Aunt Cieca is on the case
Once again we have an email from a budding member of the cher public (and you know La Cieca never could resist a budding member), so put on your thinking caps, cher hive mind, and offer a little advice:
I would like to learn more about the Ring cycle, I only know the orchestral “good parts” and wonder if you or your chers could recommend which DVD set I should try: The traditional Met production with James Morris, The Chereau/Bayreuth with Dame Gwyneth, or the newer Copenhagen with the flappers, naked swimmer and Valkyries on top of the Chrysler Building(?) Or another I don’t know about. I’m surprised the Seattle “green” Ring hasn’t been filmed and look forward to Robert LePage at the Met. But in the meantime….
In making your recommendations, cher public, please feel free to use YouTube and the Macy’s Accessory Wall, thoughtfully.
I don’t really understand what seems like a knee-jerk reaction from many posters who say that somebody new to the Ring must start with a traditional production. Only very rarely does one see a Wagner opera that repsects Wagner’s stage directions, so it isn’t as if one ever has the opportunity to get so familiar with them these days that one will be distrubed by departures from this aspect of the Gesamtkunstwerk concept (unless one has spent the last couple of decades in New York watching the Schenk Ring, apparently). And in a work like the Ring, which is about Gods, Goddesses, Valkyries and other things utterly remote from our own existence, I think the characters are often made more real and hence easier to relate to and empathise with in a production like the Chereau – they come across as human, accordingly easier to care about, and so the whole experience is more involving and moving.
I also don’t see why somebody new to the Ring would start with a complete DVD set of the whole thing. I got into it through singers I enjoy listening to, so long before I habitually listened to complete Wagner operas, I enjoyed CDs like ‘Birgit Nilsson sings Wagner’, or equivalents from Jones, Flagstad, W Meier, Varnay, Norman etc. Hearing ‘Hore mit Sinn’ on Waltraud Meier’s Wagner recital disc made me realise there is more of interest in Gotterdammerung than just the immolation scene, which made me inclined to actually hear the whole opera, and so my interest and knowledge of the whole cycle gradually built up. Had I just been given a box set with no real option other than to start at the beginning, I’d probably never have bothered. It’s only relatively recently that I’ve come round to the point of view that Rheingold is just as absorbing as the rest of the cycle, thanks to some thrilling excerpts on a John Tomlinson compilation I picked up. I’m not in the least ashamed to say I’ve got into most of Wagner’s operas this way, because even if I did come to them originally as showcases for some of my favourite voices, I now know most of them well and appreciate them every bit as deeply as anybody else.
I disagree with the poster above who asserts that the conductor and orchestra are far more important than the singers when it comes to choosing Wagner recordings. I think the singers are every bit as important as the conductor and orchestra. You can admire Haitink all you like for instance, but if you can’t stand Marton’s effortful, squallid Brunnhilde, you aren’t going to enjoy that particular Ring. I also think the converse is true – you’re not going to enjoy repeated listening of an Italian bel canto opera, even if it features your very favourite singer, if the conducting is unidiomatic or plain bad.
I don’t really understand what seems like a knee-jerk reaction from many posters who say that somebody new to the Ring must start with a traditional production. Only very rarely does one see a Wagner opera that repsects Wagner’s stage directions….
Traditional is the wrong word, and a staging respecting Wagner’s stage directions is not the measure or the test. What’s required for a newcomer to the Ring is to first experience a staging that’s true to the dramatic spirit and sense of Wagner’s original idealized theatrical vision as reflected in his scores (music, text, and stage directions). As I’ve written elsewhere, “by this I do not intend to even suggest that Wagner’s stageworks ought to be realized by slavish adherence to his 19th-century ideas of mise en scène. What I am suggesting is that those stageworks ought to be realized by adhering assiduously to the dramatic spirit and sense of Wagner’s original idealized vision as expressed in the music and text to create and shape the mise en scène. One can, for instance, at one extreme, as did Wieland Wagner in his brilliant 1951 Bayreuth production of Das Rheingold, choose to represent the seabed of the great primal body of water that opens the Ring by displaying on stage a totally abstract ‘frame’ or ‘matrix’ that lets the music in tandem with the text fill in the details for the audience’s imagination, or, at the other extreme, display on stage through the magic of modern optical trickery a vast body of real water within which the Rheintöchter and Alberich do their cavorting as did Peter Hall in his 1983 Bayreuth production. What one cannot do and still be true to the dramatic spirit and sense of Wagner’s original idealized vision as expressed in the music and text is to, for example, display on stage a simulacrum of a 20th-century hydroelectric dam and reservoir to represent that great primal body of water as did Patrice Chéreau in his 1976 Bayreuth production of Das Rheingold.”
I trust the above makes at least my position more clear on this matter.
As to your second objection; viz.,
I disagree with the poster above [viz., me] who asserts that the conductor and orchestra are far more important than the singers when it comes to choosing Wagner recordings. I think the singers are every bit as important as the conductor and orchestra.
As with all great works of art, with a Wagner music-drama every element is of importance. However, it’s wise to understand that in a Wagner music-drama the orchestra is the principal “voice” always, and the conductor the single most important performer. Unlike a typical Italian opera, if the conductor and orchestra are not absolutely first-rate Wagnerians, then nothing — and I do mean nothing — will save the performance from being second-rate or worse; not even were every principal soprano a Nilsson, every principal tenor a Melchior, and every principal baritone-bass a Pape (or fill in your own great singer names). And that’s the reason for my caveat that in selecting a recording of a Wagner music-drama one should always look first at the conductor and orchestra, not the singers.
ACD
Similarly, if the singing is rubbish, I don’t think a conductor will single-handedly raise the performance above ’second-rate or worse’, however much there is to admire in his handling of the orchestra and the score. Why not simply consider conductor, orchestra and cast together in selecting a recording of a Wagner music-drama?
Similarly, if the singing is rubbish, I don’t think a conductor will single-handedly raise the performance above ’second-rate or worse’ [etc.]…
I’m not talking about “rubbish”. Rubbish is rubbish, and rubbish anywhere will sink a production. I’m talking about superlative as opposed to merely competent. Read what I wrote with that thought in mind, please.
ACD
Oops
My,
“Unlike a typical Italian opera, if the conductor and orchestra are not absolutely first-rate Wagnerians, then nothing — and I do mean nothing — will save the performance from being second-rate or worse….”
should have read:
“Unlike a typical Italian opera, if the conductor and orchestra are not absolutely first-rate Wagnerians, then nothing — and I do mean nothing — will save the performance from being third-rate or worse….”
ACD
Chereau by a country mile. Saw it live, wasn’t all that crazy about it at the time. But on DVD it is light years ahead of the competition. The Copenhagen Gotterdammerung is provocative and you get a good sense of why Irene Theorin is evolving into a top-notch Wagnerian singer. Don’t care for the rest of the Copenhagen production, though. The Met cycle is borrrring and Kupfer doesn’t click. The Munich/Swallisch version is at times interesting, but hard to find. The Arhus version is even harder to find but I rate it no. #2 behind the Chereau cycle. Stuttgart? Liceu? Nah….
The Met DVD is a good choice for a first Ring not just because it’s a traditional staging; it’s a good choice because the performances are great and the sets are magnificent.
The cast in most part overcome the minimal direction by giving vibrant, moving performances. Behrens is a complete Brünnhilde, bring the young goddess completely to life. Morris was captured in his prime as the great Wotan of his generation. Norman has rarely been captured in better voice and, though she doesn’t show as much vulnerability as other Sieglindes, gives a mesmerising performance. Jerusalem is really great in Siegfried (though his voice is shot by GD). And Moll and Salminen are about as good as they come in the roles of giants and Hunding and Hagen. There’s a lot to savour in this production.
The Bayreuth Chereau/Boulez Ring is a great production to see in comparison with the Met production. Though I don’t agree with all of Chereau’s choices, one can see what an inspired and imaginative director can bring to this work. The cast in that set is on par with the Met cast, especially Jones’s sensational Brünnhilde. I prefer Levine’s reading to Boulez. Also, the Bayreuth production is a film while the Met production was all captured live in front of an audience and I personally have a strong bias towards videos of live performances.
The Copenhagen Ring is very interesting and has some incredibly strong acting. But musically, it is not on the same level as the Met or Bayreuth productions.
I thought the Chereau/Boulez Bayreuth DVD was a captured-live stage performance, too. I’ve only seen the “Walkure” from this set…
No. They were taped (I believe a couple of years after the premiere) for television. Notice the lack of applause and curtain calls.
Interesting. Thanks. The friend who showed me his DVD was under the impression that it was stage performance in front of an audience.
If I remember correctly, it is not possible to tape a live performance with a paying audience at the Festpielhaus, so in 1979 and 19890 (Gotterdammerung only), each act was performed and taped straight through, twice, one day per act, more or less, after the last performance of the summer.
The resulting videos are a composite of those two tapings (like most every post-war audio recording from Bayreuth is a composite of several performances). It is not a film in the sense of Bergman’s Magic Flute or those wonderful productions from the Hamburg State Opera. That is, there was no lip-synching to pre-recorded audio. It was done “live” but without audience.
While I usually like the live audience productions, and love to see the curtain calls, there’s something really cool about each opera just fading into silence.
And the lack of a paying audience certainly doesn’t hinder Jones. She literally sets the place on fire on several occasions.
Love these details. Thanks, Barnabas.
What you can hear, though, is the very lively sound of the empty Festspielhaus. As I understand it, some or all of the rows of seats were removed to accomodate the cameras, and obviously there were not all those bodies in the space to absorb sound. So for this video (and other tapings done using this system) the acoustic is not really authentic.
It’s still a great performance though. One only wishes that Rene Kollo (around whose personality the characterization of Siegfried was built) had been available for the video recording.
My first-ever Ring was the Chereau version on TV – and I was totally captivated. Siegmund and Sieglinde actually look like twins, and Gwynneth Jones is heartbreaking as Brunnhilde. I would go with Chereau!