Thursday September 23, 2010 - Just a few notes about the Met's new RHEINGOLD which I saw at the dress rehearsal. Musically, it's an A+ RHEINGOLD with Maestro James Levine seemingly choosing a somewhat faster pace than in his most recent traversals of the score. Wonderful orchestral detail.
Among the many vocal pleasures today, the Loge of Richard Croft ranks high as the most beautifully sung interpretation of that music I can recall ever hearing. His wonderfully clear and plaintive sound fell so melodiously on the ear. Bravissimo! Bryn Terfel's Wotan alternated thunderbolts of tone with lieder-like intimacy - I really enjoyed listening to him - and Eric Owens sang with power and cutting dramatic edge as Alberich. Stephanie Blythe's strongly sung but expressively colourless Fricka made me long for the dynamic and verbal detail such artists as Helga Dernesch, Christa Ludwig and Yvonne Naef have brought to this role at the Met. Grandly sung giants: Hans-Peter Konig and Franz-Josef Siegel. Patricia Bardon, looking a bit like Lady Gaga, sounded fine as Erda and Wendy Bryn Harmer's powerful vocalism as Freia made me wish she was singing Brunnhilde. Kudos to Dwayne Croft (Donner) for rushing up onto the steeply raked platform to summon the lightning bolts with his authoritative "Heda! Hedo!"; his striking vocalism was superbly abbetted by the Met's horns. Adam Diegel made a good impression as Froh and Gerhard Siegel compensated for missing out as Mime last season (due to ill health) with a finely-wrought vocal characterization today. Lastly (firstly, really) Lisette Oropesa, Jennifer Johnson and Tamara Mumford were the vocally attractive and verbally nuanced Rhinemaidens. They were called on for risky flying, some acrobatics and some nice balletic gestures and they dove in - so to speak - with good-natured compliance. There was something a bit ominous about their dark, long fins.
The Robert Lepage production is neither here nor there. Two outstanding 'pictures' linger in the mind: the opening with the mermaid-Rhine daughters drifting up thru the blue depths of the Rhine to perch high above the stage floor for their teasing of Alberich...
...and (above, in Richard Termine's photo) the beautifully evocative walk high above the stage of Wotan and Loge as they head to Nibelheim (an effect dampened, however, by their visible fly-wires). Once in Nibelheim the braziers and billowing smoke are most effective. Excellent screaming from Alberich's hapless gang of slaves.
During much of the afternoon, the singers in rather drab costumes - Ms. Blythe looking especially frumpy in mossy green - simply stand in front of grey walls on grey floors and sing. The characterizations are standard and generalized and there is no galvanizing moment, no memorable stroke of drama.
Among the production's oddities were the first entries of Freia, Donner and Froh (acting doubles, I believe) who slide down a steep ramp head-first - pointlessly. Freia is made to look like Minnie in LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST; when it is time for the gold to be measured out in Freia's dimensions, poor Miss Harmer had to lay in a fussily-arranged hammock while cheap fake-gold armory was heaped upon her. Then she had to sit up to listen to Erda's warning and then lay back down in her hammock til Wotan paid the full price for her release.
I expected fantastical effects for Alberich's transformations into dragon and toad but the dragon was just a huge skeleton shoved out by visible stagehands. The stuffed frog was a droll touch and he was caught by Loge and tossed into a nearby pot and the lid hastily put on. That was pretty amusing.
Apparently a mechanical malfunction caused the finale to look very lame and empty: the gods are reportedly supposed to be seen scaling the wall and heading for Valhalla, but this all went awry. Ms. Blythe, heading down below the set where a double would supposedly take over for the climb, seemed to get stuck between the set's two panels. Her upper body remained visible; the lights went down but she did not move. Then as the grandiose music depicting the entry of the gods into Valhalla thundered from the pit, nothing happened onstage. Panels of rainbow colours flowed across at the back of the set but there was no Valhalla and no gods, neither singers nor doubles.
Even if the ending gets fixed, which it must if the production is to have any kind of meaning, the overall impression is of a rather dull staging - a dutiful telling of the story without the expected visual dazzle. For all the stand-and-deliver vocalism I thought a plain old Bayreuth-style disc could have been used as a setting, saving the Met a bundle.
There were only a handful of spectators at the rehearsal. Before it started, I was enjoying the sound of the Met's trumpeters warming up with their Wagnerian fanfares and I realized that the lady sitting next to me was none other than Diana Soviero - one of my all-time favorite Violettas and Butterflies. We had a nice chat.