Siegfried saw Castorf take absurdly
distracting staging to an entirely new level. The curtain rose over a Mount
Rushmore of communism with the faces of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao looming
above an Airstream trailer in which Mime is attempting to fix the sword Notung.
When Siegfried arrives, instead of leading a bear he has been wrestling out in
the forest, it is a man with a rope around his neck (this whole thing far too
reminiscient of Pulp Fiction – “bring out the Gimp!”). Siegfried ties the man
to a corner of the trailer and begins bullying Mime. Meanwhile, the “bear”
spends the remaining 45 minutes of the act doing useless, distracting things
like making piles of books, crawling in and out of the Airstream’s windows,
making tea and eating, crawling under the Airstream, and smearing himself with
black grease. None of these things supported or advanced the narrative, but
they served to distract from it which is a shame. The voices again were
spectacular, Stefan Vinke who we saw as Siegfried in Seattle a few years ago
was incredible.
Act
2 was no better in terms of the director upstaging the performers. The stage
had rotated to show a shopping mall where Fafner the dragon is supposed to be
sleeping and brooding over is treasure, the Ring, the Tarnhelm, and so on.
However, when we first see him, he is not a dragon, he is a goon from Miami
vice wearing a terrible long silver wig with a beard painted on with black
stage make up. He is also surround by a pack of trashy party girls. However,
there was a reptilian element in the form of a person dressed as an alligator
crawling around in the background. The sword, Notung, is now a Kalashnikov
which Seigfried used to noisily shoot Fafner. The forest bird is played as a glittery
Vegas showgirl ringed by at least 20 feet of shiny, protruding plumage, and
when she was done singing (the only not magnificent voice of the evening –
shrill and strident, clearly playing it as a parrot, not the traditional,
sweet, forest songbird!) she and Siegmund began to make out.
Then
there was act 3, which made us all the saddest. It took what had heretofore
been an obnoxious, hard to watch production, and created something truly
cringe-worthy that we will all be sorry to have witnessed years from now.
Details here will be lacking because it hurts to bring it to mind. One moment
illustrates the entire problem: at the end, as Siegfried and Brunhilde sing
their powerful duet, there are 5 animatronic/ puppet alligators crawling around
the stage. Their cavorting doesn’t take enough attention away and break up a
very intense moment enough, so the bird comes back out and rolls about on the
largest eventually sticking her head inside its mouth and wriggling all the way
inside. At the end when, Siegfried has overcome Brunhilde’s fears and
hesitations about mortality and love, and the music soars in triumphs we have
him ditch Brunhilde to drag the bird out of the alligators mouth and she is all
over him in “gratitude”.
So far, the audience has been tolerant, if not receptive to
the staging – several complaints about the Notung/ Kalashnikov thing were
overheard at intermission. Keywords: incoherent, pointless, confusing, and
distracting. At the end of Act 3, however, there was a great deal of booing.
That is until the singers came out, because they were incredible.
The gross disrespect for the story, the audience (all of
whom have spent years getting access to this festival and came for Wagner), and
above all the music is incomprehensible. No one is obligated to like Wagner or
the Ring Cycle. Many people object to it and him for political, historical, or
ethical reasons and they are certainly within their rights to do so – there are
many valid concerns in each of those arenas surrounding this artist and his
work. I would expect anyone with those feelings to refuse to touch the work.
This whole thing has been hateful and horrible, but it doesn’t feel like a
critique. It’s childish, rude, and spiteful – it lacks the intelligence to be
an attack on the story or its creator. It has been a heartbreaking end to a 10
year dream. We were seriously considering turning in our tickets for
Gotterdamerung, but decided that the actual talent in the theater was too
amazing to be missed – if necessary, we can close our eyes as it is really all
about the music.
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