Goodbye, Robert Lepage, Hello, Richard Jones!

Interior of The Coliseum, London

November, 2019

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

The English National Opera is launching a new Ring production, directed by Richard Jones and conducted by Martyn Brabbins . We've seen a couple of Richard Jones stagings in SF, a superb and well traveled Hansel und Gretel and a somewhat less successful Queen of Spades. They're starting out this fall -- they hope -- with The Valkyrie, with Rheingold, Siegfried, and Twilight of the Gods to follow. 

There's going to be a new translation, by John Deathridge. The previous production, of which I saw The Valkyrie in 2004, used a Jeremy Sams translation that I didn't like one bit. I am puzzled at why this revival doesn't use Andrew Porter's magnificent singing translation from the 1970s, but whatever.

I don't see any casting details on the ENO web site, but let me quote from the announcement:

English National Opera (ENO) is to bring Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the London Coliseum, starting with The Valkyrie this Autumn, subject to any further lockdown restrictions. Directed by the award-winning Richard Jones, and marking the first time in more than 15 years since ENO last staged The Ring, all four parts of The Ring Cycle will be staged at the London Coliseum over five years. Rhinegold will premiere in 2022/23 followed by a reprise of The Valkyrie, and new productions of Siegfried and Twilight of the Gods in 2024 and 2025 consecutively. The Metropolitan Opera is co-producing.

KA Kills

Screen shot of Cirque web site

Zachary Woolfe and I have both had a few things to say about Cirque du Soleil's show KA, directed by none other than Robert Lepage, whose design prefigures that of Lepage's Metropolitan Opera Ring.

Now the KA set and rigging have taken the life of a Cirque acrobat. The show is at least temporarily closed down. Let's hope nothing like this happens on the rotating planks of the Ring set.

Defending the Indefensible

The Times has a puff piece on the dismantling of The Machine, that nasty unit set used for the Met's current Ring production, which is going into storage for the nonce. Ho hum, except for the quotations from Peter Gelb, who inserts his foot farther into his digestive system with every comment:

Mr. Gelb suggested that the machine had become a scapegoat. “One of the reasons the ‘Ring’ has been criticized so much is people disagree with his approach, not the machine,” he said, referring to Mr. Lepage. “The machine is a victim, not entirely innocent because of its creakiness, but, you know, every production at the Met makes some noise.” 

He said he had not lost his enthusiasm for the machine. “It worked far more times than it didn’t work, and when it didn’t work sometimes, the machine was blamed when it wasn’t its fault.” He mentioned a moment in “Das Rheingold” last month when a jam on a separate “track-and-trolley” device prevented acrobats from zooming over the stage. Still, that problem forced the crew to stop the machine. 

He added that while it had delayed that 2011 “Die Walküre,” it had never interrupted a performance. “I’ve been to Broadway shows where the performance was stopped and the audience sat with the house lights on because things weren’t working,” he said. “That never happened to us.”

Yeah, that 45-minute delay to reboot the thing for Die Walkuere, who cares?

Nobody believes a word Peter Gelb says about the production at this point; actually, people disagree with the approach (brainless) and The Machine (worthless, dull). I'd suggest that he cut his losses by keeping his mouth shut.

He Got This One Right

I have raked Zachary Woolfe over the coals from time to time for ridiculous things he has said in the Times - Margaret isn't killing opera any time soon - but here's something he got right: what the Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil production of KA should have, could have, told the Metropolitan Opera about Robert Lepage. In a word, everything. Everything they needed to know about his style, production values, and priorities.

How do I know this? I was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago for a short visit with relatives. My uncle, who knows everybody in the theatrical world, got us comp tickets for KA. This made sense because we were staying in the MGM Grand, where the show runs, many times each week, in a purpose-built theater.

First off, the show is a complete and total embarrassment, for many reasons. There's the embarrassing, cringe-inducing, enraging, and racist use of African American performers, many of whom come out of the theatrical woodwork at the beginning of the show, faces and upper bodies brightly painted, to swing around the theater making jungle noises. God help me; it's the 21st century and we haven't gotten to the point where we consistently write meaningful theatrical roles for African Americans.

Yeah, I know it's a spectacle. So?

Second, the scale of the thing is insane, in many directions. The theater is vast, the stage makes that of the Metropolitan Opera look small. And yet....in the middle of the vastness, you've got people doing acts that were invented about 700 years ago and would look great in a medieval village square done from the back of a horse-drawn cart, with the audience within 15 feet of the performer. They look like they're about 250 feet away in that gigantic theater. Did no one notice this?

Third, there's the stage itself, which goes up and down, swivels, rotates in various planes, turns around, goes upright, and, for all I know, flips over. It behaves remarkably like the Ring set that the Met paid a fortune, and not a small one, for.

I can't claim to know its full range of tricks because the show itself is so boring that I left after about 45 minutes. There's not a semblance of plot; you're so far from the action, even in good seats, that you have no connection with the performers. Acts move on and off stage; the performers don't really interact. And you've seen most of the tricks before.

As theater, this show is a shambles. There's not a bit of Personregie or any kind of human interest, although I think Cirque does have the nerve to claim that there is a plot. No there is not.

Had anyone from the Met bothered to attend this mess, which opened in 2005, they would have known exactly what they were getting in the way of a Ring director: a guy who likes to play with toys and has no real sense of theater. And maybe they wouldn't have signed him on.

Why We Need an Independent Blogosphere

So Peter Gelb can't make us take down our postings.

If you don't want to click through: Olivia Giovetti of WQXR posted about the Ring; Gelb called WXQR, which took down the posting and now says it was under review already. Dan Wakin is on the case; read Olivia's posting here.

Good move, WQXR, during a pledge drive! And color this the problems of institutional blogging, from Dan's article:

Ms. Walker [of WQXR], without stating what her specific objections to the piece were, said it was not a review and “not exactly opinion either,” and after it quoted from the Times interview, “goes on without any substantiation or reporting.”

Ms. Walker, that's what blogging is about.

H/T La Cieca for bringing this to everybody's attention.

The Machine Stops

Around the net, we have various reports on the Met's ongoing Ring cycle. Here's Anthony Tommasini in the Times (and responses at Parterre Box); Alex Ross's recent NYer article is now available to nonsubscribers; as always, Brian at Out West Arts has plenty to say. Zerbinetta reports brilliantly and provides useful background. I'm linking to her primary blog address because I recommend reading everything she's posted about the Ring.

When Tommasini, normally something of a soft-peddler about problems at the Met, calls the Lepage Ring "the most frustrating opera production I have ever had to grapple with" and the normally mild-mannered Alex Ross says that "pound for pound, ton for ton, it is the most witless and wasteful production in modern operatic history," you know things are bad. Very, very bad.

Zerbinetta's spy in Boston reported the other day on a public discussion that Peter Gelb and Robert Lepage had at MIT. Here's the money quote:

She concluded, “My interpretation of their justification for their Ring is: Wagner wanted spectacle, and we're the only ones who have the means and wherewithal to do it properly, so we're bloody well going to do it, and any abstraction or symbolism would be compromise, and we don't have to compromise, because we can do a perfect realization thanks to technology!”

Wow. If Lepage and Gelb think that what Wagner really cared about was spectacle, they are so far off that they should both lose their jobs. If they are just bullshitting to cover for the failures of the production, then they should both etc. Yes, the libretto does call for many effects, from swimming nixies to the end of the world, but those are secondary to the real stories of the Ring: the passing of the gods and the coming of the age of men; how gods and men relate to and exploit nature; the coming of age of a young demi-god; the nature of love, power, and betrayal; promises made and broken; the nature of property and class.

If the Ring were primarily about spectacle, Wieland Wagner's bare-stage postwar Ring cycles wouldn't be legends. Perhaps it's time to send Lepage and Gelb to read up a bit on the history of Ring stagings.

"You're stuck with me whether you like it or not."

Wow. Just...wow. Unbelievably, that's what Robert Lepage said to Dan Wakin, who does the Met and all opera audiences a great favor by printing the most hubristic quotation I have ever seen, out-Jonathan-Millering Jonathan Miller by about the length of a marathon.

He is clearly clueless about what critics have been objecting to, and somehow manages to twist things around to blame the audience for its conservatism. No, Robert, mon ami, the problem is that your production is utterly brainless and in fact profoundly conservative. Audiences want more than that.

And thanks for the general insult to audience members who care about the music. If I were a Met donor, I'd be writing letters about how the company wasn't going to get a penny until it fires Lepage.