In some ways, the final opera of the Ring, Götterdämmerung ("The Twilight of the Gods"), can feel like a bit of a throwback to an earlier era of Wagner's career. It contains a number of passages which come close to being detachable, stand-alone numbers, and has far more outward physical activity and conflict among characters than any of the other three. It's the only drama in the cycle to include parts for a chorus, as well as including a dozen named characters. It's also the only opera of the Ring with multiple passages of genuine ensemble writing (apart from some brief passages in Das Rheingold).
The simple reason for the retrograde aspects of the piece is that Wagner began writing the poem (libretto) which eventually became Der Ring des Nibelungen right here -- with its ending. And he began it right after the completion of Lohengrin, the last of his old-style operas. Originally planned as a stand-alone opera to be entitled Siegfried's Death, it ended by becoming the musical and dramatic capstone of the most extraordinary music drama ever created.
But the process of getting from poem to complete drama stretched over multiple decades. Wagner kept finding that he needed more and more background information and back-story for his epic tale to make sense. The ultimate change of title to focus on the ending of the gods' rule, simply reflected the fact that, in the end, he had composed something far greater than the story of a single hero.
But the process of getting from poem to complete drama stretched over multiple decades. Wagner kept finding that he needed more and more background information and back-story for his epic tale to make sense. The ultimate change of title to focus on the ending of the gods' rule, simply reflected the fact that, in the end, he had composed something far greater than the story of a single hero.
Once the poem was written, stage by stage in backwards order, Wagner then composed the entire cycle in its proper order, beginning with Das Rheingold and ending with Götterdämmerung. Thus, you have the paradoxical experience of meeting an opera somewhat old-fashioned in structure and in the form of the storytelling, yet filled with the composer's ripest and most highly developed compositional technique.
Nowhere is that technique more on display than in the multiple passages for orchestra alone, in which some of the most important strands of the drama are conveyed through the most subtle interweaving of leitmotiven. In addition to the preludes to the three acts, you also have the scene transition pieces, commonly called Siegfried's Rhine Journey and Siegfried's Funeral March. The funeral march is a slow movement of towering intensity and power, combining multiple motifs from different aspects of Siegfried's life and welding them all together with a series of repeated pairs of chords played staccato. At the centre of the march, those chords rise to a genuine tutta forza with few if any equals in all of music. And the entire edifice is crowned with the majestic orchestral tone poem depicting the end of the story without words, a conclusion without precedent in the world of music drama.
From Brünnhilde's final words, "Siegfried! Your wife greets you!" the music then flows into the single grandest orchestral passage of the entire Ring: the epic postlude which depicts the flames mounting into the air and seizing upon Valhalla in a massive conflagration that ends the rule of the gods, while on earth the swelling waters of the Rhine cover the remains of the Gibichung hall, allowing the Rhinemaidens to restore the magic gold to its place and thus bring a new harmony to the world -- a world where the redeeming force of human love will henceforth govern life. All of this Wagner depicts in his most mature orchestration, drawing upon leitmotiven from all previous parts of the cycle to portray in music this epoch-ending and epoch-launching catastrophe.
For the audience, Götterdämmerung is the daunting finale of an epic experience. It lasts half an hour longer than Siegfried, and -- for all practical purposes -- twice the length of Das Rheingold. And yet, huge as it is, Götterdämmerung justifies every single second it takes to tell the final episodes of the story, and leaves us with a positive, hopeful ending -- not the negative one which the title seems to suggest.
Among the performers, Götterdämmerung is an epic test for the dramatic soprano fully on par with the tenor's testing role of Siegfried. Not only does Brünnhilde remain on stage for the lion's share of the opera, but she gets to conclude the entire cycle with the famous "Immolation Scene," a dramatic soprano solo -- an aria, if you like -- which has no precedent in music. It's not just the duration that makes the Immolation so intense (it lasts for fifteen nonstop minutes), but the way it requires the singer to plumb the depths and scale the heights of the widest vocal and emotional range, from low notes to stratospheric high notes and from the quietest, most inward and reflective singing to the last extrovert, fortissimo rendition of the character's famous Ho-jo-to-ho battle cry.
Christine Goerke definitely rose to the test. Her passion in the opening morning-after scene with Siegfried came across as powerfully as her rage in the oath-taking, or her regret and sadder, wiser love in the Immolation. Her finest moments of the evening came in the scene where Siegfried appears with Gutrune on his arm. Here, voice and face alike projected the slow process of initial bewilderment changing by degrees into fury. If Goerke's voice began to sound a little raw around the edges in the Immolation (and who could blame her), her acting lost nothing of its vital force in all the complex thoughts and feelings of that scene. A magnificent portrayal.
Andreas Schager as Siegfried was fully her equal, not just in depicting the almost wilful blindness which leads him to his death, but also in the moments of puzzlement where the power of his love for Brünnhilde almost broke through the potion-induced haze of forgetfulness. Excellent, too, was his singing in the scene with the Rhinemaidens. My only qualm was the speed at which he delivered his quotations of the Woodbird's singing in Act 3. In these moments, the performance became almost a race to the finish line and many of the intermediate notes in the rippling phrases of melody got lost in the rush. However, the power of his voice was totally unimpaired at the death scene.
More remarkable was the power he displayed in the moments when he is disguised as Gunther by the Tarnhelm. Schager effectively altered the tone of his voice, giving it a more baritonal quality, and still managed plenty of power in notes which are right at the lowest extreme of the tenor range. It's the best singing I've ever heard from Siegfried in that challenging scene.
Evgeny Nikitin's performance played up the vanity of Gunther, making him a total fop and clearly showing how easily his vanity led him to be duped by Hagen. In the end, when he got killed, I didn't feel remotely sorry for him.
This production highlights, as few others I've seen have done, the stern patriarchal nature of the society which reduces women like Gutrune to mere pawns in the schemes of men. Edith Haller's strong voice and expressive face showed this manipulated status in spades, her singing and her facial expressions alike appearing on command, as it were. The only time she came to life and seemed to feel anything for herself was when she expressed her affection towards Gunther or Siegfried. In the final scene, when Gutrune both her brother and the man she thinks is her husband, I wept for her -- such was the depth of her sorrow.
Waltraute also plumbs the depths of sorrow in her monologue in Act 1. Michaela Schuster gave an intensely gripping performance in her tale of how Wotan has surrendered to the inevitable and waits silently in Valhalla. Schuster sang most of the monologue in a half-tone that compelled the audience to focus intensely on her words -- which still remained completely crisp and clear. Never have I heard the monologue given such power, even when it's been sung much louder. Impressive artistry.
Hagen, the villain of the piece, was sung by Eric Owens with the same level of demonic intensity which he brought to the role of Alberich in the 2010 "Live in HD" cinemacast. Not so much crisp as biting, the ends of lines snapped off, this Hagen's singing was both powerful and to the point. Especially true of Hagen's Watch, another scene where intensely quiet singing allied to sharp diction made my hair stand on end. The only point where I couldn't quite hear him was his final line, "Zurück dem Ring" ("Get back from the Ring"), as he tried to seize the treasure from the joyful Rhinemaidens. But let's face the fact, this is a total throwaway line, by any standard. Indeed, I'm not sure why Wagner even bothered to leave it in.
Tomasz Konieczny treated us to more of the same sinister smile/grimace that marked his performance in Siegfried. His appearance in a dream to Hagen had him being much more active than some Alberichs are allowed to be.
The opening night time scene with the three Norns or Fates was staged with ropes descending from all 24 planks of the machine. The physical effort of handling and passing those ropes clearly counterpointed the slow, effortful singing of the three women. The three contrasting voices were all powerful, well balanced, and clear in tone and diction.
It's impossible to forget the shocking moment when the planks, one by one, start revolving swiftly and uncontrollably, with the ropes dropping away one by one. I had a split second to recall Erda's line from Siegfried about the world spinning out of control -- and here it was. With all the units flip-flopping in conflicting directions, the poignancy of the line "Es riss!" ("It breaks!") was massively magnified. Kudos to Ronnita Miller, Elizabeth Bishop, and Wendy Bryn Harmer for their gripping singing in this slow, yet magnetic, scene.
Act 3 brought the same trio of Rhinemaidens as in Das Rheingold. Amanda Woodbury, Samantha Hankey, and Tamara Mumford carolled and cavorted even more joyously and playfully than in the earlier opera, running effortlessly up the waterfall projected on the machine only to shoot back down as if it were a playground slide. More so than some Rhinemaidens, these three clearly changed the style of their singing when they began to warn Siegfried of his impending doom. These Rhinemaidens pushed the characters close to the limits on both sides, serious and playful, with rewarding results. Lovely work.
The Metropolitan Opera Chorus sang with power and clarity in the wedding scene, and in the hunting scene. Would a little more acting and reacting be too much to ask?
Thanks to the numerous independent passages, the role of the orchestra becomes significant in Gotterdammerung beyond any of the earlier Ring operas. With no audible glitches at all, the players covered themselves in glory in the opening introduction, Siegfried's Rhine Journey, Hagen's Watch, and other places. The Funeral March was played with immense power, yet still not overdriven. The final orchestral depiction of the closing stages of the drama towered to the skies before finishing with a tender, heartfelt account of the Redemption Through Love theme leading to the swelling final chords.
As throughout the entire cycle, conductor Philippe Jordan surpassed all expectations in delivering a near-perfectly paced and shaped account of a complex score, laden with traps for the unwary. No question in my mind, this man is an opera conductor to be reckoned with. It's no surprise that he's been chosen as the next music director of the Vienna State Opera. His contribution to this Ring was critical (for the obvious reasons) but also artistically significant in finding and nurturing the overall teamwork of the entire company.
In assessing the total performance of the cycle, I have to say that any criticisms I've made are in the nature of quibbles between 95% and 99%. For the most part, it's been a 99% artistic success.
Just sign me, "Satisfied Beyond Belief."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
To conclude, I would like to share some final important thoughts about the entire experience of witnessing Der Ring des Nibelungen in a week-long sequence of live performances, as the composer intended.
No recorded performance, even one recorded live in front of an audience, can ever equal the experience of attending a live performance of the Ring yourself.
There are three simple but very important reasons why this is so. First, because there are so many key musical moments which push the live audience to greater concentration (in quiet music) or give the audience greater immersion and a physical sense of presence (in louder music) in a way that no playback technology, no matter how good, can equal.
Second, and strongly related to the first, is that the audience becomes caught up in the experience and shares those moments of concentration and immersion as a single unit. In an opera house the size of the Metropolitan (nearly 4000 seats) the power and intensity of that sharing is both immense and palpable.
Indeed, the sharing led to the formation of numerous friendships along and across the rows of the auditorium. In my row, we had a couple from Washington DC on one side, and a couple from Melbourne, Australia on the other side with me in the middle. We shared some fascinating reactions to what we were witnessing, as well as more general conversation about other musical and operatic interests and performances. All of us agreed that it was, by any measure, a memorable and rewarding experience.
The third reason is the cumulative power of witnessing all four chapters of this drama in such a close, tightly-integrated schedule. In this respect, I think the people who bought the cycle with four consecutive Saturday matinees missed out on a valuable part of the Ring experience -- the sense that it is, by intention and in actuality, a single drama. Even after a night off in between, I arrived at the theatre for Siegfried acutely aware of the events depicted in Die Walküre, and similarly came to Götterdämmerung with an intense feeling of continuing connection from the critical turning points in Siegfried. This building of connections in our experience of the drama will always tend to elude home listeners, I think.
When I wrote my preface before Das Rheingold, I said that I felt this was likely to be my first and last-ever complete Ring. Now, after the week is done, I'm more of a mind to ponder where and when I should take in my next one. The endless miracle of live music drama strikes again.
Nowhere is that technique more on display than in the multiple passages for orchestra alone, in which some of the most important strands of the drama are conveyed through the most subtle interweaving of leitmotiven. In addition to the preludes to the three acts, you also have the scene transition pieces, commonly called Siegfried's Rhine Journey and Siegfried's Funeral March. The funeral march is a slow movement of towering intensity and power, combining multiple motifs from different aspects of Siegfried's life and welding them all together with a series of repeated pairs of chords played staccato. At the centre of the march, those chords rise to a genuine tutta forza with few if any equals in all of music. And the entire edifice is crowned with the majestic orchestral tone poem depicting the end of the story without words, a conclusion without precedent in the world of music drama.
From Brünnhilde's final words, "Siegfried! Your wife greets you!" the music then flows into the single grandest orchestral passage of the entire Ring: the epic postlude which depicts the flames mounting into the air and seizing upon Valhalla in a massive conflagration that ends the rule of the gods, while on earth the swelling waters of the Rhine cover the remains of the Gibichung hall, allowing the Rhinemaidens to restore the magic gold to its place and thus bring a new harmony to the world -- a world where the redeeming force of human love will henceforth govern life. All of this Wagner depicts in his most mature orchestration, drawing upon leitmotiven from all previous parts of the cycle to portray in music this epoch-ending and epoch-launching catastrophe.
For the audience, Götterdämmerung is the daunting finale of an epic experience. It lasts half an hour longer than Siegfried, and -- for all practical purposes -- twice the length of Das Rheingold. And yet, huge as it is, Götterdämmerung justifies every single second it takes to tell the final episodes of the story, and leaves us with a positive, hopeful ending -- not the negative one which the title seems to suggest.
Among the performers, Götterdämmerung is an epic test for the dramatic soprano fully on par with the tenor's testing role of Siegfried. Not only does Brünnhilde remain on stage for the lion's share of the opera, but she gets to conclude the entire cycle with the famous "Immolation Scene," a dramatic soprano solo -- an aria, if you like -- which has no precedent in music. It's not just the duration that makes the Immolation so intense (it lasts for fifteen nonstop minutes), but the way it requires the singer to plumb the depths and scale the heights of the widest vocal and emotional range, from low notes to stratospheric high notes and from the quietest, most inward and reflective singing to the last extrovert, fortissimo rendition of the character's famous Ho-jo-to-ho battle cry.
Christine Goerke definitely rose to the test. Her passion in the opening morning-after scene with Siegfried came across as powerfully as her rage in the oath-taking, or her regret and sadder, wiser love in the Immolation. Her finest moments of the evening came in the scene where Siegfried appears with Gutrune on his arm. Here, voice and face alike projected the slow process of initial bewilderment changing by degrees into fury. If Goerke's voice began to sound a little raw around the edges in the Immolation (and who could blame her), her acting lost nothing of its vital force in all the complex thoughts and feelings of that scene. A magnificent portrayal.
Andreas Schager as Siegfried was fully her equal, not just in depicting the almost wilful blindness which leads him to his death, but also in the moments of puzzlement where the power of his love for Brünnhilde almost broke through the potion-induced haze of forgetfulness. Excellent, too, was his singing in the scene with the Rhinemaidens. My only qualm was the speed at which he delivered his quotations of the Woodbird's singing in Act 3. In these moments, the performance became almost a race to the finish line and many of the intermediate notes in the rippling phrases of melody got lost in the rush. However, the power of his voice was totally unimpaired at the death scene.
More remarkable was the power he displayed in the moments when he is disguised as Gunther by the Tarnhelm. Schager effectively altered the tone of his voice, giving it a more baritonal quality, and still managed plenty of power in notes which are right at the lowest extreme of the tenor range. It's the best singing I've ever heard from Siegfried in that challenging scene.
Evgeny Nikitin's performance played up the vanity of Gunther, making him a total fop and clearly showing how easily his vanity led him to be duped by Hagen. In the end, when he got killed, I didn't feel remotely sorry for him.
This production highlights, as few others I've seen have done, the stern patriarchal nature of the society which reduces women like Gutrune to mere pawns in the schemes of men. Edith Haller's strong voice and expressive face showed this manipulated status in spades, her singing and her facial expressions alike appearing on command, as it were. The only time she came to life and seemed to feel anything for herself was when she expressed her affection towards Gunther or Siegfried. In the final scene, when Gutrune both her brother and the man she thinks is her husband, I wept for her -- such was the depth of her sorrow.
Waltraute also plumbs the depths of sorrow in her monologue in Act 1. Michaela Schuster gave an intensely gripping performance in her tale of how Wotan has surrendered to the inevitable and waits silently in Valhalla. Schuster sang most of the monologue in a half-tone that compelled the audience to focus intensely on her words -- which still remained completely crisp and clear. Never have I heard the monologue given such power, even when it's been sung much louder. Impressive artistry.
Hagen, the villain of the piece, was sung by Eric Owens with the same level of demonic intensity which he brought to the role of Alberich in the 2010 "Live in HD" cinemacast. Not so much crisp as biting, the ends of lines snapped off, this Hagen's singing was both powerful and to the point. Especially true of Hagen's Watch, another scene where intensely quiet singing allied to sharp diction made my hair stand on end. The only point where I couldn't quite hear him was his final line, "Zurück dem Ring" ("Get back from the Ring"), as he tried to seize the treasure from the joyful Rhinemaidens. But let's face the fact, this is a total throwaway line, by any standard. Indeed, I'm not sure why Wagner even bothered to leave it in.
Tomasz Konieczny treated us to more of the same sinister smile/grimace that marked his performance in Siegfried. His appearance in a dream to Hagen had him being much more active than some Alberichs are allowed to be.
The opening night time scene with the three Norns or Fates was staged with ropes descending from all 24 planks of the machine. The physical effort of handling and passing those ropes clearly counterpointed the slow, effortful singing of the three women. The three contrasting voices were all powerful, well balanced, and clear in tone and diction.
It's impossible to forget the shocking moment when the planks, one by one, start revolving swiftly and uncontrollably, with the ropes dropping away one by one. I had a split second to recall Erda's line from Siegfried about the world spinning out of control -- and here it was. With all the units flip-flopping in conflicting directions, the poignancy of the line "Es riss!" ("It breaks!") was massively magnified. Kudos to Ronnita Miller, Elizabeth Bishop, and Wendy Bryn Harmer for their gripping singing in this slow, yet magnetic, scene.
Act 3 brought the same trio of Rhinemaidens as in Das Rheingold. Amanda Woodbury, Samantha Hankey, and Tamara Mumford carolled and cavorted even more joyously and playfully than in the earlier opera, running effortlessly up the waterfall projected on the machine only to shoot back down as if it were a playground slide. More so than some Rhinemaidens, these three clearly changed the style of their singing when they began to warn Siegfried of his impending doom. These Rhinemaidens pushed the characters close to the limits on both sides, serious and playful, with rewarding results. Lovely work.
The Metropolitan Opera Chorus sang with power and clarity in the wedding scene, and in the hunting scene. Would a little more acting and reacting be too much to ask?
Thanks to the numerous independent passages, the role of the orchestra becomes significant in Gotterdammerung beyond any of the earlier Ring operas. With no audible glitches at all, the players covered themselves in glory in the opening introduction, Siegfried's Rhine Journey, Hagen's Watch, and other places. The Funeral March was played with immense power, yet still not overdriven. The final orchestral depiction of the closing stages of the drama towered to the skies before finishing with a tender, heartfelt account of the Redemption Through Love theme leading to the swelling final chords.
As throughout the entire cycle, conductor Philippe Jordan surpassed all expectations in delivering a near-perfectly paced and shaped account of a complex score, laden with traps for the unwary. No question in my mind, this man is an opera conductor to be reckoned with. It's no surprise that he's been chosen as the next music director of the Vienna State Opera. His contribution to this Ring was critical (for the obvious reasons) but also artistically significant in finding and nurturing the overall teamwork of the entire company.
In assessing the total performance of the cycle, I have to say that any criticisms I've made are in the nature of quibbles between 95% and 99%. For the most part, it's been a 99% artistic success.
Just sign me, "Satisfied Beyond Belief."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
To conclude, I would like to share some final important thoughts about the entire experience of witnessing Der Ring des Nibelungen in a week-long sequence of live performances, as the composer intended.
No recorded performance, even one recorded live in front of an audience, can ever equal the experience of attending a live performance of the Ring yourself.
There are three simple but very important reasons why this is so. First, because there are so many key musical moments which push the live audience to greater concentration (in quiet music) or give the audience greater immersion and a physical sense of presence (in louder music) in a way that no playback technology, no matter how good, can equal.
Second, and strongly related to the first, is that the audience becomes caught up in the experience and shares those moments of concentration and immersion as a single unit. In an opera house the size of the Metropolitan (nearly 4000 seats) the power and intensity of that sharing is both immense and palpable.
Indeed, the sharing led to the formation of numerous friendships along and across the rows of the auditorium. In my row, we had a couple from Washington DC on one side, and a couple from Melbourne, Australia on the other side with me in the middle. We shared some fascinating reactions to what we were witnessing, as well as more general conversation about other musical and operatic interests and performances. All of us agreed that it was, by any measure, a memorable and rewarding experience.
The third reason is the cumulative power of witnessing all four chapters of this drama in such a close, tightly-integrated schedule. In this respect, I think the people who bought the cycle with four consecutive Saturday matinees missed out on a valuable part of the Ring experience -- the sense that it is, by intention and in actuality, a single drama. Even after a night off in between, I arrived at the theatre for Siegfried acutely aware of the events depicted in Die Walküre, and similarly came to Götterdämmerung with an intense feeling of continuing connection from the critical turning points in Siegfried. This building of connections in our experience of the drama will always tend to elude home listeners, I think.
When I wrote my preface before Das Rheingold, I said that I felt this was likely to be my first and last-ever complete Ring. Now, after the week is done, I'm more of a mind to ponder where and when I should take in my next one. The endless miracle of live music drama strikes again.
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