Seattle's Ring Cycle garnered detailed and comprehensive praise as the world came to a spectacular, glorious end and rebirth. The epic reflected classic struggles and forces of nature in Wagner’s own life as Seattle Opera completed the first series with two to go this month. It seems most of what criticism there was to be found involved Wagnerianism. However Ring critics noted improvement even over the previous Ring in Seattle four years ago when Greer Grimsley got Artist of the Year for his Wotan and The Wanderer. This year the Ring again produced an Artist of the Year in Stephanie Blythe who sings the role of Wotan’s wife Fricka. Fricka takes a stand for wifedom against the goddess of the Earth with whom Fricka's husband has fathered many illegitimate daughters. Greer Grimsley as Wotan and Marie Striejffert as Erda, pictured.
Remarkably and like her character, Janice Baird who sings Brunnhilde, was criticized for not being Wagnerian enough. Like her character, Janice seemed to rise to the occasion later, particularly to the ear of Joshua Kosman of the SF Chronicle in his own blog.
Pictured below, Janice Baird as Brunnhilde with her siblings/twins/husband and wife Siegmund and Sieglinde. That pair would be the illegitimate twins of Wotan who had never met but fall in love when they do. They create the savior of the world, their ill-fated son Siegfried named after his magic sword.
Stuart Skelton (Siegmund), Janice Baird (Brünnhilde), and Margaret Jane Wray (Sieglinde).
Gremlins in the opera house
Depends on which critic you read as to how far Janice redeemed herself. However even the production suffered from gremlins in the house which held up the performance of Gotterdammerung but didn’t cancel it. The Seattle Times reporter opened her review by saying
Between acts in Seattle Opera's "Götterdämmerung," company general director Speight Jenkins took the stage to apologize for "gremlins in the house" — computer problems that held up the scene-shifting so long that conductor Robert Spano had to stop the orchestra twice. It's the first time in 27 "Rings" that I've seen this happen, and while it certainly didn't ruin this mammoth show depicting the destruction and redemption of a corrupt world, it was nonetheless disconcerting.
Martin Bernheimer of the Financial Times or FT.com criticized similarly. Yet he sounds the most jaded in his demand for more Wagneresque performances, criticizing many for seeming neutral (Gunther), being of modest menace (Hagen), being a portly bumpkin instead of heroic (Siegfried), looking like a silly old puppet (the dragon) or just shy (the real horse). It was the horse Star's debut.
Commanday of SFCV detailed orchestral problems. Funny but the critics also mentioned problems in the horn section. The Ring is so big on brass what other opera could have this kind of problem? Even the conductor failed to escape criticism for his volume or lack of it, volume being another Wagnerian hallmark.
Warnings of the Ring's curse come to Brunnhilde from Waltraute, a sister Valkyrie. Brunnhilde keeps the ring as a symbol of Siegfried's love nevertheless.
Moreover I am hoping the Danish tenor Stig Andersen, Siegfried himself, gets over his malady and will be in full Wagnerian mode by the time I get there next week. Wishing you well, Stig.
Here is Andersen as the slain hero Siegfried with Janice Baird, Brunnhilde.
Meanwhile I have been studying up on things Wagnerian including a spectacular biographical DVD with Richard Burton as Wagner and Vanessa Redgrave as Cosima. Tony Palmer directs this 1984 English television movie, 470 minutes.
Here is a video clip and part one about the Wagner bio.
Wagner: When does the wife get the last word?
Essentially disc one shows the warrant for Wagner’s arrest by the German government so Wagner would face the music. Wagner escapes through Switzerland from Bavaria with his first wife Minna. They escaped in disguise using false papers and alone.
This expensive and elegant production shows Wagner burning down the opera house. Literally. He says it was small and Italian. His vision entailed the glorification of Germany, the vision of his Germany. It would be apocalyptic and so big and grand and loud traditional opera houses would be unable to contain it. He foresaw the battle to the death as grand as the forces of nature with fire and water. He saw natural forces as part of the German spirit. 27 years later he would have his theater.
Political and spiritual exile
He spent a year in exile with no writing, not one note. He would emerge from distraction to security and success. He said the Neibelungs were like worms in a dead body, with this observation prefaced by the exile from where he was a posted criminal, where he failed to change anything.
Here are the Nibelungs as seen in the Seattle Opera. Front: Greer Grimsley (Wotan) and Dennis Petersen (Mime); Back: Kobie van Rensburg (Loge) and Richard Paul Fink (Alberich); and the Nibelungs.
Wagner in the DVD sees the story of Siegfried, the savior of the world, a hero born and raised to know no fear even if simple-minded. He wrote about the Norns, those who could see the future. Like the Rhinemaidens, there are three and each Norn corresponds to territory e.g. north, west.
The DVD has Rhinemaidens naked as they should be. Why are there three Rheinmaidens seducing not only Alberich but also the audience in the opening act though, as there are three Norns?
What I don't see in the DVD would be the origins of Wagner's fascination with the Scandinavian and German legends he bases the Ring on. How did he come to be so obsessed with the mythic and real Brunnhilde and Siegfried? Brunnhilde in history had to avenge the killing of her husband.
Love and a daughter's loyalty or treason?
Brunnehilde is betrayed by her father; and then by her beloved Siegfried who is under an evil spell after drinking a magic potion of the Nibelung. Father Wotan basically strips her of her birthright and power and leaves her more vulnerable than any mortal. Only Siegfried will be able to save her, like the prince saving Sleeping Beauty.
Why so harsh? Is it treason when she doesn’t do as her father directed? Is his punishment of her vengeance against those who would destroy his world? Her own father seemed to make a lesson to others out of her by putting her on display on a mountain top, not locking her away and taking her freedom by imprisonment. Was he just in torment and lashing out?
His wife Fricka had wanted to put an end to his philandering and exploitation by letting one of his other offspring get killed. He did just try to sell his wife’s sister to a pair of giants. If he had performed his contract with the giants honestly he would not have had to get involved with the underworld to pay the giants off. It’s how the vicious circle, the self-destruction, begins.
So Fricka did get her wish in some form and publicly, the disempowerment of illegitimate daughter Brunnhilde being an answer to the wife’s humiliation problem. Moreover it gives her back some leverage and power in her marriage. The Wotans had no children of their own.
I don’t write operas I write music drama.
says Richard Burton as Wagner.
Just as the Wotans had no children of their own, Wagner and his first wife Minna had none, tragically. Minna the starter wife says Wagner’s child died before birth because they fled creditors. She became barren, having another would kill her. Minna complains of the humiliation by creditors.
The pianist Franz Liszt writes the couple a letter of credit. They go to Switzerland and Wagner takes on pupils. Minna is gone and he starts an affair.
“All I want is money, love I have abandoned” he says. Mirth? Being caustic or simply stating his situation?
Hence in the Ring, the malleable gold equals wealth and power for those who have forsaken love.
So there in the beautiful Alps he takes the water cure for his ulcers and despair. He writes no music for five years and cannot return to Dresden.
Fantasies come to life. The DVD shows some candle or lantern lit full frontal nudity in the form of his current muse. Just her not Burton's Wagner. Wagner still has no money.
Schweinhunder royalty and the underworld
Disc Two has Wagner heading for Venice which he finds gloomy. The term Schweinhunder crosses his lips repeatedly. The daughter of Von Bulow, Cosima, gets him some money for his opera to be performed but the singer loses her voice. They say Wagner ruined her.
A cello-playing acquaintance of mine emailed that Mark Twain said, Wagner is not as bad as it sounds. Another asked was it Oscar Wilde who said he liked attending Wagner as he could speak in a normal tone to the person next to him and not be heard.
Pfistermeister says "Barbaric passion"
The DVD shows Wagner criticized as having barbaric passion without a tune in it. But the king must have his opera. “Extremely boring” surmises Sir John Gielgud’s character, Pfistermeister. The king will be interested in ladies and soldiers with his high spirits . . . at that point we (the king’s advisors) will point out the expense of Wagner. “What’s more, there is this Ring thing.”
Yet as in the Ring, Tristan & Isolde has a single driving thread with no break from it’s spell.
Then Schnor, the tenor who sang Tristan, commits suicide. Cosima says, "they say Tristan killed him".
However his majesty pardoned all revolutionaries on the debut of Tristan. Yet Wagner remained foreign and Protestant and living in luxury. King Ludwig his patron tells Wagner to leave Munich. Wagner calls them Jews, Schweinhunder . . . “that’s why you have snouts so you can find the truffles”.
Minna died during that time.
Yet Siegfried is born says Wagner. Siegfried, not so much born as forged by the chosen one, a sword to lead Germany, a new age, to carry the flame. The sword and the light through struggle. Suffering and struggle, victory and defeat, domination and servitude. Siegfried will help all cross the sacred river, the quest for the Grail, the truth.
Disc four goes on with insight into Wagner's political and military world and how that vision becomes expressed, embedded in the Ring.
The German spirit
Disc Four has Cosima begging for a divorce from Von Bulow so she can legitimize her marriage to Wagner, the father of her children. Women she says are supposed to uphold the moral order. Yet Cosima appears to be sacrificing her own children, indulging her own passions.
Pictured above, the Rheinmaidens as the ring and equilibrium are restored. Jennifer Hines (Flosshilde), Julianne Gearhart (Woglinde), and Michèle Losier (Wellgunde).
So in conclusion may I ask, is this why it's called The Ring of the Nibelung and not of Valhalla?
Photos: Chris Bennion and Rosarii Lynch, Seattle Opera
For more info: www.SeattleOpera.org, SFOpera.com
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