Catastrophically Vapid
Alex Ross of The New Yorker is to music critics what Luke Johnson is to exegetes. So when he characterizes the Metropolitan Opera’s just completed new production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle as “catastrophically vapid” you somehow sense he’s not happy. He expatiates:
the most ambitious undertaking of the Peter Gelb era, Robert Lepage’s production of Wagner’s “Ring,” is a very damp squib. “Götterdämmerung,” the final installment, arrived in January, rounding out what must be considered a historic achievement. Pound for pound, ton for ton, it is the most witless and wasteful production in modern operatic history.
Nor is Ross any happier with the hapless hulk that was New York City Opera. His conclusion is, well, “dispiriting:”
This has been the most dispiriting opera season since I began reviewing music in New York, twenty years ago…Both the Met and City Opera are committing the supreme operatic sin: they are thinking small.
The whole article is available, for subscribers only, here. Any nay-sayers?
Saw two Met productions: Rodelinda (with Renee Fleming) and Aida (with ?). I thought Rodelinda was incredibly interesting, maybe because it’s not like many operas; music by Handel (great!). Aida was well Aida…horses rather than elephants on stage.
We’re not regular opera goers; a friend took us. I always have to steel myself for the 3-4 hour marathon, but in the case of Rodelinda…zipped by; Aida did not, even with horses.
So….hard to say how good or bad the opera season has been. I have the impression (our friend being the prime example), that opera lovers are opera lovers and they go no matter what!
I have not seen the current production of Götterdämmerung, but I did see a production at the Met many years ago. Back in those days, when there were no Met Titles, before I went to see an opera, I always read Milton Cross’s version of it in Stories of the Great Operas, a wonderful book to read even if you didn’t go to the opera. But unfortunately, Cross’s descriptions of the action and particularly the setting were so elaborate and vivid that when the curtain went up and, instead of (say) seeing a great castle you saw a staircase which, turned at various angles, also was the “scenery” for every other setting in the opera, it could be rather disappointing. Cross had described the three Norns in the prologue moving about the stage and weaving the rope of destiny. When the curtain went up, there was darkness as close to pitch black as I had ever experienced at the Met, and for the next half hour, three voices could be heard singing from three fixed spots on the stage. After about 15 or 20 minutes, when your eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, the Norns, standing perfectly still, became just barely visible to those who had not had the foresight to bring infrared night-vision goggles along with their opera glasses. There is a story that Einstein, listening to a particularly boring lecture, leaned over and whispered to the person next to him, “I have just got a new theory of eternity.” That’s much the way I felt during the first half hour of that production of Götterdämmerung.
I happened to be driving from Philadelphia home to Vermont a couple of Saturdays ago and listened to Götterdämmerung on Live from the Met. (The section of 95 where you pass Newark airport and all the Elizabeth oil refineries is pretty Wagnerian, it turns out). The announcers made much of the huge, mechanical set, on which images were projected to suggest the river, the bridge to Valhalla, and so on. There’s a video here:
http://ringcycle.metoperafamily.org/behind_the_scenes/photos_and_videos
Coincidentally I saw Götterdämmerung last night, somewhat prejudiced against it because of Michael Tanner’s negative review in The Spectator (I am a devotee of Tanner’s reviews). I found Act 1, after the Rhine Journey, totally unengaging. But I was overwhelmed by the drama of Act II, helped especially by the chorus, and touched as never before by Siegfried’s last scene and funeral. Deborah Voigt’s smile (the “default position” of her countenance, says Tanner) has to be blocked out, and Hagen’s innocent-looking face was totally unsuitable for this Iago character. But the English Iain Paterson who played Gunther saved the drama by his wonderful acting — shiftless, shifty and in the end the very image of remorse. I found the contraption used in the whole cycle terribly irritating, despite the video effects it allowed. The Met is the best version of this opera I have seen (apart from Boulez/Chereau caught on TV in 1982 or 3). I saw it live twice — murdered by Gergiev in Tokyo (of the London presentation of that Gergiev Ring Tanner concluded: “everyone involved in this production should be heartily ashamed of themselves”) — and by the witless director of the Bayreuth Ring a few years ago — it was impossible to make out what was happening at the end — Brunnhilde went to the back to the stage at one point, no doubt to toss the invisible ring to the invisible Rhinemaidens — at the end there was a deep, deep silence in the hall, followed by the most ear-splitting collective Boo! ever heard.
The Enchanted Island, a Met pot-pourri of arias by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau (my three least favorite composers) to a libretto mashing The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream together, was something I had to walk out of after the interminable first act. The stupidity of the librettist, who managed to destroy Shakespeare, was hair-raising.
Faust, another offering this year, was magnificent — this is the first opera I ever saw, at the reopening of Cork Opera House in 1963 or so, and was the favorite opera of my devout fellow-citizens (Dubliners preferred Il Trovatore) — who would have through this dusty old vehicle could be given such power? the soprano did a magnificent job, especially in the finale (which I first heard on a Nellie Melba/John McCormick 78 rmp record) — no serenely noble trumpeting but hysterical vulnerability — having her climb the stairs (to the scaffold? to heaven?) instead of dying was a nice touch. The nuclear explosion in act 4 was over the top — but opera is supposed to be.
I missed Rosalinda (Handelophobia). Anna Bolena was memorable for the acting of Netrebko and the Russian who sang Henry VIII, and also for the period costumes, which certainly added a lot to the drama, though the extravagance is breath-taking, as so often in these Met affairs — but listening to Callas one sees how much more beauty and pathos there might have been.
I missed Satyagraha, fearing to be bored. I thought Il Trovatore was splendid.
Joseph O’Leary has now surpassed Anthony Tommasini for the astuteness of his reviews. He must also have stumbled upon the missing Rhine gold to finance those operatic excursions.
Last evening I enjoyed a fine performance of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” at the Boston Lyric Opera. The program notes included a quote from D.H. Lawrence:
“I love Italian opera — it’s so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and Death….I like the Italians like Rossini who run all on impulse.”
(Please save the post’s superb title for reuse. Opportunities are coming.)