Circling the Ring

Crossing the Plaza and seeing two thousand chairs gleaming in the gloaming with rain slick and thoughts of the evening that might have been for many. Past the ticket takers and the buzz of voices, the gawkers lined up on the stairs to see the celebs, I wend my way through and up and up. “We are back!” in my head, with a touch, yes a touch of glisten in the eye.

Companion at the Family Circle level, veteran of Opening Nights for decades. I not the opening—but I do go back to the Lee Simonson Walkure in the Old House. “Continuity and tradition,” followed by a blazing incitement of the boor who is the Republican candidate for Governor. No, no, not an Alberich! Outsider, yes, but Wagner gives his outsiders a dignity and pathos and even a majesty (he knew all about it)—little did we know how that would be realized in an hour or so by Eric Owens, no longer the scampering dwarf of by-gone, but a towering master of his tribe, upright and down center before Loge tricked him. A Master.

Lights finally go down; the usual unnecessary NYC throat exercising. Wait. Long Pause, beyond Pinter. Will he or not? FC and Balcony first: the cheers mount. Slowly Jimmie makes it. (At the curtain call we will see a man walking slowly and much thinner ). The smashing first chord, we are up, and mostly in tune through “the home of the brave”—fleeting political thoughts at that.

A wait and more NYC unnecessary coughs. A man removes the American flag from stage right. Don’t want that in on the rocky heights or in Nibelheim no matter how much the characters that inhabit same remind of us certain fellow countrymen in recent years.

The set about which so much: to me genius at work. Who could imagine how well the thing could transform: Rhine maidens in bewitching long mermaid tails seemingly floating within the water but apparently supported by the set; Alberich scoots up from his underwater rock walking upright on a perpendicular surface—and then fetches a homely bag for the gold which multiplies in Nibelheim by slaves who no better than to stand upright and whose wordless cries take us to the Gulags and forced labor camps of recent history.

The descending stairs—we’ve seen pictures of them—again dangerous descents on a seemingly planked surface—a guide cable visible above both Loge and the chief god so not to worry about Birgit- or Hildegard-type accidents.
Nibelheim. I saw an eight year old with her father afterwards, and there was the vision of Arthur Rackham of her (I hope) story books: spidery black-clad figures tending multiple fires; Mime—and here was the cringing dwarf we all know—with his jealousy and sense of being wronged.

Alberich with his whip and an oblong tub with a cover. What? Just a homely image like the sack? Yes, he comes to the forestage and sits on it when he so cleverly foils with Loge. That’s a good idea to vary the staging, or so it seems. Alberich is Master of the Universe as Owens stands and lets Wotan and Loge know all about it. What’s in the tub, the Tarnhelm, a large handkerchief seemingly mad of fine-woven chain mail, bigger than, but a survivor from the old production, no?

And no Schneider-Siemssen lights down, smoke and deep voiced growling; ye we have the lights dim and there is steam, but a giant dragon’s tail nearly beans Wotan and his spear—THE spear with all those runes—is POWERLESS, just me and thee with mosquitoes. And, surely to the eight year’s old delight, a skeletal dragon’s head on stage left, as though this beast were so big it could curl all the way around the Met sage, tail on one end, head on the other.

The Tarnhelm covers Alberich’s head and shoulders and then there is a beetle—couldn’t quite make out from the FC but Loge and Wotan behave just as me and thee doth when the unmentionable scampers across the kitchen floor.
The Tarnhelm was easy, but how did they get the ring? The erstwhile beetle is tripped, trussed with rope Loge has handy. So much so good, but the former Master won’t give it up. Loge has his legs tied, Wotan takes the spear with its runes and pinions the former Master’s arm and pulls the ring off the finger. We’re in the camps and Gulag and Argentina again. Taint that can never be eradicated from the new would-be Master.

Lepage has told us that he visited Iceland when preparing the production and was fascinated by its volatile landscape. Above Nibelheim was a ledge in umber tundra, an astonishing example of the transformations possible in a set which in other manifestations shows the divisions between apparent planks.

The tainted would-be Master is already abashed by as powerful a Fricka as has ever rebuked a Wotan, Stephanie Blythe in Schumann-Heink mode. Loge who walks up and down perpendiculars in a roseate of fire light. The giants are on ledges addressing the gods below, and sometimes they individually chose to sit it out which makes them even more implacable.

After the theft Alberich is given the stage for his curse the orchestra is given its vent in a huge, concentrated outburst that will be heard from now to the flood at the end of the cycle.

Lepage also told us that most of the action takes place on the forestage of the set, surely a matter of delight to Jimmie, and a pleasure to the singers—who have spoken not only of that but of the support the set gives their voices—no more trying to reach the FC with only a cyc to to bounce off behind you!

And there was a rainbow and what may have been a bridge. The gods did not walk across it but walked off letting its colors vibrate until a great, grey wall loomed up in the final chords, no pleasuredome that Valhalla.

Many, many beauties: light changes done skillfully (no son et lumiere effects, no “movies” to underline the action), clouds, the way they parted with Loge’s hammer, the green glow above the Rhine. Majesty too, the Met stage given its full amplitude. There were moments when with the richness of the stage picture and Our Orchestra at is very best in the pit that the fleeting thought: yes, that is what a place the size of the Met needs and can and does magnify.

With all the talk of the set, what was a welcome surprise was how deftly the singers were handled; the acting was always focused, and the moves well thought out. Fine story telling all around. It was a delight to have so much of the action close. The cast was exemplary, rarely if ever, and so on. One had the sense of an ensemble, singers, orchestra, director working together.

Boos from what sounded like a few but stentorian faction, side up right. Otherwise and overwhelmingly an ovation.
Companion: “Marvelous.” I said the same to a Met house manager type who was marshalling most of us away from the entrance to the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week tent where those “who had made the evening possible” would dine. “How did you like it?” he asked. I used Companion’s word. We were disappointed in the rain, he said, meaning the Met.

Three words came to mind on the #1 journey home: Breadth, as in of vision, of conception; Risk, as in Lepage taking one, Mr. Gelb taking one. Skill as in Jimmie, the cast, the orchestra, the costumers, the computer types manning the consoles, the stagehands, the assistant stage directors guiding the singers about behind and above the thing, the whole blooming enterprise of talented people, hundreds of them, that brought this about.