From Wagner sceptic to convert – how I learned to love the Ring Cycle
“Hojotoho heiaha!” It’s the Met’s Wagner Ring Cycle.
In 2010, Peter Gelb, controversial managing director of Metropolitan Opera appointed in 2006, put his head on a chopping block and virtually invited critics to hack it off. There were already rumblings at some of his “innovative” productions.
Maybe Mr. Gelb is a fan of the late President John F. Kennedy. Announcing the Met’s new Wagner Ring Cycle, here’s what he might well have said:
“I believe that this Metropolitan Opera Company should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of putting the ultimate Wagner Ring Cycle on stage in New York, sending audiences to Valhalla, then returning them safely to the Earth.
No single opera project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of Richard Wagner’s masterpiece (up to a point, Lord Copper); and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish (Too right!)”.
Mr. Gelb was lighting the fuse on the operatic equivalent of NASA’s 1969 risky Saturn moon shot. And at the start it turned out more Apollo 13 than Apollo 11.
As Capcom, Mr. Gelb hired Robert Lepage to stage the new Ring Cycle production, a seminal moment in the life of any opera company. He aimed high, aspiring to a definitive Ring that would outshine even sacrosanct Bayreuth’s efforts.
Mr. Lepage’s artistic reputation had been forged elsewhere – Cirque Soleil. That was spectacle, hardly opera. Wagner’s Ring entrusted to a Ringmaster? Critical wolves, especially at The New York Times, were preparing their howls of outrage from the start.
There is a fly on the wall documentary about the production, Wagner’s Dream, well worth watching; no holds barred. It’s an exemplar of frankness. Up front, Mr. Gelb admits the reputational risk, but for the sake of moving the Met out of a perceived rut, claims it’s worth taking.
Mr. Lepage boldly goes where no director has gone before, aspiring to create the spectacular set he was sure Wagner craved – Wagner’s Dream, geddit? In 1876 the technology simply wasn’t available. Now it is. Let’s use it and realise the dream.
Spool back a bit. The first Ring performance was staged at the Bayreuth Festival Theatre, Wagner’s bespoke opera house, in 1876. He was disappointed with the production, especially the scenery, and intended to restage the Cycle completely, but the detail of dying in 1883 got in the way.
Wagner had experimented with staging that simply fell apart. The global sweep of the ambitious four works could not be accomplished visually. His attempt to make the Rhine Maidens swim, suspended in mid air wearing iron maiden corsets, in the opening Rheingold had them floundering helplessly. That moment was comically realised in the Tony Palmer 1980’s mini series, Wagner.
Wagner repays watching, too. Richard Burton plays Wagner. There’s a star-studded supporting cast – Vanessa Redgrave, Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. King Ludwig II of Bavaria plays Sir Laurence Olivier. Or, is that the other way round? It’s difficult to tell.
So, 130 years on, to realise Wagner’s thwarted ambition, enter Mr. Lepage. “Hojotoho heiaha!”, as Valkyries cry, when they embark on risky business, scraping dead heroes from the battlefield. Would their next two corpses be Messrs. Gelb and Lepage?
At first sight, it seemed the Lepage set was a monster – a Prometheus unbound from reality. Financial reality; it cost $16m, give or take. This could bust the opera house, where finances were already stretched, to breaking point.
Physical reality; it weighed in at 90,000lbs compared with the original estimate of 50,000lbs, requiring the Met stage to be reinforced to carry the weight of four assemblies of tracked dolly wheels that inched it into position.
Perceptive reality; at rest it looked ridiculous, even ugly; a series of 24 flat, swiveling, nondescript vertical planks which filled the stage, all individually controlled, capable of sweeping around independently and flexing to represent the changing scenes through Rhine, underworld, earth to Valhalla. Or a big garden fence, depending on your point of view.
The whole caboodle was fitted with safety brakes, which had minds of their own, as perverse as any Nibelung’s, frequently freezing the whole apparatus in mid whoosh, operated by bustling swarms of subterranean stagehands pulling ropes.
Technical reality; effects were projected from a distance onto the writhing planks to simulate water, avalanche, forest, fire and heavens. Was this a set too far? And, what the hell did it mean?
The concept was paradoxically simple. Mr. Lepage’s imagination had been fired by an encounter with the ever-changing landscape of Iceland, where he experienced his “Come to Wagner” moment. As he gazed out at the erupting, seething, constantly forming landmass that straddles the tectonic plates of America and Europe, he saw Wagner’s mythical, pre-history world of the Ring.
With his experience of Cirque Soleil spectacle he could build Iceland in a stage engineering workshop in Canada, ship it to New York and install it in the Lincoln Center. He was either inspired, or clearly nuts. What could possibly go wrong?
One classic moment in Wagner’s Dream is when the heavily unionized Met backstage hands come face to face with the set for the first time – “You’ll never make that work in here guv”. As they take over control – they are true grit professionals to the core – they grudgingly come to terms with their new monster.
The first outing of this production (it was first staged in 2012) was marred by the constant distraction that the set might simply fall apart; perhaps kill one of the performers in its clanking jaws; or obliterate the music with its grinding and creaking. Take your grisly pick.
Never mind the wonderful performances of Bryn Terfel as Wotan, or Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde. The fires of the Nibelung were nothing compared with having to brave the dangers of that bloody set.
And, boy did it go wrong. On premiere day of Rheingold, broadcast live to Times Square and beyond, the rainbow bridge over which the Gods make their finale exit to Valhalla, stuck, leaving them firmly earthbound; Brünnhilde (Deborah Voigt) fell over the raised planks – she claimed it was her dress, trouper that she is – and the projected images sputtered out, to be rebooted, showing a Microsoft logo.
This time round the set is mostly tamed – pace the odd creak and squeak – and does what it was always intended to do. It achieves the impossible. It is magical. As a device to transport audiences to another world it is unparalleled. I was gob smacked.
Confession time: I’m not a passionate Wagner fan. I’m slightly with Rossini who disliked Wagner’s music – “Wagner has some wonderful moments and some very dull quarter hours”.
I was inoculated against Wagner at an early age – in 1966. The jab cost 7/6d – a seat in the third tier gods, Kings Theatre, Glasgow; Die Walküre on the menu, courtesy of the new and ambitious Scottish Opera, Sir Alexander Gibson in charge.
The on-stage action might as well have been in Valhalla, as tiny, horn-helmeted figures scuttled about miles below, shrieking, “Hojotoho heiaha!” Could even have been a Rangers – Celtic, Old Firm crowd on the way to the pub for a post match bevvy and battle.
I was with a school chum. We pretentiously preened ourselves as the Stendhal and Proust of St Aloysius’ College, Glasgow’s Jesuit reformatory. We were actually a couple of pretentious fifteen-year-old Muppets.
Put me off a Ring Cycle – until now. I’ve never experienced the whole Ring within a week, just the four component operas, in different houses, with different casts and with long time lapses between. Take it from me, a Wagner apostate. “Doing” the Ring has been a revelation – a totally different, consuming, experience.
This production works because the Lepage set provides a consistent visual context to hang onto, as the mythical dramatis personae sweep hither and yon, or morph into someone else. The Ring would be useless as a Netflix series. The main characters are bumped off early, turn into someone else, are occasionally referred to again, but never reappear. Bad binge TV.
For instance, Wotan, a God and promiscuous father of, well, pretty well everyone, is missing in action after Rheingold, appears as The Wanderer in Die Walküre and Siegfried, then as a statue in Gotterdammerung. Sigmund and Sieglinde flash by. Loge, God of Fire doesn’t even reappear to light Siegfried’s funeral pyre. Incidentally, the pyre is a bit disappointing. Seen bigger barbecues in a Queens back garden on Memorial Day.
Focus is retained throughout the week by the constant of that entrancing set – a character unto itself – providing a narrative backdrop and making the otherwise wildly divergent action coherent. Even on non-Ring days the vision plays on uncannily in the mind. This proved truly immersive.
Technology has advanced since 2012 and new projectors set below the first tier seats painted sharper, more believable images on the planks. It’s the Rhine; it’s a forest with well-defined trees; it’s Hunding’s dining room; it’s a rainbow bridge to Valhalla; it’s the Valkyries’ horses riding into battle; it’s a fire-bound mountain top; it’s a funeral pyre (not so hot).
Some of the action is pure circus; the almost vertical ascent of the rainbow bridge – by stand-ins – in Rheingold; the upside-down-suspended, sleeping Brünehilde (clearly a double, if not a mannequin from Saks’ 5th Avenue window, at the end of Die Walküre; Brünehilde’s clunky, nodding horse, Grane (could do better there), in Götterdämmerung.
But these are quibbles set against the overwhelming excitement of seeing the earth and heavens intertwined, seething with colour, fire and flood over sixteen hours.
Set this Met production in the context of other Wagner Ring operas I’ve seen over the years and it is truly in a class of its own. Visiting the Bayreuth Shrine in 2013, I was appalled by finding Rheingold set in the Golden Motel, looking much like Edward Hopper’s iconic petrol station painting, Gas 1940.
The Rhine was the swimming pool, the maidens represented by three itinerant hookers. Wotan was a gas pump attendant; the giants, Fasolt and Fafner, two travelling salesmen duking it out in a sordid bedroom. And … wait for it … the Ring was represented by a yellow plastic duck, floating on the swimming pool.
The cast in this Met Cycle is superb. I shall highlight two, the Austrian tenor, Andreas Schager – Siegfried; and Christine Goerke, the American dramatic soprano – Brünnhilde.
Mr. Schager started out as “Schagerl”, an accomplished performer of operettas, but on deciding to switch to mainstream opera roles realised that casting directors would Google him and be put off by his operetta history. So, he chopped the “l” off the end to confuse the search engines. It worked.
He is tireless, effortlessly inhabiting one of the most demanding roles of the repertoire, filling the Met opera house with thrilling sound for hour upon hour.
Siegfried is an extremely difficult role. He is, in the instructive, lengthy character summary provided by one of the cognoscenti Met attendees I chatted with in an interval – a “goofball”.
Brought up by the manipulative Mime to know no fear, he is an enigma. He may be the ultimate hero, but his heroism is based on ignorance. In Götterdämerung Brünnhilde reveals all along she has protected him with magical forces, except from attacks from behind, as he was never likely to flee from an enemy. What price heroism now? Of course, he then gets stabbed in the back.
Mr. Schager proves master of the subconscious gesture, subtly revealing the contradictions in Siegfried’s character. After he has drunk the poisoned potion that makes him forget his pledges to Brünnhilde, the occasional hands-on-head body language implies he is puzzling over the past love for her he can no longer accurately recall. He’s a hero in a quandary. It’s an acting tour de force.
Mr. Schager is much in demand for the role of Siegfried. Follow his path as, after the Met, he “goofs” through Bayreuth, Paris and Berlin. He is set fair to be hailed as the definitive Siegfried of the era.
Ms. Goerke IS Brünnhilde – statuesque, authoritatively voiced, with a clear and truly heroic soprano that is unforgettable. No need for a winged and horned helmet to assert her authority as a Valkyrie. Yet, in the poignant moments after she is “betrayed” by Siegfried and prey to reflection, her voice is translucent and touching. Any opera house worth its salt will cast her alongside Mr. Schager if it can
I came a sceptic and I left a convert. Thank you Richard Wagner, Messrs. Gelb and Lepage, Ms. Goerke, Mr. Schager, the rest of the cast and Maestro Philippe Jordan – the Swiss conductor who is currently music director of the Opera National de Paris and conductor of the Vienna Symphony – who led the top form Met orchestra.
Also, my long-suffering Manhattan friends who put me up and put up with me for the week – and, oh yes, Wotan and his magic Valhalla band.
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