The Ring at the Met # 2: The Spectacular "Rheingold"

In the Metropolitan Opera's production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, there's no question that the opening prelude evening or Vorabend, Das Rheingold, takes the award for scenic spectacle.  How could it not?  This 2-hour-20-minute single act demands the appearance of giants, dwarves, gods, a massive heap of golden treasure, a dragon, a toad, swimming and singing river nymphs, and a rainbow bridge.  The story begins under the waters of the river Rhine, ascends to a mountain top, descends into a cavern deep under the earth, returns to the mountain, and finally climbs the rainbow bridge to a castle in the clouds.

One can only imagine the hassles Wagner went through trying to achieve all of that with the stage machinery of the 1860s at his disposal.

In the Robert Lepage production now onstage at the Met, the scenic and lighting resources of modern technology have gone a long way towards achieving what Wagner could only imagine in his wildest dreams.  The result is a production in which scenic spectacle becomes almost another character in the drama brought before us.

Yet the technological wizardry of the production serves to enhance the performances of singers and orchestra without acting them off the stage.

Speaking of wizardry, this production also calls on the services of body doubles for the singers -- but these are body doubles with a difference.  Drawing on his experience working with Cirque du Soleil, director Lepage brings in acrobats for two powerful sequences.  First is the descent into and return from Nibelheim, in which Loge and Wotan "walk" (suspended from wires) at an otherwise-impossible angle across the steeply tilted staircase which the machine forms.  Then, for the final spectacular ascent of the rainbow bridge to Valhalla, the acrobats climb (again on wires) almost vertically up the central strip of the set, splashed with projected rainbow colours, all to the sounds of Wagner's most resplendent and grandiose orchestration -- an unforgettable moment.

Some of the singers have to act on wires too.  The Rhinemaidens in the opening scene gradually appear suspended beneath the machine as it rotates slowly upwards, bathed in cool blue and violet light, and disappear in the same way during the transition to the second scene.  And Loge, the trickster fire-spirit, on his first appearance, walks backwards up the tilted surface.  Both scenes are proof positive that a modern opera singer has to be a versatile and active actor, not just a voice!

But let's get to those voices.  Amanda Woodbury, Samantha Hankey, and Tamara Mumford made a splendid trio of Rhinemaidens, voices blending beautifully in their trio passages.  All three dealt splendidly with the acting demands of their roles, capturing the playful insouciance of the nymphs to perfection as they rolled about on top of the set, waving their "fins" in the air and laughingly mocking at Alberich.

Tomasz Konieczny presented an Alberich who, in the opening scene, appeared imposing rather than merely comical, and his voice -- a clear-toned baritone -- matched that.  In the Nibelheim scene, he at first came across as too matter-of-fact to be truly threatening.  Voice and face alike, though, ideally displayed the ego which flattered him and beguiled him when Loge and Wotan buttered him up.  His singing became much more powerful in the two moments when he sent the Nibelungs running in screaming terror, and reached its peak in an intense performance of the curse.

Gerhard Siegel gave a good account of the part of Mime, the butt of Alberich's fury.  His physicality in the scene where the invisible Alberich kicks him about the cavern was most convincing.

When we reached the mountaintop and met the gods, an interesting problem arose.  Wendy Bryn Harmer as the victimized Freia absolutely out-sang Jamie Barton as her sister, Fricka.  I was more than a bit surprised.  I've heard both artists live before, and would have said Barton had by far the more powerful voice.  Perhaps she was dealing with throat problems.  Bryn Harmer's voice sounded bigger than I've ever heard it before, and this didn't fit too well with the helplessness Freia has to display.

Adam Diegel's clear-toned tenor made the most of the relatively ungrateful part of Froh.

Michael Todd Simpson gave an intense, quick-tempered portrayal of Donner, and his great moment of summoning the storm clouds to sweep the sky clear was a vocal highlight of the evening.

Günther Groissböck as Fasolt and Dmitry Belosselskiy as Fafner made a strong impression, singing with clarity and power and dominating the stage -- not just by virtue of their higher physical position.

One of the most compelling star turns of the performance came with the Loge of Norbert Ernst.  Not only did he negotiate the character's often rapid, scherzando musical lines with ease and fluency, but Ernst also presented a spectacular take on the physicality of the character.  Completely at ease with his position hanging from a wire up on the tilted set, Ernst used a whole repertoire or facial expressions, gestures, and unique body positions to present the mercurial practical joker.  It's no wonder the audience kept chuckling.

Karen Cargill sang the brief but significant role of Erda with compelling intensity, albeit with an uncomfortably wide vibrato in the high notes.

Michael Volle gave an outstanding reading of the role of Wotan.  Both vocally and physically, he presented a nuanced portrayal of the god who only gradually realizes that he is painting himself into a corner.  Power and fury in the confrontations with the giants were matched by awe and dread in the encounter with Erda.

Speaking of the Erda scene, it's unfortunate that the inevitable live-performance glitch had to happen right there.  Musically and dramatically, it's one of the most telling moments of the entire cycle when the set lifts up, the music suddenly goes from fury to dead quiet all in a moment, and the cold bluish-white light shows Erda rising into view under the uplifted machine.  At least, it would show that -- but last night, the lift failed to deliver the goods.  Conductor Philippe Jordan had no choice but to simply stop and wait.  After a long silent pause of perhaps 15 seconds, Erda finally appeared and the performance resumed.

Overall the staging is excellent, but I do have one caveat.  The scenes on the mountaintop force the cast to stick to the narrow forestage, for the most part.  There are a number of moments when one of the characters crosses from one side to the other, for no apparent reason -- certainly no dramatic reason.  One of the perils of Wagner's more long-winded scenes is the lack of outward activity, but for my money it would be preferable to have the singers stand still rather than force them into making pointless stage crossings.

Philippe Jordan is a definite star among today's Wagner conductors, and showed his skill with a well-shaped reading that avoided extremes of tempo, either fast or slow, and maintained a through line in the composer's extended scenes.

Throughout the performance, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra delivered the score with passion, power, and nuance, as needed -- right up until the final Entry of the Gods into Valhalla, when a couple of the brass players choked at one of their most exposed moments.  I could practically feel the musicians cringing all over the audience.

But these are, in the end, minor issues -- and in live performances, something will always happen.

What matters is that the Met's Ring was launched with a performance of the challenging Vorabend that met the demands and challenges imposed by its creator, and gripped the audience from first to last.  Did it really last for two and a half hours?  It didn't seem that long at all.

Although I have seen live performances of the other three Ring operas in Toronto on one or more occasions, last night's New York performance marked my first-ever live encounter with Das Rheingold -- which happens, musically and dramatically, to be my favourite of the four instalments.  It was definitely worth the trip.

The Ring at the Met # 1: A Prelude to the Prelude

This week I'm off to New York on an adventure of a lifetime: my first chance to see a complete integral presentation of Richard Wagner's epic Der Ring des Nibelungen live on stage, at (of course) the Metropolitan Opera.

Just as Wagner reached a point where he needed to add an introductory evening to his already-massive trilogy of music dramas, so I have decided to add on an introductory post to explain a few elements which are common to the entire cycle of four operas in this production.

The story of the Ring is an epic tale rooted in the misty background of Nordic mythology.  As a mythological story, it includes gods, humans, giants, dwarves, river nymphs, dragons, a toad, a songbird, a horse, multiple settings, including a riverbed and a cloud castle, and a culminating catastrophic destruction of the world by fire and water.  The composer's massive artistic vision demands a very large orchestra and a whole cast of some of the largest, most dramatic singing voices in the world.

Since the Ring requires immense scenic, vocal, and orchestral resources from any company aiming to mount a performance of respectable or better quality, live performances are generally (though not entirely) restricted to the upper tiers of the operatic world, the opera houses which can muster the financial backing and the stage facilities needed for such a project.

The Ring which I am seeing in New York this week is a remount of the production originally staged over 2 seasons in 2010-2012 (those first stagings were also broadcast to movie theatres worldwide and issued on DVD).  The work of Canadian designer/director Robert Lepage, this Ring seeks to tell the story as Wagner wrote it, rather than trying to superimpose an interpretation or narrative of the director's own choosing.

Lepage devised a unit set which could be used in all four parts of the cycle.  It consists of a series of parallel boxes referred to as "planks", mounted on an axis which stretches right across the stage from one side to the other.  The planks can be rotated to show either top or bottom surfaces, right through a 360-degree rotation, and can be moved individually, in groups, or as a whole.  

The most striking aspect of the Lepage "machine" (as the entire unit is known) is that the upper and lower faces are coated with a reflective finish, allowing for all surfaces to serve as projection screens.  Throughout the cycle, these projections continuously change and develop, depicting all the numerous scenic worlds envisaged by the composer.  The images also change and move in synchronisation with the movements and singing of the characters, and the playing of the orchestra.  

This set design incorporating video projections is necessarily complicated, and requires very sophisticated computer software to operate it -- but when it works, the scenic effects range from subtly effective all the way to total dramatic knockout punches.

In choosing to mount the Ring again, the Metropolitan Opera has actually cast two parallel but separate Rings.  I am seeing one of the three complete cycles which were sold only as cycles.  Two of them run along a single week, with performances on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (that's what I'm doing).  The third is given on four consecutive Saturdays.  In addition, a number of stand-alone performances of each of the four operas have been scheduled, and these involve a different cast of principal singers from the integral cycles.

The spacing of performances is an absolute necessity.  Although the prelude, Das Rheingold, is only two hours and twenty minutes long (with no intermission), each of the other three operas stretches to four hours or more.  The lead singers are quite understandably exhausted (physically and vocally) at the end of a performance, and absolutely need a day off to recover for the next show.  But there's a catch, for the baritone performing the role of Wotan, the head god.  He has to sing a sizable and challenging role in Das Rheingold, and then return the very next night for an even larger part in Die Walküre.  

We can fairly assume that things are equally wearing down in the orchestra pit, for both conductor and players.  And we haven't even mentioned yet the arduous duties of all the backstage personnel from dressers and props to the stage hands and especially the stage manager -- who has to call a show with many hundreds of cues each night.

A final note: attending the Ring is expensive.  My seat, centre of the house, and just under the edge of the first balcony, cost me US$740 for the four performances.  To move forward out from under the overhang would have taken the price up to US$1900 and change.  And then there's the cost of staying and eating in New York for a week.  Safe to say, this is likely to be both my first and my last complete Ring.

It's definitely going to be an adventure.

Toronto Symphony 2018-2019 # 2: Romantic Era Bookends

The concert I attended a couple of weeks ago spanned over a century of musical history, neatly bracketing the first beginnings and the final outpourings of the Romantic movement in music.

(Sorry for being so late posting this -- sometimes too many things happen at once!)

The bulk of the concert was given over to a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 -- the famous Eroica.  I know that I'm far from being the first writer to identify this monumental work as the first great Romantic symphony.  In every way, this astounding music burst the bounds of traditional form, structure, and style wide open -- from the immense time scale of this symphony to its almost shocking harmonic stresses, from the innovation of a funeral march to the hammer-stroke energy of a scherzo that leaves the classical minuet in the dust.

Time and again, in listening closely to this work, I hear so many precursors of the great music of composers whose music spreads across the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the first decades of the twentieth.  At this time, perhaps the greatest danger is that familiarity will cause us to treat the Eroica a little too casually, too matter-of-factly, that we will lose touch with its power to rouse our emotional response.  This is why a live performance of this symphony matters so much.  It definitely belongs to that select company of works which are diminished in power and stature when heard in the home from a recording.

I don't know if the Eroica is in fact less often performed than other Beethoven symphonies, or if it's just my bad luck that this was only the second time I had ever heard it played live.

At any rate, that's where I want to begin this review -- at the end, with the Beethoven.  Guest conductor Kerem Hasan, making his Toronto Symphony Orchestra debut, delivered what was very much a young musician's performance of this symphony -- clean, brisk, and bright as a new penny.

These qualities served well in the monumental first movement, where the upbeat tempo -- well within an allowable range -- yet permitted Hasan to take the exposition repeat without over-tiring either musicians or audience.  Variations from the basic tempo were for the most part not extreme, and were held down to just a few key structural points in the movement.  More to the point was the tutta forza with which the orchestra punched out the screaming discords at the heart of the movement without abandoning the crisp staccato which allowed each chord to register as a separate blow on the ears.

The slow movement was, if not positively out of court, at least a bit problematic in the choice of an upper-end speed for the main funeral march.  This interpretation sailed close to losing touch with that fundamental solemnity which this music demands.  On the other hand, the legato of the contrasting second theme positively soared in a pure arc of luscious sound.  The sombre fugato was played with even greater gravitas than the main theme.  And Hasan did slow down at the end, when the theme breaks apart into hesitant fragments -- and even more for the two great final chords.

The lightness of touch in the scherzo contrasted beautifully with the dark end of the march, and the orchestra again sparkled with its crisply-articulated phrasing.  The trio took on an appropriately rustic air, harking back to the folk-dance which lies at the heart of this music.

In the finale, Hasan found nicely-contrasted colours in the different variations, while keeping the structure rolling steadily forward.  All built up steadily in power towards the ebullient coda, which capped the whole symphony with a fine feeling of celebratory energy.  This is another case where it would be fascinating to hear the same conductor tackle the same work again in 10 years or so, to see how his interpretation changes and matures with time and greater experience of the music.

Now, back to the beginning.  The concert began with an established audience favourite, the Prélude a l'après-midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy.  From the magical opening flute solo, the critical woodwind playing throughout this work combined smooth legato with the broadest palette of dynamics, as required.  Maestro Hasan led the orchestra in a performance of great subtlety, an essential quality in this poetic score.  This was Debussy playing of some distinction.

I wish I could say the same for the Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35, by Karol Szymanowski.  This work reminds me of Donald Tovey's famous description of a Liszt tone poem as being composed of introductions to introductions to introductions.  The single-movement structure remains elusive for me, even after several hearings.  It's not a favourite work of mine.

But this was the first time I heard it performed live, and this is when I discovered the peril of all perils in this piece: the violin soloist, the eminent Christian Tetzlaff, was basically inaudible for a good part of the work.  This of course is partly the composer's fault.  Szymanowski worked with a late-romantic orchestra which would suit a Mahler symphony admirably, but when the volume of sound from such an ensemble reaches even a mezzo-forte the violin soloist is apt to be swamped.

The times when I could hear Tetzlaff's playing truly convinced me that he had the measure of the score.  On the whole, I'd hope that the conductor could do a little more to redress the balance in at least some of those louder passages.  But here we run up against the fact that Karem Hasan was a late substitute for the programmed conductor, and may well not have had time to study the work adequately.  It's definitely not in the mainstream repertoire in the same way as the Debussy and Beethoven compositions.

Overall, it was a creditable run at a challenging and not terribly rewarding work.  But given a choice among twentieth-century violin concertos, I would opt any day for Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1, with the Barber concerto as runner-up.

Mega Dance Spectacular

Once again, I've travelled a fair distance to see the work of the edgy, dynamic, gripping modern German dance company, Gauthier Dance.  And once again, the company has all but hurled me off my seat in the theatre with the sheer dynamism, evocative power, and humour of their programme, Mega Israel.

Conflict of Interest Alert:  My nephew, Robert Stephen, dances in this company.

The title of the programme reflects the selection of dance works being presented: three major pieces by four contemporary Israeli choreographers.  Three works, and twice that many diverse styles of dance, made for an evening that was stimulating and involving, to say the least.

The opening work, Hofesh Schechter's Uprising, set a dramatic tone right off the bat with an aggressive drumbeat rhythm as the cast of seven men strode forward through the haze of a smoke machine to the forestage.  Later on, they made an even more spectacular re-entry by rocketing through the haze in mid-air.

This work explores male contention, striving, competition, and fellowship alike in a hard-edged, athletic, aggressive style of dance.  Faster passages find bodies hurtling around and across the stage at top speed, occasionally sliding into gymnastic tumbling, or running bent down low like soldiers advancing across a battlefield.  In slower parts of the work, stylized wrestling moves take centre stage.  

At the midpoint of the piece, one moment of stasis occurs -- the men stand in a close circle, facing inwards.  Each one in turn raises his right hand and slaps the shoulder of the one next to him -- some with one slap, some with two.  The last one slaps twice, then a third time on the neck of his neighbour and the conflict instantly erupts again.  At the very end, a final tableau of the men clustered together with one raised up, and lifting up a red flag, appears to pay tribute to revolutionaries of all ages and all cultures.  

Even with this description, it's hard to convey the breathtaking amount of nonstop energy which the cast brought to this study in masculine pride, power, and security (or lack thereof).

The second work brought six women of the company to the stage for Killer Pig by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar.  Artistic director Eric Gauthier, in his pre-show remarks, explicitly stated that he had no idea what this strange title might mean.  I don't either.  It's a common trend, in modern dance and concert-hall music alike, to identify works with apparently descriptive or evocative titles which in fact fail to describe or evoke anything relatable to the work as presented.  

This work exhausted the audience just as much as Uprising, but in a completely different way.  The six women, clad in anonymous bodysuits of greyish-pink hue, dance in the first of two discernable parts of the piece in a tight-knit group.  To a slow-moving rhythmic ostinato based on four notes, they move forwards, backwards, turning slowly in new directions, almost always as a group of six -- occasionally with one member detached from the group.  

The "killer" in this work is the fact that the group spends most of the first ten minutes either standing still, or at best moving very slowly in steps somewhere between a strut and a sashay, all the while poised as if they were wearing five-inch stiletto heels.  Anyone who's ever worn such shoes knows the strain they place on the whole body, from heels all the way to neck.  Now just imagine yourself moving slowly in such shoes for 10 minutes, except that the shoes aren't actually there at all.  

I know from conversations in the lobby that I wasn't the only person who began to feel that I was seeing those non-existent shoes after a few minutes.  That imagination is a tribute to the poise and apparent ease of the cast as they executed this wickedly stressful assignment.

At about the 10 minute mark, the ostinato peels away to just a beat and slowly speeds up to a faster tempo.  The dance too moves into a higher gear, with more movement, more individualism among the dancers, and more edginess.  The "high-heels" stance vanishes, for the most part, although it still appears on a few occasions, momentarily.  However, the veneer of poise never completely peels away.  In the end, the team reunites and stands, turning slowly as a group, pivoting around a point, while the curtain slowly falls.

Exactly what, if anything, all of this might mean is left open to the audience to decide -- and I always enjoy having such a challenge flung into my lap.  My mind was working overtime throughout the piece, drawing many different and conflicting layers of meaning from the dance.  In rapid succession, I found myself considering social conditioning, gender roles and identities, group dynamics versus individualism, conformity and peer pressure -- to mention only a few possible themes.  Killer Pig left me with the clear feeling that it would be fascinating to treat this work as a kind of Rorschach ink blot test, and see what kinds of reactions a diverse group of watchers could draw from having viewed it.

One thing was clear: the women earned in spades every moment of the raucous cheers that greeted their efforts when the work finally reached its conclusion somewhere past the 30-minute mark.  If there was a weakness, it was the extended length of the second, faster "part."  This section of the work eventually became repetitive, and I'm sure many people began to disconnect as a result.  I felt that no essential damage would result by cutting away many of the more repetitive passages, and bringing the second part down to a length that more closely balanced the first part.

The audience members who drew the most fun from the entire show were those who returned early to their seats during the intermission.  We had the joy of watching Maurus Gauthier (no relation to the artistic director) doing an extended improv dance/mime/string of comic pratfalls all over the stage.  His entertaining performance not only exemplified the extraordinary abilities, skills, and fitness level of this company, but also -- by design -- merged very neatly into the opening of the final piece, Minus 16 by Ohad Naharin.

Again, I've no idea what the title might mean.  Naharin has drawn together a trilogy of episodes from three of his previous dance works and set them into a combination which highlights the special qualities of each.  Taken as a whole, Minus 16 brings a much lighter, more humorous vein into the show without abandoning any of the essential energy driving the performances.

The mime solo ended with Gauthier pulling back on his black suit jacket over a white shirt, and he was then joined -- one by one -- by the other 17 members of the company, all similarly dressed.  The first section of the piece found the entire group seated in a semi-circle of chairs.   The music track was a hard-driven arrangement of Echad Mi Yodea, a traditional Hebrew teaching song used as part of the Haggadah (the ritual of the Passover meal).  The dancing hewed to the power of the accompaniment rather than the text of the song.

As an additional item adds to the list in each of the 13 verses, so an additional move is added to the choreography at each verse.  Dancers shoot rapidly off their chairs and back on, swing their bodies from side to side, fling themselves back against the chairs in a "wave" -- and at the end of each verse one dancer (the same one each time) sprawls forward on the floor as if dead before crawling slowly back into his chair.  Best not to worry about meaning here.  As the piece nears its climax, costume items begin flying -- jackets in verse 10, shoes in 11, shirts in 12, and trousers in 13.  All these items are quietly gathered up and moved away, as are the chairs, and the soundtrack flows forwards into the second section

This was a quietly evocative pas de deux set to the tender, yet aching chromatic harmonies of Vivaldi's Nisi Dominus.  Nora Brown and Réginald Lefebvre moved slowly and smoothly in a manner that mingled equal parts intention and uncertainty, and this accorded very well with the ever-shifting harmonic clashes of the music.

In the third part, the company returned in the black suits for what could only be called a nightclub scene.  It began with a slow tango.  Then the house lights came up and the company came down from the stage and picked out volunteers from all around the audience to join them in dancing.  A rapid rock beat version of Over the Rainbow filled the air as the doubled company came up onto the stage.  The music then morphed into an honest-to-goodness cha-cha (heaven only knows when I last heard something like that!).  Then the company and their guests formed into a double line, highlighting one couple as the "leads," so to speak.  At the end, as all the volunteers headed back to their seats, the lead couple kept dancing.  On the final note, the company members all fell flat on their backs on the floor, leaving the last volunteer standing to accept the uproarious applause and cheers all alone.

On Saturday, the last woman standing was shy and just scooted off the stage ASAP, but on Friday the lucky lady bowed repeatedly, and continued bowing and waving as the follow spot took her to the stairs and down into the auditorium.  Great fun for everyone.

There then followed a false curtain call, which got the audience onto their feet.  But Naharin had his fun with us too, as the music drifted into a quiet Chopin nocturne and the company resumed dancing, much more gently, until the curtain fell.

Power in plenty, energy to burn, strength to endure, and good laughs to make life easier -- Mega Israel really did have it all.  The company of Gauthier Dance richly deserved the immense cheers and applause they received from the Chicago audiences.

Me?  I'm just looking forward to my next chance to see this extraordinary company in action.