Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NY; January 31, 2012
The final installment in Robert Lepage’s $16 – $20 million Ring Cycle at the Met finally arrived – a “Götterdämmerung” that simply continued telling the long story, without any subtext, deep meaning or new insights. Not that those values are always required: the Met’s last Cycle, directed by Otto Schenk and designed by Günther Schneider-Siemssen was absolutely straightforward and it was pretty and natural-looking, following Wagner’s stage directions. But with the 45 tons of creaking scenery and 21st century projections and the twirling planks and three-dimensional running rivers and walls of fire and forests that moved, somehow, audiences were expecting more this time. Alas, you get what you see.
And alas, after an impressive-looking “Siegfried”, “Götterdämmerung” was pretty dull. The good news is that all of the machinery worked properly, it was not too noisy, and no-one was injured. With most of the action at the front of the stage, the voices projected into the auditorium well. The Norn Scene, with huge, long threads raveling and unraveling, was interesting; the Gibichung Hall was not: the 24 planks formed a wall in front of which was a dining table that disappeared into the ground to make room for the Vassals. The Rhine Maidens cavorted against a backdrop of moving water – nice, but no grand event. Grane was a life-size mechanical horse (on wheels) that Brünnhilde mounted to ride to the wall of flame that was Siegfried’s pyre. It was fun to look at. At the final conflagration, the heads of the four huge statues of “gods” that had been added to the Gibichung Hall exploded and fell off. Some in the audience laughed – not the most welcome reaction at such a moment. What an anti-climax!
The new Siegfried was Stephen Gould, singing his only performance in the part at the Met this year. His strange career began as a Rossini tenor, followed by eight years in the touring company of “Phantom of the Opera”, after which he returned as a Heldentenor. His Siegfried at Bayreuth a couple of years ago was not very well received. Now he is a clumsy man with a big, clumsy voice. He makes the occasional imposing sound, but sings utterly without legato or any sense of line. But he never tires and is always audible. If this seems like faint praise, it is. The pleasant surprise was Deborah Voigt’s Brünnhilde. She was mediocre in “Walküre” and genuinely bad in “Siegfried”; one feared for her in this part of the Ring. In fact she sang remarkably, the voice full and grand (no, not Flagstad- or Nilsson-like, but “grand” by her own standards), the high notes in place, the anger in act two pointed and exciting, and the Immolation Scene near-majestic. Brava, finally.
The singing of the rest of the cast was world-class. Hans-Peter König was a huge-voiced, nasty Hagen, Eric Owens a snarling, vile Alberich and Waltraud Meier a glorious (and beautiful) Waltraute. Iain Patterson and Wendy Bryn-Harmer as Gunther and Gutrune,respectively, turned these thankless roles into real characters, with expressive, handsome singing. Norns and Rhine Maidens were excellent. There was even occasional real acting, although characters enter and leave the stage awkwardly and without purpose most of the time: Mr. Lepage still seems more interested in his planks than in his people.
The Met Orchestra, a few unfortunate horn bobbles aside, played with brilliance and urgency under Fabio Luisi. Coming in at four hours and thirty minutes – only fifteen minutes less than Levine’s last reading (in contrast with the very fast, witty “Siegfried”, which took more than a half hour off Levine’s timings), Luisi led a superb performance; mysterious at first, joyous and menacing by turns, thrilling in the Funeral Music and the opera’s final moments. Luisi’s attention to detail and insistence on clarity is most welcome in such an overwhelming score, but he does not hold the volume down when it is called for.
And so, the end has come. Where is Nostradamus when we need him?
Robert Levine
