Wienerstaats Oper – Das
Rheingold
The
Vienna State Opera produces the Ring Cycle on a fairly regular basis, I am told
and this year they included the Ring as part of their internet live streaming
fare and I had the opportunity to watch all of the operas. As an extra treat a new streaming site has
recently come online called Opera Platform and the 4th opera of the
cycle – Die Götterdämmerung – was stream on that site. What makes that especially wonderful is that
it is now available for free for the next 6 months. You can find it here: Opera Platform
On social
media there is quite a lot of discussion of opera productions. Some claim that any production mounted since the
turn of the century is terrible and we need to go back to the golden days when
opera was produced the way it should be.
Others love the creativity. Many
others enjoy the new interpretations while decrying the excesses of European
“Regie” or director-driven productions.
And it seems like Wagner productions suffer most from this. So one never knows what to expect. Nevertheless I tuned in and found that I
really enjoyed the first installment of the Vienna Ring. I feel that it leans
more towards being a traditional production - no alligators, no nazis, no
setting in facist Italy or Spain. It does have some odd little quirks, of
course - but on the whole I thought it was very well done and enjoyed it very
much. The cast was overall great - Richard Paul Fink as Alberich was the
strongest in my view, I also loved the Erda (Janina Baechle) her singing was
gorgeous. She sang her monologue like she was singing a Schubert song. The
Wotan of Tomasz Konieczny was good vocally, he has a tendency to over-act a bit,
though I have to say I was not bothered by his youthful appearance. I liked
Peter Rose as Fasolt but Mikhail Petrenko was not enough of a bass for Fafner
IMHO. Someone wrote that they looked like the Pillsbury doe boys and I agree,
their costumes were odd to say the least. Then there is all the weirdness in
the production - what exactly was Froh carrying around, it looked like one of
the glass balls you shake and it snows inside. And why were the Niebelungs
forging the gold into body parts - heads, legs, arms - I just never got that.
The disposal of the giants was sloppy, Fafner just hung around for a while
doing nothing and then pushed the statue of Venus (yes Venus, they put the gold
in the shape of Venus - mixing myths I think) off stage leaving his staff to be
in the way of the final tableau and poor Peter Rose was left laying over the
rock for the rest of the opera. By curtain call he was limping and I have a
feeling that is the reason. There were a number of little inconsistencies and
silly bits that might have seemed brilliant to the director, but I had no idea
what the point was. And what is with the snake - Alberich turns into a dragon -
so they sent a member of the stage crew down to the Vienna Zoo to take a few
minutes of snake video on their cell phone and that is what we had to endure.
Thumbs down - I hope they do better in Siegfried! (BTW – they don’t)!
The orchestra was good, but not great. The
Vienna State Opera Orchestra is a mixed bag. Sometimes they sound spectacular
and sometimes they sound like a group of amateurs. And sometimes both occur in
the same performance. That was the case here. There were too many “kacks” in
the brass for an orchestra of that caliber, also there were too many occasions
of missed entrances and rhythmic uncertainty. And Rattle just could never get
the orchestra to play under the singers when they started to play loud. The
soft stuff was magical, but they consistently drowned out the singers when they
rose above a forte. And then there were the curtain calls - geesh - you'd think
this was an elementary school Valentine's Day play - talk about disorganized.
There was not enough room, the giants couldn't really move in their costumes,
they were in each other's way - it was a mess. Why can't they rehearse this?
One thing about the Met, the curtain calls are always organized and
professional! Not so in Vienna and it wasn't just this opera - this is a trait!
But overall I liked it and enjoyed the singers and the music is glorious. The
production was very suggestive and almost impressionistic and I liked that. I'm
glad I saw it and I commend it to you. They will be re-broadcasting the Ring
again next winter.
Wienerstaats Oper – Die
Walküre
On to Die Walkure
from the Vienna State Opera and I loved it.
I felt it was much stronger than Rheingold, in every way. The settings were more definitive, not so
impressionistic and they all worked well.
The weirdness was reduced substantially – I’ll explain that in a
bit. First the singing was really
terrific. The Wotan - Tomasz Konieczny
was much stronger in Walkure. He was
really tremendous actually. His Act 3
farewell was beautifully done. The other stand out for me was Martina Serafin
as Sieglinde. She sang beautifully and
when she finally lets loose on the Redemption motif in act 3 – wow! The
Siegmund, Christopher Ventris was good, but he suffered from what seems to be a
perennial problem with Simon Rattle, which is he can’t seem to get the Vienna
State Opera Orchestra to play under the singers – especially the brass. Konieczny was able to hold his own, but near
the end of act 1 it seemed like Ventris was pushing to try to be heard about
the noise from the pit and it was obvious and taking a toll on him. I was afraid he might crash a couple
times. But when he relaxed he sang
beautifully. I really think this is a
problem in the pit. Fricka, Michaela
Schuster (why no bio?), was also tremendous.
Her scene with Wotan was one of the most effective performances of that
scene I have experienced. And Mikhail
Petrenko was a much better Hunding than he was a Fafner. As Fafner he just didn’t have the fullness
and depth to his voice, but vocally he seemed more comfortable as Hunding. It was a solid performance. The (creepy) Valkures were all very
effective. Vocally it was a strong
performance. I should say something about Brunnhilde, Evelyn Herlitzius, she
got better as the opera progressed. She
was strongest in act 3. Her first
entrance in act 2 though was weak. I
realize it is really, really hard – but it was up from there. I felt she was the weakest singer in the
cast.
Instrumentally,
the brass were better, but in this performance it was the turn of the woodwinds
to have trouble with entrances. Chords
that were supposed to be played together were ragged and messy. The brass consistently overplayed the louds,
especially the 1st trombone (come on, this is not a piece for solo
trombone with a few singers and orchestra!).
I know there are a lot of them, but this is not a regional company, this
is the Vienna State Opera for heaven’s sake.
This orchestra should be as good as the Met, and they just aren’t. I never hear the kind of sloppy playing that
comes out of the Vienna pit at the Met.
One wonders if some of them actually bother listening to the
singers. And they do not follow the rubatos. The orchestra is never with the singers for
those, while the Met is always absolutely perfectly in sync. It is not all the fault of Simon Rattle
(though some of it was). I have noticed
these problems in other productions and performances. They need a Levine to come in a shake up that
orchestra. Finally – note to the 2nd
oboe player: once the music starts you need to stop talking and making
jokes. The celli and bassi and busy
setting the mood of the raging storm, the camera is showing them intently
playing and in the corner of the screen there is the 2nd oboe having
a good laugh. Terribly unprofessional
and distracting!
The production,
as I said above, works much better for this opera. The settings all made sense. The fire at the end was really pretty
cool. It is amazing how effective good
projections can be. So we get a raging
fire and the cast is not endangered! There were two things (maybe 3) that I
thought were odd. In act 2 were had two
left over golden heads from the Niebelheim scene in Rheingold. Apparently when Fasolt sees Freia’s gaze it
never occurred to anyone to give up these two remaining heads. Too bad, Wotan might have been able to keep
the Ring and that would have changed the plot substantially. I didn’t get them in Rheingold and I certainly
didn’t get them here in Walkure. (What, souvenirs from the past?) And then they disappear, they do not appear
in either Siegfried or Götterdämmerung. Then, in act 3 there were the horses! The stage was filled with horses. Not real ones of course, but beautiful
statues. Ok, I didn’t think much of it
in the first 3rd of the act.
But once Wotan chases away the girls it seems odd that their horses
remain, and they were there to the end!
Just odd. The Valkures were truly
creepy. And for those girls, creepy is
good! I did think it odd that Brunnhilde
was not costumed like the rest of the Valkures and there was no armour, shields
or swords for them. Instead Wotan covers
her with a wedding dress (that is the 3rd oddity). I don’t suppose there is anything wrong with
that - just different. Back to the
Valkures, they all brought with them their collected heros (dancers from the
company) who really seemed frantic to get away from these crazy blood-stained
girls. Can’t say as I blame them. It was effective. I liked that.
The hero corps in Valhalla is not such a happy community after all!
Last comment – I
really focused on the text for act 2 especially and found it all really quite
profound and moving. Not just the scene
between Fricka and Wotan, and Wotan’s monologue, but in particular the scene
between Brunnhilde and Siegmund. Don’t
you want to escape all of this and enter into heavenly bliss with your dad, and
Wotan and a band of brother heroes and innumerable lovely maidens? No, comes the response, my responsibility is
here and if I can’t fulfill my responsibility then I want nothing to do with
the shallow bliss of heaven! Not only
responsibility, but here is love – human love – and this surpasses everything
else. No escapism here! This piece is a
masterpiece. I love it! On to Siegfried!
Wienerstaats Oper – Siegfried
Siegfried this
morning – and from a musical perspective this was the strongest one of the lot
so far. The American heldentenor Stephen
Gould (who studied at my alma mater New England Conservatory) was simply
terrific! What a great voice and his
acting was good. Tomasz Koneiczy was
wonderful as Wotan, and Evelyn Herlitzius was great as Brunnhilde. She was much stronger in Siegfried than in
Walkure, of course it is a very different role.
The test is coming for her though in Götterdämmerung! Helwig Pecoraro was a strong Mime and Janina
Baechele was wonderful as Erda. I did
not like Mikhail Petrenko as Fafner any better than I did in Rheingold. I still feel that his voice is not right for
the role. The Forest Bird was very good
– don’t know her name the website chose not to list the entire cast! The orchestra played the best of the 3 so
far. The ensemble was better (the “Heil
dir” chords weren’t perfectly together, but close enough I guess). There were still the perennial balance
problems, the singers were consistently covered as they have been for the
entire cycle. But this is the strongest
performance so far from a musical standpoint.
Hats off to the principal horn – his playing was stunning!
I would not
consider this production a “Regie” production, even so this production of
Siegfried came the closest and had the most disconnects from the libretto. I really like there to be some connection
between the libretto and the staging – so when they are singing about a helmet
it is nice if there is in fact a helmet somewhere. And if you can’t have that then at least
let’s have some consistency within the production itself. Alas, this was woefully lacking. Granted the Ring makes the task more
difficult as you have 4 operas that have to be coordinated. First, note that act I – Mime’s cave – looked
more like a factory floor with a huge wall with fans in it. So then to act 3, Walkure ends with
Brunnhilde on the stage covered by a white bridal dress (she is dressed in
blue) surrounded by horses. So when we
get to Brunnhilde there she is on the stage covered by lacey white material (and
no longer dressed in blue). There is no
way even a dolt like Siegfried could mistake that whatever it is for a male
warrior. There is nary a sword (except Nothung), spear, shield, breast-plate or
helmet in sight. The revealing of
Brunnhilde consisted of pulling off all the white lacy material. And there are no horses – where did they
go? Even Gräne was not there. And not only that but the hall from the 1st
act factory was behind her – AND it was night!
“Heil dir…” what sun, what light?
Act 3 began with
Wotan digging what looked like a grave with a shovel out of which Erda (who was
costumed in white lacy material… hmmmm) rolled. Then the confrontation with
Siegfried took place in the grave and consisted of Siegfried roughing up Wotan
(I really hated that – that bothered me a lot – there should be one strike and
it is the sword which shatters the spear).
Oh and the spear didn’t shatter Wotan disappeared in to the grave and
emerged with a broken spear – kind of lame.
Act 2 was boring. This has got to
be the most boring dragon fight ever.
Even St. Louis’ Regional company Union Ave Opera had a more exciting
dragon. This dragon consisted only of a
projected eye that turned red when Siegfried struck the mortal blow. How lame is that! And then Fafner emerged covered in blood, but
in Rheingold Fafner was blue – his skin was blue – in Siegfried his skin color
has now miraculously changed to lily white.
Maybe that is what happens when you turn yourself into a dragon for
several decades! And besides the shovel,
which I thought was silly, there was a HUGE egg in act 1 – what in the world
was that and then while Mime is making the poison drink he pulls out a jar that
has what looked like a human embryo in it.
There was just no sense to any of this in my view. The general overall settings were ok, except
the final scene of act 3 which was just ridiculous – oh and did I mention there
was NO magic fire for Siegfried to penetrate at all!
My take on the production of Siegfried is my most negative
of these Ring productions of the Ring.
Luckily the music was the best of the Ring so far and I really love the
music to this opera. I should also
mention Richard Paul Fink who is a tremendous Alberich. He and Wotan were magnificent in act 2, scene
1. It will be interesting to see how
this all shakes out in Gotterdammerung.
Götterdämmerung – Wienerstaats Oper
I want to repeat that the last installment of the Vienna
Ring was and is available on the new opera streaming website – Opera Platform:
If you have not yet checked this out you should. They
launched the website last month with an outstanding production of “La Traviata” from Madrid which was shortly
followed by an incredible production from ROH-London of Szymanowski’s “King
Roger” starring Marius Kwiecien. Both
performances were outstanding. “King Roger” is one of the most powerful opera
experiences I have ever had. I only wish
I could have seen the production live. The
other Ring operas were streamed through the Vienna State Opera Live streaming
site:
I have watched over 20 performances this year and they have
certainly been a mixed experience, but what a wonderful opportunity to
experience one of the great opera houses here in rural Illinois. The whole Ring experience I would say was
mixed, both musically and in terms of the production. Director Sven-Eric Bechtolf has some great
ideas and certainly has a vision for this Ring, but unfortunately was not able
to carry it off consistently across the board.
That being said,
in my humble opinion this Götterdämmerung was the best of the entire Ring both
musically and in terms of production.
I’m not sure why, but this Götterdämmerung
simply didn’t have the head-scratching oddness and disappointments of the
earlier operas. It was a traditional
production that never strayed and the rather impressionistic supernatural
elements that were used in Rheingold worked beautifully here. I especially loved the ending. Those of us
who love the Ring and go out of our way to experience multiple productions of
the Ring Cycle get used to getting the end of the marathon and being
disappointed with the final apocalypse.
I am sure it is not easy to portray engulfing of the earth and the
heavens in fire and then have the Rhein overflow its banks. The Met Lepage
production for example was a major disappointment at the end and they are not
the only one. This Vienna Ring however
used projections and what I call lighting impressionism to create the effect along
with some supers or dancers, and I thought it was excellent. That said it is a pretty dark production on the
whole. Except for the flowering trees on Brunnhilde’s rock during the prologue
there was no color to speak of and I wished for at least a bit of wilderness
green in the 1st and 2nd scenes of act 3. Still this G
was terrific and I found it very moving and powerful and beautiful.
The star of the
performance easily was Evelyn Hertlizius as Brunnhilde. I felt that she improved over the cycle. She struggled mightily with her first
entrance in Walkure and then improved progressively from there. In Götterdämmerung
she was outstanding. Her voice was full
and powerful throughout. Someone on the
FB Met Opera page said they didn’t think she had a beautiful voice but it is a
powerful voice and she was an excellent Brunnhilde in Götterdämmerung. Her partner, Stephen Gould, as Siegfried was
also very good. I liked him quite a
lot. He was solid and secure. Falk Struckmann was effective as the dark and
brooding Hagen. I don’t think his voice
is particularly beautiful either but he has the dark timbre needed to be
effective in the bad guy roles he tends to play. Now Boaz Daniel as Gunter has a beautiful
voice. He and Caroline Wenborne as Gutrune brought a beautiful musicality to
these roles. Richard Paul Fink was again
terrific in his cameo part as Alberich in act 2, scene 1. In Götterdämmerung
Alberich is hardly on stage at all, but he was one of the shining stars of the
complete Ring. His Alberich was
consistently outstanding throughout. And
the two trios – the Norns and the Rheinmaidens were excellent. Vocally I felt that this was a terrific
performance and that in this 4th opera all of the singers were well
cast and sang well.
The orchestra I
felt was also better overall. The
tendency to cover the singers was less of a problem than it was especially in
Walkure and Siegfried, but there were still moments. But in the two orchestral set pieces – the
Rhein Journey and Siegfried’s Death March – the orchestra played very
well. Well, except for the poor guy who
was the principal off-stage horn. He was
having a bad day. I don’t think I have
ever heard the off-stage horn calls played as badly as they are in this
performance. On the whole I still feel that Simon Rattle is not yet in the same
class as Daniel Baremboim or James Levine as a Wagner conductor. And there were times when I felt he was not
in control. And the orchestra overall
was inconsistent.
It appears that
I am not the only one who felt this way.
After the 2nd intermission when Maestro Rattle entered and
had the orchestra stand a noisy conflict seemed to erupt in the audience
between the booers and the applauders.
Just as the applause and cheers would subside then others would start
booing which would prompt more cheering and applause. I wondered at one point whether they ever would
get the 3rd act off the ground.
This may be why the off-stage horn completely crashed on his entrance
that is at the downbeat for the 3rd act. Rattle almost started the act several times
before he actually did. It is
interesting as an American. We don’t often
see this kind of behavior from audiences.
But, as was pointed out to me, it does show that the audience is more
engaged and discerning. Americans tend
to applaud and cheer for anything.
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