Brunnhilde the Valkyrie shows her gifts with horses and heroes (Star as Grane, Stig Andersen, Janice Baird)
My beau and I have been enveloped in a fairy tale in the Emerald City, Seattle’s Ring Cycle. He and I await the finale of Seattle’s much lauded Ring Cycle Sunday night, Gotterdammerung. It’s the epic Seattle has staged once every four years and expected to bring in 9.5 million dollars to Seattle this time. It looks like an almost sold out house in this third cycle. Stig Anderson in the title role of Siegfried has recovered from his ailment which he suffered during the first cycle this month. Further the opera has gotten the disconcerting gremlins under control and experienced no technical issues or delays. The audience gives Wagnerian length applause each night for each and every performer.
Pictured above, Stig Andersen in the title role of Seigfried takes on Fafner the dragon with Seigfried's magic sword Notung.
Most significantly the pretty and athletic young Janice Baird as Brunnhilde garners as much or more applause as the other performers.
Pictured above, Brunnhilde (Janice Baird) awakens like Sleeping Beauty.
Nevertheless I keep hearing murmurs about Jane Eaglen as Brunnhilde from the Ring fans, about Jane Eaglen’s power. However. This is a sexy and athletic production with a lot of demonstrativeness, physical affection between Wotan and the women in his family. And last night finally between Siegfried and his awakened bride Brunnhilde, ending with a real kiss before he leads her off her mountaintop prison. The two destined to be lovers unite like the forces of nature, like fires burning and rivers rushing, forever one in love, power and purpose. Just as each one matures, breaking free of corrupt father figures to discover the attractions of their soulmate. Let Valhalla and it’s corrupt entrenchment burn to the ground.
Yet this production doesn't take itself too seriously. Greer Grimsley, pictured above in Siegfried as The Wanderer, had a fine comedic moment when he's trying to excuse the love affair between his own illegitimate twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. The current wife is putting her goddess foot down. Such things are unheard of she declares, it's never been done before. "It has now" Wotan says. Moreover he adds rhetorically and half seriously "Can't things be done that have never been done before?"
Good judge of horseflesh
Getting back to Janice’s abilities as a horsewoman in real life. Seattle’s press officer Sara tells me Janice rides dressage in Germany. That means when Brunnhilde talks of her love for her horse Grane and walks through the forest with a bridle or halter in her hand, she is in her element. I anxiously await the appearance of the fabled Grane in the conclusion Sunday, Gotterdammerung, when the horse goes into the flames only to be immortalized in Valhalla. This is the horse Star’s debut and she should be in capable hands. Sara also tells me Stig went himself to the stable to visit Star. The previous Grane appeared in two other Ring Cycles and he retired after showing Star the ropes.
I didn’t expect the Ring Cycle, being a first for my beau and myself, to be so lighthearted and optimistic. Wagner’s music often sounds whimsical and childlike and not so heavy on brass, volume and moralization as I expected. The music sounds hopeful even as Wotan puts his most cherished daughter to sleep on a mountaintop after a long embrace and goodbye while they look each other in the eye. I said to my date as we watched from the first tier, over the heads of Speight Jenkins and of Sheri Greenawald with the San Francisco Merola Program, the music sounds like Tchaikovsky and the Nutcracker, with the girl going into dreamland.
The monsters have a cartoonesque look, perhaps more like Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, lending themselves to a trademark whimsical or fairytale quality of this Seattle production. The serpent dropping suddenly from the ceiling in Rheingold added to the feeling that the serpent in it’s original form, the Nibelung dwarf Alberich, would not be too difficult to outsmart. It was like SpongeBob and Patrick yelling “Boo”. There’s an innocence.
Indeed when Wotan and Loge trick the Alberich into becoming a toad to show off his transformative powers, the scene turns into hot potato with Greer Grimsley as Wotan tossing the big toad back and forth with Loge. The slapstick pair bind Alberich's hands/frog legs and hauling him to the surface where they will rip the ring and it’s power.
Last night we saw the beginning of the story, Siegfried, after the two prequels Rheingold and Die Walkure. It had it’s comedic moments, with Siegfried looking for the songbird to guide him to his beloved Brunnhilde. He looks into the sky and suddenly the bird darts across the back of the stage from the forest behind the mountains and he bounds off after her.
Forest Bird
Julianne Gearhart. It was lovely to hear Forest Bird’s song ringing from the treetops after all the male voices throughout Seigfried. Moreover the singer did emerge with a prop bird at the end to take her bow. Similarly the dragon Fafner’s voice emerged with a piece of the beast for identification. The only one I missed would be the man inside the bear suit, JC Casino, who could be a woman for all I know. My beau says the dragon seemed similar to the dragon in Tolkien’s Ring, with the dragon so huge his tail comes out of one part of the cave and his head another.
Speight returned my smile in the VIP Valhalla Room. My beau and I have been enjoying the Seattle wine and chocolates and mozzarella balls on toothpicks with cherry tomatos. I asked Speight at the elevator how to find out more on the real Brunnhilde, the one of Scandinavian and German myth. So that’s my quest and I’ll get back to you.
From our perch on a Queen Anne roof
Meanwhile my beau and I have been taking in Seattle with our rooftop view of Elliot Bay and the planes. Many are seaplanes. He flys his own plane so he identifies each and every plane that flies overhead.
After Die Walkure he and I taxied to the Olympic hotel for an elegant glass of champagne. I take him to the outdoors--the shoreline and the forest--and he takes me indoors--to the quintessential and elegant. The Mariner’s had just beaten Oakland and the pitcher’s father sat on the barstool next to us at the Olympic Hotel. Hey what do we know we’re from Ballard.
Salmon
Speaking of which, we rode the bus to Ballard and visited the locks. Enormous twenty pound salmon hover in the salt water of Puget Sound before swimming to their doom in the fresh water of the lake. We walked to Ray’s Boathouse and he had a black and tan; I had an African Amber ale as we sat in the hot sun, switching to Mojitos and peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips indoors. A young man dived over the railing into the water as it was his last day as a waiter, probably returning to college.
Water taxi to Alki
We also road the water taxi to Alki from the pier after strolling Pike Market; and walked all the way to the beach before hopping the free shuttle back to the water taxi.
Lighthouse at Discovery Point
Yesterday we hiked Discovery Point to the lighthouse in Magnolia. Before riding the 24 bus back to our hotel at Seattle Center, we had a honey lavender ice-cream cone and an mint chocolate chip ice-cream cone from the village.
It finally rained last night silently after about two months of sun.
I’m sitting here at the Uptown Café in Queen Anne waiting for my beau to pick me up to have banana pancakes with rum sauce at Five Spot on the hill.
What next in San Francisco, Mardi Gras for Halloween?
Be home to San Francisco soon. I have a part as a Mardi Gras reveler in a Castro Halloween party for the new medical emergency show Trauma. The costume is from my real days in New Orleans during the millennium. You never know when you will need it. It’s my homage to Greer Grimsley, who puts his New Orleanian tough/sexy/lowdown into Wotan. Luretta Bybee his real life wife sang a feisty and clarion Waltraute, a Valkyrie in Die Walkure. Perhaps as a tribute to Greer’s upcoming performance in San Francisco as John the Baptist in Salome? Waltraute pulls a bloody head out of her trophy bag of body parts.
My beau just arrived at Uptown Cafe so we are off to the Danish bakery for something called a potato.
For more info: www.SFOpera.com, www.SeattleOpera.org
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Comments
love the black and tans at rays boathouse ballard / seattle
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