Paid in Full

LA Opera announced today that the company has paid off the remainder of the money it borrowed to get it through a rough patch in 2009, in no small part due to expenses from producing its first (and brilliant) Ring Cycle.

I found this to be refreshingly good news. Congratulations to the company and their supporters. For all those people who complained so vociferously about the LA Board of Supervisors backing the loan and screaming it was a waste of money and priorities, I have just one question for you:

Don't you feel a bit silly now?

LePage's Die Walkure from the Met

The first thing one can say about the Met's broadcast of Die Walkure yesterday is that it should finally silence those idiots who've been talking smack about Deborah Voigt for the last year. Voigt's performance carried the extremely long afternoon and left no doubt that not only can she sing the role, but it re-affirms her status as one of the leading sopranos of the day. Too bad such a triumph was unfolding in what turned out to be a pretty mediocre production that left me thinking perhaps the Schenk museum piece wasn't so bad after all.

The singers, individually, were in superb voice, but Walkure is a series of conversations and conflicts between two characters and what caused this production to be such a failure from my perspective is that each pairing failed to work on a dramatic level. Everyone seemed mismatched in some way and none of the scenes, except for the showdown between Fricka and Wotan (more on this in a moment), was convincing. This was only magnified by the talent onstage and seeing it all unfurl larger than life on the big screen in HD.


Taking it from the top, James Levine led the orchestra through a musically thrilling first act- superbly paced, the details in the score coming through with a slicing precision I've seldom heard anywhere else that made the listener pay attention. Sadly, that precision disappeared during the second act ("Du hehrstes Wunder, herrliche Maid!" came and went with no impact at all) and only sporadically returned during the third, mostly in the conclusion. The orchestra wasn't bad by any means, but the heights achieved during the first act weren't heard again.


Kaufmann and Westbroek, both offering fantastic phrasing, tone and diction, looked like a great pairing of the Walse twins on paper but the reality was quite different. Kaufmann seemed tentative with Westbroek, as if he wasn't quite sure how far he should go with her, and his performance lacked a necessary passion and desire, though his voice is simply amazing. This hesitancy on his part made his Siegmund have less stature onstage than Westbroek's Sieglinde, rendering their entire pairing something of a dramatic mismatch. As Hunding, Hans-Peter Konig's entrance, delivering a devastating side-ways glance perfectly cued to the music (albeit lifted straight from Hunding's entrance in the Copenhagen Ring- the first of many "borrowed" ideas in this production), was the kind of subtle touch wholly missing from Kaufmann's performance.


In Act II Voigt and Terfel started off with a playfulness similar to what Francesca Zambello is doing with her "American" Ring about to unfold in its entirety in San Francisco later this month. This would be the first of two moments during the afternoon which made me think director Robert Lepage has been seeing every Ring Cycle he can, searching for ideas because dramatically he has none of his own (more on this later). Voigt's first "Heiaha" immediately served notice to the doubters that she was going to be on. While hers wasn't a display of endless range, she was in complete control and remained so throughout the performance. On top of that, despite the ridiculous costumes she and everyone else had to endure, she looked and acted the part.


The highlight of the second act, indeed of the entire show sadly enough, was Stephanie Blythe's Fricka. Making a fantastic entrance on a throne with prominent goat-horns as armrests (this reference to cuckoldry would be only thoughtful piece of set-design we would see all day), Blythe's eighteen minutes onstage were devastating in more ways than one. Completely emasculating Terfel's Wotan, Blythe turned this Die Walkure on its head in a way I'm not sure was intentional because it never recovered afterward. Her imperious, take-no-prisoners Fricka not only slices off Wotan's balls during their scene together, but Terfel seemed so beat-down by her that his character couldn't seem to shake his newly imposed impotence for the remainder of the opera.

And that's a problem because while we all know Wotan is weak in many ways, there has to be moments during the rest of Walkure where we see that weakness cast aside and he reclaims the anger and gravitas which make him such a compelling figure. Sadly after this scene, Terfel's Wotan has this air of "my mom just cut off my balls" about him that never goes away and makes him seem pathetic and powerless, which LePage's stage direction does nothing to ameliorate, example one being when Wotan steps in to break Siegmund's sword and the net impact was "really- is that all there is to that?" Ho-hum, check off another plot point. Some of this is also exacerbated by Terfel coming across as appearing much younger than Blythe and Voigt- another downside of casting in the current era where every nuance and detail is illustrated in HD. Compared to them, he seems to possess no maturity. On the upside, he sang beautifully, though after the marvel of the singing in Act 1, there was a noticeable difference in the diction of the native Germans versus the non evident in Act 2.


Act 2 also featured the second of LePage's pilfering of ideas from others- the eyeball, which 20 years from now might seem like a neat homage to the brilliance of Achim Freyer's LA Ring of last year, but in this context seems one-step shy of plagiarism. Furthermore, this reminder of the LA Ring brought into full relief what's missing in LePage's- a concept or vision. There simply isn't one at all. Where in the LA Ring everything onstage made the audience think about the connections and relevance to the characters and story, there isn't anything going here at all- it's just the Machine doing its tricks and the singers moving around it. Sure there are some glorious visuals- the hunting of Siegmund through the trees, and the forming of the Ash tree- both in Act 1, and the final visual of Brunnhilde on the rock was visually gorgeous and arresting, but beyond that? Nothing.


Even the "Ride of the Valkyries" felt flat and unexciting, even though this was the closest thing we'll likely ever see of them making their entrances riding their steeds through the air. This, of all moments, should have been the one where the Machine silenced its critics with the amazing theatricality LePage brought to La Damnation de Faust, which caused me to get all excited about him doing this Ring in the first place. But like everything else except the scene with Fricka, it remained unconvincing and devoid of drama.


There were two priceless moments during the broadcast- the first came during the first intermission when Joyce DiDonato was interviewing the Met's stage manager about the 45 minute delay in the start due to some mechanical malfunction with the machine- as she ended the interview, she said to him "Thanks for getting it up today!" to which the guy looked completely flummoxed and any response he may have had was drowned out by the uproarious laughter from the audience in the theater. The other was the sight of Jonas Kaufmann drooling a six-inch long bit of goo off his lower lip which will probably be edited out of the DVD release so it doesn't become a YouTube sensation following him through the cyber world for the rest of his life.


I'm pleased for Voigt's triumph in this, but dismayed that this Walkure not only made me lose interest in what's to come in the following installments, but surprisingly, it made me see Zambello's production in a kinder light- I don't like most of what she's doing with her concept- but at least she has one.

In the Ring, with the Times

The coverage of LA Opera's Ring at the LA times has really been exceptional. Not only has classical music/opera critic Mark Swed been a highly visible presence online, but the Times has also sent theater and pop music critics to cover it from a different perspective. As someone who appreciates pop and rock as well as opera, classical and other forms of music, I have been impressed by the postings of Ann Powers, who usually writes the Pop and Hiss blog (part of the larger Culture Monster blog found on the Times' website). She gets it- and articulates it very well, even if I sometimes disagree with her choice of analogies.

I'm linking to all four of her reviews of the second cycle. The third one is about to begin- again, if you can, I urge you to take a trip to LA and see at least a part of it if not the entire thing. It's phenomenal and last time I looked you could get tickets for individual performances on Goldstar, which is sad for the company but great for the average Joe or Josephine. In the meantime, take a look at these:

Das Rheingold: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/06/a-pop-music-critic-takes-on-wagners-ring-cycle-das-rheingold.html

Die Walkure: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/06/a-pop-critic-takes-on-the-ring-of-valkyries-and-vocal-magnificence.html

Siegfried: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/06/a-pop-critic-takes-on-the-ring-siegfried-at-los-angeles-opera.html

Gotterdammerung: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/06/a-pop-critic-reviews-the-ring-gotterdammerung-at-la-opera.html

Also Ring Festival LA has a pretty robust page happening on Facebook that keeps one apprised of what's going on about town. It only makes me wish I was there. The third and last cycle starts tomorrow night with Das Rheingold.

Das Rheingold and Die Walkure: the LA Ring Revisited

Since I had previously seen the individual productions of LA Opera's Ring cycle over the last year and a half, I was initially not going to see it as the full cycle for reasons of cost and scheduling (9 days to see an entire cycle- what were they thinking?). When the prices came down and the opportunity arose to buy selected performances rather than an entire cycle I eagerly bought tickets to see Rheingold and Walkure and after seeing how director Achim Freyer has tweaked what were already substantial artistic triumphs into near perfection I'm certainly glad I did. I was already tempted to see the fantastic Gotterdamerung again, but now I may even see Siegfried just to see how it's been improved.

Das Rheingold has been tinkered with less than Walkure, though there were subtle changes that made it even better than I recalled. That's saying something since I'd rate this particular Rheingold among my top five favorite productions of all time (and yes, it is my favorite opera). I was seated much further back in the orchestra than I was the first time, which makes Freyer's mise en scenes much more potent but had the distinct disadvantage of making large portions of the orchestra almost inaudible though the singing came through with complete volume and clarity all evening. We were stuck in a dead zone for the orchestra, unfortunately.

Richard Paul Fink has taken over as Alberich, replacing Gordon Hawkins. Fink brings a different, more energetic interpretation to the part, changing the dynamics in a significant way. This production of Rheingold casts Loge as the central figure, while Wotan is an observer to his own miscalculations and poor choices- hence the cage around his head representing how he's trapped by his own machinations. Fink's strong presence makes Arnold Bezuyen's Loge a less dominant figure this time around, which gives the entire production a less sinister air, while making it more of an ensemble piece, further aided by having Fricka and Wotan move about the stage more than they did the first time around. Michelle De Young, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite singers, was again spot on as Fricka, arms extended in pitiable frustration- she's pleading or she's illustrating how despicable her husband's games are. Graham Clark's Mime gave an energized, strongly sung performance. Fink's singing was strong throughout, and while he's not a sinister Alberich, he displays emotion through his voice and body language, allowing him to project more personality than anyone else onstage despite being masked through the entire performance. His Alberich is a cocky ringmaster, corrupted and avaricious. Hungry to exploit and eager to run the show. It's quite an interpretation.

Vitalij Kowaljow's Wotan, which was solid last year after a hesitant start, is now a full-blown star turn, though that becomes more apparent in Die Walkure. Having perhaps the most onerous demands as far as working within Freyer's elaborate production, Kowaljow seems completely at home in this role and he owns it from the moment he opens his mouth. For my money, he's the Wotan I want to see whenever possible and though he's fantastic here, I can't wait to see what he does with this role in a different production.

What surprised me the second time around? How solid this cast is. For Rheingold, there is not a single weak link onstage. I was also impressed by how quickly it moves and feels significantly less static than the 2009 version. Even the scene where Alberich turns from a dragon to a frog, normally my least favorite part of this, went by without me hoping it would be over quickly. The scene in the Nibelung's mine was thrilling and brilliantly choreographed, thanks to Clark's willingness to go all out and lead the way. I'm still not a fan of the airplane rainbow bridge, but it's larger now and makes sense in that you can tell what it is and further back in the house the Giants magnifying glasses are of no effect whatsoever. Small quibbles for what is really one of the greatest interpretations of Wagner's work there is, and I do mean that. For those who think this production has nothing to do with the story, what part of it don't you understand?

The following night we returned for Walkure, which didn't thrill me as much as Rheingold the first time around, but now I would have to concede it's better than it's predecessor. Why? Kowlojov, Domingo and Michelle DeYoung. Kowloljov owns this evening and though Domingo naturally got the biggest rounds of applause, Kowoljov wasn't far behind and in my opinion gave a flawless, nuanced, extremely sensitive performance. In the third act his remorse and anger were staggering. Having Michelle DeYoung replace Anja Kampe, who was a weak link last year as Sieglinde, transformed the first act from the most static thing I've ever seen into a thrilling, brilliant hour of drama and passion. She matches up much better with Domingo, and having the characters move around the circle, while the presence of Hunding and his kin lurk all around them, greatly improves the drama.

Second time around, improvements were significant for the Ride of the Valkyries, which now seems much angrier and violent, and having seen the production, I had a better appreciation of how Freyer uses a silhouette of the unborn Siegfried to mark time's progression, or lack thereof. There are so many brilliant, small details and nuances in this production that illuminate the story (if you know it) in such rewarding ways. The way trails of blood red ribbon tether the gods to Freia. The way Wotan gathers up the same tethers (tendrils?) extending from his Wanderer persona as he prepares to banish Brunnhilde, and then casts them aside, as if it's the most painful thing he's ever had to do. Kowoljow was simply riveting during this part of the third act.

And then there's Linda Watson- the Achilles heel of the production. Still not my kind of Valkyrie, but at least when she didn't have to emote anything strongly her voice was pleasant. Unfortunately, in Walkure, that's not too often, and let's just say she's no Gwyneth Jones.

This night flew by and oddly, was one of the most brilliantly paced, perfectly executed evenings of opera I've ever attended. I just wish I could have heard the orchestra better.

A final note: I saw Freyer in the lobby Saturday night and was quite disappointed he didn't come out to take a bow on either night. Based on the strong audience reaction, I think he would have been warmly greeted. Contrary to all the naysayers, everything I overheard during intermissions and after, with the exception of a certain New Yorker and a lover of Italian Bel Canto whom I brought with me on Saturday, was extremely positive.

Okay, one more note: it was a pleasure to run into Brian from Out West Arts, The Opera Tattler and her brother, and to catch up with Mary Ann Smart, whom I have not seen for way too long.

Really, you'd be foolish to miss this if you can make it.

The LA Ring Posts

Below are my reviews of the individual operas as they unfolded during the past fifteen months. The review for Rheingold is a combination of two posts. I will be revisiting 3 of the 4 (less Siegfried) when the cycle runs continuously in May and June. I urge you to get some tickets- it's an incredible production on every level.

Das Rheingold

Die Walkure

Siegfried

Gotterdammerung

Click on the tags for other posts about the LA Ring or LA Opera

Gotterdammerung- Tearing Down the House

LA Opera's Gotterdammerung brings the company's first Der Ring Des Nibelungen to an audacious close in what has turned out to be one of the most interesting, stimulating and brilliant productions I've ever seen. I remember once reading a quote by someone who said "What happens in Gotterdammerung is just awful." The quote kept coming back to my mind as I was getting ready to see the performance. Circling around it was my own thought about how director Achim Freyer would present what really is an awful story, because his Ring really hasn't been centered in the emotional lives of the characters, but rather in their psyche.

Since Freyer is really interested in exposing the inner psychological workings of these characters, this is a Ring without any heroes to be found anywhere on the stage. In this version, the ostensible hero is one step above a buffoon, trapped and ruled by his own id. Even without having his heart poisoned by Hagen's love potion, this Siegfried would have made the wrong move at some point. Brunnhilde really doesn't fare much better because a woman who would worship such a man can only end up looking foolish in the end.Those who dislike Wagner because of his anti-Semitism and eventual co-opting by the Nazis would be hard pressed to find anything here that even remotely glorifies the ideas behind their their discomfort. If Hitler's army was composed of nothing but Freyer's Siegfrieds WWII would have been over shortly after it began.


It's worth noting that the characters with least amount of moral rectitude in the entire cycle, Loge (Rheingold) and Hagen (Gotterdammerung), have been the true stand-out characterizations and hold the center in their respective chapters. While everyone else is trapped by their own flaws or personas (often literally), these two approach a level of strength that Schoepenhaur and Nietzsche would have admired. Does that make Freyer's approach anti-Ring? No. Set in no discernible time period or place, Freyer's vision takes on a quality of timelessness and otherworldiness that liberates Wagner's libretto from its historical time period and mythical sources- this story could be taking place 5000 years ago on a distant planet or 2000 years from now on this one. It really doesn't matter. Most productions of the Ring I've seen go one of two ways- the make the Gods truly gods (read heroic or noble), or they want to anthropomorphize them. Freyer throws those notions away and works with the libretto as it is. In this way, despite all the hoopla and dissent this production has caused, this may indeed be the most literal production of a Ring ever staged from the standpoint of the characters. And Shavians would be disappointed- unlike Zembello's Ring staged in Washington and currently unfolding in San Francisco, it would be a stretch to pin a capitalist critique on this cycle.


While there were some rough spots in the staging of Die Walkure and Siegfried, most notably expressed in the lack of comfort John Treleavan and Linda Watson seemed to have in their roles as Siegfried and Brunnhilde, with Gotterdammerung Freyer seems to have finally gotten everybody onboard with his vision. Treleavan seems comfortable with Siegfried as a clown this time around- and gave the character a depth that was lacking before. This was most notable when his face and body showed genuine angst when he realizes the truth behind his betrayal of Brunnhilde. Watson seems to have made peace with being an unglamorous, vengeful warrior- a woman spurned by both father and lover who is incapable of seeing the flaws in either of them. While neither are perfect singers for these roles for my taste, they both delivered powerfully sung performances, with Treleavan making every word distinctly clear and Watson becoming a force of nature in the third act, even though when she tears her hair out in age I kept thinking she looked like Esther Rolle dressed as Morticia Addams at a Halloween party. Equally important, both seem to have grown comfortable with the physical demands (and limitations) of Freyer's vision.


Eric Halfverson's Hagen was everything one could want in the role, whose conception is brilliant. Freyer's Hagen is a dwarf, constantly perched on the lap of another, whom he makes do his bidding. He looks like a puppet though he's always pulling the strings. Strong in voice, Halfverson was fantastic.


The real revelation in the singing department came from Michelle DeYoung, who performed double duty as the second Norn and most impressively as Waltraute. De Young impressed me quite a bit in Rheingold, but she was even better here. She justly received a tremendous ovation afterwards as her singing was the finest of the performance. Her addition to the upcoming performances of Die Walkure will remedy the one bit of weaker casting from that chapter and give Domingo a formidable partner in the first act.


Jill Grove and Melissa Citro were the first and third Norns, and Grove gave another memorable performance.


Alan Held as Gunther and Jennifer Wilson as Gutrune both had masks on for the entire performance, as did the entire Gibiching chorus. Wilson had a difficult time making the role more than a cog in Hagen's machinations, and couldn't convey any physical presence justifying Siegfried's desire for her, but Held, large and clear in voice, managed to project a strong physical characterization behind his mask that gave this faceless Gunther a distinct and unique presence onstage. Held made Gunther a sympathetic character- who would have thought that possible?


Richard Paul Fink's Alberich has little to do here, but his moment was solid and as he trolled the stage checking on his son's progress, he casted an interesting aura of menace and intrigue when he was onstage.

The Rheinmaidens, Ronnita Nicole Miller, Stacey Tappan & Lauren McNeese, were again fine and mesmerizing to watch as their arm movements were duplicated to create a rippling effect at the rear of the stage. This time around lit in red, rather than blue, to signal the disharmony i.e. blood that surrounds their missing gold.


The orchestra, led by James Conlon, delivered the most gorgeous-sounding chapter of the ring in all of its fullness. Undoubtedly helped by the fact that the pit is no longer completely covered, they emitted a glorious sound the entire afternoon.


As for Freyer's choices in the staging, especially of the ending, I found it to work on a couple of levels. This Ring isn't of our world, and it's unlike any other, so when Valhalla goes up in flames and takes everything with it. there really is nothing left behind. Well done.


Photo by Monika Rittershaus

March of the Invisible Siegfrieds Down Sunset Blvd

Concludes tomorrow- HORN at 7:29pm, DROP at 7:45pm

Details are here: http://invisiblesiegfrieds.org/

Even if you aren't fortunate enough to be in LA for this performance, you can still take part in it from anywhere in the world. It's going to be epic, I'm certain.

A Golden Opportunity

One of the things that makes seeing a Ring Cycle prohibitive for a lot of people is the cost and the time commitment. Usually opera companies charge twice as much for Ring tickets as they do for other productions, so even sitting up in the back of the balcony can easily run $400 for an entire cycle of the four operas, not to mention going to the house four times over the course of a week or so for some very long performances. Personally, there's little I'd rather do, but since I'll have seen the entire thing piecemeal by next week, the cost, and to a lesser extent the time commitment dissuaded me from seeing LA Opera's complete Ring Cycle again.

But now that LA Opera has made the tickets the same price as they are for other productions, and given people the opportunity to choose performances on the dates that work for them, I can't see any good reason to miss what is one of the greatest works of art ever created in what's turned out to be an intelligent, provocative, creative, fascinating and very well-cast production. Or at least catch some of it- especially Das Rheingold and Die Walkure.

No doubt LA Opera is only doing this because they have to sell more tickets, but their loss is a gain for opera lovers who can now see the most exciting Ring around until the LePage production comes to the Met in 2012. Don't be a sucker- get some tickets. This production of Rheingold is on my all-time top 5 list of things I've seen.

And how many opportunities to you get to hear Domingo in something terrific (rather than wait for him to show up in something mediocre like Cyrano, which no one really would ever mount if here weren't in it).

Don't kick yourself- when are you ever going to get the chance to see a Ring Cycle of this magnitude ever again for prices that start at $200 for the whole thing? In this country? Probably never. See you there.

PS- currently there are tickets for the remaining performances of The Stigmatized available on Goldstar.

Photos by Monika Rittershaus

What's the point of booing Gotterdammerung?

Photo by Monika Rittershaus

Every review I've read of LA Opera's Gotterdammerung, which opened this past weekend, has mentioned the robust booing directed at Achim Freyer, the production's mastermind (and careful of that last link- the LA Times' Mark Swed gives way too much away about the opera's concluding stagecraft). What is wrong with these people? Seriously. I'm not saying everyone should love the production, though I have so far, but this is part four!

Did you not see the first three in the cycle? If you saw them, or at least one of them, are you such a dimwitted masochist you would pay good money and spend over five hours to watch something you know you are going to loathe? Really? What's wrong with you?

If you haven't seen any of the previous operas, first of all why are you starting at the end and not the beginning? And what did you expect- Otto Schenk or Seattle? Had you not read a single review nor caught a glimpse of a publicity shot? The people booing this production are morons. Not because they don't like it, but because they went in the first place.

Now I don't like everything I see just because I want to, and sometimes I end up loving loving stuff I thought I'd hate- read this blog for ample evidence of this- but if I know the first ten or so hours of a fifteen-hour work aren't something I liked or was interested in, then why commit to the final five hours? It makes no sense to me at all. So shut up, would you please?

PS- if you've never been to the opera before, Gotterdammerung is not the place to start. Seriously.

Carie Delmar Punks the Huffington Post!

Oh dear, Carie Delmar, Los Angeles' raving anti-Wagner loon, at it again, this time under the pseudo-pseudonym "Carol Jean Delmar."

Somehow she's managed to convince the Huffington Post to publish her, giving her previously marginalized perspective a much greater audience than she deserves. Jumping on the anti-Domingo bandwagon as an excuse to take some cheap and inaccurate shots at LA Opera's Ring Cycle, Delmar's post is disingenuous on several fronts. I'll give her credit for one thing though- she's tenacious, crafty- and she just blew the credibility of one of the web's most heavily trafficked sites.

HuffPost readers who aren't that familiar with how opera companies work will read Delmar's statements and take them at face value. This is the largest issue I have with Huffington giving Delmar a forum to spew her slanted junk. For example, Delmar writes "Judging from the lineup, measures to cut the company's expenses seem to be in place. Many of the roles will be sung by lesser-known young singers." Like whom, Carie? Nino Machaidze???

Of course young, lesser-known singers fill the smaller roles to gain experience. That's the way all opera companies work and it's vital to the careers of the singers and the growth of the companies. But in a season that includes Sir Thomas Allen, William Burden, Charles Castronovo, Vladimir Chernov, Sarah Coburn, Plácido Domingo,George Gagnidze, Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Paolo Gavanelli, Ben Heppner, Soile Isokoski, Nino Machaidze, Ann Murray, Daniel Okulitch, Marlis Petersen, Patricia Racette, Martina Serafin, Kristinn Sigmundsson, Bo Skovhus and Dolora Zajick, it's really inaccurate B.S. to imply LA Opera is fielding its season with B-List youngsters.

Delmar being Delmar, she can't help herself from trying to save the world from the evil-influence of Wagner's Ring. She implies LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich's ridiculous motion to "diversify" the Ring Festival (by including Mendelssohn!!!) was defeated because "other powerful members of the community had a vested interest in maintaining the status of the company and their status in it." When the Board voted on it, the motion received only vote of support- Antonovich's. That's a nice try at revisionist history Carie, but you've failed again.

You can read the rest of her slanted crap at the Huffington Post and you can continue to see her exposed here whenever possible.

Siegfried stumbles

Of the myriad challenges present in staging a Ring cycle, none is probably more difficult than coming up with a Siegfried that engages the audience for its duration. From my perspective the problem lies in a title character who is not only unsympathetic, but is the most uninteresting character of any significance in the entire cycle. LA Opera's production, seen on Sunday October 11th, lays the problem bare and can't overcome the challenge despite the continued genius of director Achim Freyer's monumental, visionary staging and some impressive efforts from many quarters. In fact, Freyer's conception magnifies the problematic elements of the Siegfried character.

Among the Ring's main characters Siegfried is the only one without any inner conflict. He is all id, all the time- an adolescent with corresponding appetites whose only problem is that he didn't know mommy and daddy. There is an opportunity to make him real, to make him interesting to us, as Chereau's centenary production proved, but Freyer's intensely psychological staging renders him a two-dimensional comic strip, who looks like Thor or Aquaman drawn by Matt Groening. Notwithstanding John Treleaven's ability to project some personality through the blue muscle suit and Bart Simpson dreadlocks, it would take a heldontenor of superhuman abilities to make this Siegfried compelling for almost five hours and alas, Treleavan is a mere human like the rest of us. His voice was serviceable without ever sounding remarkable, but he did have the stamina to make it through the final act's duet with Linda Watson's Brunnhilde, though she overpowered him significantly.

Siegfried takes place on a running track, with the characters poised waiting on their starting blocks. As Freyer notes in the program, the staging conveys the condition of waiting. Siegfried awaits the sword Notung, an object, while everyone else is awaiting a person or an event to transpire. Setting up the drama this way, having the hero wait for a thing while everyone else awaits something or someone, is where the staging goes awry. For once Siegfried has his sword, he's merely walking the track toward a destination he has no hand in creating. In other words, Siegfried, the center of the action, is a dullard. Given that everything else surrounding him is fascinatingly and vividly alive, this makes Freyer's depiction of the hero an especially frustrating one. How this will impact Gotterdammerung should prove interesting, but I suspect my sympathies may be on the side of the Gibichungs by the time the it's all over.



So let's move on to the good news, because there are still plenty of things in this production to make it worth seeing. First of all, Graham Clark's Mime is superb in voice, diction and acting. Vitalij Kowaljow's Wanderer, after a shaky start that proved brief, turned in a magnetic performance both vocally and visually, growing better and more formidable with every scene. During the potentially static Q&A scene between Mime and the Wanderer, characters from the previous operas come out onstage as they are mentioned. This is brilliantly done and wholly mesmerizing, in effect creating visual leitmotivs for the audience to match those in the score. The elaborate visual world Freyer constructs plays out beautifully across the stage, creating the first of what will be quite a few gorgeous tableaus- Siegfried is the best-looking part of this Ring so far. During Wotan's final scene, Kowaljow invested an anger into his performance that was palpable. He's really grown into the role and I hope to see him as Wotan in future productions.

Jill Grove's Erda was again brilliantly sung, though her costume unfortunately reminded me of the defaced statue of the Virgin Mary in The Exorcist. I was sitting much closer to the stage for this performance than I was during Das Rheingold, so if it's the same costume it's more disturbing up close. Eric Halfvarson's Fafner and Oleg Bryjak's Alberich were well-sung. Stacey Tappan's Woodbird, in another freaky costume (the red nipples were a bit distracting) was adequate for this performance.

Finally, though Linda Watson's Brunnhilde was arresting visually, I can't say I'm a fan of her voice, which has a tendency to shriek at the top. The staging during the third act however, is brilliant, with Brunnhilde's emergence from her protective armor very evocative of the power and strength of her character. As she awakens from her sleep, at the rear of the stage her horse Grane comes back to life as well, creating another memorable tableau.

James Conlon's conducting chose clarity over vibrancy, with the forging scene particularly lacking the vehemence that anyone raised on the Solti recordings would long for. On the other hand, every nuance in the score was rendered with a clarity and dedication that distinctly brought every leitmotif out in the open, providing musical subtitles that almost rendered the surtitles unnecessary for those of us who don't speak German.

Das Rheingold still remains the high point of the cycle for me thus far, though I'll admit that may be due to it being my favorite among all operas. Siegfried doesn't quite live up the expectations Freyer has created in the two earlier chapters, but his vision remains fascinating and I wish I didn't have to wait until April to see Gotterdammerung. There is one performance left this coming weekend.

All photos by Monika Rittershaus, taken from LAOpera.com

The Final Motion (aka- the last word on the brouhaha-really, I mean it this time)

The LA Board of Supervisors met today to discuss Mike Antonovich's motion "requesting that the [LA Ring] Festival shift the focus from honoring Wagner to featuring other composers as headliners." Since I've already commented at length about this subject (here, here, here and here!)I thought I was finished with it. But sadly I'm not.

The citizens who showed up to rally behind Antonovich's motion were extremists of the worst kind- people who had no problem twisting facts and distorting the truth to their own ends- they reminded me, frankly, of the very kind of people they were claiming the festival would tacitly attract, support or endorse. Extremism, no matter its religion or ideology, is the driving force behind the most violent acts currently taking place around the world. It breeds intolerance and that is precisely what was on display in the meeting. Listening to the comments offered today in support of Antonovich's motion was like watching a perverted inversion of Phillip Roth's "The Plot Against America" coming to life on my computer screen.

One man claimed that the festival would indeed encourage tourists- like David Duke, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Louis Farrakhan, who would then successfully petition the City for a permit to hold a march down Fairfax to the tune of "The Ride of the Valkyries" while waving Nazi flags. Another claimed Wagner's anti-Semitic beliefs were explicit in his works. More than one claimed "the man and his music are the same and cannot be separated."

Another said the front rows for Gotterdammerung would be filled with White Supremacists wearing Nazi armbands (at $2200 a seat I doubt that very much). It went on for about fifteen minutes, and even the now-infamous Carie Delmar showed up to spew misinformation and lies, including the idea that Wagner was the "defacto soundtrack" to the Holocaust and a Nazi supporter. How could that be, when the Nazis didn't even exist when Wagner was composing the Ring?

Finally, some supporters, including I believe LA Opera's Stephen Roundtree, stepped forward to counter some of the blatant misrepresentations about LA Opera's efforts and intentions for this festival- noting the many ways the company is taking pains to acknowledge the one thing everyone already knows.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslovsky, a strong Festival supporter, introduced an amended motion supporting the Festival and its legitimate activities. Thankfully it passed with only one nay- Antonovich's. I'd like to thank the LA County Supervisors for acting in a reasonable and rational manner and voting to support the Festival and the LA Opera people who offered such a reasoned explanation of the truth.

The crowd supporting Antonovich reminded me of certain people to which my people have vowed, "never again." Thankfully, this is America in the 21st Century- not Germany in the 20th. Sure, this whole brouhaha is in some ways a small issue, given everything else that's going wrong all around us right now, but it was re-assuring to see some politicians stand up and do the right thing. Mazel-tov.

One last comment on the LA Ring brouhaha

So today's the big day when the LA Board of Supervisors is going to vote on Mike Antonovich's ridiculous proposal that the long-planned LA Ring Festival changes its focus away from Richard Wagner and his music to less controversial composers such as Puccini and Mozart (see previous posts for the details if you're just tuning in). Some folks object the to hype, others to the man and what his music have come to represent through its association with the Third Reich. Antonovich essentially wants to make it an "opera festival," though what that would look like and how to plan it at this late date, never mind the fact that LA Opera is going to simultaneously be staging its first complete Ring cycle, is a detail to be worked out later, I guess.



From what I've been reading online, the consensus of most bloggers and critics thinks this idea is foolish or just plain wrong on many levels. Although I'm well aware of the slippery slope which lurks treacherously in the background when one chooses to juxtapose Hitler, anti-Semitism, Wagner and the legacy of the Holocaust with the view of the online "majority," in this case I have to call out the squeamish and say to them, with all due respect, "get over it."



In the last year "The Producers" made it's debut in Berlin. Talk about a conflicted audience response. Yet how interesting it would have been to be in that audience and feel the reaction- to feel the tension of, Is this going to be funny? Can we actually give ourselves permission to laugh at this? Is our culture ready for this?



In LA, in the entire U.S., we don't have these qualms. We have Henry Ford, we have Lindbergh, we have FDR's internment camps. Yet no one lodges campaigns against the Ford Motor Company, Lindbergh is largely thought of in a heroic sense (justified or not) and the camps are not the first thing most people think of when FDR is brought up. Our own culture and history has many more such examples we could debate forever, but to what end?



So let the festival go on as originally planned. It will provide plenty of opportunity for people to discuss Wagner's anti-Semitism, and also give them the chance to delve into what is one of the Western world's most significant and impressive artistic achievements. It will draw people from all over and it will be a boon to the LA arts and academic communities. I'm all for it- and the conversations it will start. Hopefully the Board will get this one right and vote against this.

Below is the motion to be voted on today:

MOTION BY SUPERVISOR MICHAEL D. ANTONOVICH JULY 21, 2009
Los Angeles Opera’s upcoming Ring Festival LA, which celebrates the work of composer Richard Wagner, a racist whose anti-Semitic writings were the inspiration for Hitler and the holocaust, is an affront to those who have suffered or have been impacted by the horrors of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialistic Worker Party.


To provide balance, historical perspective and a true sampling of operatic and musical talent, the LA Opera should reevaluate and rearrange the festival’s programming to delete the focus on Wagner and incorporate other composers as headliners including Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Schubert, Schumann, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn and others.


I, THEREFORE, MOVE, that the Board of Supervisors direct the County’s Chief Executive Officer to send a five-signature letter to the Marc I. Stern, Chief Executive Officer of the LA Opera and members of the Board of Directors requesting that the Festival shift the focus from honoring Wagner to featuring other composers as headliners.

Even more LA Ring Festival brouhaha!

One of the unexpected positives to come out of all the noise surrounding LA's upcoming Ring Festival is I've discovered a couple of interesting blogs I haven't read before.

I especially like Singer Central, with some good points on the topic in their post of the 15th. The blog itself it contains a lot of interesting news and information and I'm surprised I haven't come across it before.

David Ocker's Mixed Meters isn't really opera-oriented, and we disagree on the subject at hand, but it's an interesting blog worth taking a look at and his comments on the dust-up are worth reading. He's also published the full text of Antonovitch's proposal on the festival.

Aria Serious, the blog from San Diego Opera, also weighs in.

Perhaps the strangest one comes from very vocal critic of the Festival, Carie Delmar, who set up a blog specifically protesting the festival! http://ringfestlaprotest.wordpress.com/.

Carie won't make it onto my blogroll, but I like to give voice to the opposition- by the way- Jeremy Denk, I'd still like to hear back from you!

Finally (for now), Popehat looks at the subject from a different perspective - and I love their headline, "Every Time You Play The 1812 Overture, A Woman Is Battered"

More on the LA Ring Festival brouhaha

LA Times critic Mark Swed wrote an interesting response to LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich's idea to broaden LA's upcoming Ring Festival by including other composers- Puccini, Mozart & Meyerbeer, along with the more amusing suggestions of Schubert, Schumann & Mendelssohn, to take the focus of the festival away from Wagner the anti-Semite.

The comments following Swed's article are well worth reading, especially the one from Carie Delmar. She appears to have been tilting at this particular windmill for awhile and now has the ear of a prominent pol to aid her cause. Delmar's comment has prompted some thoughftul and provocative repsonses on its own, so by all means read through the thread. Furthermore, Delmar has a brief essay posted on Operaonline.us where she lays out her rationale, which is heavily influenced by her own personal history. While she makes a case for her perspective, I don't agree with her largely subjective conclusions. Read it if you have the time.

Still, it was stupid of Antonovich to weigh-in on something he seems to have little understanding of, so I hope the noise around this continues to grow. It can only be good for the Festival and for LA Opera in the long run. Perhaps it will also have the net effect of putting this matter to rest, or at least reframing this particular discussion toward a more productive discourse in the future.

And just out of curiosity, if anyone happens to know if Delmar has been a large contributor to Antonovich's past campaigns, please let us know about that little side note.

Dumb, dumb, dumb

The L.A. Times Culture Monster blog reports today that LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich wants to omit Wagner from the city's upcoming Ring Festival because of the composer's association with the Nazis. While Wagner's anti-Semitism is a well-known, tired (and tiring) fact, the festival is celebrating his music, not his beliefs. And it is, ahem, a Ring Festival- not a Wagner Festival. It's time to move on from this sort of squeamishness.

Rather than go forward with the city-wide Ring Festival, already in the works for years, he wants LA Opera to “Delete the focus on Wagner and incorporate other composers as headliners including Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Schubert, Schumann, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn and others.”

That's not a festival, Ring or otherwise- it's LA Opera's regular season programming.

Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn? I'm just curious which operas by these composers Antonovich would like to see staged. I'd have to check my Kobbe's for reference to name even one by Schubert and I'm not aware of any written by the other two.

The brilliant mind behind this carefully thought out idea belongs to a Republican married to a woman 26 years his junior (more weird family values from the Party that wants to tell everyone else how to behave?), who has been in office since 1980. It's time to retire him. Or maybe not- with leaders like this, the Republican party won't be making a comeback anytime soon.

LA Opera's Die Walkure

The last time I anticipated seeing an opera as much as LA Opera's Die Walkure was probably Karita Matilla's initial turn as Salome at the Met. Those who've read my comments about LA's Das Rheingold will understand why- it was genius. Is Walkure on the same level? No, it's merely very, very good.

The problem is the first act, which is one of the most static stagings I've ever seen. There were static bits in Rheingold as well, but they worked for me because it showed the gods paralyzed by their own identities, acts and choices. In Walkure that approach doesn't work in the first act because we are supposed to be witnessing the flowering of a lust that results in, well, gotterdammerung. Yeah, it's incest and all that, but it's molten love all the same. Place Siegmund and Sieglinde at opposite ends of the stage for an hour and there's not a lot of tension building to match the music. The picture to the left is about as hot as it gets, and that cool blue light is a constant through the first act.

Additionally, while everyone is correct about the astonishing ability of Domingo at 68, he took awhile to warm up and his voice wasn't nearly as strong as when I last saw him in this role a couple of years ago in Costa Mesa. Anja Kampe, normally a singer whom I really enjoy, seemed completely unable to handle the vocal requirements of the role, though I've heard her quality seems to change from performance to performance. The staging gives you little else to go by however, so when the voices aren't there, it becomes, well, very slow going. Eric Halfvarson's Hundig was as good as expected.

Acts 2 and 3 were an altogether different story and returned to the level of greatness achieved in Rheingold. Vitalij Kowaljow's Wotan had confidence and range- he was completely convincing in voice and acting. The Wotan of these two operas is in distinctly different circumstances and Kowaljow's performance conveyed all the conflicts that come out during this part of the Ring. I think it's a brilliant portrayal. To my surprise, the afternoon's best singing came from Michelle DeYoung as Fricka. She was perfect and has definitely laid claim to the role.

So yes, I haven't mentioned Linda Watson's Brunnhilde, the star of our show. My opinion- fair. Act 2 went fine, she delivers the Hojotohos with force and power, but during Act 3 she was pinched at the top and her pairing with Kampe and that leads to "O hehrstes Wunder! Herrlichste Maid!" was not the gorgeous moment one hopes for (indeed, perhaps it's the musical highlight of the entire Ring). The remainder of the afternoon saw no turnaround in the vocal department from her.

Since Walkure is a much different dramatic set up than anything else in the Ring, it's essentially one confrontation between people in love (familial, sexual, romantic, etc.) after another, it is a different animal to stage. There are no dragons, rainbow bridges, giants, dwarfs to make a big show of things. It has just one murder, and of course the Valkyries set piece, which was the highpoint of the staging, with the various limbs of heroes scattered all around the ever-present disc that forms the stage. When the Valkyries depart the stage an indelible visual moment is created. The fire surrounding Brunnhilde at the end was beautiful, but the effect was lessened by the fact that not all of the lanterns came on when they should have and one didn't come on at all, despite the harried attempts of a member of the stage crew. Achim Freyer's production is good, but overall it doesn't achieve the glories of his Rheingold in execution or imagination.

Musically, the performance by the orchestra was superb and the muffled sound created by hiding the orchestra was not apparent at all this time. What was apparent however, and this something LA Opera needs to FIX NOW is that background noise that sounds like an old air conditioner that was audible throughout the entire performance (and present again on Saturday's performance of Die Vogel. It's white noise and it's hugely distracting. PLEASE FIX THIS!

One last comment. I hardly ever go to matinee performances because of the audience one usually finds there. When Domingo bowed out of the final two performances, I changed my tickets because, well, given a choice between Christopher Ventris and Domingo, who are you going to choose, right? So I ended up at the matinee. The audience was hands down the most obnoxious, rude, loud and inconsiderate to which I have ever seen been subjected. Hey stupid lady in seat 1 of row L- if you hadn't been eating your lunch out of a paper bag during the entire 3rd act, your hands probably wouldn't have been dirty. And exactly what the fuck do you think your husband was going to do about it anyway? As for the two biddies who kept talking in row M until you were shushed, you really need to stay home, because it's obvious you too are way too old to learn any new etiquette tricks. Appalling. Simply appalling.

The knives are out...

As Brian at Out West Arts predicted, the Culture Monster blog at the LA Times is aflame with vitriol for Achim Freyer's Die Walkure. Someone has even suggested booing Placido Domingo when he takes his curtain, not because of his singing mind you, but to voice displeasure that as the Director for LA Opera, he's the one responsible for bringing this director's vision to the stage. I'm not quite sure what to make of such a ridiculous and stupid idea, and furthermore, why are these people bothering? Did they miss Rheingold or not read a single review? Are they opera masochists? That should be one word, even if I have to make it up- operamasochist. I like the sound of that. But will that make me an operadom by default?

Okay, can the operamasochists please all line up on stage left? David Gockley will take you to a nice, safe, warm and expensive seat where you can watch Angela Gheorgieu sing La Rondine. Again and again and again.

Operadoms, step to the right. Freyer and Domingo will show you to your seats.

It's entertaining to read these comments, but listen up- go see this if you can- if it's only half as good as Das Rheingold was, it's still going to be better than almost anything else you're likely to see before next fall. I'll be seeing it tomorrow and yes, I'll tell you what I thought of it, too.

Video of LA Opera's Das Rheingold

This video gives you an idea of what the production that I am still thinking about and wish I could see again actually looks like.
LA Opera has their own channel on YouTube. There are interviews with director Achim Freyer, conductor James Conlon and Placido Domingo. I urge you to see one of the remaining performances- this is really an event.

LA Opera's Das Rheingold (combined)

L.A. Opera's Das Rheingold is one of the best productions of any opera I have ever seen. Period. Absolutely Fantastic.Now, I should mention that Rheingold is probably my favorite opera (at least it has been for the past few years). This is the fourth production of it I've attended and I've watched four versions of it on DVD. This one is the best. It is not without flaws, but this is the real deal- the combination of dramatic theater and music that Wagner intended to create, albeit for a 21st Century audience. My impression is that this Ring, if it stays consistent over the remaining parts, will take its place alongside Chereau's centenary Bayreuth production in redrawing the boundaries of how the work can be presented to contemporary audiences.

In other words, there are going to be haters, but let them pine for horned helmets while the rest of us follow opera into a new era.Achim Freyer made a bold choice by making the central character Loge rather than Wotan and it pays handsomely. Wotan's role is not diminshed, but rather he is portrayed as being trapped by his own decisions to the point where he is immobile for most of the evening while Loge is the prime mover on the stage. I've never seen it presented this way, but it made complete sense, aided tremendously by Loge's four-handed devil outfit nicely contrasted with Wotan's Hellraiser-inspired one-eyed god/ goon encased in an elaborate box of his own creation.


Arnold Bezeyun gave an amzing performance with precise diction and elegant phrasing. As the gods pose and pontificate, he acts- and he steals the show in the same way Heath Ledger owned the Dark Knight whenever he was onscreen.Also contributing stellar performances were Gordon Hwakins as Alberich and Graham Clark as Mime. It's saying something that these were really the standout performances of the evening. Vitilaj Kowaljow's Wotan was reserved in the beginning but it suited the presentation.


In this production, Wotan is a witness to the crime he plotted, but is forced to into a certain passivity by the events he set in motion. He has upset the balance and lacks any power to set things right, though we know he's going to spend the next ten hours trying.Women are chattel here, with the exception of Erda. Fricka stands to the side for most of the evening, outstreched arms in a mock presentation of the action unfolding right before her as if to say "but what could I have done with such a man?" She is only a spectator to the disaster befalling her family. Freia is a freak show, the gods tethered to her golden apples via a blood-red umbilical cord. The Rheinmaidens, the evening's only real disapointment in the vocal department, were interesting to watch as their reflections in the water appeared beneath them in human form, but are presented as objects of fanstasy rather than lust.And it did the hardest part right! When Alberich turned into the dragon it was actually a really cool effect rather than the cheesy bit of stage whiz or lame projection usually presented.


There are so many intriguing things here that I wish I could go back to L.A. and see it at least one more time. The dual Wotan identities made sense. The violence of Fasolt's death, while producing chuckles in its execution, was chilling to contemplate- the next performances should get it to the point where it isn't funny but horrifyng.So what didn't work? The silly plane as the rainbow bridge was lame. The giant hands were probably a good idea that didn't work out too well on stage. The magnifying glasses the giants held up made them look freaky and cool, but when they put them down the effect was lost and they were just two guys upstage. Too much neon, and the scrim was in place for the entire performance.


The orchestra was completely hidden underneath the stage, to the extent that even the conductor couldn't be seen at all from the orchestra level. The acoustics of the Dorothy Chandler aren't great to begin with, and the orchestra wasn't well served by the way the pit was obscured.At one point during the Vorspiel, I thought someone had turned on something mechanical that was creating a buzz somewhere, and I was dismayed to figure out it was originating from the pit. The orchestra sometimes had a lackluster sound to it and I can't tell if it was from the way the stage was configured. There are so many sublime moments to Rheingold's score, yet only in moments did its full power emerge. Even the anvils were not the thrill they should be, nor was Donner's hammer blow.In a live performance one always notices things in a score for the first time, yet everything I noticed seemed to be a mistake. This was a surprise to me because I've read that Conlon really wants to turn L.A. into a Wagner powerhouse. Perhaps it was where we were seated (orchestra Row M, just under the balcony). It's not that the orchestra was bad- they just accompanied a magnificent production rather than helped make it.Having said that, compared to the superbly conducted and well-sung performance I saw this past summer in San Francisco, this production was in a completely different league due to the sheer brilliance and execution of what was happening on stage and it made the SFO production look provincial and old-fashioned (even though it was excellent). Kudos to Freyer, Conlon and Domingo- L.A. Opera is the most exciting opera company in the country west of Manhattan.

Still, I loved this production. I can't wait for Die Walkure.