Wagner Bytes

Gesamtkunstblog for Steve

2011-11-07T23:18:00.000-08:00

Steve Sokolow, a mainstay, friend, mentor, peacemaker, and guide of the WSNC since its inception, died October 25th. Those of us who knew him are devastated. Messages of grief from friends have been coming in, but I've also been getting mail from out-of-area members who never met him and are equally stunned. For many of us, Steve was All-Vater.

Steve has been such an active part of WS activities for 30 yrs that it's difficult to separate him from the group. At meetings, Steve drew fascinating, intricate doodles while listening to lectures - one who didn't know him might think that he wasn't paying attention - and then he'd ask penetrating questions, quote passages from the Ring, and make insanely brilliant, insightful comments. Steve led many panel discussions over the years and always pulled the best out of a guest. He was WSNC president for many years and was the grease that oiled the machine.

A frequent attendee at the SF Opera, one could also run into Steve at the LA Opera, MetHD broadcasts, and various other venues, including Gilbert & Sullivan and Grateful Dead-related shows.

A memorial service will be held Sunday, November 27, at 1:00 pm, on what would have been Steve's 68th birthday. It will be held at Steve and Bryana's home:

851 Brittany Lane

Concord, CA

Please RSVP so Bryana can have a head count for refreshments.

All-Vater

Taken by John Chilcott at last summer's Ring

Apropos of never knowing where you'll bump into Steve is this remembrance from David Ehmke:

I have an endearing memory of meeting Steve in Bayreuth in 1996. I was there on my own that year, having been offered tickets after applying for 8 years. Steve was in Europe on business and had driven up to Bayreuth. He got someones ticket and saw the 2nd and 3rd acts of Siegfried - typical Steve.
So, as I was returning to my hotel, much to my surprise here came Steve up the street. We talked for a while. As we prepared to part, he said, "this calls for a hug" which we proceeded to do.
In 1996 I was not used to getting hugs from a guy. But that one has remained in my memory ever since. It was typical of Steve, a warm-hearted, wonderful man whom I shall miss very much.

Please feel free to post comments about Steve below or by email to me. If you have photos you'd like to share, send them to me and I'll put them up.

And please visit the site Steve's daughter Molly is creating for her dad, www.stevesokolow.com. It's still evolving and is a real labor of love. And feel free to cross-post between the two sites.

Symbolism: Call for Papers

2011-03-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

We've received a request for papers on symbolism from Professor Rosina Neginsky of the University of Illinois in Springfield. Goodness knows that the Ring is a fleshy topic for symbolic interpretation!

Between 25-28 April, 2012 ALMSD (Art, Literature, Music in Symbolism and Decadence) will be hosting a second International conference, "Symbolism, Its Origins and Its Consequences" with the theme Light and Shade or Light and Obscurity in Symbolism, its origins and its consequences, which will take place at the beautiful Allerton Park, near the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana campus, in Monticello, Illinois. The organization would like to invite you to submit a proposal which will address the theme of the conference in art, literature and music. The proposal should be about 300 words and should be sent to symbolismabstracts@uis.edu before May 10, 2011. Please include a short version of your CV. If you have questions, please contact Rosina Neginsky at rnegi1@uis.edu.

For further information, please refer to: http://www.uis.edu/hosted-orgs/ALMSD/conference.html

Nixon Meets Wagner

2011-02-28T21:31:00.000-08:00

I'm appalled that it's been nearly 6 months since my last post! That's the perils of volunteer labor, I guess. It's been busy, busy for us. First it was getting ready for the holidays, then it was recovering from the holidays, and now it's trying to buy a new home in the Bay Area. Lots of driving all over and viewing properties, offers, due diligence & fact-finding, an inspection - which led to cancellation of the contract. Now we start all over. I do think about the blog, but I'm too distracted by current events. House issues, Egypt, Libya, Wisconsin - you name it. All seem so much more present, so much more important than a silly vanity blog.

Last week we went to the Met HD performance of Nixon in China and I was blown away by how much Wagner is contained in the work. I've seen the work live twice before, but not since 1990 in LA. I'm sure I noticed the Wagner at the time, but the piece is now more familiar and I'm more comfortable with minimalism.

I came home, got out our Nixon CDs and ripped them into iTunes and put them on my iPod. And I've listened over and over. The music is so complex and lush - it's just a revelation. In the scene "Tropical Storm" towards the end of the 2nd act, there is a section that is pure Salome dissolving into the gods entering Valhalla and shades of the end of Götterdämmerung.

Here and there throughout the opera you hear the opening Rhine music, bits of Forest Murmurs, which when you think about it is really a precursor to John Adams and Philip Glass (funny thing, but I couldn't remember if it was spelled Philip or Phillip, but on my way to Wiki to check, I thought, "Well, heck, he's a minimalist; I'm sure he'd only use one 'l'." And, indeed, he does.)

If you haven't seen the production, most Bay area theaters are running the encore performance this Wednesday, March 2. And I would encourage those who may not think they're interested to give it a shot. Contained within the minimalism is some gorgeous, lush orchestration that you will probably recognize.

I also wanted to attach a review Martin Bernheimer wrote after he saw the world premiere. (And no, it wasn't in Houston, it was right here in San Francisco at the Herbst Theater a few months before it premiered in Houston. It was a concert version with 2 pianos and Adams conducting, as I recall. It was sort of the off-Broadway equivalent of a preview run before a show hits the Great White Way.) The review doesn't exactly say that it's a dud, but one can infer that Bernheimer wasn't sure the work was here to stay!

Minimalist Mush : Nixon Goes To China Via Opera In S.F.

May 25, 1987|MARTIN BERNHEIMER | Times Music Critic

SAN FRANCISCO — Richard Nixon eyes Mao Zedong nervously, sweats profusely, thinks of his place in history and sings an aria. It is a high baritone aria full of shallow, well-meant platitudes.

The Chinese Chairman receives his guest with quizzical civility compromised by sly bemusement and sings an aria of his own. It is a high Heldentenor aria full of mystical philosophical references.

And so it goes. This is the Imperial City in 1972, or a deliriously unreasonable facsimile thereof.

Pat Nixon spouts giddy petit-bourgeois homilies as well as lyric-soprano cliche-fragments, weeps for the downtrodden and waltzes with her sentimentality-prone husband.

Mme. Mao does some vamping, musing and waltzing of her own, amid daring coloratura flights and gusts of Wagnerian resolve.

Henry Kissinger, a basso-not-so-profondo, provides comic relief. Premier Zhou Enlai sings a symbol-laden soliloquy with something akin to a probing if inscrutable voice of baritonal reason. Choruses of various sizes add Orffian punctuation to the multifarious verbal encounters.

This bizarre but potentially beguiling concoction is "Nixon in China," a pseudo-historic quasi-satirical opera-in-progress by everybody's favorite romantic minimalist, John Adams. (Remember "Harmonielehre"?)

With two intermissions and glib explanatory remarks by the composer himself, "Nixon" ran--sometimes crept--for three and a half trying hours Friday night at the Herbst Theater.

At this so-called "concert preview," the audience in the 1,100-seat hall shrank dramatically as the evening rambled on. That need not suggest a lost cause, however. Things could be very different by the time "Nixon" receives its much-ballyhooed full-scale premiere at the new Wortham Theatre in Houston in October (with reprises to follow in Brooklyn, Washington and Amsterdam).

When finally staged, the opera will no doubt benefit from the theatrical imagination of Peter Sellars, the fashionable enfant terrible who happened to conceive the project in the first place. Mark Morris, another avant-gardish Wunderkind, will no doubt provide off-the-Great-Wall choreography, including a heart-rending ballet divertissement inspired by "The Red Detachment of Women."

By October, the opera should be adorned with bona-fide orchestral accompaniment. The singers, for better or worse, will be outfitted with body mikes.

It all will be terribly daring, terribly mod, terribly chic, terribly up-to-date. It also may be provocative. It may even be fun.

Minimalist Mush : Nixon Goes To China Via Opera In S.F. - Los Angeles Times

Also, here is a fascinating piece with a different perspective by a journalist who was on that historic trip:

Far From Valhalla: A Witness Sees History Restaged and Rewritten

By MAX FRANKEL
A look at the opera "Nixon in China" by Max Frankel, a former executive editor of The New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Nixon's trip to China.

News from Bayreuth

2010-09-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

Rats!

Photos Bayreuther Festspiele GmbH/Enrico Nawrath

First it was rotting rabbits in Parsifal and now it's lab rats in Lohengrin.

Here's an email I received from long-time member Sally Eastwood just back from Bayreuth and presumably wishing she'd stayed home:

Made my third and final trip to Bayreuth last month and was saddened and deeply disappointed that there is not a trace of Wagner there anymore. The whole experience was defiled beyond recognition. Since I have lived so long "out of the loop", perhaps I'm the last to know. I had been forewarned about the Meistersinger, which was the last of the seven operas I attended, but by that time I had been assaulted by so much pornography, ugliness, pointless violence and distracting nonsense that I was numb. I like to think it is ignorance rather than intentional that his own family is trivializing and ridiculing his work. Have the audience and the directors even read the texts? Wagner wanted all the elements of his work (musical, text and visual aspects) to work together for an experience deeper than "entertainment" or "distraction." I was always moved by the beauty which touched the depths of my soul and took me to a deep place of no time/ space. Where I always experienced it as an antidote to the world's insanity, I now saw it as a REFLECTION of the world's insanity. During the few moments when the distracting, pointless busyness ceased and the words and music were allowed to simply speak for them selves, I noticed the audience looking at their watches. Young people now are "wired" differently seeking outer satisfaction and an overabundance of input coming from all sides or else they are "bored." It all depends what one is seeking...depth and stillness or stimulation and "entertainment", an inner experience or an outer one. It is also generational I suppose as I am not "wired" to have my senses bombarded with ugliness, frivolity and chaos, especially when it involves something that has meant so much to me for so long. Enough kvetching already. Suffice it to say that if I want a Ring where technology is used to enhance not detract from the text and which still retains its beauty, depth, meaning and humanity, you'll find me in Seattle rather than Bayreuth.

And in a followup email, Sally remarked about the Lohengrin:
I was in the far-most Loge seat for this where half the stage was blocked from view. I considered myself LUCKY!

Festspielhaus infestation!

The embryonic thing in the eggshell is supposed to be Gottfried. Perhaps this is why Jonas Kaufmann was sick and canceled his last two performances.

Not too hard to figure out who's supposed to be naughty and nice here:

I wonder why the caged rat sings (with apologies to Maya Angelou):

I'd love to hear from others who attended and what they thought. Is there any redemption to be had? Perhaps we should have a caption contest?

Completely off topic

2010-09-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, this has nothing to do with music of any sort, but I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. As someone who currently has a huge watermelon rocking and rolling around the bottom shelf of her fridge, this idea seems like pure genius and that sort of head-slapping "Why has no one come up with this before?"

Space in Japan is always at a premium, so smart farmers have begun creating square watermelon; the melons are grown inside rigid containers. Brilliant!

They, of course, fetch a premium price at 10000 ¥ (about $118), roughly the 4 times the cost of a traditional watermelon, but everything in Japan fetches premium prices.

This article is from 2001, so perhaps the prices have changed since then - the exchange rate certainly has!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1390088.stm

"u" the opera

2010-08-31T13:52:00.000-07:00

Klingon opera

Not Wagner, but let's be honest here. The Nordic sagas that we love are cut from the same cloth as all the warrior mythology. And Star Trek has certainly taken its place as a major interpreter of that heroic mythology. So it's sort of a second-cousin-once-removed from Wagner's Ring.

Sure, it's odd, but if I were anywhere near the Netherlands next week, I'd definitely attend, if only for the value of being able to say, "Why yes, I've seen a Klingon opera!". (And while I'm not a Trekkie, these characters are just as alive to Star Trek fans as Wotan, Brünnhilde and Siegfried are to us Wagnerians.).

The next performance of the opera ‘u’ will be:

9, 10, 11 and 12 September 2010
Theater Zeebelt

De Constant Rebecqueplein 20A

The Hague
For reservations email kassa@zeebelt.nl or call +31 (0) 70 3656546

And if you want to know more, there's lots of u and Klingon lore here, including a couple of videos in the Klingon language.

http://www.u-theopera.org/

Thanks to OperaBobb for sending this tidbit in his newsletter.

Review: Lotfi Mansouri's new tell-all book

2010-08-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

Whilst perusing Amazon, debating whether to buy Lotfi's new book in print format or wait until it's available for Kindle, I saw Janos Gereben's review of it and asked him if I could put it on Wagner Bytes. He graciously responded with an expanded version, plus his review of the current Berkeley Opera offering, Legend of the Ring. Thanks, Janos!

The World According to Mansouri

By Janos Gereben

Reading "Lotfi Mansouri, an Operatic Journey" is a guilty pleasure.

The former San Francisco Opera general director's straight-from-the-shoulder - if inevitably self-serving - autobiography is published by University Press of New England; it is available from

http://www.amazon.com/Lotfi-Mansouri-Operatic-Journey/dp/1555537065

This 330-page delight of backstage stories from a 60-year-long international career is perhaps disquieting for the genteel reader, made to witness a tell-all orgy, ranging from the discourteously candid to the nakedly retaliatory... some with numerous grains of revelatory truth, others purely of personal resentment.

Hundreds of the past half century's best-known singers, conductors, and administrators are praised-and-demolished or just the latter. It is amazing stuff, even if one feels uneasy to be so positive about it. Yikes! I am beginning to sound like the book.

Examples of Mansouri dishing it out, picked at random:

- Santa Fe Opera founder/director John Crosby had an "unmatched tenure [of 43 years]," was "an incredible fund-raiser," but "his people skills were nowhere near his managing talents... the price he paid for his fear of human contact was the coldness of his conducting."

- Otto Klemperer: "unaware of his health problems [a stroke and a botched brain operation], I just thought he was an abusive boor... His fascination with the opposite sex took precedence over everything else." Klemperer, responding to someone with a Swiss accent: "Would you repeat that in German?"

- Zürich Opera administrator Emil Jucker "had all the integrity of the average viper."

- Kurt Herbert Adler "ran San Francisco Opera like a personal fiefdom, oozing disdain for anyone he considered inferior in judgment or experience, and his list was a long one... tightfisted... could be arrogant, aggressive, rude, and insulting - and this was just on an average day."

Written with Donald Arthur, the book is impressively diverse in its appeal: all about opera, it's a perfectly captivating book for readers oblivious to musical theater - a fascinating read about the struggles of a young man from a dysfunctional family in Iran, his subsequent adventures around the world, and skyrocketing international career.

Apparently stillborn in Tehran, on a sweltering day in 1929, and given up for dead, the baby miraculously revived on a block of ice was named Lotfollah - "kindness of God."

Mansouri's recurring adventures over the years in Iran and in Hollywood are both suspenseful and rib-tickling. In kindergarten, he played the Grand Vizier in a cast with Fatemeh, the future Shah's sister.

Unfortunately, the crown prince himself attended our little performance... and I got so nervous that I wet my pants and started crying onstage. From that moment, I developed a lifelong sympathy for singers' nerves.

In Hollywood, Mansouri played Caruso in the made-for-TV movie "The Day I Met Caruso," and many years later, he was involved with the Pavarotti disaster, "Yes, Giorgio," which, he says, cost $19 million to make and grossed $1 million. He went on to direct the opera scenes in "Moonstruck," with Cher and Nicolas Cage.

Mansouri, who ran opera houses in Geneva and Toronto before, became general director of San Francisco Opera in 1988, just a year before the Loma Prieta earthquake which damaged the War Memorial. "[Administration] dysfunction, strike, recession - and then an earthquake!," he laments.

For the next decade of those trying times, Mansouri held the company together, helped to oversee the $90 million on-time, on-budget, successful reconstruction of the building in the middle of an economic downturn.

And yet, instead of losing audience during almost two years of the company being homeless, Mansouri actually brought in many new and young opera fans with productions such as the "Broadway Boheme" in the Orpheum, and great casts in the Civic Auditorium, transformed for the occasion.

Mansouri engaged Valery Gergiev and the Kirov to San Francisco for their U.S. debut, also signing Christoph von Dohnányi, Peter Schneider, Markus Stenz, Christian Thielemann, Antonio Pappano, Andrew Davis, and Yuri Temirkanov.

During his term, Mansouri commissioned new operas by John Adams, Conrad Susa, Stewart Wallace (whose Harvey Milk, he says, "the cast saved from its second-rate music. I've never even listened to the recording"), André Previn, and Jake Heggie, enhancing San Francisco's reputation for having a leading opera company. On the other hand, Mansouri manages this aside about the Harvey Milk creators:

We met composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie in New York. I found them pretentious, pseudo-intellectual East Coasters and self-satisfied. There was an aura of mirthless superficiality about them.

Then, in 2001, Mansouri was succeeded by Pamela Rosenberg, "who [in Europe] was used to realizing her visions... and then send the bill to the government." During the six-month overlap between them, Mansouri says, "she never talked to me about business. Not once."

By this time, in the transition period to the new general director, Mansouri was "barely on speaking terms with Donald Runnicles," he had named music director of the company a decade before.

At his most Dante-esque, Mansouri reserves the ninth circle of Hell for those two, listing Rosenberg's misdeeds (an appointment resulting from "a search process gone tragically wrong") and, even more, attacking Runnicles in great detail, calling him "the one problem entirely of my own making."

Besides Runnicles' siding with Rosenberg, Mansouri also holds the conductor's behavior ("weirdly insecure") and even work on the podium against him:

When he was on, his performances were very, very good. But when he was off, he was way off. Sometimes he didn't seem familiar with a score, as if he were sight-reading it, even in performance. He also had a habit of letting the orchestra overpower the voices. He cared about some operas, but not about others, which was odd, considering he always had his choice of whatever three operas he wanted each season.

But, beyond personalities and feuds and dishing it out, there is a wealth of material, both fascinating and debatable, in "Lotfi Mansouri, an Operatic Journey."

Janos has covered the SF Bay Area arts scene for many years, as arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and music editor of the San Jose Mercury News. He now covers music, theater, and art for the SF Examiner, and for the past decade has been Music News columnist for San Francisco Classical Voice:

http://www.sfcv.org/

Review: Berkeley Opera's Ringlet

2010-08-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

Berkeley (Now West Edge) Opera Conquers Big Miniature Ring

By Janos Gereben

Once upon a time, six long years ago, there was a little opera company in Berkeley tackling a huge project, called the Legend of the Ring, making waves far and wide.

And now, on Saturday, here was a little company again, taking up the same challenge: David Seaman's condensation of Richard Wagner's four-opera, 15-hour Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle into a four-hour evening, including a single intermission.

Photos by Ching Chang

Alberich (Bojan Knezevic) and the Rhine Maidens

The first part combines Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, the second consists of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung.

A point of perspective: Legend's entire running time is shorter than Ring intermissions alone in the Wagner temple of Bayreuth, where the first of the 2010 cycles just concluded on Sunday - a total of six hours.

Legend dispenses with a 100-plus piece orchestra, about the same number of soloists and chorus, and huge sets, settling instead for a cast of eight (eight!) in multiple roles, no chorus, an orchestra of 16, and projected sets. A challenge indeed.

In 2004, it was the Berkeley Opera in the Julia Morgan Theater, packing 'em in and scoring critical success. This time, it's the freshly renamed Berkeley West Edge Opera in its new venue, the El Cerrito Performing Arts Theater, once again filling a hall (twice the size of the Julia Morgan), and scoring even bigger. And not.

The new cast includes astonishing, world-class voices, but the orchestra performance on Saturday had enough intonation problems and badly blown notes to temper enthusiasm.

Seaman's reduction of the orchestra is radical. In the string sections alone, Wagner's 32 violins disappear, Legend has none; instead of 12 violas, there are three (Michi Aceret is the first violist and thus the concertmaster in El Cerrito), two cellos do the work of 12, and two basses substitute for the original eight.

Strings on Saturday did great work, but there were not enough of them to cover up problems in the brass to the same extent that the original gargantuan Wagner orchestra can.

Perhaps there were not enough rehearsals or it was just a "bad night," so upcoming performances - on Aug. 4, 6, and 8 - may still have the best of both worlds, on the stage and in the pit.

Wotan (Richard Paul Fink) and the giants (Bojan Knezevic and Dean Peterson)

The cast is gloriously starry for a small company. Wotan is sung by Richard Paul Fink, a regular in some of the world's big opera houses. His Saturday performance combined a great voice with musical intelligence, and praiseworthy restraint to avoid oversinging in a relatively small theater. The Seaman reduction takes most of the depth away from the character, but Fink still gives a solid portrayal.

Fink also appears as Gunter, another remarkable vocal performance, but here he is handicapped by the director's whim of presenting the character as a shuffling, prissy caricature.

Jay Hunter Morris, as Siegmund, Siegfried, and Froh, gives sterling performances, his bright, clear heldentenor not only holding up well, but actually peaking as time went on.

Marie Plette sings five roles brilliantly, including a wonderful Sieglinde and Gutrune.

Among a number of roles they sing, Bojan Knezovic scores best as Alberich, and Dean Peterson as Hagen. The two are also paired well as the giants Fasolt and Fafner.

Berkeley Opera regular Stephen Rumph, a dynamic singing actor, impressed as Loge (especially) and Mime in a personal-best performance.

Christine Springer's main role is Brünnhilde, Valentina Osinski sings both Flosshilde and Fricka.

Heading both the 2004 Berkeley Opera and the 2010 Edge Opera productions: music director Jonathan Khuner and artistic director Mark Streshinsky.

Khuner, who has had an important role in many "real" Ring productions in San Francisco and New York, exhibits an impressive mastery of the score, which is a smooth aggregation of Wagner's operas, making the omission of lengthy portions and of "big numbers" (bye-bye "Ride of the Valkyries"!) almost imperceptible.

Jay Hunter Morris as Siegmund and Marie Plette as Sieglinde

Streshinsky, whose career has skyrocketed since his early days with Berkeley Opera, had a fascinating stage production back then, and he has improved on it this time.

Gods, dragons, giants, dwarves, heroes and villains perform their cosmic drama in a small box center stage, between two large screens. The "set" consists of two chairs and a desk-like platform - that's it. And it works!

The improvement since the last production: instead of Loge using a trash can to clean up the stage during the finale, this one has the proper world-ending fireworks.

Insisting on a previous misstep, however, Streshinsky still has the Forest Bird use a cell phone to report (silently, but in a grotesquely animated fashion) Siegfried's slaying of the dragon, and then sing her lines into the phone. Mercifully short of EuroTrash, it is just plain silly.

Jeremy Knight's projections are terrific - more modest, abstract, and at a fraction of the cost, just as effective as those in the San Francisco Opera's current production. Lucas Krech's lighting design needs fine-tuning: stripes and blotches of colors on faces and bodies are confusing.

Again, three more chances to see and hear this economy-but-vocally-opulent edition of the Ring.

Siegfried (Morris) about to die at the hand of Hagen (Peterson)

Thanks in abundance to Janos Gereben for sending this excellent review!

For a far more negative review, see Josh Kosman's:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/02/DDVG1ENBN3.DTL

(Frankly, I don't think Josh "gets" this sort of production. He reviewed the WSNC's 1994 Rheingold poorly, without seeming to realize that our objectives were to give a number of young musicians an opportunity to perform in a Wagner opera and add it to their résumés. As I recall, after the costs and receipts were tallied, our grant fund had spent around $3000 on the production - and had given around 70 musicians and stagehands (and most of the orchestra members were students) an experience they wouldn't have otherwise had. C'mon, Josh! When the tickets only cost 20-30 bucks, you should hardly expect the production to be the spectacle of a full-blown SFO one. You come to hear promising talent and see innovation done on-the-cheap, something the SFO could learn from, IMHO.)

Trish "still bitter after all these years" Benedict

(ok, not really bitter, but obviously seriously annoyed)

The Chicago Building Stage Ring

2010-07-24T22:04:00.000-07:00

Early this year, The Building Stage, a theater company and performance space located in Chicago’s West Loop, undertook a version of The Ring with a rock band performing "original music by Kevin O'Donnel inspired by Wagner's themes". Its tag line was "not an opera - a play that rocks".

Attendees included Sandra & Larry and member Michael Barna from Milwaukee. They shared their thoughts on the production via email:

Hello:

Finally a few minutes to discuss The Ring. Let me preface my remarks by saying that I'm glad we made the trip to Chicago.

As to the play. Building Space is a great little company, and I admire their courage for taking on such a huge project. Did it work? Yes -- mostly. The problem for both Larry and me was Wotan -- Chris Pomery looked the part, but his voice was wrong. One does not put a young tenor in that role. Plus, Pomery suffers from the American problem of trying to be Shakespearean -- it's just not in the blood, and he confuses drama with volume. It's too bad, but if the core is weak, all the bells and whistels around the edges won't make up for it. Was Götterdämmerung the best segment because Wotan was not in it? Probably not entirely, but his absence helped.

Highlight: The Rhinemaidens and Woodbird(s). Fantastic idea and execution. It also points out -- as did the set in general -- that one can put on a great play (or opera, for that matter) without spending a fortune. I rarely mind stage hands taking over roles in plays unless they are supposed to be invisible and are not. I even got used to the stage hands in the Valencia Parsifal we saw recently on film. Here, however, it was mandatory, and they were integrated nicely -- even splitting the anvil was believable -- well, at least sensible. The use of various levels, doors, and imaginative lighting was very good. Also -- the shadow puppets -- good work. Even Friea as a doll demonstrated the size of Fafner and Fasolt. So simple yet effective.

I also liked the cuts (with one exception). I particularly like the decision to eliminate the Norns at the beginning of Götterdämmerung. It makes more dramatic sense to jump right into Siegfried's leaving Brünnhilde and then compress the scenes at Gibbichland. The one lapse was the confrontation between Wotan and Alberich in Siegfried. I believe this is one of two key moments in the entire work -- the other being Siegmund's interchange with Brünnhilde in Walküre which was, unfortunately, reduced. I spoke with Blake Montgomery during the last break, and he said they had kept the Wotan/Alberich segment in until very recently. Siegfried was running too long, and they needed to cut more out. His cutting decisions were based on leaving out any text that explained what had already happened or was about to happen and lengthy dialog between two characters. Well, OK. But, I argued -- and still believe -- that Wotan as licht-Alberich is essential to the Ring -- just as Brünnhilde's coming to realize that love is more powerful than heroism. Tightening the question scene between Wotan and Mime was no great loss. In fact, eliminating almost anything with Wotan in it, was an improvement -- except with Alberich.

Götterdämmerung was genuinely moving, but then it is the most inherently dramatic of the four operas. As the evening wore on, however, I found myself missing the music. It pointed up just how damn important all those snippets are that signal events, personalities, and emotions. I found myself silently humming the passages between the text. This should not be surprising -- after all, it IS (or WAS) an opera. But, I was surprised by just how much I missed things like that rainbow bridge and the "Heil der Sonne" or the opening chords to each opera.

Montgomery's decision to couch the language in Shakepearean terms was also effective (other than for Wotan). I liked the contrast between the "groundlings'" colloquialism set against the more formalistic language of the gods. One did not need a British accent to pull it off. Nick Vidal was very effective as Siegmund/Siegfried because he FELT and conveyed the characters' emotions. The final part of Walküre even made the music in my head sound right.

So, all in all, a good theatrical experience. It won't take place of the opera, but it wasn't intended to. It was an experiment that, generally, worked. However, it made Larry give up mulling over whether or not to purchase the text-only CD that recently came out (German only). From my perspective, that constitutes a success.

OK -- your turn.

Sandra

Hi Sandra,

I'm glad that your trip to Chicago was enjoyable and you found the production to have some merit. I was a bit concerned after viewing the opening weekend's performance and, like you, applaud the company for attempting quite an undertaking. I fully agree with your review.....it worked mostly.

By the end of the evening, I found myself wondering how this would play with another theatre company with perhaps more experienced actors. While I did enjoy the "freshness" of the cast (I did ask Montgomery if any of the cast had seen a Ring or knew of it.....mostly no on both counts) I found that the actors were a bit too "green". Wotan comes to mind especially. His young age wasn't so much the problem for me, but I didn't think he conveyed the weariness and complication of the action as best as he could. And as you mentioned, his vocal delivery was most distracting. I loved your comment about confusing drama with volume. Wonderful!

I did think that the production was very creative though. Loved the birds, and the Rhinemaidens.....great use of the space and the resources to make them swim/fly! And I rather enjoyed the creation of the giants and eventually the dragon. Pretty good for shadow puppets!

The most embarassing moment for me was the Hagen/Alberich scene in Götterdämmerung. The director had painted himself into a corner by casting the same actor for both of those parts. Unfortunately, the jumping on and off the chair was quite silly and distracted from the drama at that point in the story. Could it have been staged differently? Perhaps. Maybe Hagen sleeping in the chair, dreaming, and using his own taped voice for that of Alberich????? Hmmmmm, maybe in the next staging!

The "rock" band left me a bit cold as well. It did add some atmosphere at times, however, some infusion of blood was needed to combat the quasi-meditative, new age-y sound. I would have liked a little variation in instrumental sound. Most of the time it worked, but like you, I was wanting to hear something more but the end of the evening. (The drum solo went on far too long, in my opinion).

Ultimately, I was glad I went to see it. I had originally thought I might see it a second time, but after the first viewing I decided once was enough. Now, if it showed up at the Goodman, then perhaps that might be another story! Who knows? Maybe some other company may tackle it.

Regards,

Michael

Here's a link to the Building Stage's web page with a video of their interpretation:

http://www.buildingstage.com/blog/?cat=14

"Wagner the Mystic" by John J. Pohanka

2010-07-24T17:37:00.000-07:00

From member Tom Arthur in Santa Fe comes a heads up on a book being offered by the DC Wagner Society, penned by one of their board members, John J Pohanka.

From the DC Society's web site:

"The overcoming of all unusual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement." --- William James

In this important new work, John Pohanka presents a innovative survey of the Wagner's aesthetic and philosophical development, within the historical context of mysticism. Articulately written, and comprehensively documented, both from Wagner's own writings, and from an authoritative host of western and eastern philosophers, poets and musicians, Pohanka has given us an invaluable insight into the question: Why does Wagner's music affect us like no other?

Wagner the Mystic is available from the Wagner Society of Washington DC. $19.95.

http://wagner-dc.org/?q=node/50

Cincinnati Meistersinger: Review

2010-07-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

Several WCNC members and friends converged in southern Ohio last month for Cincinnati Operas' first-ever Wagner production, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg which was to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Cincinnati Opera.

This gutsy undertaking was to showcase Cincinnati native James Levine in a homecoming performance leading an all-star cast. However, Maestro Levine, who has been plagued with health issues, literally "backed out" in April (he had back surgery for a ruptured disc), as did James Morris, also for impending back surgery. One-by-one, all the principals cancelled. Disaster! The Cinci Opera admin department must have been swilling Maalox and downing Migraine-Strength Excedrin like crazy as they scrambled to find last-minute replacements. Here's Steve Charitan's report on how they pulled it off:

(photos by the author, who points our that the Cincinnati Music Hall (built in 1878) is one of the few places to hear a major 19th century work in a major 19th century setting)

A phoenix rose from the ashes this past week in Cincinnati's Music Hall. Those of us who have been anticipating this gala performance for the past 2 years watched as it began to unravel with Levine's cancellation in April followed by James Morris (Sachs), Hei Kyung Hong (Eva), Thomas Allen (Beckmesser), Richard Margison (Walter) as well as several other key singers. How many of these chronic cancellations were legitimate and how many were of the "dog ate my homework" variety only the beleagured directors of Cincinnati Opera know for sure. In a lecture at Music Hall sponsored by the Wagner Society of Ohio, Opera director Evans Mirageas commented that this casting crisis allowed him to know where every singer in the world capable of performing a role in Meistersinger was on the two Cincinnati performance days.

Aside from James Johnson who had impressed me mightily with his Berlin Sachs this past February, and Mr. Kettleson, a proven Beckmesser, the rest of the replacement cast seemed to take a little of the glitter off the gala. I could not have been more wrong. What this brave company pulled off under very adverse circumstances was one of the most effective and moving Meistersingers I've seen in many years' experience with this piece.

I will start with Mr. Johnson as I think his understanding of Sachs and the mature artistry he brought to the role must have been a rallying point for the diverse talents that had to come together in relatively short order. The voice itself may not be as refulgent as Morris or Weikel in their primes or as plush as Terfel's is now, but his clean, lean column of sound never waivered or lost character throughout a strenuous evening. Both monologues were sung and acted with deep feeling and he could light up the stage with a pure and generous Menschlichkeit. Despite his tall stature and lack of whiskers, he bore a passing resemblance to Wagner himself which added a subtle layer of authority to the cobbler's pronouncements on the interplay of music and poetry. The Saturday night audience roared its approval when he took his curtain call.

Having heard John Horton Murray in the past, I was prepared for an uneven performance as Walter. Act I with its two demanding solos must have been close to his "personal best," the voice strong and rich from top to bottom with a gorgeous legato flow to the music. By the final reiteration of the Prize song in Act 3 the voice grew husky and the pitch began to sag, but based on the majority of his work, indulgence should be given for overall achievement if not for stamina.

Two other "anchors" of the evening were Hans-Joachim Ketelsen as Beckmesser and Norbert Ernst as David. Both were well seasoned in their roles but familiarity never for a moment gave way to routine. Ernst looked the juvenile, but had enough heft in his voice to make you believe he would attain the rank of Meistersinger in his time. Unfortunately John Del Carlo's Kothner was audibly, if not visibly indisposed. Having seen him perform the part with honor in the past it would not be fair to judge him by his efforts in this performance other than to thank him for carrying on and not adding another "cancellation" to the list.

Twyla Robinson was a delightful surprise. My previous hearings of this voice involved inappropriate repertory - the soprano soloist in Verdi's Requiem, and Alice Ford in Falstaff. Despite those mis-steps she was a glorious Eva. The instrument is bright and forward which gives it dramatic thrust and it has a rapid vibrato which tempers those steely qualities with a warming glow. She managed to sound young and girlish while encompassing the intensity of “O Sachs! Mein Freund”. She then went on to deliver a serene and soaring contribution to the quintet. Despite a bulky frame she moved with complete freedom on stage erasing any barrier between singer and character.

John Keenan conducted with great sensitivity to his singers - at no point were the voices lost in the orchestral tide and the horns behaved beautifully - no disturbing "cracks" to take the listener out of the moment. The big choral pieces, augmented by voices from Cincinnati's famed May Festival Chorus proved that a "live" event can produce thrills impossible to capture even with the most sophisticated digital equipment.

Having seen Katarina's Meistersinger in Bayreuth I now approach this work with trepidation wondering if her idea of wheeling in a gurney piled with dirt during Beckmesser's "Prize Song" in Act 3 will catch on. As Beckmesser sings he begins clearing away the dirt and out pops a bald, naked man. There were reams of text in the program book explaining why Katarina finds things like this relevant. Cincinnati's director, Chris Alexander decided to eschew the verbiage and trust Wagner's ability to tell a story on its own terms.

Originally, the production was to be a new one set in Cincinnati's "Over the Rhine" district - a predominantly German neighborhood in the 19th century. Economics forced a cut back and the company ended up buying a traditional Schneider-Seimssen production from Düsseldorf. It was polished up and looked newly minted for the occasion.

The only tragedy here is that this finely honed group of artists had only two opportunities to perform together.

-Steve Charitan, Ohio

Reviews of the LA Ring...

2010-07-07T14:17:00.000-07:00

(From the LA Opera web site - uncredited)

Love it or hate it - and the opinions are well and truly divided - the LA Ring was an ambitious undertaking. Begun with great hope, it ran afoul of the down economy and languished. It was under-attended and ended up $6 million in the hole. Was it a great concept poorly explained and promoted or tragic hubris on the scale of a Greek epic?

Following are some members reports and observations:

( Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Opera / September 22, 2009)

From Michael Barna in Milwaukee:

Reflections on Los Angeles Opera’s Ring Cycle

The end of the world has come and with it a sense of renewal. And so it is with the completion of the Los Angeles Opera company’s complete Ring Cycle. Much speculation and discussion has occurred since the first installment of Das Rheingold was unveiled approximately two years ago with many taking an “either/ or” side on whether they like or abhorred Achim Freyer’s new production. As successive installments were revealed, the gulf between those that liked and those that disliked Freyer’s concept seemed to grow ever wider, culminating in a boycott by some ardent Wagnerians of LA’s production. While I suspect that LA Opera’s decision to elongate the cycle from the usual six days to nine prohibited many from attending, I feel safe in saying that many also chose not to attend due to the controversial staging of Freyer’s production.

It is clear, however, that Freyer has created a unique Ring that will not soon be forgotten. Much like the recent film, "Avatar", in which James Cameron and his staff created an entire new world that included human-like creatures, plants, and animals that transported the viewer into a place we had never experienced before, Freyer has done exactly the same thing in his version of the Ring. Characters are not what we expect them to look like, scenery is not what we expect it to be, and even the interaction between characters (or lack thereof) is not what we expect. But never-the-less, Freyer creates a strong symbolic visual language that is hard to erase from one’s memory even after a month, or more, has passed since viewing the production. One is certain that Freyer’s production will most certainly be remembered in years to come much in the same way the Patrice Chereau’s production is today; controversial at the time, but regarded as an important landmark in production history years later.

This is not to say that everything in Freyer’s production worked, or was easily digested. One certainly was challenged by this staging; nothing was to be taken for granted, nor easily dismissed. Rheingold was a steep learning curve. It was full of an immense amount of inventive and creative visual language, but often these symbols were not immediately understood. It was not until the other operas in the cycle were viewed that this visual language became more clear. Whimsical elements such as the magnifying lenses that enlarged Fasolt and Fafner’s faces, the rainbow colored accordion held by Froh, and Donner’s airplane were easily identifiable, but the parade of characters later in the opera, such as a king rolling a golden Ring, a top hatted, spotted dog, the Charlie Brown-like character who removed his large head, and the prostitute-like figure remained more elusive. And often, many characters were shown with doubles that performed actions while the singer/character often remained stationary. Some of this became clearer later in the cycle, but patience was needed to offset feelings of frustration early on.

Challenging as it may be, it is this abundance of characters and scenery that become more distracting as the cycle progressed. By the end of Act III of Die Walküre, the stage was so littered with props (the Valkyries’ horse/bicycle contraptions that eventually became the fire surrounding Brünnhilde), that it detracted from the poignancy of the scene between Wotan and Brünnhilde as she was about to sink into her prolonged sleep, and many of the scenes in Götterdämmerung seemed so crowded with singers, actors, and other scenic elements that one hardly knew where to focus one’s attention. This created a conflict that seemed at odds with Wagner’s concept of the “total work of art.” Throughout much of the cycle the harmony between visual and aural seemed out of balance and not in proportion to each other. In many ways the music seemed to take second place to the production itself.

By contrast, Freyer’s production seemed to work best when things were simplified. There was a graceful elegance to Act I, scene I of Die Walküre. The action, played on the face of a clock-like surface, seemed to move easily between present and past time as a silent, Lycra clad figure moved the arm of the clock forward and backwards as indicated by the story. The use of track lanes simply, and effectively, conveyed the ideas that everyone in Siegfried was trying to beat out the others in order to obtain the all-powerful Ring, and the prologue of Götterdämmerung was staged in a restrained manner that suggested the eternal cosmos as the Norns moved about the stage while geometric figures of circles and triangles floated around and above them. In all of these scenes, one was able to “relax” which allowed more time to concentrate on the music rather than the visuals.

Freyer’s world is unabashedly visual and theatrical. One only has to look at the costumes of Alberich, Siegfried, and Hagen, to name a few, to recognize the comic book influences, and the deliberately “low-tech” approach to some of the other scenic elements (e.g., Grane) to feel that perhaps Freyer is “dumbing down” of one of the greatest works of art. But Freyer forces us to view the characters and other elements in the Ring in a totally new and different way; a way in which we will never confuse his Ring with any another’s; a way in which our “traditional” view of the Ring is challenged. The scenery and costumes may not be “pretty” but then again, Freyer’s concept of Wagner’s world is not pretty either. It’s a dark world that is full of illusions, greed and evil; a dark world that is equally represented on stage as mainly a single illuminated circle in an otherwise all black environment.

As devotees of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, we are accustomed to the huge demands placed on the singers, instrumentalists and the audience in presenting such a monumental work. In turn, Freyer places no less of a demand on us while viewing his production. Whatever one felt about Freyer’s production, one can not dismiss the idea he had a clear vision about his work, and much time and thought went into presenting a unique Ring cycle that will not soon be forgotten. Perhaps this was the best possible Ring Cycle for Los Angeles. Los Angeles is hardly a city steeped in tradition; it is constantly revitalizing itself with new trends, fashions, and style, and Freyer’s Ring was as untraditional as the city itself. It will be of interest to see if and when Freyer’s Ring will be produced again.

From Kris March in Vallejo:

I was in L.A. for 10 long days (the performance schedule was maddening) for the 1st Ring cycle, and then attended the SF Walküre Sunday June 13; what a difference in tone and approach! The L.A. staging was so confusing and cluttered than I lost my way (this could be chalked up to my mental limitations, however). For example, Fricka suddenly shows up on stage during Siegfried....(well, we shouldn't see her after the end of Act II in DW) so I spent a great deal of mental time and energy trying to figure out what she's doing on stage, what it means, will she sing, etc., while missing part of the opera. There are dancer-Wotans, singer-Wotans and Wotans who just stand around like large puppets; I was confused as to who was what when. I'm sure the artistic vision is quite avant-garde, but Siegfried looked like Bozo the Clown to me (well, okay, he is a bozo, but still....). I must say that James Conlon did a very fine job with the orchestra (and with the pre-opera talks), and that singing from Linda Watson, Graham Clark (as Mime) and Placido (of course) was first-rate. It also bothered me that the singers didn't touch each other or show physical emotion (versus the SF Walküre which was very touchy-feely). I'll be curious to see what others think as I'm probably not a good judge of this type of visualization; it seemed so out-of-focus to me.

Bill Elkins in Long Beach writes:

I did see the LA production of the Ring Cycle twice and I must take issue with the principal thrust of the reviews concerning its visual aspects. I have attended traditional stagings of the Ring in Vienna and the Met and must say that I found this production to be superb. Conlon and the LA Opera orchestra was very good, the singing ranged from adequate to outstanding (Linda Watson), but the real joy here was the staging. I was mesmerized by the beautiful lighting, stage props replete with Jungian symbolism and the adept manipulation of color and light that made this ring cycle a much more intellectually stimulating experience while retaining fine singing and storytelling. The third and final cycle started Friday and it is a real shame that this production is not being filmed for DVD, because the visual elements of this production are really remarkable.

This production is not perfect, however, LA Opera made a big mistake spreading each cycle over 9 days, instead of the customary 6 days. This resulted in disappointing ticket sales. None of the 3 cycles was sold out, and cycle tickets had to be reduced significantly in an effort to bring more people in.

And David Marsten in Calistoga gets the last word:

The Ring in Los Angeles (their first ever!) had some striking imagery as one might expect from respected German artist Achim Freyer {who was designer, director, costume designer, and lighting director}.

The most effective touch was staging Siegfried as a kind of foot-race......with Siegfried himself a late entry ('running' against Alberich, Mime, and Wotan).

The Siegfried (John Trelevan) was inexhaustible vocally....but he also presented one of the strangest characterizations I have ever seen. This Siegfried was weird looking with odd hair - he looked like an escapee from a lunatic asylum. He was pathologically self-absorbed with utterly no interest in the motivation of others. One wonders why

Brünnhilde could conceivably take any interest in this monster (granted he is the result of an incestuous union)

Brünnhilde (Linda Watson) started Die Walküre with some pitch problems but soon found herself securely in the role. She was vocally vibrant throughout (although she and others in the cast complained about the steep rake of the stage). And Freyer had her endure some pretty strange stuff (i.e. the end of Siegfried more resembled the Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome).

Wotan (Vitalij Kowaljow) was a tremendously powerful Bass-Baritone - acted and sang with great potency, despite having to wear some rather silly costumes.

Graham Clark (Mime) and Richard Paul Fink (Alberich) have secured these roles in many halls and never disappoint. They managed to project their voices through clever full masks.

In Die Walküre Michelle DeYoung (who sang Fricka in Das Rheingold) graciously stepped in to sing Sieglinde while Ekaterina Semenchuk took over the role of Fricka masterfully.

The other outstanding vocal role was the Gunther (Alan Held) - sometimes a weaker voice is chosen to reflect his wimpy character.....but Held was heroic.

One especially fascinating touch was the depiction of Hagen (Eric Halverson) - he was personified as a dwarf, realized by Halverson carrying around a diminutive body like a ventriloquist's dummy, but using his own arms in the doll. Very cleverly devised and carried out, and hammering home the concept that Gunther's step-brother was fathered by a dwarf.

The final question might be made about the basic issue that has plagued this whole production. Granted when the company decided to launch the Ring, we were in better economic times.....but once launched, it was hard to stop. The figure of $34 million was spent on special effects (which one could argue did more to distract rather than instruct) and a less than expected sale of tickets could lead this company to a serious impasse.

I reflected that during this First Cycle, the Disney Corporation released a film "The Prince of Persia" to less than glowing reviews....and that film allegedly cost $200 million. Both the Los Angeles Opera and the Disney Corporation are in the entertainment business and both are taking great risks. I think General Director Placido Domingo should be praised for attempting this bold, striking and, at times, brilliant Ring. It does speak to our times.

And for more on the LA Ring...

Here's a YouTube video of an interview with Achim Freyer from 2009:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GjEZw8kNY0

And a pithy Ring article on Huffington Post by Ivan Katz:

How Do You Lose $5,960,000 on an Opera?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivan-katz-/how-do-you-lose-5960000-o_b_638092.html

Thanks to all who contributed. If anyone else has any comments or rebuttals, I'd love to post them. Send them to trish.wsnc@gmail.com or post them in the comments.

-Trish

Verna makes the news in China!

2010-07-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

The intrepid, indefatiguable Verna Parino, former president and founding member of WSNC, recipient of Opera Volunteers International "Partners in Excellence" award for 29 years as preview chairman of the San Francisco Opera Guild, inveterate opera traveler and Ring-attendee extraordinaire made the news in a major Chinese newspaper a few days ago after they caught wind of the fact that a 93-year old woman was traveling all the way from San Francisco to Shanghai in order to attend her 58th Ring. The letter from the friend who sent it explains the headline:

Dear Verna
Please see attached newpaper of Jun. 26 Saturday of Xinmin Evening News, which is the among the oldest and biggest evening newspapers in China. Hope you enjoy it.

The title is "93 years lady longing for 58th cycles of The Ring in Shanghai". The article is based on your interview in Email and adapted by a famous Shanghai reporter Mr. Yang Jianguo.
Have a nice day.
Pan

Addendum:

Verna forwards a rough translation of the article:

The music drama “Wagner’s rings” , co-sponsors by Xinmin News and City Dancing Co., will be on staged in September in the Shanghai Grand Theatre for eight performance. Once announced, audiences bought and booked tickets enthusiastically. An 92 years old lady, Ms. Verna Parino, who had booked 4 performances of the music-drama and proposed her wish to visit the World Expo aroused the curiosity of the reporter in Xinmin News. The reporter interviewed her through internet and got her 3 pages reply immediately.

Ms. Verna Parino said she has watched 57 cycles of the Ring in 30 cities in 18 countries and she is going to watch her 58 cycles of the music-drama in Shanghai. Ms. Parino lives in San Francisco and was a medical worker. In 1930’s she listened the Ring radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera and the first time to attend the performance was in 1973 in San Francisco . From that performance on, she has been fond of music drama , especially the Rings. Since then, she has became member of the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Symphony . Also , she joined the Wagner Society of Northern California and became its president for three years . After her husband passed away, she has acted as an art volunteer. Because she is so fond of the “Rings” , besides writing comments of the Rings, she enjoys collecting worldly researches or information relating to that music drama . In Ms. Verna Parino reply letter, she also shared with us her happiness and challenges in attending the cycles and collecting information of the music drama.

She said everytime she watched the performance, she will be inspired and got something new for her to comprehend. She mentioned this music drama tells about the beginnings of the world, inner conflicts of human beings and the struggling and fighting for worldly power. The story simulates the audiences to explore the meaning of existence of human beings. The reason for her pursuing to attend the performance is the gorgeous orchestral music pouring out the beautiful feeling of human beings and providing her to enjoy in an excited state . For her, she has addicted to watch the “Rings” and her life and the Rings have already fused together. When she was told that the Rings will be performed in Shanghai at a meeting of the Wagner Society , she immediately decided to watch her 58 cycles and visited Shanghai again. She visited Shanghai in 1982 with a tour group and attended a concert. She recalled during the intermission, some audiences gathered round and looked at the musical instruments and some attendees searching dictionary to communicate and chat with her in English . After that , I got a copy of the recording broadcast from Kurt Herbert Adler, the General Directo of San Francisco Opera . When she listened the records, she also can hear her applause and “Bravo”.

Shanghai is a sister city of San Francisco. These years, she really wants to visit Shanghai again and watching the Rings provides her a good reason to visit Shanghai again. Members of the Wagner Society told her it’s worth for her to visit the World Expo if she be there. Recently, she has watched news about the Expo in the internet and found it’s very attractive and wonderful. Ms. Parino said that her health is not bad and long distance flight will not be a problem for her but may be a problem for her to walk too much . So, she will bring a wheelchair and will arrive Shanghai two days early .

Finally, she hopes her visit in Shanghai will be a wonderful and happy journey and she is happily looking forward for that.

(Verna points out that she was not a medical worker, although she did work for a period in the business office of the Mayo Clinic.)

Mahler's Sesquicentennial

2010-07-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

Today is the 150th anniversary of Gustav Mahler's birth.

Here's a great caricature:

Mahler's conducting style, 1901, caricatured in the humorous magazine Fliegende Blätter

-from Wikipedia

Lieben Sie Brahms?

2010-06-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

In the '80s, I took a beginning German class at the Goethe-Institut in San Francisco. For real-life practice the teacher handed out little Langenscheidt "Sprach-illustrierte" mini-magazines containing short simple stories, news photos with descriptive captions, simple word games. And on the back of each issue were some cartoons. This one (from the April-June, 1986 issue) cracked me up; and a quarter of a century later, it still makes me laugh when I come across it in my bookcase.

Hopefully you will enjoy it, too! Even if you don't know much German, I think you'll get the jokes.

(There is no credit info in the magazine: The cartoon is signed "Augustin" and it's ©Verlag Horst Deike.)

(click on the image to enlarge it)

Rioting in the streets in Wagnerland!

2010-05-31T13:02:00.000-07:00

Well, ok, not quite spilling into the streets, but there were some serious protests and charges of anti-Semitism leveled on the steps of the Los Angeles Music Center for the opening of the Ring. They did the same thing in SF on opening night of the 1985 Ring. Banners, bullhorns, screeds. It was the Schiller Institute and they are a very angry group of people.

Here's the article on the LA Time's blog, Culture Monster (from which the above photo was borrowed):

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/05/las-ring-cycle-begins-with-protests-outside-mixed-reaction-inside.html

The LaRouche brown shirts are behind it. His followers are verrrry creepy and angry. The really bizarre thing is that altho' they rail against what they perceive as anti-Semitism in Wagner, they appear to be over-the-top-Jews-want-to-rule-the-world conspiracy freaks - or, at least, LaRouche himself seems to be. Weird, angry people.

This is not to ignore the question of Wagner's anti-semitism, to be sure. But rants and screeds solve nothing and the Schiller Institute seems to be unwilling to engage in honest back and forth discussion. I approached one of the bull-horners at the 1985 SFO Ring and asked him if they'd be interested in a debate with the Wagner Society and gave him my card. I promised him that we'd engage in a fair debate. I never heard back from him.

What's bizarre to me is the the Schiller Institute theoretically espouses peace, love and equality and yet in my experience, they strike me as very fascist in their tactics. They don't want an honest discussion; they just want to drown out any opinions that aren't their own. Perhaps they should join forces with the Tea Baggers.

Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth

2010-05-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

A fascinating review by Norman Lebrecht of a new book about Cosima. Would anyone care to read and review the book and support or refute what Mr Lebrecht says about it?

"Cosima Wagner made Bayreuth what it is today, a repository of great music, bad ideas and venomous family relations."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704635204575242262598768250.html?KEYWORDS=cosima

Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth

By Oliver Hilmes

(Yale, 366 pages, $40

18th of April

2010-04-18T16:28:00.001-07:00

Happy April 18th!

For fans of American history and Longfellow, this date commemorates Paul Revere's ride.

And for those of us in the San Francisco area, it's also the 104th anniversary of the big earthquake and fire. What's amazing to me is that Longfellow's "hardly a man is now alive" is still true in SF. Several survivors of the '06 Quake remain alive and one of them attended the annual commemoration at Lotta's Fountain at 5:12 am.

What makes this date opera relevant is that Enrico Caruso and the great Wagnerian & Straussian soprano Olive Fremstad had just sung Carmen at the Grand Opera House on Mission Street the preceding evening; it was part of the traveling season of the Metropolitan Opera. Described as "the most exciting cultural event of the season", things got even more exciting when the roof of the opera house collapsed a few hours after their triumph.

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/earthquakeandfire/exhibit/room01_item01.html

Caruso's personal account of his experience, along with his sketches can be found at

http://www.sfmuseum.org/1906/ew19.html

Caruso vowed never to return to SF, and he never did. Who can blame him? Does anyone know if Fremstad returned?

I plan to celebrate by watching the 1936 MGM classic, "San Francisco" starring the wonderful Jeanette MacDonald as a cabaret and opera singer in love with tough-guy-with-a-heart, Clark Gable. It was my entrée to opera as a 10-yr old... :o)

Review: Opera in Cinema's 2008 Valencia Siegfried

2010-03-11T19:11:00.000-08:00

From the Opera in Cinema website:

"In the words of the prestigious German weekly "Die Zeit," the stage production of Wagner's "Rheingold" and "Walküre" by La Fura dels Baus "quite possibly shows us the path that musical theater will be taking in the future." There's no doubt about it: the city of Valencia is setting new accents in 21^st-century opera not only with its spectacular new theater designed by Santiago Calatrava, but also with its visually transfixing production of Wagner's "Ring" staged by Carlos Padrissa and his theater group La Fura dels Baus. The Barcelona-based Fura blends music, dance, acrobatics and technology into unforgettable stage events of sometimes raw but always captivating power."

Siegfried Visits Beaubourg

or Verfremdungseffekt vs. Gesamtkunstwerk

Larry and I were able to see the 2008 Valencia Siegfried during a recent screening of Opera in Cinema's season last weekend (2/14) in Cleveland. I left the theater less than overwhelmed, but further reflection has led to some insights -- and greater appreciation -- for what the director (Carlus Padrissa) may have attempted. Not having seen this cycle's Rheingold or Walküre is a distinct disadvantage in trying to figure out a meaningful arc to the Valencia Ring, but any one opera in the tetralogy should be able to stand alone well enough to stand at all. So, let's blame the initial confusion on the cinematography (for now).

The cast was universally strong -- particularly Lance Ryan (Siegfried), Juha Uusitalo (Wanderer), and Stephen Milling (Fafner). Franz-Josef Kappellmann (Alberich) and Jennifer Wilson (Brünnhilde) were also effective. Gerhard Siegel's Mime, however, may provide the key to the production -- less the buffoon than is often the case and genuinely overwhelmed and frustrated by his task. But, it was Siegfried's night, and Lance Ryan was superb, looking as though he could manage another hour or so by the time he had seduced Brünnhilde.

On face value, the production, however, just did not come across as anything but a mess -- at least the way it was filmed. Much of the "action" took place on huge, multiple, and very busy projections against a rear screen which was very close to the actors. This placement compressed the very broad "stage" into a very shallow space on which to act. A highly polished black floor surface reflected the backdrop screening, increasing the motion enveloping the singers. Dancers doubled as stage hands who moved the sets around, became props (a bench for Siegfried, forest debris), and in act one even mopped the floor.

In pure Brechtian terms, the mechanics of production were all visible and became part of the performance -- from Fafner's hydraulics linking a skin of movable triangular plates; Erda's "cherry picker" seat thrust out from a crack in the filmed earth; a recreation of the Giant machines, one controlled by the Wanderer; Wotan's spear with its clearly visible break-away mechanism; projection screens opening to reveal reverse-side framework; a mobile forest of hinged, highly-polished chrome boxes. These mobiles ended in small round platforms on which Wotan and Alberich confronted each other, rising and falling, swaying side to side as light and dark vied for command of the argument. The skeleton structure is no longer invisible but takes center stage.

The design concept is similar to those employed by Renzo Piano et. al. for the Pompidou Center (Paris, 1977) where all the structural elements are not only fully exposed but also color-coded to indicate the various mechanical systems normally hidden behind interior walls. Padrissa's conception strips away all artifice, exposing the power struggles residing at the heart of the Ring story. It is also primarily a struggle for the right to tell a story that is larger than any single, unified vision of truth.

The filming, however -- with its heavy emphasis on close-up shots -- undercut much (dare I say "most"?) of the overall effect one would have had in the theater where the audience could experience the entire project as a whole. The close ups significantly reduced the perception of the singer/actors overwhelmed by the activities swirling around them, a key component of the production. On stage, the singers would have appeared as only one aspect of the theatrical presentation rather than the center where tradition -- and the filming -- placed them. On the other hand, one might safely claim that the act of cinematic montage further fragmented what Brecht might have called the constructed reality of the work itself and, consequently, enhanced the defamiliarization effect on the audience. In terms Penn and Teller would appreciate (and thanks to Larry's analogy), Padrissa and his creative team created a new illusion by stripping away all illusion.

Even the costumes support a re-reading of the characters. Siegfried is no untutored adolescent but a primitive wild man -- complete with leather and fur skins -- confused by an alien world.Mime, in white lab coat, is more a chemist (alchemist) than a mechanic overwhelmed by his need to create the impossible -- carbuncle clusters showing his laboratory experiments to have physically attacked him. The act one "dancers" -- fully protected by masks, gloves, and foot covers -- function like a haz-mat cleaning crew having to cope with modernism gone wild.Other costuming decisions directly confront expectations. If you want a real bird, then I'll give you a bird -- complete with flapping wings -- but one that is heavily strapped into her very visible flying harness. You want a traditional breast plate for Brünnhilde, then I'll give Jennifer Wilson a breast plate -- but one fit for Natalie Dessay. In a complete reversal, it is Siegfried who strips away his clothes to reveal a very virile young man. Fortunately, Brünnhilde gets rid of her confining breast plate, but only to reveal an aging woman who remains bound in a corset of bulky straps like those used at an electrocution or in a straight jacket.

I now believe -- and am more than ready to test my theory in Valencia -- that the Valencia Ringis a deliberate confrontation between modernist realism and the illusion of romantic wholeness. Brecht's theories of theater face down those of Wagner. Throughout this performance, a new, stark realism contends with previously accepted -- and still anticipated -- familiarity. The familiar "realism" of the theater is challenged and stripped away, leaving only Wagner's music as the central "reality." If, like the Wanderer and Albrecht, the conflicting theories contend for supremacy, which wins depends on the degree of alienation experienced by the viewer.

When we left the movie, I felt I learned nothing new about Siegfried from this production -- and learning something is a key element of any new experience for me. But, like the LehnhoffParisfal which initially left me angry, the Valencia Siegfried has haunted me all week. What WAS Carlus Padrissa thinking? What new was he trying to say about Siegfried, about the Ring?If we grant that Padrissa -- or Achim Freyer in LA or Francesca Zambello in SF -- is an artistwith something significant to say, then it is incumbent upon me as a viewer to work with that new idea toward understanding and, only then, judge its success or failure on its own terms rather than on a 19th century theory which can no longer claim to be the final "truth."Unfortunately, I have no idea how the initially illusive signals were developed from Rheingoldthrough Walküre to Siegfried, and I don't know how they will be resolved inGötterdämmerung. But, I am willing to bet that what left me pondering in the Cedar Lee Theater will leave me overwhelmed in the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia.

Sandra Molyneaux -- from snowy Columbus, OH

February 17, 2010

http://www.operaincinema.com/

And here are a few photos from Rheingold and Walküre:

Deutsche Oper Berlin reviews - Part Zwei

2010-03-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

Here are the rest of the Berlin reviews. Please note

that the reviewers submitted their opinions in the

form of complete essays, and I extracted paragraphs

pertaining to individual operas for compare-and-contrast

purposes. So if anything seems stilted or out of context,

that's my fault and not the reviewers'.

Lohengrin

Jean Scarr:

I was in Berlin February 5-6-7 for the Wagner Festival at the Deutsche Oper. I saw Die Meistersinger, Lohengrin and Rienzi. The casting was strong throughout. Of particular note was the superb chorus, which serves as a vital ingredient in all three works and especially in Lohengrin and Rienzi.

The twenty-year old Götz Friedrich production was pleasure to see after dealing with Robert Wilson’s Met performances a few years ago. Recently, I was in Houston for their production, which takes place in a ruined library during the 1930's. There may have been no physical swan in Berlin, but its presence was there, especially in the first scene of Act III - a bed and floor runner covered with swan feathers and a huge circular picture of a swan in the background. I would classify the production as traditional with an aura of abstraction hovering about. It will be scrapped after this run. Conducted by Michael Schenwandt and strongly cast (Ben Heppner, Ricarda Merbeth, Waltraud Meier, Eike Wilm Schulte, Anton Keremidtchiev, and Hans-Peter König), this was a musically magical evening.

Terry Quinn:

This was one of the best Lohengrin productions I have seen in a long time, maybe ever. It was beautifully staged with no guessing games on the meanings behind the visual analogies. This 20-year old Götz Friedrich production was a straightforward piece of storytelling with no "improvements’" to what Wagner wanted to say and with beautiful sets and some nice directorial touches. There were two standouts for me. Waltraud Meier as Ortrud, a role that she now owns, and the Deutsche Oper chorus who approached Bayreuth quality with great beauty in the soft passages and spine-tingling glory in the climaxes.

Elsa was sung very well by Ricarda Merbeth, a new name to me, and Ben Heppner was an excellent Lohengrin. They deserved better recognition but were eclipsed by the amazing Meier who is not only a top drawer singer, but a brilliant actress and a master of the evil look.

Terri Stuart:

I can't agree with the others about Heppner's performance. I was in the 1st Rang dead center and Ben gave the most careful, effortful performances I've ever sat through. I was a nervous wreck at the end. The voice was often at the edge of breaking but he'd rein it in. I've seen him a number of times and even twice in recital and gone was the full sound and open voice. Eike Wilm Schulte was about the least effective Telramund I've ever watched the singing just so-so. The costume did him no favors, tight leather pants and an open to the navel black shirt. The women were a triumph - Ricarda Merbeth and the luminous Waltraud Meier. Also noted Kristin Sigmundsson (whom I adore) was indisposed and was replaced by the always wonderful Hans Peter Konig.

* * *

Meistersinger

Terri Stuart:

I am also back from Berlin and while there met up with two other WSNC members. I have to state my own opinion because I differ in my opinions about the works we all saw - 3 were the same performances.

I saw Tannhäuser (last 2 acts), Dutchman, Lohengrin, Meistersinger and Rienzi.

First - the two Götz Friedrich productions (Meistersinger and Lohengrin) are the last death rattle of those productions. Good. While I love that Meistersinger on DVD, much of the kitsch and excess was removed for filming. In real time the Meadow Scene was so cluttered and there were enough supers on stage waving banners to create gale winds. The fire juggler nearly incinerated the wig of a super. It was pretty much the same for the Lohengrin. Moths and dust flew all over! Chorus - excellent and on par with the chorus in Bayreuth - possibly they share some of the singers.

Jean Scarr:

Götz Friedrich's Die Meistersinger was the Friday night opus. Again, we have a sane approach to this masterpiece, which is framed by the skyline of Nuremberg, but with the WWII bombed out Nuremberg in the background. (The production is on DVD). James Johnson headed the cast as Sachs. His was a credible portrayal - a youngish looking cobbler who managed to survive the rigors and demands of this role. His second act was truly remarkable, especially during the scene with Beckmesser (Markus Brück). Herr Brück was a marvel with an especially endearing voice for this role. After all, he was a mastersinger! Klaus Florian Vogt sang Walter with clarion voice, seemingly tireless as he progressed through all those "Prize Song" refrains. The Eva of Michaela Kaune; the Magdalena of Ulrike Hetzel; and the David of Paul Kaufmann were all stellar. Donald Runnicles conducted, but unfortunately some of the audience greeted him with boos. Why, I don't know.

* * *

Dutchman

Terry Quinn:

There was no ship, the action took place in what looked like a stock exchange. There were two Sentas, only one of whom sang and not all that well, especially at the beginning. Instead of sewing machines the women combed and recombed their hair. Senta cuts Eric’s throat and then her own. The knife was then passed down the line and as the curtain fell the chorus were taking it in turns to use the knife on themselves. This triggered sustained booing from all parts of the house. I for one did not disagree. Enough said.

As we commented on leaving our third Wagner opera of the week, two out of three ain’t bad.

Terri Stuart:

The Flying Dutchman was extremely well sung but the production was just a disaster, in my view. It opened in a commodities trading floor, segued to a theatre back-stage make-up room (I guess the spinning meant rolling up hair on curling irons?) and the finale was a mass-suicide zombie cocktail party with Senta stabbing Erik with scissors, slashing her throat, and handing the scissors to the rest of the women who sequentially slashed their throats as the Dutchman walked away. All of this to the revised redemptive ending - harps plucking away. For whatever reason they stinted on the off-stage chorus for the ghost sailors and they were barely audible. UGH

* * *

Tannhäuser

Terri Stuart:

My train was delayed and so I missed the 1st Act of Tannhäuser so I can't speak to the dramatic arc, but what I saw was pretty good. I couldn't work out the Elizabeth/Venus reincarnation - but not having seen Act 1, I won't discount what the director did. Stephen Gould continues to amaze for his stamina combined with technique that results in glorious singing. It is so wonderful to hear a lieder singer in the role of Wolfram and Dietrich Henschel delivered the goods. Petra Maria Schnitzer was the Elizabeth/Venus - I'm not a fan but apparently she is highly regarded in Berlin. I loved the cold hard, shining but hollow suits of armor which created the basis of this production.

Terry Quinn:

We are now 3 and 1 and, for a while anyway, Eurotrash is taking a back seat. This was an excellent production with no weird gimmicks but imaginative use of the Deutsche Oper’s stage technology. The first two acts were performed on an essentially empty stage with plain drapes at the sides and back. The visual magic was in the extensive use of flying techniques and the multi-level stage lifts. The stage frequently dropped out of sight of those of us in the orchestra seats to reappear populated with Bacchanalian dancers, noblemen and women, Landgraf Herrmann and his knights on horses wheeled around by attendants, and, of course, pilgrims. The flying figures were mostly the Langraf’s knights and the departing demons when Tannhäuser decides to abandon Venus. When the final scene rises into view the stage is filled with hospital beds occupied by pilgrims, presumably recovering from their journey from Rome.

American tenor Stephen Gould sang the title role, Nadja Michael had a powerful voice for one so slim. (I wonder if she will ever manage Brünnhilde?) Reinhard Hagen was convincing as the Landgraf and Dietrich Henschel was Wolfram von Eschenbach. His more lyric tenor voice contrasted well with the other lead singers. Was it his voice or the well acted, tender sympathy shown to the dying Elizabeth that made me more sympathetic to Wolfram than to Tannhäuser?

Once again, the chorus was a standout for me. In place of the more usual off-stage introduction of the Pilgrim’s Chorus, the singers sang or so softly while lying on their beds. But when they sat up for the final chorus, the stepped stage resulted in an amazing wall of sound hitting the audience.

Director Kirsten Harms created a Tannhäuser without irrelevant creativity yet was satisfying to the ear, eye and intellect. I hope that he will take aside his colleague who directed the weird Dutchman and tell her, ‘Now look here, Tatjana…’

Thanks to all the reviewers. It's always fun to see how much folks can disagree on a production!
Stay tuned for Sandra's review of the high-def broadcast of the 2008 Valencia Siegfried.

Deutsche Oper Berlin reviews - Part 1

2010-03-04T11:27:00.000-08:00

Several stalwart WSNC members bundled up and braved the frigid Baltic temperatures last month to attend Deutsche Oper Berlin's big Wagner fest: WAGNER-WOCHEN — A WINTER FESTIVAL OF WAGNER. With January-February productions of Rienzi, Lohengrin, Holländer, Tannhäuser, and Meistersinger, it culminates in April with two RING Cycles. Here are some reviews of the productions. As I said in the February E-Notes, diversity of opinion abounds!

First, let's start with the 500 lb. gorilla in the room:

RIENZI

Production photos credit: Bettina Stöß, 2010

From Jean Scarr in Ohio:

February 7

This was my first live Rienzi. I hated the concept, but loved the music. Sebastian Lang-Lessing conducted; Philipp Stötzl was the stage director. Wagner’s score was cut to 160 minutes, performed in two acts. According to the director, they did not cut any of the tenor's music. The cast was once again very strong with Torsten Kerl managing to excite and to conquer the role as the 14th century Tribune, Rienzi. His sister, Irene, was sung by Camilla Nylund, but her character was destroyed in the concept. Also, Wagner does not give her a starring role. Miss Nylund, a beautiful woman, did the best she could under the circumstances. Not only was she an aggressor in the incestuous relationship with her brother, but she basically was a common slut. The real star was Kate Aldrich as Adriano (Irene's lover) - a trouser role. Miss Aldrich has a commanding and powerful voice. Hopefully, the operatic world can hear much more from her.

Scenically, we watched a replay of German history from the end of WWI thru to the conclusion of WWII - the decadent Weimar Republic era to the rise of Hitler and his eventual demise. It was an eerie reminder of what can happen to a society when a charismatic leader can control the populace. The text was about Rome, but the visual was of Hitler's mountain retreat, Albert Speer's architecture, and the final days in Hitler's bunker. There was a Rienzi salute; a Rienzi flag (a big R); a citizenry of uniformed men and women, marching to the beat of Wagner's music. Adolf Hitler apparently loved this opera. During the overture we see "him" (Rienzi) at his mountain retreat looking out at the Alps. He is seen conducting; doing handstands and cartwheels and gyrating to the music. (It was performed by a super - not the tenor.) I enjoyed all the music from this Rienzi, but I would have preferred that it had been set in Rome, where it belongs.

* * *

From Terry Quinn in the UK:

10 February

Most Wagnerians remember their first Wagner opera and sometimes envy the journey of discovery facing those attending their first production. For most of those present in Berlin in February, this was an opportunity to see Rienzi for the first time but to be honest, we did not expect much because we knew that the original was very, very long and apart from the overture, much of the music was unmemorable. However, most of us were pleasantly surprised.

The production qualities were very high with imaginative, well thought out sets and a cast that sang and acted very well. Rienzi, sung by Torsten Kerl, was portrayed as somewhat eccentric at the beginning and a progressively nuttier failed leader as the climax approached. The curtains opened at the beginning of the overture and a hyperactive Rienzi strode, cartwheeled and lay on his desk while he played at conducting the orchestra.

Some of us were distinctly uncomfortable with the director’s thinly disguised Nazi theme with Rienzi’s supporters wearing uniforms and waving banners carrying a stylised K. This was probably the cause of some isolated booing at the end of both the first and second acts.

The story is long and complicated and some of us had failed to find an English libretto before making the trip. I found it impossible to resist the urge to look up at the supertitles for help but found none because they were in German only. However, they did serve one useful purpose, they helped to identify the main characters.

The second act used an effective split-screen technique. On the upper stage, a large rebellious crowd overcame Rienzi’s forces while below, Rienzi and his sister Irene (Camilla Nylund) were surrounded by smartly uniformed officers poring over campaign maps. Again, the connection with an earlier failed leader in his bunker was uncomfortable.

The standout singer in this production was American Kate Aldrich who sang the male role of Adriano. She was warmly applauded by the predominantly German audience who even interrupted the flow by applauding two of her major ‘arias.’ Once again, the Deutsche Oper chorus led by Washington DC born William Spaulding were outstanding and it was nice to see the principals insist on the chorus stepping forward with them for the final curtain calls.

Now we know why Rienzi is so rarely performed. Interminable recitative with very little memorable music. Fortunately the original five acts have been drastically cut and this new Deutsche Oper production was presented in two acts but the long sequences of recitative, chord, recitative, chord, became wearying. I have no wish to see Rienzi again but I am glad I was there. After 50 years of being a Wagner nut, it was a novel experience.

* * *

From Terri Stuart in CA:

I just loved Rienzi. Having seen a fuller, but still cut version in Leipzig with Stephan Vinke in the lead, I'm all for the cuts. The role of Rienzi is simply punishment for a tenor. The cuts also served to tighten the action. I thought it was riveting in Part 1 and also Part 2. If I want to see an "Animal House" toga party - I'll rent the DVD. Adriano was turned into the hero who finally got the cojones to take action against the inept leadership of Rienzi - a puppet Facist dictator. I loved that the final scene split into the reality of the people Rienzi urges to "be free" above and the bunker below, from which Rienzi made his freedom pronouncements. The use of stage cameras to project faux live newsreel footage of Rienzi was just brilliant. Torsten Kerl must have sat watching old silent films to make some of those grimaces. From the bunker - Irene served as a Leni Riefenstahl filming her brother as the messages were transmitted to the square above. And while maybe the historic Rienzi was stabbed thousands of times by an angry mob, this Rienzi was bludgeoned to death (in Leipzig they were stoned) and Irene was done in by jack booted soldiers' rifle butts. Kate Aldrich, Camilla Nylund and Torsten Kerl were all fantastic in their roles - Aldrich clearly the audience favorite.

There was a lot of disagreement about the ending and I concluded that the facist overlay worked, except at the end. Wagner's Rienzi was weak, vain and inept. He had no message and provided no leadership. The Facists who were used as the outline for the production absolutely did have their own insane ideas and were disasterously effective in carrying them out. So it didn't quite fit but it was still riveting theatre. I'm glad that this will be released on DVD.

* * *

And from Stephen Charitan in Ohio:

Heil Rienzi! or Springtime for Rienzi

I have always been curious about Rienzi even more so after experiencing a very stage worthy production of Das Liebesverbot a few summers ago in Cooperstown. First and foremost, any opera by a composer of Wagner's stature is worth attention, but I was also drawn by the three excerpts that occasionally cropped up - that magnificent overture, Rienzi's prayer, and Adriano's "Gerechter Gott" sung by the likes of Schumann-Heink or Frida Leider. I finally satisfied that curiosity through a rare performance of the work at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. More of the production later, but witnessed live with a strong chorus, an intense Adriano, and a clarion Rienzi it made for a thrilling, visceral evening of music theatre. Much of the choral writing matches the swagger of the overture, and very stirring it all is. Having heard the Deutsche Oper chorus in Lohengrin and Meistersinger the two days before, here they outdid themselves. Perhaps it was the excitement and newness of music seldom performed, spiced by that aforementioned swagger but the group came together as a "character" in the drama, just as important as any of the protagonists. Some of the choruses foreshadow what was to come in Tannhäuser and Lohengrin in their otherworldly, ethereal beauty - the chorus of Peace Envoy's from Act 1 stays in the mind. The most fully developed character in the opera and the one that leaves the theatre with you is Adriano, torn between his family ties to a corrupt nobility and his conscience which leads him to trust Rienzi as hero and savior of the people. There is more than a little of Sesto from La Clemenza di Tito in his self struggle and, like Sesto, it is a meaty role for the right mezzo. In bygone days, I could have easily envisioned the late, great Tatiana Troyanos in the part, but young Kate Aldrich seized her moment and exposed the heart of this character with her rich, large scale voice, almost out of proportion to her small stature. She captured the audience from the start and won the biggest ovation of the evening. As Rienzi, Torsten Kerl had the heft and thrust to serve the public face of the character which is the one most on display throughout the opera. He lacked the poetry and beauty of tone for the famous prayer which went for very little vocally. He also wasn't helped by the concept which reached a dead end when it came to staging this critical, self revealing moment for the title character. Irene, Rienzi's sister, is one of Wagner's least developed characters. She has no major solo scene and seems to exist only to "duet" with Adriano or Rienzi or fill out the top line in ensembles. She does have some wicked coloratura in her final duet with Rienzi that caused the otherwise lovely Camilla Nylund to shake and muddle through as best she could.

When I read the advance write up on this new production I had a pretty good idea that there would be allusions made to Rienzi as a fascist demagogue. What I was not prepared for was a full scale operatic biography of Adolf Hitler shoehorned into Wagner's music and libretto. Some of it was very clever and I must admit I could not take my eyes off the stage for a minute. When the curtain rose at the start of the overture we were in a unit set that looked like one of the audience chambers in Albert Speer's new Reich Chancellery. At the back of the stage was a large picture window looking out over snow covered mountain tops - the Berghof perhaps? Sitting at a large desk with his back to the audience was a uniformed figure whose hand lazily started to "conduct" the overture along with the maestro - wasn't "Rienzi" one of Hitler's favorite works in the Wagner canon? As the music builds the uniformed figure begins to dance, pirouette, and then do multiple cartwheels across the stage - not as subtle as Charlie Chaplin's Adenoid Hinkel doing a pas de deux with the globe, but a reasonable facsimile thereof. Incidentally this was not Torsten Kerl, but a dancer plumped up to resemble the singer.

At the end of the overture sets fly in looking like the "modern" city seen in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis". It is this Weimar world with the chorus dressed like George Grosz characters that Rienzi and his black leather coated SS men come to change. During one of Wagner's most rousing choruses the people show their acceptance of the Fuehrer by shedding their colorful individual eccentricities and donning black and white uniforms emblazoned with the letter "R." Whether supported by music or libretto it was nonetheless a brilliant "coup de theatre" and made director Philipp Stölzl's point in one sharp stroke. All in all I would say the first act was both provocative and successful from a production standpoint. In Act 2 (5 Acts compressed to 2) "The Concept" started taking on water. At curtain rise the stage is split with the top being a war torn city and the area below a concrete bunker hung with military maps. The bunker also contains architectural models of an "ideal" city including a large dome like structure looking suspiciously like the one Hitler planned to erect in his New Berlin. When Rienzi makes his appearance in the Bunker he is seen hunched over and walking with a cane. His other hand is held behind his back shaking with palsy. This sort of attention to biographical literalness leads you to expect that the director will continue to find direct parallels between Hitler's life and Rienzi's life as the opera works to its conclusion. One of his biggest stumbling blocks comes in the famous prayer. If you look at the words alone Rienzi's hubris is fairly evident - he credits the deity with endowing him with exceptional powers - a divine right to rule. However, there is no guile, pride, or cynicism that I can hear in the sublime music accompanying those words. In this production Rienzi begins to toy with those architectural models as he sings to his "Almighty Father" upending the buildings and piling them on top of one another helter skelter as if playing a capricious god himself. Perhaps the young Wagner thought his Rienzi a noble character after all if the music is to be trusted. The question for director Stölzl is how do you find a side to Hitler that would justify such spiritually uplifting music at such a critical moment in the character's musical development? Of course he couldn't and chose to play for irony, ultimately sacrificing Wagner's sound world for a bit of clever business to fit the concept. At the end of the opera, Rienzi does not take his own life in the Bunker but is killed by the mob - again a jarring note given Stölzl's fascination with literal detail. I hope to see the opera Rienzi again, in fact I will seek it out. I would enjoy hearing this cast again, particularly Ms. Aldrich who I believe is a talent to watch. The "tricks" in this production are all pretty much on the surface and though I was engaged in piecing them all together in the moment, I've done that now and don't think it would gain much by repetition.

Thanks to the reviewers for their insights on this seldom-seen opera. I'm happy to know that it will be out on DVD for those of us who missed it. Love it or hate it, it looks provocative!

The reviews of the other four operas will be in the next posting. For more dazzling photos of the productions, visit the DOB web site: http://deutscheoperberlin.de/