A bridge not quite far enough
The fact: the rainbow bridge worked tonight in Rheingold at the Met, and the effect was “spectacular.” (All right, that last part was an opinion. But, moving on.)
The rumor: “everyone” at the Met knew “well in advance” that the rainbow bridge would not be attempted at Monday night’s opening performance.
A Met insider relayed that this is not the Rheingold set; it’s the Ring set.
By “Met insider” you apparently mean anybody anywhere who has read anything at all about this production?
No, a Met insider who has worked for and advised the Met for half a century.
What LittleMasterMiles is trying to say is that the production was advertised as such. Only one set for all four operas. When they unveiled the designs for it last March, they issued a statement saying it was the Ring Set, not just the Rheingold Set.
Now that the novelty of the magic Machine has worn off, am I to understand that this equipment will be used again for the basic sets of all 3 operas to follow ??
Is there not a risk here that once you’ve seen it all in Rheingold it might become very repetitive & dull to
see it again in action in Walküre, Siegfried &
Götterdämmerung ??
“the machine” seems pretty flexible … i seriously doubt we’ve seen it all with Rheingold.
Besides, maybe this means that the €16m price tag we’ve been hearing about will in fact cover the whole shebang?
yes, one set fits 4.
The Met was at the top of its game musically on Thursday night. In that regard it was an incredible evening. But I was moderately disappointed by the production, primarily for not weaving drama, music and production together well. I’ve been trying to figure out where it didn’t work for me. I loved Lepage’s Damnation because the performers interacted so beautifully with the production, and the production interacted wonderfully with the story. Two others I love are Robert Wilson’s Lohengrin — it does not get more abstract than that — and Herbert Wernicke’s Frau. So I think I’m pretty open-minded to new approaches. Rheingold for some reason left me cold. I also agree with others that the Machine risks becoming deadly dull in the lengthy 5-hour stretches of the next 3. There are only so many video projections you can throw onto the Machine to keep it alive while most of your singers are left to squeeze their maneuvers onto a narrow strip in front of the prompter’s box.
> There are only so many video projections you can throw onto the Machine
agreed.
but it would seem to me premature to conclude we’ve reached that limit already.
and that ignores the fact that the machine itself almost certainly still has a few more tricks up its sleeve, without regard to what’s being projected upon it.
this would be a fairer topic of debate next spring.
i also was there last night, and would offer a slightly different perspective on the rainbow bridge: overall, the effect was indeed spectacular, but the pacing struck my Other Half and i as quite off; the gods were marking time too long, and at one point seemed to move backward perceptibly.
not hard to see past this, but we at least thought it pronounced.
€16m? Has the price gone up again?
I know, I know – pressed the wrong enabler alongside the 4/$ button, hence € popped up.
Mind, with the euro in freefall pretty lately, maybe it amounts to the same thing?
LOL. I hope there’s parity around Xmas time. (Sorry, Euro-friends.)
Sorry to say that in the past month, the dollar/Euro rate has tipped again against us! In mid August, it fell to $1.27 to the Euro, we are now back up to $1.37 to the Euro. The long hoped for parity is slipping away…
Nooooooo!
actually, we went through an almost three-year period back at the turn of the millenium in which the greenback enjoyed parity or better … ne dis jamais jamais.
Price for the four Ring operas could be as high as $40 million, according to Martin Bernheimer in his FT review: http://tinyurl.com/2fptd76
Buttressing the floor of the stage cost more than $4 mil; this is in addition to the reported $16M for Rheingold.
CruzSF, which SF Ring are you seeing? I followed folks’ advice and booked a room at the Inn at the Opera for the second cycle.
Hi Jay! I’m seeing the 2nd Cycle, too!
great, Cruz, hope to see you at the War Memorial Opera House (won’t know my seat #s for a while, tho).
Jay, I will buy you the first glass of champagne.
Thanks Cruz; second glass on me. When I see you in one of the opera chats in coming months, will give you my email address. If I post it here, I’ll get spammed to the gills.
Frankly, I think the Met Ring is a no-brainer to make money. With the DVD sales, HD transmissions, multiple year performances, it is almost guaranteed to make money in the long run.
Especially when Jennifer Wilson steps in and Flagstads everyone with her Brunni!
Talking about cost and money is vulgar & parvenu.
What’s the difference anyway, its not your money ?
TOT – TOTALLY OFF TOPIC
Do any of you fellows think the October 27th “Evening with Christine Brewer” is worth not only the fundraising prices they will have, PLUS a $100 air ticket change fee??
I haven’t seen her since Ariadne, half a dozen years ago, so do not really know her current vocal estate.
May I say, KUDOS to Madame La Cieca for this marvelously handy-dandy new New Yawk opera calendar: better by far than the late, lamented NY Times Sunday listings.
Now if we could only get the Reply function to work in a more sanguine manner. …
I saw and heard her two years ago as Isolde in San Francisco. The worst night of opera I’ve ever sat through. You pays your ticket, you takes your chances. Good luck!!!
Why? Because she is morbidly obese, as many others in her fach are, or because she did not sing well, or because she did nothing to express the character…? Which one? Or is it something else?
NB – I incorrectly stated the concert is on the 27th so before I spread misinformation, let me correct that the proper date, October 28th.
Camille, I’ve heard Brewer live only twice. The first was in the Verdi Requiem with the SF Symphony where she really sang superbly. The other time was as Isolde in SF. I don’t have a problem with her weight but rather she never seemed to light a fire either vocally or dramatically. There were only glimpses of greatness. I think her fach, is in the concert hall and not on an opera stage, at least not as Isolde. It is quite an impressive voice so I would urge you to go see her in concert.
There was some talk that at least early on Brewer had some memory problems in the Isolde, and I can recall several commenter talking about how for all the glory of the sound she didn’t do much with the words.
The San Francisco production is pretty “stand and sing” too, if I’m not mistaken, and that exacerbates the problem of a mostly immobile and not particularly nuanced Isolde.
what a bitch!!!
Yes, well, how did she sound as Lady Billows, e.g., in Santa Fe this past summer?
Oh yes, definitely a concert singer, more her temperament than her weight, really. A very pleasant middlewestern housewife not prone to excessive or egregious acts, so that is par for the course!
Just wondered if the programme will consist of 1) Liebestod 2) In questa reggia and 3) a whole long string of Jerome Kern–no quarrel with that, I love ‘em, it’s just I want to hear Dorothy Kirsten singing this part of the programme–and then that hideous thing from ‘Carnival’ she insists upon always inserting.
Couple arias, then she gets to take off her shoes (as Karita Mattila so memorably did when singing “Golden Earrings” in Carnegie Hall some years back) and then she gets to be a good old gal, just a regular person like everybody else…?
Uh-uh, no, I ain’t paying for that and that’s what I’m feared it’ll be.
She showed up in SF no knowing the role. At some point, they considered allowing her to use her music onstage! A score of that complexity, both musically and intellectually takes a lot of preparation, which she did not have. No one was surprised, as a result, that she got through the role adequately, but without any form of artistic expression, which is so crucial.
I think Christine is not really a stage animal. She is probably much happier as a concert singer. Sort of like the Farrell of our day, but moreso if you catch my drift.
Depends on what kind of night CB is having. Vocally, she was a terrific Farberin in FRoSCH in Chicago, so-so in T@I in L.A., and uninteresting when I heard her in a concert.
Camille–
My ticket for Brewer was 12 bucks.
Thanks a lot, Herr Mandryka! That douze dollars plus US$100 in air ticket change fee may be just the ticket for me.
Thanks to all for your kind responses.
YT,
C
Based on all the reviews and comments I’ve digested over the last few days, I get the impression that there is almost no interpretation or dramatic intention to this production. It sounds like it’s the confirmation of Debussy’s quip about the scenery grimacing in Wagner. I know most of the commenters at Parterre like to dump on so-called Eurotrash producitons, but doesn’t a work like the Ring need some interpretation beyond the special effects?
So the machine is cumbersome, distracting and noisy and the costumes suggest Mamie Eisenhower reading Marvel comics after having a little Bourbon with branch water, I presume? Oh dear! Think of the millions spent on the machine and fixing its glitches!
It all made me think of Wagner when composing Das Rheingold in Switzerland. There are, for example, all those letters of 1854 and 1855 he wrote to Liszt. “My dearest, dearest, unique Franz, give me the heart, the spirit, the mind of a woman in which I could wholly sink myself, which could quite comprehend me….If I could live with you in beautiful retirement…how happy I should be.” Of course, Liszt was instrumental in performing Lohengrin and Tannhauser in Germany, where Wagner could not go, so Wagner depended a lot on Liszt for his finances, as Wotan was dependent on Loge, and Wagner went through money fast. He was full of anxiety at that time, with even thoughts of suicide, and the world created for the Ring kept him active. I can’t blame his expenses. As he says in another letter, “If I am to dive into the waves of artistic fancy in order to find contentment in a world of imagination, my fancy should at least be buoyed up, my imagination supported. I cannot live like a dog; I cannot sleep on straw and drink bad whisky.” I do understand perfectly. I just wish technology was more advanced so that a fraction of what the present Ring machine costs at the Met could be sent in a time machine to Wagner in 1854, together with some bottles of 60 year old MacCallan. I wonder how a whisky would taste aged a negative amount, say, some -94 years?
Just wondering. Was there any booing at the Thursday performance, or was that all opening night politics?
The design team only takes a bow on the prima, so I doubt it.
The production got pretty much a standing ovation on Thursday night. Did anyone boo on O.N. or is that just a rumor because production teams usually get booed these days? (and usually deserve it)
I attended both Monday and Thursday performances. The set is a massive and beautiful modern sculpture in itself, and when animated by the projections and the lighting it is very much a character in the opera. I find this to be apt, as much of Rheingold is about describing this cosmos of gods and giants and the seemingly proto-human Niebellungs. Loge states that he is “denn halb so acht nur bin ich
wie , Selige ihr” (half as godlike as you); but we are not told what constitutes his other half. We meet the demi-god twins in Die Walkure, and Brunhilde becomes human when Wotan takes away her godhead in the ending of that work. Then we have Erda, and the Norns – in short a mix of creatures, all of whom will disappear in the new dawn of the earth which will follow the doings of the heroes. The set creaks and thumps at times, but I find this less distracting, in an opera which includes the cacaphony of tuned anvils and the dissonent chords which must have sounded very much like noise to the first audiences which heard this opera, than I do the thumps and whacks and crashing noises which penetrate the curtain during the interminable pauses in any production by Gian Carlo Delmonico. The sliding and slithering on the set which occur in the Rheinmaiden scene and at various entrances and exits are not intrusive, and the artists seemed to be interacting with the physical set with more comfort and even enjoyment on Thursday than at the opening. I found the draqon and the muppet-like toad amusing, and when have these ever been staged without requiring suspension of disbelief? The body doubles work for me (the fat suit idea notwithstanding), and the cables are not so distracting. Beginning with Donner’s striking the set with his hammer, producing a spectacular and startling effect of lightning, the final scene replicates the gradually increasing power and astonishing beauty of the music in physical terms.
That most of the singing takes place on the apron part of the set allows a more conversational approach to the libretto, which might approximate what I am told is the effect at Bayreuth of having the orchestra covered (muted?). The singers respond with appropriately intimate line readings such as the exchange between Wotan and Fricka about the building of Valhalla. And much of the scene with Wotan, Loge and Alberich benefits from the proximity of the singers to the front of the stage.
I found all of the performers to be fully engaged, and there was much to appreciate vocally. The orchestra is playing the music at its very high standard, and Levine is in top form. I think that some negative reactions to the production were created in advance by over-hyping the conception. I find a certain elegance in this enterprise that will ultimately mean a great deal more than the “state of the art technology” angle which seemed to the the major focus of the Met’s advance publicity about this Ring.
Thoughtful comments. Thank you. I haven’t seen the production, but both having the singers pushed to the apron and the reflecting qualities of the Machine should be useful until Flagstad and Melchior return.
DCF-
No booing Thursday. And actually very little at the premiere. Of course three or four (or ten or twelve) boo-ers really throwing themselves into it can make quite a din.
It was quite clear that those who chose to boo were vastly outnumbered by those who chose to cheer. It looks like we ARE back to having a few people boo on opening night. I suppose it’s just as well. Imagine what unhealthy things might transpire if they did not have that outlet.
The booing at the premiere may have been due to the failure of the sets at the end. I gather that the entrance to Valhalla was visually a let down. Some people may have thought with all the publicity and technology, that’s it? Result: some boos.