not only survives but is growing in popularity is its never-ending relevance to us and our life as it unfolds through the ages. Interpretative approaches may not always come off but for me at least there is an intellectual dimension that keeps me coming back for more.
In vocal terms, the Manaus Ring may not have had a Placido Domingo or a Waltraud Meier – but how many places do and American Maria Russo's experienced and passionately realised Brunnhilde was eminently suited to the 700-seat auditorium. Canadian, Alan Woodrow [who will sing Tristan in Perth later this year], drew on his ringing tenor and experience as the reigning Siegfried in many major opera houses, including Seattle, to convey the ambiguities of that character to great effect. Brazilian Licio Bruno's Wotan was a bit short on gravitas for a head god, but was vocally superb with a warm and powerful bass baritone. Stephen Bronk was a sensation as Fasolt, Hunding and Hagen. Then there was Thomas Rolf Truhitte as Siegmund - tall, handsome, ardent with a magnificent tenor voice - we Aussies invited him to our shores on the spot; Opera Australia are you listening, he's very keen to come here.
The Amazon Philharmonic Orchestra consisted of mostly young eastern European players, lured there by better pay and conditions than they could get at home, and nurtured over the last four years by artistic director Luiz Fernando Malheiro. What the 70-strong band lacked in number they made up for by playing their collective heart out. Although the 40 degree-plus heat and 98 per cent humidity must have led to severe culture shock – for the cellist from St Petersburg in particular.
The tickets, by the way, cost $25 a performance!
Of course being the Ring our artistic pilgrimage was interspersed with sightseeing on the days off. We went gliding up Amazon tributaries in a canoe, mesmerised by monkeys swinging from tree to tree, indigenous kids who invited us to ‘pat' a boa constrictor, and a caiman sunning itself precariously on a giant lily pad. We took a trip into the jungle to see exotic flora and fauna, including to our delight, a sloth, high in a tree and living up to its name with its exaggeratedly slow gyrations. Hiring a small plane we looked down on fingers of jungle protruding resolutely into the huge expanse of water, and marvelled at the meeting of the two rivers which flow side by side, the Negro black and the Solimoes yellow, neither conceding blending rights to the other for miles.
It took Wagner 26 years to write the Ring. Perhaps even more than usual we were grateful that he lived long enough to finish it.
[ Jan Bowen No 743 January 2006]
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16-Apr-2006
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