English National Opera's really rather good production was viewed by yours truly.
Just to recap, this is Part 2, ie the third opera of ENO's Ring; I have l already done their Rhinegold and Valkyrie; and Das Rheingold at the Proms, and have tickets for Covent Garden's Das Rheingold and Die Walküre (Spring run) and for ENO's Twilight of the Gods. In all, I hope to do five Die Walküres in 2005, even though it's my least favourite of the four. I think. Hey, WTF do I know.
I had read a couple of positive reviews in the papers, but it's always best to see for oneself. It's quite a long evening, starting at five and finishing at ten, but that includes two half hour intervals.
The absolutely best bit of the whole evening for me was the wonderful gorgeous music played very well by the ENO orchestra under Paul Daniel. The very next best thing was Kathleen Broderick's singing of Brunnhilde. The love duet that makes up Act 3 Scene 3 is one of my most favourite pieces of music, and she was just wonderful.
Richard Berkeley-Steele as Siegfried was, on the whole, very good. It must be an absolute killer role to sing. There is very little time when he is not on the stage and singing, often very long passages. A look of Craig McLachlan (Henry from Neighbours, Grant from Home and Away) did him no harm as the young man who knows no fear. He moved round stage very well. He was particularly excellent in the Forging Scene that closes Act 1, but I have to say he disappointed me in the Love Duet. He wasn't helped, IMO, by having to sing it in English. It shouldn't be done in English, but in German, in what it was wrote, and as Covent Garden will be doing it. And I guess his voice was tired by this stage. I can't say that there was anything about his voice that made me go 'Oh wow!' but definitely, overall, a good performance.
And perhaps I am being slightly unfair to him in the Love Duet. It's just that the version I have on CD contains perhaps the most sublimely stupendous wonderful note in my entire music collection
Robert Hayward was again disappointing. He had played Wotan in the previous two; The Wanderer is Wotan in disguise. It wasn't that he was bad, but there was no variety of colour in his voice, and a lot of the time he couldn't be heard over the orchestra. When he could, his words were barely distinguishable. As somebody said, if - and big if they're going to put on a proper cycle, they will need to find someone else for that role.
The other major part was Mime played by John Graham-Hall. I thought it was a very sympathetic and poignant portrayal of a character not supposed to be that sympathetic.
ENO set out to make the productions controversial. This was clearly less controversial than Valkyrie had been, but was determinedly modern in its setting. Mime and Siegfried's cave in Act 1 was reminiscent of Steptoe and Son. But it worked. The forging scene was a wonderful display of strobe lights and smoke. The second Act seemed to be set in a corridor-as-waiting-room typical of many hospitals I have visited, but with the rear wall being a flat of painted forest. I was very impressed by the way they showed Siegfried slaying the giant Fafner - disguised as a dragon, but yet not disguised as a dragon. It was done in silhouette behind a white screen, and the angles of refraction made it look as though Fafner really was a giant in relation to Siegfried.
Some of the most beautiful music comes when Siegfried hears the song of the Woodbird. This was staged by Siegfried blowing bubbles as he lay enchanted. I'm a sucker for bubbles anyway, and as they floated, they went gorgeously with the music. The woodbird was portrayed as a young child in baseball cap and riding a scooter, which was kind of cutey.
When The Wanderer went to seek the advice of Erda, she was based in an elderly residential home. All was grey, except for Erda's green tights. Then Siegfried burst onto the scene and was finally shown where to find Brunnhilde lying on a rock surrounded by fire (remember she was left there at about the time that Siegmund and Sieglinde conceived Siegfried, so she's been there in solitude a very long time...)
Again, I think that was well staged. She lay behind a white screen, a white screen edged with a border that, I assume, represented a circle of fire. He went behind to embrace her, and all that was visible were their silhouettes. As they twisted and embraced, their silhouetted bodies formed a giant phallus on the screen.
The scenery was very minimalist, and I think the Love Duet suffered for this. As I say, the music is completely gorgeous, and Kathleen Broderick's singing was utterly gorgeous. But with little scenery, and a deprecation of 'stand-and-deliver' style of singing, there actions were a little unconvincing.
Every time I hear any of the operas from the Ring, I think, 'that music is completely gorgeous, I would love to have a CD-set of the entire thing without singing'. But I don't think any are available. And I don't have any complete CDs anyway: the only complete versions I have are taped off the radio.
there were people pooh-poohing the contemporary staging, but I like it - as long as it doesn't make a nonsense of the story. And it doesn't. Mind you the guy behind me, a pooh-pooher, declared that he had stoped going to Italian Opera when he discovered Wagner. I wanted to turn round and say "You should get out more, dear..." but I didn't.
During the first interval, I was standing on St Martin's Lane having a cigarette and I noticed Adrian Dwyer leaving the building. I was going to go up and say that i had really enjoyed him in the Ten Tenors Gala at the RFH. then I remembered I hadn't particularly, so I didn't...
The cast:
Siegfried: Richard Berkeley-Steele
Mime: John Graham-Hall
The Wanderer: Robert Hayward
Alberich: Andrew Shore
Fafner: Gerard O'Connor
Erda: Patricia Bardon
Brunnhilde: Kathleen Broderick
Woodbird: Sarah Tynan
