Mingling With The "Gods"

Das Rheingold

Metropolitan Opera, October 4, 2010 (157th Metropolitan Opera performance)

Music and Libretto (1) by Richard Wagner


New Production

Producer/Director: Robert Lepage (in association with Ex Machina)
Sets: Carl Fillion
Costumes: Francois St-Aubin
Lighting: Etienne Boucher
Video Image Artist: Boris Firquet

Conductor: James Levine

Wotan: Bryn Terfel
Alberich: Eric Owens
Loge: Richard Croft
Fricka: Stephanie Blythe
Freia: Wendy Bryn Harmer
Fasolt: Franz-Josef Selig
Fafner: Hans-Peter Konig
Erda: Patricia Bardon
Donner: Dwayne Croft
Froh: Adam Diegel
Mime: Gerhard Siegel
Woglinde: Lisette Oropesa
Wellgunde: Jennifer Johnson
Flosshilde: Tamara Mumford

Anybody who lives in New York City, and possibly even the surrounding area, is probably aware of the Met's latest publicity blitz. Bus shelters, the sides of buses, and quite a few other things are covered with pictures of Bryn Terfel, costumed as Wotan and carrying his spear, titled "Mingle With The Gods". Well, I was one of the "minglers" on Monday night. Although I have heard a number of recordings (especially the famous Solti one), saw the telecast of the previous production by Otto Shenck (and a few non-Met ones), I have never seen the opera live - the only Ring opera I have seen in it’s entirety is Die Walküre, and I deeply regret not having had the money to see the entire cycle of Schenk's production. Well, virtually the whole world has been waiting for Bryn's Met Wotan (which he's done at Covent Garden - and there was the concert Die Walküre from the Proms), and that plus a promising new production and Stephanie Blythe as Fricka made me willing to brave the hordes of Wagner fans who descend on New York every time a Ring opera is performed here. It turned out to deeply satisfying, far more than I expected (that was, I thought, more from the later Ring operas), and at least musically, one of the best nights I’ve had at the Met in ages.

First of all, I was pretty lucky. The performance, of course, had been sold out for months (and now Die Walküre is sold out as well), so I had to get standing room. I logged on the Met's website at precisely 10AM and went to the performance page, refreshed that page and snagged a standing room ticket at 10:01. By the time I finished the transaction, at 10:08, Family Circle Standing Room was sold out. I suspect Orchestra Standing Room sold out even before that. Unfortunately, online purchase fees, facility fees, and what looked like a mandatory "contribution" (which I whittled from $5 down to $1 - I might have figured out how to get around it if I had more time) turned a $17 ticket into $28. I was too relieved to have the ticket to yell "extortion!" Since I normally buy standing room tickets at the box office where the only thing they charge is the $2.50 facility fee, this usually isn't a problem. And the performance was worth a heck of a lot more than $28. I admit I didn't relish the idea of standing for 2 1/2 hours without an intermission - the last time I stood that long was for Wozzeck, I can't remember when. I did stand through Die Walküre in 1997, but that was a breeze by comparison as there was a "sitting break" every hour and 15 minutes. Naturally, I was very careful not to eat or drink anything until after the performance.

This performance was proof, if any was needed, that no matter how exalted the cast, conductor, or orchestra, recordings do not do Wagner justice - his music must be heard live. Not even the Immolation Scene (with Jane Eaglen) at the James Levine Gala back in 1996 drove home this point so strongly. The orchestra was like a cauldron that Levine stirred with his magic baton, and the sheer raw, elemental majesty emerging from the pit (and elsewhere - where were the anvils?) was astonishing. The opening chords really do sound like the creation of the universe - all the more appropriate considering I just finished reading the biblical creation story in Parshat Bereishit (2). You could hear the leitmotifs swirling back and forth between instruments. For lack of a better term, it sounded truly “3D”. Plus it was a bit of a “shock” to hear some of the leitmotifs (Giants, Magic Fire, Donner’s “Heda, heda, hedo!”, etc.) for the “first time”. Kudos is particularly due to the brass section.

The cast was equally superb, and of the singers, bass-baritone Eric Owens took top honors as Alberich. His voice is huge (easily carrying over the intense orchestration in all but one probably sextuple-forte moment), dark, firm, rich and burnished, and his German diction is superb - I actually noticed it more than the three native speakers in the cast, or Bryn, who is usually a master of it. And he's a wonderful, as well as very physical, actor. One might argue his voice is too beautiful for Alberich (or Hagen, which I hope he does as well - what he could do with the Summoning of the Vassals!), and not "menacing" in and of itself, but that actually makes him almost sympathetic when the Rhinemaidens are teasing him.

I first heard Owens back in the mid-90s when he won a prize in the Licia Albanese Puccini competition, singing a memorable Sparafucile in the duet with Rigoletto (3). He was a finalist in the Met Auditions (not sure if he won) a few years later, and admittedly at that time he seemed a little small-voiced in the Met auditorium, I remember he sang "Arise, ye subterranean winds", which I think is from Handel's Hercules - he is shortly to sing the title role in Chicago. I waited for him to appear on the Met roster for years after (I think he might have been a cover at one point). While he was very young when I first saw him and basses don't reach their full maturity until they're in their mid-40s (not sure how old he is now), I can't help but think that racism might have been a factor in such a long way to the Met, especially under Joseph “Blonde Fetish” Volpe. He finally made his debut as General Groves in Doctor Atomic, a rather blustery comic character role, in 2008. He also sang Sarastro (in the English-language Magic Flute performances?), but I missed that. It looks like Owens is finally getting the career he deserves, and this portrayal is going to raise his star considerably. Some Opera-L posters preferred him to Bryn Terfel for Wotan, and I would indeed like to see him do it one day - although how many singers have done both Alberich and Wotan? Hunding might be more likely - and I think he could make a more sympathetic one than usual. I only hope his success in German and English-language repertory doesn’t “disqualify” him from French and Italian.

One thing I couldn't help but think while watching this - and I'll probably go more into this when I write my inevitable "What's A Nice Jewish Girl Like You Doing Listening To Wagner?" post - was that for all of Wagner's anti-Semitism and the embrace of his music by Hitler (who probably saw himself as Siegfried!) and the Nazis, there is no better allegory for Hitler than Alberich, the "ugly dwarf" who renounces and curses love for the sake of power, enslaves his own people, and has fantasies of world domination. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a production somewhere that actually portrayed Alberich as such, since German productions of almost any opera seem to love to put their villains in Nazi uniforms, whether or not it makes much sense in context of the opera. (4)

I found it a bit odd that the Met Titles referred to Alberich as a "gnome" rather than a "dwarf". I'll have to check the libretto to see if the German word was "zwerg". When I think "gnome" I think the benevolent, one-with-nature Huygen/Poortvliet version, which also draws pretty heavily on German/Scandinavian mythology (their wonderful book Gnomes recently released a 30th Anniversary Edition and was a mainstay of my childhood, as was its sequel Secrets of the Gnomes) or the Dungeons & Dragons version where they're essentially fun-loving and joking. Not to mention "dwarf" more than "gnome" conjures up people who dig for precious metals under the earth (5).

If Bryn "suffered" in comparison to Owens, I suspect that it's simply that Die Walküre is a better showcase for Wotan and the singer playing him - Das Rheingold is much more an ensemble piece and if anyone dominates the proceedings, it's Alberich and Loge. As Bryn himself says in this interview , in this opera Wotan is a character who reacts, leaving most of the “action” to Loge. It's possible he had difficulties on Opening Night, as some reported, although I heard nothing wrong here. I was surprised that there were moments where he was drowned out by the orchestra – this is not a small voice! - but by and large he had both the majesty and internal conflict the role needs. The truth is, there really is no way that Wotan can do the right thing, and Bryn made that clear, as well as showcasing his mercenary quality. For the other gods, Freia is their sister and they love her, whereas for Wotan, she's at best a mere in-law and more likely just a magic apple producer. I still wish his first major Wagnerian assignment at the Met (he did Wolfram in Tannhäuser back in 1997) had been last year's Der Fliegender Hollander, based on his stunning recording of the Dutchman's aria - Juha Uusitalo wasn't bad, but for a role like the Dutchman you need much more than "not bad". And he just did Hans Sachs at the Welsh National Opera (admittedly much smaller than the Met).

Although I’ve admired Richard Croft since I first heard him (as a particularly sweet-voiced and sympathetic Cassio in 1995), I’ve tended to think of him as “Dwayne’s little brother”. Since my Met attendance records were stolen (long story), I am unsure as to whether I saw him as Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte (definitely not the performances with Dwayne, possibly ones with Nathan Gunn), so this is probably the largest role I’ve ever seen him in. He’s not just a great singer’s little brother - he more than held his own as the scheming, unctuous wheeler-dealer. As I said, it’s he and Alberich who really drive the proceedings. While his voice is not as beautiful as it was 15 years ago, Loge is more an acting role than a singing role - it's more important to convince as a bastard than to sound great. I’ve seen a few stories in Norse mythology where Loki/Loge is a more benevolent trickster god, and while here he is clearly evil, it was interesting to see him as the outsider among the gods (he’s half human? Who are his parents?), as well as the fact that there’s clearly a backstory between him and Alberich (his cousin).

Stephanie Blythe was magnificent as Fricka, probably the character I most identified with in her desperately trying to revive her marriage to Wotan and save her sister from essentially being sold into slavery. This is particularly satisfying as I think Wagner is at best ambivalent about her, making her the guardian of the "bourgeois morality" he scorns. I originally thought Blythe, being a true contralto, was vocally more suited to Erda, and then I realized that Erda is just that one aria whereas Fricka is a role. I believe this is the first time I've heard her in a German opera, although I've heard her in German song repertory. (And I’ll have to miss her master class at Manhattan School of Music tonight as I have to both give blood and go to my chorus rehearsal!)

The smaller roles were also very well, even luxuriously cast. Dwayne Croft (Richard’s big brother!) had probably the most memorable single moment in the production with Donner’s conjuring the storm and the rainbow bridge; this is the first time I’ve heard him sing in German. It’s still a pity that illness (GERD? Sinus issues? ) reduced him from being the greatest lyric baritone on the Met roster in the mid-to-late ‘90s to being just very good now. (6) I had first seen Patricia Bardon as Cornelia, the role that Stephanie pretty much owns now, and Erda suited her better – it was nice to have both singers in the same cast. I’m also happy to see Wendy Bryn Harmer breaking into her first major role as Freia. Let’s hear her in some Puccini (I had doubts about mostly-Mozartian Hei-Kyung Hong’s suitability for Liu until I heard her Freia). A little surprised to see Lisette Oropesa as a Rhinemaiden (as I said, luxury casting), now that she’s done Susanna and Lisette and is about to do Amor in Orfeo ed Euridice, but I suspect she was cast as this first. There were also two fabulous giants (although I had difficulty telling which one was which until Fafner kills Fasolt, not to mention the similarity between the singer’s names!) – I actually felt quite sorry for them, even if they are dumb brutes, they’re the working class guys exploited by the rich folk. I remember Franz-Josef Selig’s Pope in Palestrina from the late ‘90s (where he sang an easy low G) and Hans-Peter König’s Daland was the best thing about Met's Hollander revival last year. Adam Deigel brief outbursts as Froh were enough to make me want to hear him as Walther von Stolzing one of these days, although I suspect David is more likely. I’m not absolutely sure of this, but I think he started his Met career in the children’s chorus – which would make him the first adult singer at the Met to do so. While I'm still pretty desperate to hear David Cangelosi as Mime (after his stunning performance on the Domingo/Pappano Wagner Scenes disc, plus his equally fabulous Spoletta), Gerhard Seigel was very good.

On Sunday I went to a double bill of The Wrong Trousers and Topkapi as part of Film Forum's "The Heist" series (7). Since these films showcase a lot of climbing with wires and walking on walls and ceilings, this actually turned out to be a pretty good preview of Robert Lepage's new production, on which I'm reserving judgment for now. I’m enough of a traditionalist to prefer the Schenk. Die Walküre will be a major test, as will later performances of Rheingold this year and in the full cycle. As spectacular as some of the descent into Niebelheim and subsequent ascent looked (and I'm not sure how else one can stage the floating Rheinmaidens) I'm a fanatic about performer safety (since my "real life" job is in worker's compensation) and all the wire work, sideways climbing, and sliding down a steeply raked set raised my alarms. Not to mention that such production requirements on the performers excludes great singers who might not be very agile or have fear of heights (8). A production should expand a singer's performance choices, not limit them. The stage machinery famously got stuck at the gods’ entrance to Valhalla on opening night, but there were no problems now, although it was noisy (I suspect that's unavoidable), Still, I would bear in mind the saying "the more complex the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain".

(UPDATE: Apparently Bryn, and presumably the other singers, had stunt doubles. Whew. Actually there was a moment after one of the “walks” where Wotan went offstage – and came back a bit too fast for him to have taken off the wires, so I should have realized. I guess there won’t be any close-ups during those scenes in the HD broadcast. The doubles should have been credited in the program!)

At least nothing Lepage did got in the way of the story or was outrightly offensive, like Luc Bondy's Tosca production or most European productions of Wagner (or anything else). And I'd give a lot more leeway to a story essentially steeped in myth and fantasy. Just don't make the gods literal 21st Century real estate moguls. Lepage meant the production to evoke the landscape of Iceland, as it's a raw, primal location, almost like another planet, and of course Iceland is one of the major sources of this mythology (9), but I didn't get quite as much sense of Iceland as he talked about. I suspect there will be more of that in the other operas which take place on "Earth" (Midgard?) and we have more dealings with mortals. I think the use of film projection probably is the best way to stage this sort of work, and most of them were very effective. In particular, Donner's lightning bolt (I actually jumped!) and the rainbow bridge was incredible. Also the "fire" surrounding Loge looked very realistic. It was a relief to see Wotan looking like most traditional depictions of him (and the publicity photos had him with his two ravens , not seen here) instead of, say, in a business suit, or even the somewhat "generic" costume James Morris wore in the Schenk production. His "comb over", as opposed traditional eye patch, had a few complaints on Twitter (and Opera-L, I imagine), but it has largely the same effect and obstructs the singer's actual vision less. I don't think I'd want to walk "down to Niebelheim" with no depth perception. I admit some "scar makeup" around his eye would have been nice, but that's probably too subtle to be seen by anyone not the front of the orchestra. The giants looked a bit too much like Hagrid (10) for my taste, but then again, I don't doubt J.K. Rowling got some of her ideas from Wagner and his sources, as she's a real polymath when it comes to mythology and folklore. The other costumes were fine - Stephanie looked suitably matronly, but any regality came from her bearing, not her rather plain gown.

One bit of possibly bad news. I only got a brief glimpse of James Levine, at the end of the performance (couldn't really see him in the pit, nor was I sure whether he was standing or sitting), but he did not look well. Of course, he had several recent surgeries, and he's lost a lot of weight, but still... He took his bow from the side of the stage, apparently unable to climb onto the set platform (which wasn't very high) and stand/bow with the singers. Wishing him a refuah shleimah (that's Hebrew for complete healing, body and soul). Would anyone happen to know his Hebrew name? Has it been made public?

The 2 1/2 hours went by pretty quickly - it would have been a breeze if I had actually been sitting. I stood next to a horn player from the Philharmonic. It would have been nice if there were an intermission so we could continue our conversation. I can't remember his name, but I'd recognize it if I saw it in a Philharmonic program. He hadn't bought a seat because he was in Europe while most of the tickets were on sale. Nice guy from Georgia. Played a lot of Broadway shows before he came to the Philharmonic. I expressed regret that he probably didn't get a chance to play Siegfried's horn calls at the Philharmonic, but he said he occasionally played them in excerpts and he couldn't handle the Met Orchestra's hours. He had the aisle place (which I thought I had) and moved away to stand where he could look down the stairs, so I had a bit of room to move in the stuffed-to-the-gills space.

Ironically enough, after the performance the Met elevators were having problems and wouldn't go down to the concourse where the subway was - they kept going up once it hit orchestra level. Someone from the safety office had to override them. And one was apparently stuck on the Grand Tier (with no one in it, baruch Hashem!) for the whole performance. You can build Valhalla, but you can't get out of it?

Oh, I now have a craving for Golden Delicious apples. We now know what happens when we don't eat our fruit...

Afterwards, I tweeted actor Nathan Fillion (best known for his collaborations with Joss Whedon, especially Firefly) to ask if set designer Carl Fillion was related to him, as I imagine it's not a terribly common name, but since Nathan has tens of thousands of followers and I'm not one of them, he may not have noticed it (or found it interesting). I also thought about tweeting Owens to congratulate him on his performance, but I don't think he's on Twitter - although there are at least 20 other Eric Owenses there, nearly all Caucasian.

Hopefully, I should be able to add some pictures onto this post this weekend.

I'll end with the following: A few years ago there was an article in Opera News about suggestions for making very long operas shorter. The winner was:

RHINEMAIDENS: Give us back our gold!

ALBERICH: Okay! (11)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

(1) Or as Wagner himself put it, “poem”

(2) The universe, by the way, actually does "make music" - on a frequency about 64 octaves below middle C, As in Parshat Bereishit, the “action” moves immediately from the Creation to the doings of mortals, which in the end are what the story is really about. Take that, fundamentalists who interpret the first few verses of Genesis literally! Note I said “mortals” because compared to G-d, the Norse/German deities are indeed mortals (one of the reasons I put quotes around "gods" in the post title). There are also some Jewish sources that say G-d sang, rather than spoke, the universe into being.

(3) The Rigoletto in question was a Chinese baritone named Xiaoping Dai, who I remember primarily because he kept making circular movements with his right arm that looked like he was winding up for a baseball pitch, and his very strong physical resemblance to Chinese-American character actor Jack Soo, best known for playing Sammy Fong in the film of Flower Drum Song and a memorable turn on The Odd Couple as a Chinese baseball player - he and his girlfriend bring Felix and Oscar "food that Chinese like", and Felix is overjoyed because he's going to eat "real" Chinese food as opposed to Chinese-American food. To Felix's and Oscar's shock, the ball player removes lox and bagels from the bag: "This is the 'food that Chinese like'?" "Are you kidding? I love Italian food!"

(4) I’m thinking of a picture I saw from a production of an opera called Der Templer und Die Jüdin by Heinrich Marschner, based on Ivanhoe, which nonetheless had Bois-Guilbert in a Nazi uniform. Actually, an opera based on Ivanhoe is interesting as George Sanders, who played Bois-Guilbert in the film, had one of the most beautiful speaking voices I’ve ever heard and actually was offered Scarpia by a West Coast opera company…

(5) Remember how spectacular the Mines of Moria looked in the The Fellowship of The Ring film? That was a civilization!

(6) Both absolutely delightful, by the way, especially the Wallace and Gromit short. And I now want to eat some Turkish food, which I don't think I've had for years, if ever. It's one of the world's great cuisines and I intend to visit Turkey one of these years. Probably should have tried one of the restaurants around the Met.

(7) It’s also a pity that Dwayne’s wife, soprano Ainhoa Arteta (gone for several years, presumably to be a mom) seems to be cast at the Met exclusively as Musetta. I’ve seen her Musetta at least 4 times. I’m getting bored – I want to hear her do something else – how about Susanna or Despina?

(8) I feel sorry for any soprano who can otherwise sing Leonore in Fidelio but can't handle really tall ladders, as the Met's production requires her to use one to climb into Florestan's dungeon.

(9) I don't know if it's still in print, but you might want to search out Sequentia's wonderful recording Edda (my copy, alas, is damaged), which is Icelandic music from roughly the 12th Century, based on much of the same themes. You could call it the original Ring Cycle. And Tolkien fans will be delighted to know that one of the songs lists Gandalf, Fili, Kili, Bombur, et. al. These myths are Tolkien's principle source as well.

(10) Bryn Terfel has said more than once that he would like to play Hagrid in an operatic version of Harry Potter - "Oh yes! I am Hagrid! Hagrid is me!" Of course, my priority is for him to appear in Doctor Who, which is of course filmed in Wales. He's a far better choice than fellow Wales native and occasional singing partner Katherine Jenkins, who will be in the upcoming Christmas Special, probably as the equivalent of Fan Scrooge. Then again, if producer Steven Moffat thinks Jenkins is an "opera diva" (even she doesn't call herself that), he probably has no idea who Bryn is!

(11) Might actually work if it was Mercedes Lackey's version of Alberich!