At Met, the New ‘Ring’ Is Mostly a Success
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
From left, Richard Croft, Bryn Terfel, James Levine and Stephanie Blythe taking their bows at the end of the performance of the opera “Das Rheingold” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
The Metropolitan Opera’s opening-night gala traditionally begins with the conductor of the evening, who for the last 40 years has usually been James Levine, appearing in the pit to take a bow, before leading a performance of the national anthem.
But in another Met tradition, “Das Rheingold,” the first of Wagner’s “Ring” operas, begins in almost complete darkness. The conductor sneaks in, then cues the sustained low E flats in the orchestra that begin the piece so mysteriously.
Patriotism and eagerness to welcome back Mr. Levine trumped “Rheingold” tradition on Monday night, when the Met opened its season with the director Robert Lepage’s new production, the first installment of a complete “Ring” cycle. Mr. Levine, who has been recuperating from surgery, had not conducted anywhere since last February. When he appeared, he was greeted by a prolonged ovation. He led a stirring “Star-Spangled Banner.” Then, slowly, the house lights dimmed, and the music began.
Mr. Lepage’s staging is the most intensely anticipated new production the Met has mounted in years. For the most part it was an impressive success: an inventive, fluid staging and a feat of technological wizardry that employs sophisticated video elements without turning into a video show. Wagner buffs tend to be a fanatical sort, and no doubt there will be debate about Mr. Lepage’s work. Here he received a mostly enthusiastic ovation with scattered boos. I had mixed feelings.
But let me start with Mr. Levine and the splendid performance he drew from the superb Met orchestra, which played brilliantly, and the excellent cast, as strong a lineup of vocal artists for a Wagner opera as I have heard in years. The formidable bass-baritone Bryn Terfel sang his first Wotan at the Met, a chilling, brutal portrayal; the remarkable mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe was a vocally sumptuous, magisterial yet movingly vulnerable Fricka. And the bass-baritone Eric Owens had a triumphant night as Alberich.
Still, the state of Mr. Levine’s health and music-making were major concerns going into this evening. When he took his bow during the curtain calls he looked a little wobbly and needed support. He seems to have lost weight. But there was nothing frail about his conducting.
Almost as if determined to prove something, he conducted the score with exceptional vigor, sweep, and uncommon textural clarity. Inner details emerged, but always subtly folded into the overall arching episodes and spans of the opera. In the scene in which Wotan and Loge, the demigod of fire (here the tenor Richard Croft in a vocally suave and sly performance), try to wrest the booty of gold and the magic ring from Alberich in the lower realm of Nibelheim, Mr. Levine was an attentive accompanist, allowing the singers to exchange lines with conversational urgency, yet always there to nudge and juice the orchestral subtext. Mr. Levine clearly has some way to go in getting back his stamina and health. But this performance was an encouraging sign.
And the machine worked. Well, almost worked. There was one serious glitch at the end. The “machine” is what the cast and crew have taken to calling the 45-ton gizmo that dominates Mr. Lepage’s complex staging, the work of the set designer Carl Fillion. It consists of a series of 24 planks on an axis that rise and sink, singly, in tandem or in patterns. To evoke the churning currents of the river where the Rhinemaidens protect the magic gold, the planks, bathed in greenish lights, undulate slowly. As in many traditional productions, the three aquatic sisters (Lisette Oropesa, Jennifer Johnson, Tamara Mumford) first appear dangling from cables. But when planks rise to create a wall of water for the maidens to rest on, there are video images of stones and pebbles on the river floor tumbling downward as the sisters rustle them.
Otto Schenk’s Romantic “Ring” production, which was retired in 2009, had passionate defenders. In talking up the Lepage “Ring,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, tried to assure everyone that this was not going to be some high-concept, Eurotrash staging. Mr. Lepage uses the latest in staging technology to “tell the story,” Mr. Gelb said repeatedly in interviews.
Actually, in many ways, even with all the high-tech elements, Mr. Lepage’s production is fairly traditional. François St-Aubin’s costumes are like glitzier, quirkier riffs on old-fashioned Wagnerian “Ring” outfits. Mr. Terfel’s Wotan has stringy hair that falls over the god’s blind left eye, and a rustic shirt missing an arm. Yet he has a bronze breastplate right out of a storybook ring. The giants are like rugged bushmen, with scraggly hair and beards, and leggings covered with fur. Loge has a Peter Sellars hairdo (an inside joke from one director to another?), a ragtag outfit and hands that emit a fiery glow on command.
The production is also traditional in that Mr. Lepage essentially defers to Wagner. If he has strong personal takes on who these characters are, they did not come through in this production. One thing about those high-concept, updated “Ring” productions is that a director can put Wagner’s characters in a setting that makes you see them afresh. We will have to wait for the later installments of this “Ring” to see how, say, Mr. Lepage views Wotan’s role as a father to a rebellious daughter whom he loves and vicariously lives through.
There are breathtaking stage tricks in this production. When Wotan and Loge descend into Nibelheim, we see the two of them walking down the planks as if descending a huge stairway. But we look down on them from above. Actually, Wotan and Loge in this moment are portrayed by body doubles harnessed to cables. Mr. Lepage is like a magician eager to show off how a trick works, knowing it will still hook you. This one hooked me.
At other times, the use of body doubles seems gratuitous and distracting. When Fricka’s sister, Freia, whom Wotan has foolishly promised to the giants as payment for their construction job, first appears, she (actually a body double) careens on her stomach head-first down the planks, tiled like a playground slide. Really, this is just not a very godly thing to do.
The production worked well in scenes in which the machine turned into a stationary backdrop, and the planks became a video screen. In Nibelheim, for example, when on a lower level we saw Alberich’s slaves sweating over molten pots of gold, the wall above them was alive with shifting russet, earthen and blazing yellow colors.
Mr. Lepage deserves credit for coaxing vivid portrayals from his cast. And most of the action is played on an apron of planks that extend out from the stage, which brings the singers into exciting proximity. Mr. Terfel’s singing was sometimes gravelly and rough. But his was a muscular Wotan, in both his imposing presence and his powerful singing. Mr. Owens’s Alberich was no sniveling dwarf, but a barrel-chested, intimidating foe, singing with stentorian vigor, looking dangerous in his dreadlocks and crazed in his fantasy of ruling the universe.
The bright-voiced soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer was a sympathetic yet volatile Freia. The tenor Gerhard Siegel was pitiable as Mime, Alberich’s oppressed brother. The mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon was not the most earthy-voiced Erda, but she sang with grave beauty. Adam Diegel, a youthful tenor in his Met debut, was Froh; the Met veteran baritone Dwayne Croft was in good voice as Donner.
Alas, the machine malfunctioned in the final scene, when the planks did not move into place to form the rainbow bridge to Valhalla. So the gods just wandered off the stage. Given the complexity of the device, it’s a wonder that it worked so well on its debut night.