Wagneriana Durch deine Tugend allein Summer 2011 soll so ich Thaten noch wirken? Volume 8, Number 3 —Götterdämmerung From the Editor e are now gearing up for our fall events. We are delighted to report that Margaret Juntwait, host of SiriusXM Satellite Radio and of the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, has graciously W agreed to give a talk on life at the Met, with audiovisual illustrations of the upcoming season’s productions. This event will take place on Saturday, September 24, at the College Club. A reception will follow. For more details, please see the back cover. Many members missed the wonderful presentation by Hilan Warshaw last fall due to the Met’s broadcast of Don Pasquale that afternoon. By popular request, we have asked Mr. Warshaw to return to Boston and speak of Wagner’s influence on film. He will be here in the afternoon of October 30, at the Brookline Public Library. In this issue you will find a review of the San Francisco Ring Cycle, as well as a review of a CD of Wagner/Liszt transcriptions performed by Albert Mamriev. –Dalia Geffen The San Francisco Ring Pleases despite Drawbacks Der Ring des Nibelungen, San Francisco Opera, June 28, June 29, July 1, July 3, 2011; conductor Donald Runnicles; director Francesca Zambello; set designer: Michael Yeargan; costume designer: Catherine Zuber Wotan: Mark Delavan; Alberich: Gordon Hawkins; Fricka: Elizabeth Bishop; Erda: Ronnita Miller; Mime: David Cangelosi; Fafner: Daniel Sumegi; Fasolt: Andrea Silvestrelli; Froh: Brandon Jovanovich; Donner: Gerd Grochowski; Freia: Melissa Citro; Sieglinde: Heidi Melton; Siegmund: Brandon Jovanovich; Hunding: Daniel Sumegi; Brünnhilde: Nina Stemme; Siegfried: Jay Hunter Morris (Siegfried) and Ian Storey (Götterdämmerung); Forest Bird: Stacey Tappan; Gunther: Gerd Grochowski; Hagen: Andrea Silvestrelli; Waltraute: Daveda Karanas; Gutrune: Melissa Citro; First Norn: Ronnita Miller; Second Norn: Daveda Karanas; Third Norn: Heidi Melton came to this year’s San Francisco Ring Cycle willing to be pleased, and I enjoyed many things about it, right down to the comfortable seats in the San Francisco Opera House and the Biergarten on the I veranda. The singers were of uniformly high quality individually and sang well in ensemble. The director Francesca Zambello’s Gold Rush premise was convincing, even when the rednecks put down their hunting rifles to pick up swords and spears. The costumes were appealing and coherent. The conducting by Donald Runnicles, though a bit on the fast side, never fell apart and kept the singers 1 comfortable. The orchestra was small, but the sound was big. Several singers were especially good in their roles: David Cangelosi as Mime [David Cangelosi coached with our music adviser, Jeffrey Brody— Ed.], Andrea Silvestrelli as Hagen, and an outstanding, maybe definitive, Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde. The supertitles came in a thought-provoking modern translation; the Norns, for instance, sang about the cable they were handling inside a giant, computer-based world. On the minus side, two aspects of this production were hard to overlook. • The singers moved around too much, detracting from the dignity of the story. Wagner’s music does not need extraneous gestures and motion to advance the plot; that is the genius of his art. In this production, however, even Erda walked around. Consequently, I propose four basic ground rules: Opera singers should not run at all; they should seldom walk; they should not move around while another singer is performing; and they do not need to clench their fists and wave their arms to get their meaning across. The recently retired Schenk production at the Met kept the singers from unnecessary activity, with much greater dramatic impact. • The scenery and slide projections harped on the theme of ecological damage, going far beyond anything that the libretto called for. One can read this theme into the story, but that is not what the Ring Cycle is about. In addition, the white-robed child who carried a small green sprout at the end seemed unnecessary, though the message was upbeat. Das Rheingold In keeping with the setting in California’s Gold Rush of 1848, the Rhinemaidens were shown as saloon girls who played in a bubbling stream; Alberich was a grizzled old prospector; and Fricka was the rich wife of a robber baron. This premise was convincing throughout most of the cycle, with interesting results and only occasional dissonances. For instance, Loge as a sleazy corporate counsel with a briefcase was brilliant. Projections between the scenes and during overtures showed computerized clouds, tides, flames, and images of an increasingly mechanized future and despoiled Alberich and the Rhinemaidens in the San Francisco Ring Cycle (photos by Cory Weaver) landscape. These sophisticated, constantly moving images distracted from the music and did not add depth to the story, weakening the theatrical impact of the stage scenes they followed. Wagner’s music tells us where we are—river, clouds, mines, forest; we don’t need cinematic emphasis. Die Walküre Sieglinde’s abode was a dirt-poor cabin lost in the depths of the woods. She wore a limp housedress, clutched at her formless cardigan, and pushed her hair out of her face repeatedly. One wall of the house lifted after 10 minutes to show the interior. Hunding’s abuse was on stark display as he intimidated her, grabbed her, stared her down, and shouted his singing at her. In the next scene, Mark Delavan as Wotan, in his 20th-century skyscraper boardroom, sang ably, but in this Ring his stage presence fell short of the gravitas that this role demands. Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde was the singer we came to hear, and she did not disappoint. Characterized as a spinto soprano (the Italian term for a sound that “pushes through” Mark Delavan as Wotan at the conclusion of Die Walküre, with Nina Stemme as the orchestra), she had stood out as Isolde in Tristan und Isolde Brünnhilde 2 at Bayreuth in 2006. Here her Brünnhilde was clear, strong, flexible, and joyful, with spot-on pitch. Even though Stemme is in her late 40s, she makes a convincing tomboy. She will reprise the role at the Vienna State Opera’s Siegfried next year. I’ve always felt that the dramatic core of the Ring’s story lies in the war of words between Wotan and Fricka in the second act of Die Walküre. Fricka’s case has to counterbalance Wotan’s yearning to show how trapped he is, even though in her anguished plea she never once mentions love, and in his defense he talks about nothing else. If she is presented as a nag, it is too easy for the audience to allow Wotan to discount her claim. Instead, she pinpoints his double-dealing even though she can offer only a cruel alternative. Elizabeth Bishop’s Fricka gave this goddess the hearing she deserved; her dignity and pain justified her requests, even though they set the whole disaster in motion. Trying to make an unworkable marriage work, Fricka forces Wotan to allow Siegmund to be murdered and leads him to abandon his favorite daughter—all in the service of preventing her from being mocked, which Hagen does anyway, in the second act of Götterdämmerung. The last act was placed in an abstract, ramp-framed set; though the production notes indicated that this set echoed the battlements of San Francisco’s Presidio, it seemed out of place with the more naturalistic sites in the rest of the opera. Nevertheless, it offered real flames, always a challenge to stage. Siegfried In Siegfried, Siegfried and Mime were in a tiny, cluttered mobile home. Mime was sung and acted endearingly by David Cangelosi. I’ve always considered Mime a perfect portrait of the archetypical irritating parent whose habitual, almost automatic, demands for sympathy extinguish every possibility of obtaining the gratitude that he craves from his adolescent son. Although the mincing, whining music itself tells the story well, Cangelosi punctuated the plot without overacting. In one nice bit of stagecraft, Siegfried lounged behind Mime, miming the gestures and phrases that he had heard so often before. Jay Hunter Morris as Siegfried and The dragon was staged as a huge, robotic, trash- Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde in Siegfried crushing machine operated by the giant himself, who slowly collapsed from the driver’s seat as he died. This turned one of Wagner’s clunkiest story devices into a perfectly logical and visually touching explanation and kept the artificiality of the stage “dragon” in context. It also let Fafner’s stagy booming voice to revert to normal. The second act offered an arresting new interpretation of the forest bird, who appeared as a modern young woman in a coral-colored jacket and pink skirt. She stayed onstage, up on a high walkway, whenever her voice was heard. Her moves were charmingly birdlike without being parodic; she waved hello with fluttering fingers, tilted her head in curiosity, stared with birdlike intensity, and came and went with a rustle. Siegfried’s role was sung well by Jay Hunter Morris. Having once watched a Siegfried run out of gas ten minutes before the end, I sympathize with any tenor who can wake up that fresh soprano. Götterdämmerung In the last opera of the Ring Cycle, the cast shift was a little disorienting at first. Ian Storey as Siegfried had a drier tone than Morris, and his night spent with Brünnhilde had clearly aged him! The Rhinemaidens were shown in dirt-streaked dresses at the banks of a trash-clogged river, sorting refuse into plastic bags. The Gibichungs were placed in a nasty, hard-edged, Art Deco penthouse decorated in black, white, and silver. Their retainers were dressed in metropolitan black.