Rocket Through The Ring
March, 2004
The very first performance I ever saw of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” was a condensed version, staged in about four hours with puppets and people at Harvard’s Loeb Theater, the music provided by George Solti’s great complete recording, directed by a talented undergraduate named Peter Sellars. He took a greatest-hits approach, so we heard the Rheingold prelude, the Ride of the Valkyries, Siegfried’s funeral march, and other bleeding chunks in full.
David Seaman’s “The Legend of the Ring,” currently at Berkeley Opera, takes a different approach to reducing the sixteen-hour masterpiece by three-quarters. His version tells the story of the Ring and cuts everything that doesn’t directly advance that story. Out go most of the famous set pieces, orchestral interludes, and perorations, including the call to the mists, entry of the Gods into Valhalla, Wotan’s monologs, the Valkyries and their Ride, the Wanderer’s riddle duel with Mime and his scene with Alberich, the Norn scene, the Waltraute scene, and the funeral march.
Everything that’s left is drastically shortened: the Fricka/Wotan debate in Walkuere, Act II, might take three minutes and Siegfried races from bear to Bruennhilde in about a half hour. Goetterdaemmerung’s last act is cleverly compressed by cutting the Rheinmaiden scene and moving Siegfried’s narration to Gibichung Hall, where his death takes place in front of a silent, horrified Gutrune.
“The Legend of the Ring” is reduced in sound as well as length. Seaman imaginatively shrinks Wagner’s huge orchestra to a chamber ensemble for a dozen musicians, playing primarily winds and brass. So many characters are trimmed that Berkeley Opera’s production uses only eight singers for the remaining roles.
The whole enterprise works surprisingly well. The profound moral epic with its web of leitmotivs is mostly gone, but the ripping great tale of gods and giants, humans and dwarves, dragons and birds remains. The headlong rush does omit details a newcomer might need to fully understand the story line. I missed the full orchestra much less than I’d expected to because the reduction beautifully retains the flavor of every important orchestral sonority. Enough of the great moments remain that I was predictably reduced to tears a few times.
I must lament a few of the losses, however. Cutting Erda’s warning from Das Rheingold left Wotan’s surrender of the Ring to the giants without motivation. Wotan’s “Die Walkuere walte frei” (“The Valkyrie is free to choose”), normally heard in the dense to-and-fro with Fricka, might be the most important single line in the whole cycle. The god’s farewell to his daughter is mercilessly cut; he’s not even left with a “Lebwohl!” The Annunciation of Death scene starts with Siegmund’s first line instead of Bruennhilde’s, shortening the proceedings by all of 45 seconds. She also loses “War es so schmaehlich?” (“Was it so shameful?”) in Act III.
This is a real pity, and not only for the loss of the music itself. Christine Springer, who is singing the Valkyrie (and also a Rhinemaiden) had plenty of shine and volume for the heroic phrases, but she was especially moving and beautiful in the intimate moments, and I would have liked to hear more of those.
The whole Berkeley Opera cast performed on a very high level, with few weaknesses. The Rhinemaiden trio of soprano Marie Plette, Springer, and mezzo Catherine Cook is competitive with what’s heard in major opera houses. (They’d make first-class Norns as well, if Cook is comfortable with the First Norn’s contralto mutterings.) Plette is a touching and varied Sieglinde and a strong Gutrune. I loved her adorable and funny portrayal of the Forest Bird – whom you never see in standard Ring stagings – but her voice is just a bit too heavy to be ideal for the role. Springer would have sung it better, though it wouldn’t have worked dramatically. Cook’s Fricka is more the sad and betrayed wife than shrewish goddess; too bad she didn’t also get a shot at Erda.
Jo Vincent Parks brought excellent stage presence and a fine way with the words to the roles of Alberich and Fasolt; he also earned some kind of good-sport award for physical abuse, as he got thrown to the ground multiple times and – contrary to the libretto – apparently got a finger chopped off by Froh to take the Ring for the Giants. (Was this an allusion to that other Ring?) William Pickersgill’s smoothly produced, beautiful bass and air of physical menace made him an ideal Fafner, Hunding, and Hagen. Gary Ruschman, unlike many character tenors who take on Loge and Mime, went out of his way to sing the parts rather than sneer them; he was mercurial as the demi-god and abject as the dwarf.
Roy Stevens has the right sound for Siegmund and the murderous role of Siegfried, though I’m not sure he would survive singing them in full, but for this short version, he had enough voice without obvious struggle. He certainly brought the right manner to both parts: noble for Siegmund, swaggering for Siegfried. He was also a terrific Froh, whose music fits him like a glove.
Clifton Romig looked good and acted well as Wotan and the craven Gunther; I wish he had more of the vocal goods. He was uncomfortable in Wotan’s higher-lying phrases and couldn’t manage a legato in any phrase spanning large intervals.
The singers benefited from the thoughtful, detailed work of director Mark Streshinsky, who used small-scale gestures and movements that emphasized character development and could make plenty of impact in the intimate Julia Morgan Theater. About the only significant directorial misfire was the appearance of a garbage collector during the closing pages of the work; please, just give us some visual grandeur to match the music.
Jeremy Knight’s production design was both beautiful and imaginative: he employed three large screens and an array of gorgeous projections to set each scene. We saw fish in the Rhine, a castle for Valhalla, a rainbow for the rainbow bridge, a mass of tooth and claw for the bear; Nibelheim consisted of a lot of piping and ductwork; Mime’s workshop was…well, a workshop. The Rhinegold glowed at the appropriate moment, and flames flickered around Valkyrie Rock and during the Immolation. Sometimes the action was played as shadows on the screens and sometimes they provided cover for singers’ entrances and exits. The few minor technical difficulties with the projections will doubtless be worked out by the next performance.
Jonathan Khuner conducted intelligently and with an excellent sense of the flow of the music; always supporting the singers well and (after a rocky start) eliciting very good playing from his orchestra.
There are some significant benefits to performing “The Legend of the Ring,” and more American opera companies should stage it. This is a version of Wagner’s masterpiece that can be performed by a community opera company at less than ruinous expense. Its chamber scale and length allow the use of singers with less vocal firepower than the usual Wagnerian trumpeters. And it’s short enough to lure Wagner novices daunted (or horrified) by the thought of spending a week at the opera house for a full Ring cycle.
Kudos to Khuner and Berkeley Opera for having the vision to bring it to the Bay Area and for doing such an excellent job with it. You can see it on March 10, 12, and 14, 2004.
No comments:
Post a Comment