The Guardian reviews last night's production of The Rhinegold at the Colisseum, which I attended. (As a parenthetical comment, I realised a few months ago that, apart from Ride of the Valkyries, I know very little Wagner at all, and determined that I was going to learn, so I have booked for the first three in the tetralogy).
On the whole I agree with the conclusions of the critic.
More general impressions. I am unsure about the performance of opera in English - unless it is written in English. Perhaps because, by chance, the first opera I went to was also the first time supertitles were used in this country, which probably influenced me. As a student, we often went to Opera North, who perform in English, without supertitles. My friend used to mock me, saying that supertitles are a gimmick that will never catch on. I wrote a cheque to her (actually for Evita tickets), where I inserted into her name "I want to see an opera in English".
Despite the multi-billion pound refurbishment of the Colisseum, they didn't install supertitles, instead, are looking for £20 million to install a seatback system. Not sure how that works, apparently they have it at the Met, but I would have thought that you would be constantly changing your view from seatback to stage.
However, for better or worse, ENO perform in English. And actually, despite my prejudice, I soon got accustomed to it and think it's no bad thing. However, it doesn't necessarily mean that all the words are intelligible, so I still think supertitles would be a good thing. And it can't be that expensive to install, because when I went to Figaro back in 1985 they had installed them for a very limited run at the all-purpose Palace Theatre in Manchester. When BBC4 broadcast The Tempest, they used subtitles, despite it being in English.
I'm not sure, either, of the modern setting of the opera. Considering that the main point of the Ring Cycle is ancient mythology, and considering, as the programme itself commented:
Today's generation, weaned on Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, Pullman's Northern Lights trilogy and fantasist computer games, will recognise The Rhinegold as the prototypical action-packed story of gods, demons, giants, cunning tricks, deadly curses and magic spells, it seems a bit - patronising? - to remove the ancientness, especially in a week where LOTR picks up 11 Oscars.
The second scene, where, amongst other things, Wotan uses his mobile phone, caused a certain amount of titters where I was sitting. In front of me were two opera queens; one shook his head negatively throughout the modern scenes.
Just as they were about to cross over into Valhalla, they walked across a bridge that was, surely, the Big Brother bridge, surrounded by paparazzi - I half expected Davina McCall to appear. Yet, when they actually crossed into Valhalla, they did so across a gorgeous rope suspension bridge suspended in the sky through clouds of mists that was truly magical.
As for the music - well, Wagner didn't write pretty tunes, but there is something about the richness of the orchestration that is compelling.
At the end, one of the opera queens in front of me, booed the Director, Phyllida Lloyd, and called out "Rubbish, rubbish". How exciting, I thought. It's terribly fashionable to boo the Director.
In the bar beforehand, I overheard someone saying to their friend, "I started coming here in the Seventies because I hated Covent Garden. It was full of people who knew nothing about the music and were just there to be seen and be pretentious."
As for the much-talked-about refurbishment, well, it looked absolutely gorgeously sumptuous. Very effective air conditioning. there were all sorts of people wandering around saying "Oh wow! It's wonderful! Fabulous!" The excitement in the Ladies loos was barely controllable - apparently there used to be only three cubicles and now there's maybe twelve. The wash hand basins are interesting - a porcelain bowl, into which the water pours from a wall-mounted button-operated tap. I didn't go to the Star Bar which is said to have one of the best views in London. I shall leave that to a light summer's evening.
April Update Just discovered review from Gay.com.
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