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Chicago gets the 'Ring' music right
par William
Littler - source
Toronto Star
CHICAGO- The whole truly is greater than the sum of the parts,
where Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen is concerned,
a truth Chicago has learned this month and Toronto has yet to learn. No complete
production of this four-evening, 15-plus-hours musical journey into the world
of Nordic mythology has ever been mounted in Canada, and
Lyric Opera of Chicago, one of the continent's Big Three
opera producers, has undertaken the task only once before, back in 1996. The
Canadian Opera Company tried to climb Mt. Everest back in the early
1970s, mounting three of the operas (or music dramas,as Wagner preferred to
call them) over as many years, on thestage of what was then known as the
O'Keefe Centre. Alas, when it came time to add Das Rheingold,
the company's notoriously conservative board experienced a sudden drop intemperature
below the ankles and abandoned the project, which hasonly recently been revived
to open the company's new home, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing
Arts, in September 2006.
Like Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Canadian Opera Company has been assembling
its Ring part by part, though not in chronological order. Two seasons ago
it began with Die Walkure, part two of the tetralogy,
this season it mounted part three, Siegfried, and
next season it will add the fourth, Gotterdammerung,
leaving Das Rheingold, the prologue or first part,
to be presented when the Ring is forged whole in the fall
of 2006. The strategy is an understandable one. Not only does the audience
become gradually educated in the ways of Wagner but producers
can also focus on one production at a time and tinker with their concept as
the project evolves. Not that Toronto can do this quite the
way Chicago did. Lyric Opera engaged one director, August
Everding, and one set and costume designer, John Conklin,
where as the Canadian Opera Company engaged a different director
for each opera, leaving itto designer Michael Levine to act
as unifier (as well as director of Das Rheingold).
Everding died in the years following the first Chicago Ring
and its revival this month has been entrusted to a staff director, Herbert
Kellner, who has reportedly made numerous changes of detail within
his late colleague's overall concept. That concept was not universally admired
when first unveiled. The New York Times review even
suggested that the production"makes ugliness into a policy statement."
That judgment seems harsh, by comparison with what is done to the Ring in
Europe, where the Valkyries rode motorcycles in
Kassel, where a hair-in-curlers Erda wore a housecoat in Edinburgh and where
the Rhinemaidens resembled prostitutes in Bayreuth itself, the Wagnerian holy
of holies.
All the same, the post-modern Chicago Ring cannot be compared
invisual beauty with the far more traditional productions seen inrecent years
in Seattle or New York. It is profoundly eclectic, mixing metaphors right
and left, the scenery sometimes abstract,sometimes naturalistic, sometimes
on the verge of looking down right Chinese, with neon lights outlining symbols
and costumes ranging through space and time.
The usual defence of this kind of approach is that it universalizes Wagner's
vision. What it actually does is turn audience members into detectives, trying
to solve the mystery of what each confusing detail means and how it fits into
some subliminal scheme.
One of the strengths of the Chicago Ring is that it actually tells the story
quite clearly. The giants Fasolt and Fafner
maybe manipulated puppets, the Valkyries may bounce
on trampolines and the Rhinemaidens may be bungee jumpers, but when Wagner
asks for a bear, Chicago gives him a bear (albeit two-legged) and when he
asks for a Forest Bird, we see one, Japanese origami style, flown by a nimble
dancer.
As in the Toronto Ring, or at least the parts we have seen
thusfar, the characters are treated as humans, and that includes the gods
and goddesses. Not for the City of Big Shoulders some symbolic vision, inhabited
by icons. Wotan, king of the gods, has wife and
daughter troubles like the rest of us and behaves with atouching humanity
in James Morris's portrayal.
Morris was also Chicago's Wotan back in 1996 and
has been singing the role internationally for a couple of decades, yet he
still sounds rock solid and marvellously musical. I doubt I've ever heard
Wotan's farewell to his daughter Brunnhilde
sung more poignantly or with such attention to the softer end of the dynamic
spectrum.
Brunnhilde is, of course, the archetypal Wagnerian character
inthe public mind, complete with horned helmet. The image even turns up in
a famous Bugs Bunny cartoon. The role is cruelly difficult and a company able
to hire a soprano able to sing it can ill afford to worry about such niceties
as whether she looks plausible or not. Not to mince words, Jane Eaglen
looked big, so big that thedirector did not dare have her lie down on a rock
in the traditional manner, at the climax of the farewell scene, to be surrounded
by fire by Wotan. Instead, she was unconvincingly
shoved into a niche in a curious-looking, neon-outlined pyramid,appearing
as if she were on guard duty waiting for a hero to penetrate the fire and
claim her for his bride.
Sadly, there was no real fire. There wasn't at the end of Gotterdammerung,
either, when Valhalla is supposed to go up inflames.
At some critical points in this Ring, John Conklin
has let his audience down visually. The compensation arrives musically. Despite
her size, Eaglen inhabited her role so convincingly, singing with such fervour,
that the eye's skepticism yielded to the ear's belief.
A pity the same could not be said of her Siegfried,
the Britishtenor John Treleaven, of whom the opposite proved
true. The tenor star of this Ring was the ageless Placido
Domingo as Siegmund in Die
Walkure, though there were many strongly vocalized roles, including
the Alberich and Mime of Oleg Bryjakand
David Cangelosi, the Hunding and Hagen
of Eric Halfvarson ,the Sieglinde and Waltraute
of Michelle DeYoung and the Fricka
of Larissa Diadkova.
Most crucially of all there was the dazzling playing of the Lyric
Opera Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis, whose first
complete production of the Ring has catapulted him into the
major leagues among Wagner conductors. Wagner liked
to think that hiswords mattered as much as his notes. Davis knew better.
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