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<i>Der Ring des Nibelungen</i> directed by Robert Lepage (review)

2013; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tj.2013.0049

1086-332X

Joseph M. Ortiz,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Reviewed by: Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner Joseph M. Ortiz Der Ring des Nibelungen. Music and libretto by Richard Wagner. Directed by Robert Lepage. Metropolitan Opera, New York City. 5-12 May 2012. After the world premiere of his Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876) in Bayreuth, Richard Wagner expressed disappointment with the opera's staging. "There is so much that we shall have to put right next year," he wrote in a letter to the soprano Lilli Lehmann. Although his fastidiousness is well-known, his reaction was tepid so far as Ring criticism goes. No other work in the operatic repertoire regularly inspires such high expectations among its audiences or provokes such impassioned diatribes among its critics. Any opera company that decides to mount a new production of the Ring does so with the knowledge that it will inevitably spark controversy in some corner, in addition to shouldering the enormous costs required to stage a cycle of four operas based on Nordic mythology that stretches to nearly seventeen hours of music. The Metropolitan Opera expended much financial and critical capital when it recently staged its new production of Wagner's Ring, designed and directed by Robert Lepage. Lepage, one of Canada's most highly regarded theatre directors, is best known to American audiences for his work with Ex Machina and Cirque du Soleil. The Met rolled out the production in installments, premiering Das Rheingold and Die Walküre during the 2010-11 season, followed by Siegfried and Götterdämmerung during 2011-12. Three complete cycles of the Ring were performed in April and May 2012. By the time the third cycle opened, the critical verdict had already been pronounced: Alex Ross in the New Yorker dubbed it "the most witless and wasteful production in modern operatic history" (12 March 2012), and reviews in the New York Times, Opera Times, and the New York Observer were about as congenial. Much of the criticism was directed at what has come to be known as "The Machine"—an expensive forty-five-ton contraption of rotating aluminum planks that occupies most of the stage and that is used throughout the cycle as stage architecture and video projection screen. Early performances were marred by technical issues associated with The Machine (such as a loud creaking noise whenever the planks were in motion), although the production resolved most problems by the third cycle. On the face of it, it seems unfair to criticize Lepage's production for its unusual approach to stagecraft, given his well-known penchant for acrobatics and visual pyrotechnics. Such criticism also seems at least premature, given the fact that many Ring productions during the last forty years have been avant-garde in nature—including some that were initially panned but are now considered landmark achievements. The critically acclaimed Seattle Opera Ring that premiered in 1986, directed by François Rochaix and designed by Robert Israel, proudly billed itself as a "postmodern" Ring. In addition to real fire onstage, it featured Rhinemaidens in Victorian-era pantaloons and Valkyries riding carousel horses. Most famously, Patrice Chéreau's Ring, which premiered at Bayreuth in 1976, presented the work as a Marxist critique of political power—in line with George Bernard Shaw's interpretation in The Perfect Wagnerite. Instead of evoking mythological settings or natural landscapes (as Wagner prescribes in the libretto), Chéreau's sets were made to resemble modern hydroelectric plants and dilapidated urban tenements. Although the production provoked near-riots among critics and audiences at its premiere, it is now generally considered by Wagner scholars to be the most important Ring production of the twentieth century. Lepage's production might have elicited a kinder response from its critics, or at least found more champions to balance the attacks, had it extended its revolutionary zeal to other aspects of the drama. His Ring was, in many ways, surprisingly traditional, as was especially evident in the visual presentation of the characters, especially in the first three operas. Wotan enters Rheingold donning a bronze breastplate and long, wavy hair—evocative of Nordic mythological heroes though without self-conscious irony or exaggeration. Likewise, Wotan's wife, Fricka, was clad in regal, matronly gowns...