THE TORONTO RING

by
Graham Bruce

 

 

· Toronto's new opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, opened in September 2006 with a grand flourish: three cycles of Wagner's DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN. The new home of the Canadian Opera Company has a splendid auditorium, a contemporary version of the traditional European horseshoe shape, with expanses of elegant blond wood replacing the traditional red plush and gold

 

 

· The visual splendour matched by superb acoustics. The exterior, however, is rather featureless until one views the wall of glass which fronts University Avenue. Unfortunately this view in September was obscured by earth-moving equipment and ugly scaffolding which extended around the sides of the building, making entry to the performances a tricky business, an astounding blunder by the city fathers for the opening of such an important building. Inside, however, the impressive foyer

 

made one forget this, the glass wall bounding a space which extends up to the top of the building and is marked off on the opposite, auditorium side by an elegant curve of wooden slats

 

 

· Within this huge vertical sweep, the staircase zig-zags upwards, the first-floor stairs cunningly encompassing a broad seating area where patrons could listen to the excellent introductory lectures which preceded the performances

 

 

· The pertinent question surrounding the Canadian Opera Company's production of Wagner's RING was whether using different directors for each of the four operas, one of whom was the designer for the whole cycle, would result in a unified vision of the tetralogy. I'll try to offer a tentative answer to that question at the end of this discussion.

· Certainly DAS RHEINGOLD, the Prologue to the tetralogy, offered a most promising start. This may have been Michael Levine's first attempt at direction, but his long experience as a designer in opera, dance, and film has clearly equipped him well; indeed, his work in DAS RHEINGOLD ranks him with the best of the directors associated with "regietheater" where the direction of the singers is central. Here, both text and music were, in Levine's detailed and precise direction, reflected in the singers' every gesture, expression, and movement. The result was an enthralling drama, the more so since the singing throughout was of a very high standard, and the orchestral playing excellent. Richard Bradshaw's conducting favoured an unhurried, clear exposition of the score, eschewing exaggerated dynamics. The resulting orchestral detail isolated by his approach was often revelatory.

· Levine's dual function as director and production designer was clearly a great advantage here, design and production problems often conquered with the simplest of solutions. In the first act, the flowing Rhine was a circular wall of billowing silk and from its base rose the Rhine maidens and later Alberich who seemed attached to, or part of, another figure. The Rhine maidens teased Alberich mercilessly and very erotically. When the gold was revealed (a bright spotlight from above centre stage), Alberich tore himself away with great effort from the other figure, clutching the gold to himself. Finally, the Rhine "curtain" dropped to the floor, and rapidly "vanished down the plughole" as a friend colourfully put it, to reveal the second scene.

· Here, the design and production strategies were a little more complex but again extremely effective. A series of gantries at the sides of and above the stage held rows of spotlights. A model of Valhalla, presumably the model shown to the giants for their building task, lined the stage, its central section resembling the Washington Capitol building, its side extensions stretching out in front of the metal gantries. The completed building was as yet revealed only dimly, hidden by a back scrim, and only in part: just the massive door was faintly visible, reproducing that in the model, from which we could imagine the rest of a monumental Valhalla stretching above and beyond the stage. The Rhinemaidens had remained on stage and were now dressed, by Wotan's retinue, in the same black, Victorian costumes the latter were already wearing, while the figure from which Alberich emerged was now seen to be Wotan who rose, in formal attire, from his lying position. The equivalence of the two power-seekers, Alberich and Wotan, was thus succinctly suggested. The problem of suggesting the massiveness of the giants, Fasolt and Fafner, was solved quite simply: they were carried about on the shoulders of their henchmen (here added to Wagner's stage group as a balance to the addition of the gods' followers). The henchmen roughly knocked away the side parts of the Valhalla model, thus providing a clear table for the giants to stand upon . Apparently, in rehearsal, it proved impractical for the giants to be shouldered continuously. The blocking of the whole second scene was extremely detailed and was dominated by a virtuoso performance of Loge by Richard Berkeley-Steele who caressed Freia suggestively (appropriately, one might argue, since she is the goddess of Love) and charmed Fricke with winning attentions.

 

· The third scene when Loge and Wotan descend into Nibelheim, (here via the ceiling gantries) contains production challenges which were met by Levine with characteristic ease: the hoard of gold was simply a dazzling gold cloth concealing a pile of objects; the dragon was suggested by large, movements of the cloth; tiny jerking jumps in the cloth conversely portrayed the little toad; the tarnhelm was a gold crown with a long gold fringe which covered the face, so that Alberich's "disappearance" was achieved simply by blending his gold costume with the gold cloth behind him; and finally, as Wotan exits at the end of the scene,he pulls up the gold cloth as he leaves via the upper gantry. This echoed nicely the disappearance of the Rhine cloth in scene 1 and was also functional: it revealed the pile underneath the gold cloth to be the tables supporting the Valhalla model, these partly in place for the return to the scene of the gods. Throughout the scene, Richard Paul Fink's virtuoso control of the whip with which he terrorized the Nibelungs, was simply one striking aspect of a brilliant performance where strong characterization never broke the bounds of fine singing.

 

· The final scene revealed the last imaginative use of the gold cloth: piling up the gold to the measure of Freia was achieved by wrapping her tightly with the cloth; the addition of the tarnhelm upon her head, after Fasolt had complained that he could still see Freia's eyes, completed the covering. Donner wielded a small silver hammer to "clear the mist" causing the back scrim to drop and reveal the massive front door of Valhalla. Now occurred Levine's most brilliant coup de theatre: Valhalla's door split in two and the left half was brightly lit while the other half moved forward to remain in semi-darkness. The rainbow bridge to which Froh points, in Wagner's stage directions, as the way to the fortress, was here transmuted into a single colour juxtaposition of white and black with its associated dichotomy of good and evil. While the other gods entered through the spilt door into Valhalla, splendid, yet fatally compromised by the circumstances of its construction, Wotan for his part hesitated, wracked by the complaints of the Rhinemaidens concerning the double rape of their gold. In John Fanning's superb portrayal of Wotan (all the more impressive in that he took over from an ailing Pavlo Hunke), the pain of the god's remorse over his sordid deal with the giants and his duping of Alberich was most tellingly portrayed. Consequently, there was no question, in this production, of Wotan or the other gods adhering to Wagner's directions that they laugh at Loge's ironic comment to the Rhine maidens:

No longer gleams the gold on you girls. But in the gods'new radiance you can happily bask now (1)

· The grand entrance music in this painful scene thus became so much inflated, self-deluding pomp, with Wotan alone, possessing the insight to see the situation clearly. It pointed clearly to the tragedies that follow in the tetralogy.

· Throughout this DAS RHEINGOLD, Levine's faithful yet creative response to the spirit and, for the most part, the letter of Wagner's text produced a very satisfying experience. The next two parts of the cycle, however, were not able to match this success, at least in the second cycle which I attended.

DIE WALKÜRE

· In the first scene of GOTTERDAMMERUNG, the norns tell the story of Wotan's actions following the breaking of his spear by Siegfried in the third act of SIEGFRIED: they tell how Wotan ordered the heroes of Valhalla to chop down the dead World Ash tree and pile the chopped logs around Valhalla. Atom Egoyan's production of DIE WALKÞRE brought this grim vision back to the earlier part of the tetralogy. The Act 1 set of this production was dominated by a tree trunk chopped into four parts. The ordered, rectangular gantries from RHEINGOLD now fell across the stage in a chaotic mess. The great door of Valhalla was visible but the building was in an advanced state of disrepair and pieces of its tilework littered the stage. The whole appearance of the stage was cluttered, dark, grim and depressing.

· Wagner's music for this first act, on the other hand, is, together with TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, probably his most ecstatic and romantic. While the scene with Hunding brings an atmosphere of menace, this only serves to highlight the scenes with Siegmund and Sieglinde on either side of it - their tentative expressions of attraction in the first scene, and their rapturous outpourings of love in the last. Egoyan and Levine's view of this act, then is strikingly at variance with the music and the action. In this gloomy anticipation of the tragedy to come, we loose the sense of contrast: the tragedy of the lovers' subsequent story is lessened if we do not fully experience their initial rapture and optimism. That the act worked as well as it did in this production was thanks to the superb performances, both histrionic and vocal, of the three players. Though it had earlier been announced that Adrianne Pieczonka, having sprained her ankle, would sing the role of Sieglinde from the wings, she nevertheless braved the treacherous rubble-strewn stage to give an excellent performance. Here was a voice that will no doubt move to the role of Brunnhilde in the near future. Equally fine were the heroic tenor of Clifton Forbis's Siegmund and the effortless menace of Phillip Ens's dark-voiced Hunding, a worthy addition to his excellent Fafner. Despite these performances, Egoyan's direction denied us the requisite feeling of rapture in the last scene. The climax of the act is the entrance of Spring, when, as the stage direction asks, "the main door flies open" to reveal "the marvelous spring night outside" and "the full moon shines in and throws its bright light on the couple" (2). Now we may not expect those stage directions to be followed literally, but this climactic moment needs to be marked in some way in the production. Egoyan and his lighting designer, David Finn, simply gave us a feeble light effect from stage left.

 

Act 2

· The excellent performances of Pieczonka and Forbis continued in the second act, but those of the major players of this act were less assured. As Fricka, Judith Nemeth again sang well, yet her performance was quite one dimensional. There was nothing of the subtle characterization of the part which Kupfer achieved in his direction of Fricka in the RING at Bayreuth in the 80's and in Berlin more recently. There, the remains of Wotan and Fricka's earlier infatuation were still evident; here, Egoyan's direction ensured that Fricka remained merely a harridan.On the other hand, it was the acting skills Egoyan drew from Peteris Eglitis that gave validity to the latter's Wotan. The god's anguish as he sets out his moral dilemma before Brünnhilde in his long monologue was telling portrayed, allowing us to ignore the evident vocal problems. Though Wotan dominates the opera, the work is actually named for Brünnhilde. As the Valkyrie, Frances Ginzer was merely adequate, her opening Hojotohos effortful rather than thrilling, and the repetition of these, before Fricka's entrance, delivered simply as a repetition, without the ironic playfulness which made Lisa Gasteen's second set of Hojotohos so effective in the Adelaide RING. The production denied Ginzer much opportunity to develop a performance: in the scene where Brünnhilde announces his fate to Siegmund, Egoyan had Ginzer stand rigidly upon one of Valhalla's fallen tiles with a projection of a flame (from a hidden computer) upon her costume. Apparently the original idea of surrounding Brünnhilde with smoke and projected flames was abandoned because the singer understandably found it difficult to sing amid all the smoke.  Perhaps that was also the reason that the climax of the act, Siegmund's death was portrayed clearly downstage without any of the usual smoke effects often used to render the action less banal.

 

Act 3

· The sole note of levity in this otherwise grim production occurred in the famous Ride of the Valkyries which begins the third act. The eight Valkyries seemed to enjoy themselves hugely, Egoyan properly reproducing the high spirits indicated in the text. Loads of bodies bound in white sheets were brought in by the jolly girls, passed down from the gantries, and let down from the flies until there were piles of bodies everywhere. Furthermore, the singing of the Valkyries amid all this activity was very accomplished. The rest of the act, however, verged on anti-climax. Wotan's furious remonstration with Brunnhilde had little effect since by this point, Eglitis had hardly any voice left, and the starved sounds were painful to listen to. It would seem that his call for Loge to circle the rock with fire clearly went unheard in this production. Instead, the eight Valkyries entered, apparently blatantly disobeying Wotan's order in the previous scene that they keep away from the rock, and surrounded their sister with flaming torches. It was a disappointing anticlimax to accompany Wagner's atmospheric magic fire music.

 

SIEGFRIED

· Francois Girard, the director of SIEGFRIED, approached the opera via the idea that it takes us on a journey into Siegfried's mind. Such a notion brought more problems than advantages to the staging. The advantages were visual in the first and second acts. In the first, we saw above the tree stump (from DIE WALKÜRE) a huge spread of foliage which suggested to Girard the "shadowy fragmented space of Siegfried's mind" (3); its "leaves" consisted of fragments from the previous two operas: broken parts of Valhalla, some heroes' bodies brought to the hall by the Valkyries, and the bodies of Siegfried's parents, Siegmund and Sieglinde, which moved as Siegfried tried to visualize them. In the second act, the perspective moved through ninety degrees and we looked down through the "foliage" on to the head of Siegfried who was lying down parallel to the stage. Visually this was a brilliantly effective set.

· Conceptually, however, the notion of the journey into Siegfried's mind raised many problems within the action. Girard was reportedly "not interested" (4) in the technicalities of Siegfried's forging of the sword in Act 1, yet gave his singer nothing else to do to replace the filing, melting, and hammering described in the text and the music of the forging scene. Instead, during this gestural music, Siegfried simply waved his hands over a hole lit from beneath and from which protruded waving fingers. Since the musical sequence is quite protracted, this finger-waving continued so long that it became tedious. Something else which overstayed its welcome was the bear which Siegfried brought in to frighten Mime. Perhaps in this production's mental journey, Siegfried couldn't erase him from his mind, for the bear remained on stage for the whole of the act, dressed inexplicably, like Siegfried himself, in pyjamas, presumably the boy's customary gear when out hunting.

· In the second act in the "forest", bodies were strewn over the edges of the stage. Later a group of these was drawn upward on flywires to form a kind of athletics team pyramid. This became the "dragon", Fafner, a none too convincing solution to the difficulty of the visualization here. When I first saw this production at its premiere the previous year, the Woodbird, suspended on fly wires, flew about the stage in Act 2. It was a magical effect. This  time, the woodbird merely walked about flapping her "wing" sleeves.

· Similarly in the third act, the atmospheric appearance of Erda, rising from below in a bluish light, as the stage directions suggest, was reduced simply to her walking on and off. The Woodbird, at least, in her brief appearance in this act was allowed to fly. To have the rumple of white-clad bodies which remained strewn about function as Brünnhilde's rock seemed like a promising idea until they rose to form first a circle and then a line behind Brünnhilde as Siegfried seeks to win her and learn fear. These irrelevant extras were perhaps designed to give some visual interest to the bare stage.

· The real disappointment of this SIEGFRIED, however, was not the staging but the singing. What a relief it was to hear Richard Fink (Alberich) at the beginning of Act 2 singing the notes as written after listening to the approximations of Peteris Eglitis (the Wanderer) and Christian Franz (Siegfried) in Act 1. Franz can sing softly and, while the tone is rather threadbare, the result is acceptable and often turned to very good histrionic effect. But as soon as volume and pitch rise, his voice becomes more like a hectoring shout, the pitch indeterminate, the timbre ugly. Well, Mr. Franz may reckon he is in good company: in 1931, the famous tenor Lauritz Melchior was soundly criticized for shouting rather than singing.(5 )

· The truth is that the role of the young Siegfried is probably the most demanding in the whole of the heldentenor repertoire and good Siegfrieds are scarce. The puzzling question, however, is why the Canadian Opera Company hired Franz instead of Canadian heldentenor Alan Woodrow, still in good voice, on the evidence of his Perth Tristan, even if his stage presence is rather stolid. We must be grateful to Peteris Eglitis for stepping in when the scheduled Wotan and Wanderer , Pavlo Hunka, became ill. However, Eglitis simply doesn't have the vocal heft for these parts. Furthermore his habit of beginning sustained notes without any vibrato then swelling them to an ugly wobble where the pitch can't be determined was rather trying. There is a problem in a production of SIEGFRIED where the best singers in the first two acts are the singers of the "character" parts, Alberich and Mime. Phillip Ens's Fafner was predictably excellent: accurate in pitch and beautiful in tone. Frances Ginzer was an acceptable Brunnhilde who produced a few thrilling top notes. The real hero of this production was possibly the orchestra which played beautifully throughout, Richard Bradshaw ensuring that all the details of the score were laid out with painstaking clarity.

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG

· In Tim Albery's experienced hands, the production of GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG was a great advance on the previous two operas, equaling, in some ways, the success of DAS RHEINGOLD . In Levine and the director's vision of the final opera of the cycle, the detritus of the decaying Valhalla was replaced by an empty waste land of power-lines, their horizontals pierced by a single vertical pole. The Norns were in contemporary dress, their thick, dark garments emphasizing the chill atmosphere of the scene. The first two Norns sang well, the third was afflicted with an unpleasant wobble.

· Brü nhilde's rock was hardly less bleak than the first scene. The horizontals of the power-lines were now joined upstage by a low-set horizontal line of spotlights which functioned as the fire surrounding the rock, a more impressive solution than that found in DIE WALKÜRE . A large, untidy bed set diagonally downstage broke the vertical / horizontal motif and formed the acting area for Siegfried and Brünnhilde. Ginzer and Franz sang adequately only and it was left to the orchestra to let us experience the exhilaration which the score provides here. This continued with Siegfried's Rhine journey when Richard Bradshaw and the orchestra delivered a truly thrilling journey. A black draw-curtain covered the scene change and allowed us to revel in the music without distraction.

· The first act revealed the Gibichung Hall as a sterile contemporary interior. Again, the vertical / horizontal motif prevailed, with the stage illuminated by horizontal banks of descending fluorescent lights, the downstage ones an irritating distraction for those sitting in the first rows of the stalls as I was. This interior revealed the world of the business suit and the cocktail cabinet and both featured much in the action: Gunter and Gutrune imbibed frequently, and later in Act 2, the "vassals" divested themselves of their suit-jackets when Hagen called them to action, gradually putting them back on when it was revealed there was no danger. The vassals carried gleaming metallic spears whose verticals pierced the horizontals of the light banks. In this world of cocktail dress and business suit, Siegfried, dressed in casual attire, was clearly out of place and an easy target despite his Brünnhilde-given additional strength. The whole of this first scene in the Gibichung Hall made considerable impact thanks to Albery's detailed stage direction and the excellent singing: John Fanning's Gunter continued the strong singing which characterized his RHEINGOLD Wotan; Joni Henson was a fine Gutrune, and Mats Almgren, despite a rather strange back-of-the-throat vocal production, was an extremely effective Hagen. Scene 2 returned us to Brünnhilde's unmade bed for Waltraute's visit, the latter's long monologue ably sung by Mary Phillips. The horizontal line of spotlights began to glow more brightly as Brünnhilde sensed Siegfried's return. Albery's attempt to solve the staging problem of Siegfried adopting Gunter's form was a bold stroke which simply did not work: Gunther appeared on stage to perform the action of subduing the Valkyrie while Siegfried, wearing the tarnhelm crown, sang from downstage left.

· The second act's Gibichung Hall resumed the horizontal / vertical motif with the addition of a line of tables spread across the stage. This provided a useful acting space for the vassals after Hagen had summoned them: they mounted the table in a line as first Siegfried and then Brünnhilde swore an oath upon one of the gleaming metal spears; and in the beginning of the act, Hagen sat on the edge of a table silhouetted in the darkness as Alberich exhorted him to action. The eerie atmosphere and the excellent singing of Richard Paul Fink (Alberich) gave the scene a compelling, quiet beginning to an act which burst into life with the magnificent chorus work of the Canadian Opera chorus as the vassals.

· The first scene of Act 3, where Siegfried confronts the Rhine maidens when divorced from his hunting companions, can sometimes seem like an anti-climax. Albery's skill ensured that this was not the case here, though many might question the means. Dressed initially as rather drab shop-girls, the Rhine maidens soon stripped to their underwear, donned electric-blue wigs, and cavorted upon a bed in order to seduce Siegfried into giving them the ring. One even performed behind a shadow curtain improvised by the other two from a sheet stripped from the bed. For their final serious warning to Siegfried, they returned to the stage once again in their drab shop gear. The bed became a useful platform for the subsequent scene with Hagen, Siegfried and the vassals, then a place for Siegfried to die on, and finally a bier for his body in the last scene. Christian Franz's performance, after Hagen has stabbed Siegfried and he haltingly recalls Brünnhilde's awakening, was the high spot of his performance. Here as elsewhere in GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG, his singing was a great improvement on that in SIEGFRIED. Freed from the rigours of that exhausting role as the young Siegfried, his performance as the mature Siegfried allowed him to indulge his capacity to sing softly. This, under Albery's sure guidance, he did to good dramatic effect even if the tone was thin and none too pleasant on the ear. At least the hectoring shout which dominated the previous opera was generally absent here.

· Siegfried's funeral music was beautifully played by the orchestra, again in front of a closed curtain. After the curtain drew back for the finale, Joni Henson made Gutrune's scene over Siegfried's body extremely touching. When Brünnhilde came forward to claim her husband, the performance of Frances Ginzer at last sprang to life. To this point, both her singing and her acting had been little more than adequate; now she rose to the challenge of the great final peroration, singing with dignity and feeling and producing some thrilling top notes. A pity, then, that Albery's vision in the final moments of the opera denied us a satisfactory stage resolution; instead, the mundane and unspectacular confronted us: Brünnhilde joined Siegfried on the bier, Wotan grieved over the pair, and the Rhine maidens, now back in their white underwear, entered to retrieve the ring. The wonderful musical catharsis climaxing in the final statement of the "Redemption by Love" motif here remained firmly in the orchestra pit, unmatched on the stage. However, Albery might well remind us of Wieland Wagner's statement in his 1951 Festival Book where Wieland defends his revolutionary minimalist staging:

 

· Scenes like the cosmic catastrophe of GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG.....

can never come even close to having a visual impact to equal their musical expression. (5)

 

· In any case, whatever our disappointment in the final moments of the staging, Albery's production as a whole was a considerable success and a worthy conclusion to the cycle.

 

· And the question posed at the beginning of this article concerning a multiplicity of directors for the four-work cycle? Certainly my own view by now is clear. Despite the presence of the designer throughout as a unifying element, the efforts of four separate directors don't seem to have produced anything like a sustained vision. At first glance it might seem that the juxtaposition of two highly experienced artists in the opera field - Albery with an enormous number of opera productions to his credit, Levine with a similar number as designer -along side two artists , Egoyan and Girard, whose major successes have been outside opera production, was the most important factor in this mismatch. Certainly the more experienced opera workers produced the more successful results in the first and last operas. But this is probably a separate question from establishing a consistent overall vision. It's more than likely that four directors, equally experienced in the opera field, would fail to provide us with a unified vision of Wagner's great tetralogy.

 

REFERENCES

1. Wagner, R. Das Rheingold trans. William Mann (London: Friends of Covent Garden) p.84.

2. Wagner, R. Die Walkure trans. William Mann (London: Friends of Covent Garden) p.24.

3. Gooding , W. "Where in the World are we?" Canadian Opera Company Program Book, Wagner's RING, p.47

4. ibid.

5. Spotts, F. Bayreuth: a History of the Wagner Festival ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) p.62

6. Spotts p.62