Wagner's “Götterdämmerung” at the Met

Now that the flames have flickered and the smoke has disappeared, what's left to say about the Metropolitan-Lepage production of Wagner's Ring cycle?

The final scene of the cycle's final opera, Götterdämmerung, captured the essence of the problem: Brünnhilde did not ride her horse into the fire, not even via visual trickery; fire did not engulf the stage; the buildings of Valhalla did not collapse; and no transporting vision appeared in the sky neither a wreckage of civilization nor a rainbow of hope. In short, the cycle seemed to mean nothing.

You could argue that the Ring is just a story, and a good one one that doesn't need a "meaning." But would you prefer a production that starts with a gathering around a campfire with someone, like a Scout leader, telling his listeners a tale? I'm not aware that anyone has staged a Ring that way.

How would such a tale end, 15 hours later? I don't know; I lack such creative skills. Robert Lepage does possess such skills. The sad thing is that he failed to sufficiently utilize them.

I looked forward to the sort of magic that Lepage created in Cirque du Soleil's KÓ and in his first Met production, The Damnation of Faust, as well as in the rather modest but clever The Andersen Project.

Sweet innocence

I write this a few hours after seeing the "live in High Def" cinema showing of the final installment. This is the Götterdämmerung that will be preserved on TV and DVD. It included excellent performances, but it lacked impressive stagecraft.

Jay Hunter Morris was the production's hero, playing the part of Siegfried and also offering audiences the most pleasant surprise in the cast. He's handsome and strapping, and his voice is honeyed, suiting a character who is the quintessential innocent. Morris reminds me of Hans Hopf, a Wagner tenor in the 1950s who was known for his sweet tone.

Deborah Voigt sang well as Brünnhilde, though with apparent effort understandable because she had just missed two performances due to illness. She looked handsome and noticeably older than Siegfried, which is dramatically correct. Yet the two lovers lacked sexual or emotional chemistry no small matter for a love that led to the destruction of a civilization. And that chemistry deficiency was all too obvious in big-screen HD.

Rhine maidens from Vegas

Unequivocally excellent were Hans-Peter König as the evil Hagen and Eric Owen as his malevolent father, Alberich. Waltraud Meier was excellent in the short role of the valkyrie Waltraute. Wendy Bryn Harmer and Iain Paterson were good as Gutrune and Gunther.

Most of the costumes were conventionally Wagnerian, except for the Rhine maidens' black outfits, which reeked of Las Vegas, while their black hair protruded upward and outward like a cross between the Ronettes and the Mouseketeeers.

Fabio Luisi conducted a clean, lean interpretation of Wagner's score. The emotionally expressive grandeur of James Levine was sorely missed.

Giant xylophone

The horse that Voigt mounted for her immolation was a mechanical one, an elementary copy of those in War Horse at Lincoln Center Theater, and instead of galloping into a fire it just disappeared upstage. There were no lofty visions, no rainbow, just a flat horizon at the end.

Throughout most of the opera, geometric-patterned video images by Lionel Arnould were projected onto Carl Fillion's set of giant rotating planks. As the critic David Finkle put it, they looked like a giant xylophone. In any event, they suggest none of the magic that's inherent in the Ring story.♦


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