The End of the World

            The absolute first thing must be an awed appreciation of the voices tonight! Everyone was incredible! The Norns were dramatic and eerie, Brunhilde was powerful yet sensitive, Siegfried dynamic and mellifluous by turns, the Gibbichungs intense and expressive, Hagen was magnificent! His rich bass was practically left a treacly trail of evil in his wake! Waltraute was impassioned and the Rheinmaids lilting and exquisite.

            We’ve made no secret of the fact that we do not care for the director’s “concept” for this cycle, so we won’t belabor that too much. I felt that this one was the least tedious and the most coherent since das Reingold. As for some of his “interpretations” and liberties, I will simply say that I do not believe that the Ring requires additional violence, sexual assault, or incest. It was also a little disappointing the world ended here with a literal whimper (from Hagen when the Rheinmaidens chucked the ring into a trash can fire). As bleak, despondent, and generally nihilistic as this production was, I really thought the director would be (and I was personally looking forward to) all about burning it all down.

            Just to clarify, when we are trashing this cycle we are only attacking the direction and the director’s overall “vision”. The performers have been amazing, the production values have been incredible – the lighting, sets, costumes, etc. have all been excellently done; however little they may have served the actual story, they alone served to somewhat hide the nakedness of the Emperor’s concept. I leave out the video, because we truly loathe the incorporation of video into so many productions. The extremely rare moments when it adds anything positive are so overwhelmed by the all the times it is a distraction, a disruption, or just a lazy way to work around exposition.

            The last thing we want to laud is the Bayreuth audience! The Ring is the endurance trials of opera and this crowd was gold medal grade all the way through. Not a single cell phone went off, I think I might have heard two sneezes, and six coughs over the entire 19+ hours. No one sang along (HGO production of La Boheme), tapped feet or wrist watches to the music (SFO Ring), or squirmed endlessly (squeakily) in those little wooden school desks (every production ever – except our seats are plush and squishy). Seriously, as soon as the lights dimmed you’d have thought they were magically transformed into waxworks (well, statues – wax would totally have melted in that sweat box). They took their hours of pent up potential energy and used to it vociferously acknowledge the performers. My pet peeve (okay, one of them!) with so many American audiences is that they treat the performance like the opening ceremonies for the REAL event – the race to see who can get to the parking lot first. There was none of that here – curtain call after curtain call, they roared like lions, and just when you thought it was time to seek medical attention for the blistering of your palms, here comes the conductor and the thundering made me genuinely afraid for the fabric of the building.

Although we obviously would have preferred a production we didn’t hate, loathe, and despise, the music was splendid. So as Brad insists on saying, we have no Bayreuth’s remorse. All angst and bad puns aside, we have loved all that we have experienced of Germany! The landscape and the marvelous cultural heritage have been tremendously enjoyable! We plan to finish strong with a visit to the 3^rd of Ludwig II’s fantastical pleasure palaces, Herrenchiemsee!

Siegfried and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Staging

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. 

Hojotoho! Heiaha!

           Well, we discovered how Frank Castorf intends to cope with weaving his story together – he doesn’t. At all. In any way. Hunding and Sieglinde’s hut, we at first assumed was in some Louisiana backwoods or Texas oil-patch wasteland. It did boast a large cage with live turkeys – They squawked at Hunding’s entrance and couldn’t take their eyes off Sieglinde as she explained about Notung. Who could? She was spectacular – this was the absolute best Siegmund ever and Sieglinde is at least a tie for first. They were unbelievable. Hunding was excellent as well, so we were assured of that whatever went on visually.

           When the stage rotated for the next act, we discovered it was some Central Asian/ Russian oil field. We were never clear on who/ what the Valkyries were supposed to be. Wotan is now a Russian oil baron/ gangster – oddly when he first appeared with Frika (appearing as Lady Macbeth now) he was wearing a bizarre beard that looked like an elementary school prop made from yarn. When he appears again, it is (thankfully) gone.

           More magnificent Siegliende and Siegmund in the next scene. Brunhilde who had underwhelmed in her first appearance was better here in her scene with Siegmund. The fight between Hunding and Siegmund was off stage – shown in Blair Witch cam on the on-stage screen. This whole part was strangely incoherent (much like the whole production, really)

The noble dead are oil field workers killed in industrial accidents, except that some of them get up and wander off to perform various strange and distracting actions like reading a book in the turkey cage, locking someone into the turkey cage and attacking it with a flag, and finally, cutting the trapped person out of the turkey cage – lots of this action was broadcast on a big screen in case it hadn’t taken enough attention away from the actual story in real time.

            The Valkyries entrance seriously disappointed – the iconic “Hojotoho!” was lackluster and their amusing banter about the dead somewhat low energy. They appeared variously as Clara Barton?, Lady Capulet at the tomb?, Pre-Raphaelite militant nuns? Brunhilde ran onto the stage as Cruella de Ville – not really, but in a huge grizzly of a fur coat and a tall, spiky, silver Mohawk cap. The Valkyries stripped off their top layer and stood around the tall wooden derrick in shiny evening gowns with an array of strange sparkly headdresses. We were not impressed with Brunhilde. She lacked intensity and power for the most part – her scene with Sieglinde (who was again marvelous) was an exception and showed what she could do if she wanted.

            The final scene between Brunhilde and Wotan had real moments of pathos and beauty – but only moments and that was infuriating as the whole scene is supposed to be immensely powerful and heartbreaking. I really feel like the action interfered with the focus of the scene. A particularly infuriating example of this is at one point, while Brunhilde is singing, Wotan is mincing around in the background. He finds a bearskin rug that he starts dancing with. It seems that is saying to the audience that the story and the singers should not be the center of attention.  The stage direction, which has everyone pointedly ignore and/ or mock whomever they are singing with seems a proxy for the director’s attitude to the entire project.

Here is what we wish we had heard:

Bamberg Charms, The Ring Confuses

Bamberger Dom

           We set out early to explore Bamberg before we our performance in Bayreuth. Bamberg is a lovely town that was spared most of the ravages of war, but unfortunately was actively addressing the ravages of time during our visit! Almost every site we visited was coated in scaffolding, construction equipment, and/ or restoration experts hard at work cleaning frescoes, repaving stone bridges, and just generally patching up. The steeply winding streets of the UNESCO World Heritage alt-stadt invite investigation at every twist and turn, and the river at the heart of the town allows for a picturesque series of bridges and a most unique location for the town hall – sited mid-river, precisely between two arches (currently undergoing re-enforcement).

Bamberg Horseman

            We started at the cathedral, Bamberger Dom. The first church on this hillside was founded in 1004, but the current look is from the 13^th century. It’s a mash up of Romanesque and gothic styles such as one might get from a committee of church architects. It is made of a light colored local sandstone with four squared steeple towers capped with green copper roofs. Just inside the door is the grave of Pope Clemens II, the only pope buried north of the Alps. There is a dark, narrow, and steep set of stairs that leads underneath the altar to a crypt containing the former bishops of the Dom. The most curious object within is the Bamberger Reiter, a statue of a young man riding a horse set high up on one of the columns. No one is sure who it is supposed to be, but the cathedral children’s brochure says the best guess is that he is King Stefan of Hungary who married Gisela, the sister of Emperor Heinrich. Heinrich ruled Germany 1000 years ago.

            Next we visited the Residenz. Ludwig II has rather spoiled us for this kind of thing and even though the entire suite of Electors’ rooms boasted absolutely magnificent tapestries, and the Imperial suite featured an impressive trompe l’oeil audience chamber (complete with wonderfully unsubtle allusions to the power, prestige, and prerogatives of the ruling family) and a room full of exquisite Venetian canal scenes, we were most impressed with the views it afforded over the city and the wonderful rose garden! 

            We trekked up to Kloster St. Michael, but were deeply disappointed to find it in the throes of such extensive restoration that it was almost entirely closed off and whole portions of the exterior were behind wooden barricades.

            I feel like I have used up my life-time supply of the word “charming” on this trip, but it really is the most apt term for this captivating little town! Its greatest attraction is just wandering its streets searching out the ideal café!

            We could scarcely contain our excitement for the start of our 4^th complete Ring Cycle and at the Wagner Mecca, Bayreuth! Wagner, although a creative genius of breathtaking proportions, was undoubtedly a complete mess in almost every other arena. His myriad moral, personal, financial, and intellectual failings are well documented elsewhere, so we are not even going to think about wading into that morass here.

Bamberg Rathaus

            The Bayreuth Festspiele had sent us an email detailing changes for this year due to enhanced security measures – the entrances gated off and manned by armed police, no red carpet, no bags (ladies evening clutch exemption!), no cushions (a BIG deal as the seats are these little wooden things reminiscent of 1950’s elementary school desks without the writing surface), and the need to arrive an hour early. That is kind of a big deal too as most of the Ring Cycle is already several hours long. We found on arrival these measures were related to threats received due to their new production of Parsifal – set in an IS controlled portion of Iraq! Apparently everyone was incensed initially by the changes, but the whole crowd was meek as little lambs – showing their tickets 5-6 times to get into their seats and all. Possibly the multiple horrific incidents around Bavaria this last week made it seem less excessive.

            Das Rheingold is the shortest piece of the cycle at two and a half hours long, but it is written to be performed without intermission. This was our fifth Rheingold and while we had heard that the production was “challenging”, we were eager to hear the famed acoustics, celebrated orchestra, and internationally acclaimed soloists. Well, we got all of that. The sound was magnificent – entirely making up for the two and a half hours in the equivalent of the medieval “little ease” torture instrument. The theater is indeed a cramped, airless, sweat box. The seats are sloped to provide excellent sightlines, but no leg room.

            We didn’t want to “spoil” our experience so we assiduously avoided reviews of our production, which opened for the 250^th anniversary in 2013. Well, it was certainly one way to interpret the story. It was set in some depressed, sleazy Route 66 town in Texas at a gas station/ no-tell motel. The Rhein was an above ground pool next to the barbecue deck. The cast seemed to be taken from a range of late 70’s early 80’s TV – Wotan looked like a pimp/ crime boss from Starsky and Hutch, The rest of the gods looked like refugees from Dallas or Dynasty. Fafner was played as a sadistic psychopath, beating up random people and breaking windows and trashing the gas station with his baseball bat. The Rheinmaidens were somewhere between gone-to-seed Vegas showgirls and 80’s Madonna.

            The stage was a bit cramped for the action – primarily throwing furniture and shoving each other. The stage rotated to afford better a view of either the motel or the gas station as needed. Although build in several levels, a great deal of the action took place inside the motel room on the second level over the pool area. It was somewhat small for five gods and two construction gangsters and the staging called for lots of jostling in the window and jumping onto the bed.

            A Jumbotron hangs over the motel and a camera man dodges in and out capturing close-up content; another video screen provided images of Albrect’s transformations (inside an airstream) and showed snippets of what the actors who weren’t in the ongoing scene were doing. We’re old fashioned in that we prefer a director to an invisible, magical force – they should cast whatever spell to bring their version of the story to life, but I shouldn’t have to see the eye of newt or whatever. Frank Castorf doesn’t seem able to get off the stage – many of his conceits detract from the story and serve as nothing more than a kind of theatrical “tagging” his name emblazoned 20 feet high in puffy, faux gothic letters all over the place.

            Again, the voices were phenomenal, the orchestra sublime, and overall we are thrilled to be here, but if this had been our first Ring Cycle we might not have made so much effort to see more. This take on the story works enough for Rheingold, but we cannot begin to imagine how it can be carried through the remainder of the story. Brunhilde as Wotan’s daughter from his “nice” first wife, who has become a petroleum engineer? Siegfried as an EPA inspector? We really don’t see it, but I guess we will – starting tomorrow at Die Walkure!