The Met, Lepage save best for last in a ‘Götterdämmerung’ driven more by characters than machinery

The final installment of the Met’s mammoth ‘Ring Cycle’ invites multiple interpretations of Wagner’s myth—and a daring musical interpretation by Fabio Luisi

By David Rubin

http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

Director Robert Lepage’s highly successful mounting of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung demonstrates, finally, what this new Ring contributes to the Metropolitan Opera’s repertoire for the next 20 years—and what it does not.

Now that all four operas have been presented, Lepage’s Ring is not what many people, myself included, hoped it would be: a 21st century Star Wars response to the Ring that would put on stage all the fantastic images in Wagner’s libretto and score.  The enormous expense of the project, the set consisting of a 90,000-pound computer-controlled “machine,” and the extravagant pre-opening hype all conspired to raise such Star Wars expectations.  They were meant to.

But fantastic images were few in this Ring, and almost entirely absent in Götterdämmerung.  The production suffered from the anticipation of what Lepage apparently never intended to deliver.

While the entrance of the gods into Valhalla in Das Rheingold was arresting, as was Brünnhilde’s vertical suspension from her rock at the close of Die Walküre, only one such image sticks in the mind from Götterdämmerung:  Siegfried paddling down the Rhine on a raft with the mechanical horse Grane as his companion.  Otherwise the computer-controlled panels were used mostly as they were in the other operas, as a backdrop for video projections of rushing water, a forest, and kaleidoscopic swirls of color suggesting the Gibichung palace.

Nor did Lepage offer a “concept” Ring such as Francesca Zambello’s 2011 “Eco-Ring” in San Francisco that charts the despoliation of the planet.  Nor is it an anti-capitalist Ring, or a critique of industrialization, or of a broken legal system.

Rather, this new Ring is not new.  It is similar in spirit to the traditional staging it replaced at the Met from director Otto Schenk and set designer Gunther Schneider-Siemsen.  Lepage invites the audience to make what it wants of the myth, and the stage pictures encourage pretty much any interpretation, or none.  It’s exciting to look at, just as the Met’s successful productions of La Bohème and Turandot are lush without distorting the composer’s intent or challenging the audience.  

For a production that will probably come back four or five times in the next 20 years and have to sell 180,000 tickets, this is a safe Ring that should draw the curious as well as the Ring nuts.  To amortize its cost, it will have to.

While Lepage was justly criticized for stinting on direction of the characters in the first three operas, Götterdämmerung was successful precisely because he paid them some attention.  The virile, young, and athletic Siegfried of Jay Hunter Morris and the radiant Act One Brünnhilde of Deborah Voigt were entirely believable as a couple who had been making love on her god-forsaken rock for ages.  The agony expressed by Waltraud Meier as Waltraute when she cannot persuade Brünnhilde to save the world by giving back the ring was scary.  At one point she grasped Voigt around the neck so tightly that Meier’s veins were popping in her neck and shoulders.  I thought she was about to strangle her Valkyrie sister.  Siegfried’s by-play with the Rhinemaidens in Act Three was properly amusing, flirtatious, and menacing.  Gunther’s shock at witnessing Siegfried’s murder was evident.

Not everything worked.  The end of the world is beyond a convincing staging, even with sophisticated projections.  Putting Voigt on the metal Grane with his head bobbing as he approached the conflagration was foolish.  The fire and the flood were small scale.  Having the hefty Hagen of Hans-Peter König hop into the flooding Rhine to retrieve the ring as he yells the final words of the opera was far too dainty.  He should have been in a raging panic.  Hagen’s vassals—hemmed in by the panels—simply stood and delivered their heroic chorus in Act Two, thrilling though it was, and always is.

Nevertheless, Lepage made his characters come alive.  Gunther (Iain Paterson) and his sister Gutrune (Wendy Bryn Harmer) were not the usual simpering, weak-kneed pair.  Paterson, looking like a British toff but singing heroically, made Gunther a more complex character, and Harmer put some backbone in Gutrune, often a thankless part.  Often these two get lost in the opera, but not here.

Musically this Götterdämmerung could hardly have been better.  Conductor Fabio Luisi told the international audience during a live intermission feature that he was hoping to make his Ring less Germanic and to give it “passion” and “swing.”  I would add that he provides light textures and fleet pacing, much appreciated in a six-hour afternoon.  The woodwind playing was glorious, particularly from the clarinet and bass clarinet.  The brass players were generally on their game, a couple of entrances aside.  The orchestral interludes were properly magisterial.  In Luisi the Met has found a worthy successor to James Levine.  He is a conductor who is not afraid to put a much different stamp on Wagner.

It’s hard to imagine where the Met would be if Morris hadn’t suddenly appeared from the cover ranks.  Siegfrieds do not grow on trees.  Already he has to be one of the three or four best available anywhere for this part.  He did not age much, either emotionally or physically, from the “young” Siegfried of the previous opera.  He remained the slightly goofy, lovable braggart with a linebacker’s build.  His voice is slightly nasal but strong and accurate.  He tired only slightly in the rigors of Act Three.  He sings with confidence, and the audience was with him all the way.  He clearly loves to sing this part, and he’s not afraid of it.

Voigt has been taking some critical lumps of late, unjustly in my view.  Her voice doesn’t have the steely ring of Birgit Nilsson, but it’s warm and lovely and powerful enough (although this is hard to judge in the HD transmission).  She might have been more furious in Act Two when she is dragged to her wedding with Gunther, but overall she was a believable Brünnhilde and a good match for Siegfried.  She was greeted with bouquets at the curtain calls.

Everything about König’s Hagen is big—the frame, the face, the voice.  He might have been more evil in his acting.  He let his voice do most of that for him.  He was at his best in Act One when, sitting on the Gibichung throne, he proclaimed that finally he was going to get the ring back.  You had to believe him.  

Meier was luxury casting as Waltraute, and Erich Owens returned for his cameo as the aged (or ghostly) Alberich at the start of Act Two.  For lovers of the bass voice, hearing Owens and König—stage father and son—growl at each other was a real treat.

If I had the money to see only one of the Ring operas, and if the Met were to sell single tickets this spring during presentations of the cycle, I would see Götterdämmerung.  It’s the team’s best work, and it will leave you limp.

Details Box:

What: Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, Simulcast Live in HD
When: February 11, 2012

Who: Metropolitan Opera
Running time: about 6 hours, including intermissions
Where: Metropolitan Opera House, New York

Encore performance: Not yet determined