Customer Reviews

The Copenhagen Ring: The Complete DVD Set

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This Ring is different from all other Rings on DVD and is mostly successful in what it aims to bring. It is wonderful to have this pinnacle of operatic spectacles in a staging worthy of the subject, a stage with `actors who can sing' as Wagner wished it. The singers do act as if in a movie and the DVD has been filmed as a dramatic movie, not as a static stage performance though a live stage performance it of course is. This may at times be a bit tiresome as images and image angles may seem to switch a bit too often but most of the time by far this cinematographic approach pays off well and enhances the drama without disturbing the operatic enjoyment. The result is an experience unlike the live experience in the opera house itself but I'm inclined to say the choice was well made. After all, a film on DVD is not a stage performance even if it is based on one.
Staging and acting, all of the visuals are evidently extremely important in a DVD release and the Copenhagen Ring gives you decors to relish and acting on a very high and convincing level indeed. As in the Boulez Ring, the acting closely follows the music and specifically the text though it may sometimes appear to stretch the imagination a little too far. The film quality in itself is superb and so is the sound.
Speaking of sound, the orchestra is more than up to the task. No one I think expects this orchestra and this conductor to give the best-ever performance of Wagner's Ring on record. It is however more than adequate to deliver a good reading that never disappoints and often impresses.
There are moments when the singing (never less than adequate, often quite good) struggles without really succeeding to rise above the orchestra. It is noticeable and thus it is a blemish albeit a small one and more forgivable in a live performance than in a studio recording.
A few remarks on the side : Hagen acted splendidly but his voice was less impressive. Siegfried in Götterdämmerung was not that strong either. Brünnhilde was great.
There was one scene that I thoroughly disliked : the Norns in the introduction to Götterdämmerung really knew how to irritate me, making by exaggerated playacting a parody out of what could have been an original idea (casting the Norns as members of the audience), it simply does not fit in the whole and to me it stands out as a black spot on this otherwise quite excellently directed Ring.
I feared for even worse when the curtain rose on Siegfried and Brünnhilde's farewell scene and uncovered a sight that awakened horrified memories of Konwitschny's Götterdämmerung (for those who watched it in the Stuttgart Ring) : you will see Siegfried donning an apron to start doing the washing-up (à la Konwitschny) but then Brünnhilde gestures him not to be silly and to take it off again, and the story starts at last to unfold again in a Wagnerian mould. So was this only a director's joke ? If so, I find it out of place in a production such as this one.
In short, this is a very good production and a very good DVD release with some weak moments that do not fundamentally alter the overall impression of a rewarding experience. If it weren't for the Norns, I'd give it overall five stars despite of a number of imperfections here and there. The first three parts of the cycle deserve five stars, the fourth only four (without counting the Norns) or three (when counting the Norns).
Should you watch this Ring ? Yes, absolutely.

Reactions to this Ring production have been varied; see other posted reviews. As with most "modern" productions, there are liberties taken with the settings, costumes, and interactions among the characters that may be stimulating or irritating to the viewer. Rheingold takes place in the early 20th century (1920s?). The maidens cavort about dressed as "flappers" in a nightclub; Alberich drinks like a fish; the gold is personified as a young adult male swimming in a lobster tank. The first scene introduces three motifs that recur throughout this production: booze (all the major male characters drink frequently -- no doubt a comment on their weakness), blood and brutality (besides the scripted deaths additional characters are bumped off, always in a graphic, brutal manner). This is not a "PG" Ring. As a Ring lover, I found most of this production entertaining and often provocative. One effect of living in our time with video and audio recordings readily available is that a performance of the Ring is not a particularly unusual event. To be special productions have to introduce novel interpretations. So far, thankfully, the music and libretto have not often been violated; that leaves the setting, costumes, and stage action as the domains for creative directors. The major conceit in the Copenhagen production is the the idea that Brunnhilde seeks out the history of her predicament between Acts 2 and 3 of Gott. The earlier operas become something of a flashback; she appears periodically (often during scene changes in the earlier operas) pouring over diaries and souvenirs (from Valhalla's library?) that recount the history of the ring. Although great effort went into achieving this effect, for me all of this effort doesn't add or subtract much from the production. And it certainly doesn't make the production a "feminist" Ring cycle. The power relations are the same as any traditional production. (How could they be otherwise without changing the libretto?) The men are clueless (Siegfried), short-sighted (Wotan), and evil (Hagan) as they make the decisions and wield power; wisdom rests with the women (Erda, Fricka, and eventually Brunnhilde) -- but that's just as true in traditional productions because that's what Wagner wrote. There are a few touches that suggest a "feminist take" such as the sword pulling scene in Act1 of Walkure. Brunnshilde's discovery of the history of the ring hardly makes the production a feminist one. I have focused on this point because several reviewers suggest some radical feminist interpretation; by and large I didn't see it. In addition, Brunnhilde is not so ignorant of the ring's history as this production implies; she gets much of the story from Wotan in the Act 2 monologue (Walkure) as well as from Waltraute in Act 1 of Gott.
Normally, I would not reveal a surprise ending but other reviewers already have; Brunnhilde appears at the beginning of Gott. visibly pregnant and delivers the child during the immolation scene; this makes for an uplifting, warm conclusion but hardly fits with Wagner's intent that the race of gods are destroyed at the end of the cycle (Brunnhilde and Siegfried are not "pure" humans)
Each succeeding opera in the series moves the action closer to the present era. For example, in Gott. Siegfried returns from wooing Brunnhilde for Gunther in a Mercedes. For the most part, modernizing the production works and the similarity between the brutality displaced by Hagan and his minions to that we have observed in recent years in Bosnia, Iraq, and so forth is striking and can be unsettling (that's a compliment). For me the most chilling scenes were the theft of the ring from Alberich in Rheingold and Hagan's watch in Gott. Speaking of Hagan, many reviewers have applauded his acting but found his voice a bit weak. Nevertheless, the evil 3 (Hagan, Alberich, Mime) were among the best singing actors in the production. Most of the cast did a fine job; not as brilliant as some of the classic audio Rings, but certainly more than competent. Altough old timers like myself often wax nostalgic about Nilsson, Traubel, Varnay, or Flagstad, none of the aforementioned grand ladies (or comparable grand men of the past) could act (or more accurately were required to act) like the singers in this production. I thought all the singers did a great job of acting and a very good job (more variable here) of singing. The cast and production was worthy of any of the "great" opera houses.
The quality of the film is excellent; sharp images; vivid colors. My only complaint is that because it is shot like a movie with multiple cameras and perspectives, the camera often jumps around excessively and there are too many way-too-close closeups. Wny film makers think viewers enjoy seeing the pores of the actors and the fillings of open mouthed singers is beyond me.
Before closing, I want to single out the production of Siegfried. Often, this opera is considered the most difficult to bring off successfully. In this production, the set was great and, for once, the opera moved along without dragging.
I've rambled too long, so to close, I recommend this Ring along with the recently released, but quite different, Amsterdam Ring to stand along with the Barenboim, Boulez, and Levine efforts. It certainly may not "click" with some viewers (hence the wide range of opinions posted here), but it is never less than entertaining and thought provoking.

Notwithstanding all the positive customer reviews, the truth is that neither the conductor nor most of the performers evince much talent for Wagner. The one notable exception is Stig Andersen, who plays both Siegmund and Siegfried. He is the main reason why this silly sci-fi/horror themed Ring is worth watching.

The production begins with a gory "Das Rheingold." Wagner's romanticism largely falls by the wayside, but of course that is the case with most contemporary Rings. (Can it be doubted that ours is a thoroughly unromantic age?) Now, there is something to be said for emphasizing the dark side of Wagner's work. The composer himself spoke of the "ghostly fifths" that he found so eerie as a child. He often recalled the thrilling Wolf's glen scene in Weber's Der Freischutz, which made such a frightening impression on his young imagination. He even described some of his own music for the Ring -- specifically, music he wrote for the villian, Hagen -- as "demonic . . . annihilatory syncopations . . . a concert for toads, crows, and ravens." One of the problems with this Copenhagen Ring, however, is that the conductor, and subsequently the orchestra, fails to evoke this frightening side of Wagner even while the mise en scene tries to emphasize the story's horror. Moreover, without the redemptive, counterbalancing force of Wagner's almost metaphysical romanticism -- the art-as-a-religion seriousness that he advocated -- you end up with a staging so lopsided that it can no longer be taken seriously as Wagnerian. You wind up with what amounts to a B-grade horror movie, one that doesn't take ITSELF very seriously. In short, you wind up with camp. This is a very juvenile, campy Ring cycle.

It all begins with an event that is not in Wagner's libretto: Brunnhilde is looking through her father's attic, trying to find out from dusty books and packed-away mementos how she ended up betraying and basically killing her soul-mate, Siegfried. One of the mementos she finds is the Nibelung's ring (for some reason they turned the ring into a bracelet here, but I will continue referring to it as a ring; incidentally, the reason why at the end of this staging Brunnhilde doesn't return the ring to the Rheinmaidens is precisely because it appears as one of the mementos that she finds stored away in a box in Wotan's attic). The insertion of Brunnhilde in the attic is unwarranted on so many levels that it is easy to come up with a steady stream of objections. Brunnhilde is supposed to have killed herself after she betrays Siegfried, so she can't still be around at this point in the story. Also, she has no need to "find out how it came to this" since all that she needs or wants to know is revealed to her at the end of "Gotterdammerung" (this is emphasized by Wagner himself). Moreover, Wotan can't have an attic since Valhalla is supposed to have gone up in flames, along with Wotan himself.

Of course, the heart of "Das Rheingold" is not Brunnhilde -- she isn't even supposed to be in this part of the Ring -- but her father, the god Wotan. But the Wotan in this production is so weak that all the theatrical energy ends up coming from the demonic dwarf Alberich, who is here portrayed as a mad scientist. As Alberich, Sten Byriel's singing is horrible in the first scene of the opera. Thankfully, he improves significantly during scene III (even if he is occasionally drowned out by the orchestra) and remains pretty solid for the rest of the cycle. Interestingly, the point at which he improves is precisely the spot at which he puts the tarnhelm on to make himself invisible. When he sings "Dem Haupt fugt sich der Helm" his voice suddenly deepens, his whole demeanor changes and, aided by some fine playing from the orchestra, we finally witness the magic that Wagner can achieve. In keeping with the sci-fi theme of this Ring cycle, when he changes shape for Wotan and Loge, Alberich turns into a weird, mutant worm. After Wotan and Loge capture him, he is tortured and his arm is hacked off. The scene is brutal yet effective thanks to Byriel's dramatic singing and acting. Unfortunately, once he leaves the stage all the drama goes with him. Wotan, Fricka, Loge, Donner, Froh, Freia, the giants -- all of these parts are sung with more aplomb in the Boulez and Barenboim cycles. The Copenhagen cast isn't bad; they just aren't great Wagnerian singers. Much of the reason for the failure of this Copenhagen production rests with the conductor and stage director, who totally fail to create an atmosphere of high drama, of massive wills (of gods and giants) coming into titanic conflict. Instead, we get a bunch of ordinary people milling around the stage, seemingly with very little purpose for being there. Nothing much appears to be at stake when absolutely EVERYTHING should be at stake. Where is the high-strung emotion that Wagner demands here, just as he demands it in Tristan und Isolde?

For me, "Die Walkure" is the low point of the Copenhagen Ring. It starts out strong with Schonwandt doing a great job conducting the prelude. But Stig Andersen (Siegmund) is hampered by being paired with Gitta-Maria Sjoberg's disastrous Sieglinde. Ms. Sjoberg is blessed with a gorgeous voice, but she is not cut out for this part. She would have been much better as the Woodbird that speaks to Siegfried later on in the cycle. Her sweet, warbling voice would have been perfect there. In any case, the role of Wotan, sung by Johan Reuter in "Das Rheingold," is now handed over to James Johnson. His long scenes with Fricka and Brunnhilde are nothing short of enervating, not a good thing. Irenie Theorin gives an inconsistent performance as Brunnhilde. At times she is very good, especially toward the end of the cycle. When I compare Theorin's Brunnhilde to Gwyneth Jones's or Anne Evans's, Theorin comes out losing. In my opinion, in this "Die Walkure" only Andersen reaches any level of greatness.

The cycle improves somewhat with "Siegfried," mostly because Stig Andersen takes center stage and has a decent -- if by no means spectacular -- Mime to work with. His voice blends more smoothly with Bengt-Ola Morgay (Mime) than it does with Sjoberg. It is exciting to listen to Andersen sing as he forges his sword. Act II is aided by the return of Byriel as Alberich. In his scene with Johnson, Byriel's singing and acting leaves Johnson's Wotan in the dust. The dragon is depicted as a grotesque creature with huge tentacles coming out of a hole in the ground. Siegfried jumps into the hole and the stage rises so that we can follow him under ground. As the floor rises, an underground cave (where Fafner is controlling the monster from a console) is revealed -- a very cool theatrical effect. In Act III, Johnson delivers his best singing as he calls on Erda. He remains strong through the next scene opposite Andersen. The long, concluding duet between Andersen and Theorin is good, but by no means extraordinary.

Finally, we come to what is, musically speaking, the best part of this cycle. By the end of "Gotterdammerung," Stig Andersen, despite some bad acting and a lackluster first act, will have sung one of the best Siegfrieds available on DVD, and the orchestra will have soared. Theorin delivers a phenomenal finale -- at least compared to some of her earlier singing, where I found her tone at times somewhat shrill. Another stand-out is Anette Bod's Waltraute. The chorus of Vassals belt out their part so well that they rival the chorus in Clemens Krauss's Bayreuth recording of 1953, which is the best chorus I've heard. Most of the rest of the cast is solid, with Byreil returning as Alberich, and Guido Paevatalu delivering a tolerable Gunther. Peter Klaveness's voice grows weak occasionally, but I like his dark, quavering tones; they suit Hagen's character. In keeping with the campy sci-fi, most of the stage-craft remains silly, but the worst aspect is that the video editor decides to add absurd slow-motion replays of, among other things, Brunnhilde aimlessly wandering through her father's attic. And of course the Rheinmaidens never get their gold back. But the music is so good in this "Gotterdammerung" that the weaknesses seem mere trifles.

A minor point of annoyance: the Copenhagen audience does not stop coughing throughout the production.

On DVD, the Boulez Ring remains my favorite, with Barenboim probably coming in second. The much ridiculed Stuttgart Ring can justly claim a fantastic conductor of Wagner, as well as much better singers than Copenhagen. There are actually several parallels between the Copenhagen and Stuttgart Rings. The director of the former obviously took many ideas from the latter (for instance, Fafner bellowing through the loudspeakers). Judging by comments made by other reviewers, most people who have seen both Rings seem to prefer Copenhagen over Stuttgart, but here is my case for favoring Stuttgart: I rather watch the Copenhagen Ring, but I much rather hear Stuttgart -- and ultimately opera is about using your ears, not your eyes. If you want a solid Ring on DVD, you can't go wrong with Boulez: Wagner: The Ring of the Nibelung ( Das Rheingold / Die Walküre / Siegfried / Götterdämmerung) (Boulez/Chereau Ring Cycle).

I am of two minds about the Copenhagen Ring. Musically and dramatically, it is a truly exceptional offering from a smaller opera house that is blessed with a very good cast and nuanced orchestral playing. It is, as far as acting, one of the most heartfelt Rings on dvd, at its best when showcasing the wonderful drama and profound feeling of Wagner's work. It also allows a number of directorial fancies that deviate from Wagner's text and could easily have ruined the production; however, I am amazed, for all that, at just how much it succeeds nonetheless.

And where it succeeds, it succeeds brilliantly. While one might not agree with every textual addition or subtraction, one can't help being caught up in the vision it presents, or appreciating its overall intelligence and coherence; whatever else, it presents a unified and unique reinterpretation of Wagner's masterpiece, if not one totally true to form. In contrast to interpretations that seem to offer alterations that don't particularly fit into any broader scheme, nothing in the Copenhagen Ring is random. It all fits into the overall interpretative framework, and in doing so, catapults itself instantly into a higher class of production than those that throw in anachronistic changes in time period or situation without rhyme or reason. The production does do much that is challenging and different, beginning with its very opening premise: clutching a single candle for light, Brunnhilde enters a musty library stacked from floor to ceiling with books. Steadfastly, determinedly, almost desperately, she sifts through the reading in search of the answers that will unveil the truth of her family's history and the convoluted path that has led to her betrayal by the greatest of heroes--and her betrayal of him in turn.
In many ways, this backstory doesn't particularly add new insight into The Ring. Nevertheless, presenting The Ring as Brunnhilde's discovery of the past is an interesting, rather humanizing idea--and certainly presents a captivating tableau as the familiar e flat chord of the prelude dawns in the orchestra and we watch Brunnhilde emerge from the shadows with her torch--and manages to stay mostly in line with the spirit of The Ring. The decision to place the operas in a determinate time period has always truck me as anathema to any good Ring production. And yet, the setting of the Copenhagen Ring in the various decades of the twentieth century--progressing from the 1920's in Rheingold (the Rhine maidens are flappers, of course) to the 1990's in Gotterdammerung--mostly works, leaving you constantly wondering how the director is going to pull off the next act and genuinely excited to see the ensuing part of the staging. I can't help feeling this specificity of time period limits the scope of the piece, fettering the universality of its mythological underpinnings to too concrete a context--but I'll talk more about the downside of the production in a moment. And all things considered, as well-conceived and implemented as it all is, it mostly works very well.

The numerous other amendments to the text achieve various degrees of success. While I am not normally in favor of altering a work that I consider so complete as it is, there are moments when changes can be used to poignant effect. The Valkyries, for instance, are fancifully portrayed with cherub-like wings. At the end of Walkure when Wotan annuls Brunnhilde's divinity, he tears hers off; as he moves to kiss away her godhead, a radiant white dove appears within their folds. Brunnhilde stoops to pick it up, tenderly caresses it in her hand, and then finally sends it flying away. The bird then reappears in Siegfried as the woodbird that guides the hero to Brunnhilde's rock, an ingenious and altogether moving touch. Similarly, the symbolic portrayal of the Rhinegold as an innocent, beautiful youth is deft and powerful. When the theft of the gold is depicted by Alberich pitilessly tearing out the young man's heart, the grisly scene drives home the sheer brutality of Alberich's crime against nature with imagery that could not be more potent. The violence is shocking, as it should be. Other touches, such as having Sieglinde withdraw Nothung from the world ash tree instead of Siegmund, are less effective and sometimes downright silly.

Minor changes to the text aside, what hurts this production the most--and this is why I feel incapable of giving it, as much as I have enjoyed it, a full five stars--is the anemic, over-humanizing touch employed towards the more heroic, mythological elements, particularly the characterization of Wotan. That probably sounds paradoxical, as any successful Wotan ought to be intensely human and resonant with the audience. However, there is a point where too much humanizing can detract from a hero's mythological stature, and in doing so, actually render him less sympathetic. This has become one of the aesthetic plagues of the modern age, where the heroic characters of romanticism, representing dramatized expressions of the best and worst within us, are viewed as unrealistic, divorced from the life of the modern man. The unfortunate result of this is that in the name of realism, heroes are bled down to some vague view of the `common man', someone presumably indicative of the folks next door; in pursuit of this, no one is allowed to be too grand--after all, we're all human and flawed, aren't we? The downside to this is that the characters of romantic works of art appeal to us precisely because they represent not a carbon copy of the idiot next door, but rather what is important to us, our own virtues and foibles portrayed on a dramatized, monumental scale. The great heroes of art endure not because we see them in the street every day but because of what they represent; we recognize in them what is noblest (and sometimes worst) about us, and this adds to our humanity as much as theirs.
So conceived, *this* is the essence of Wotan. He is heroic and noble, emblematic of our own personal struggles and contradictions but dramatized on a much grander, mythological scale. Our individual paradoxes and shortsightedness impact our lives; his wreak havoc throughout all of existence. And we only really care about it all if we feel we can relate to him, understand his struggle and why he made the choices he has made, even if the consequences of his actions have a slightly larger sphere of influence than our own. And if we don't care about Wotan, the whole thing is pretty much over from the start; as much as this Ring presents itself as Brunnhilde's story, it can't help revolving around Wotan and the decisions he made before the opening bars of Das Rheingold even sound. And one of the great disappointments about the Copenhagen Ring is that in Das Rheingold, we don't give much of a damn about Wotan. He has been brought hopelessly down to earth--not only does the specificity of chronological context (he is some sort of gangster-like industrialist, by the look of it) detract from his status as the chief of the gods, he is characterized as something of a monster. Here is a Wotan who doesn't just kidnap Alberich--he chains him up in what can only be a torture chamber, replete with a tray of medical syringes which he fingers devilishly during the `interrogation'; when it comes time to claim the ring as his own, he is not content to simply extract it from Alberich's chained hand, but slices off Alberich's entire arm as Loge looks on in horror. (Yes, even Loge is presented as a moral authority over Wotan in this particular Rheingold.) He is utterly unsympathetic as a character, and this is precisely what one does *not* want to achieve at the beginning of The Ring.

Fortunately, there is enough of interest in Rheingold to hold one's attention despite the thuggish characterization of Wotan, and the rest of the operas improve from there. Walkure is intensely heartfelt, Siegfried rather clever (the vision of Siegfried and Mime living together in a suburban house in the late 1960's is delightfully absurd, and it's to the director's credit that it manages to succeed as well as it does), and Gotterdammerung concludes with a fundamental deviation to the ending that, even if it will doubtless cause purists to groan, is about as good as directorial fancy is going to get. It changes things on a profound level, but for the Ring veteran, it's a refreshing surprise, and certainly a happier one than, for instance, the abrupt and unwelcome appearance of random people watching the end of the world on television screens at the end of the Kupfer/Barenboim production.

Musically, however, it doesn't match up to Kupfer/Barenboim, or several other of the major dvd recordings. I have mostly focused on the mechanics of the production in my review, as that is what is bound to most interest prospective Wagnerian buyers who are curious about a new staging; having said that, the quality of the music is of course of paramount importance, and while the Copenhagen Ring is mostly very good, the orchestra simply doesn't soar the way that of Bayreuth or the New York Met does. Even so, the orchestra mostly presents a solid and beautiful account of the score--if some of the grandiosity is lost, surely the more lyrical sections are played with tenderness and an immensity of feeling--and the majority of the singers do ample justice to their roles. To the most part, what a given singer lacks in vocal power, he or she makes up for with superb acting and emotion; the production is certainly one of the very best in terms of successful drama and direction. And there are a few world-class standouts in the midst of a generally solid cast; Irene Theorin in particular is a superb Brunnhilde, and Stig Andersen does an admirable job as both Siegmund and Siegfried. There are moments when the orchestra drowns out the singers (always a risk in Wagner, I suppose), as well as times when the power and majesty of Wagner's vision is dimmed and simply not quite able to reach the sweeping heights of which the music is capable. There are nevertheless many memorable and truly beautiful scenes, and particularly given that the orchestra does not have the world-class Wagnerian stature afforded the likes of Bayreuth or the Met, it actually is astoundingly good, certainly worthy of much commendation for these performances.

So for all that, despite the stated reservations, I was very impressed by the Copenhagen Ring and would absolutely recommend it to those who want to experience a reinterpreted, non-traditional account of the operas. Those who are strict textual interpretationalists and would consider it a crime not to include all the magic of a resplendent rainbow bridge leading to a fantastical Valhalla crowning the sky in all its mythical glory would do well to look elsewhere (see Otto Schenk's just about flawless romanticized production). For those who are of a slightly more open mind, those who, as in my case, have seen and own a number of Ring Cycles and are interested in experiencing those that are less stringently traditional, this is surely as good as it gets.

'Eurotrash' is an odd, rather dismissive term. It's bandied around by critics of non-traditional productions of classic operas, particularly if the director's interpretation differs from that of the reviewer.

I'm going to modify this slightly. After all, the latest Bayreuth production of Meistersinger fits the above definition, but it isn't Eurotrash - it's just trash.

For the purposes of this review, let's define 'Eurotrash' as a production where the director feels that
- His views are more important than those of the composer
- The audience are far too jaded to appreciate a traditional production
- All those gods and heroes aren't particularly relevant to our modern age - let's introduce some good honest mediocrity; everyone can relate to that.
- Opera doesn't have to be inspiring, just provocative
- Keep it shallow; these days people don't understand 'deep'
- When all else fails, make fun of your audience

However, and this is very important, if the director actually understands the source material, and has the integrity to make the best possible interpretation (within his world view), Eurotrash isn't necessarily a bad thing.

By this definition, the Copenhangen Ring is an excellent example of Eurotrash, and would be a worthy addition to the collection of any Wagnerite who hasn't yet acquired a specimen - far better than the Stuttgart travesty, and actually quite entertaining, in an irritating kind of way.

There are some quite bizarre aspects of this performance. The most obvious is Kasper Bech Holten's decision to portray der Ring as a comedy!

Loge is a sleazy, chain-smoking lawyer, always looking for a light (he's the God of Fire, and doesn't have a light(har har))

When Wotan is quizzing Mime, he keeps glancing at a kichen knife, trying to influence Mime's choice of questions. You know, the same way that Harry Kupfer did it, but less subtle.

The Norns are portrayed as Wagnerites, sitting in the audience. When they talk about the past, they wave a copy of Wagner's autobiography. When Norn III complains that her view of the future is obscured by the actions of humans, the Norns hold up a picture of the director, with a placard denigrating 'regietheater'. (Ego showing a bit, old chap)
And for the hard of understanding, when they return to Mother, they show a picture of Cosima.(Laugh? I nearly started!)

And throughout, the characters drink like fish. When Siegfried finally catches up with Wotan on the mountain, he's sitting there surrounded by empties. Is the constant drinking a Danish thing? I vaguely remember Hamlet saying something of the sort.

There is some unnecessary gore, which seems to be a Eurotrash standard. Was it really necessary to remove Alberich's arm? Surely a spot of vaseline would have done the trick.

Add to this the obligatory, uninspiring, provincial drabness and squalor (maybe Eurodrab would be a better term than Eurotrash). Why oh why do European directors think this is a good thing!!!!

In its defence, this isn't actually a bad production.

There is a consistent dramaturgical vision, unlike Stuttgart. There are some liberties, including the presence of Brunnhilde in Rheingold, the death of Alberich, the non-death of Hunding, and of course, the ending..... but these don't detract from the composer's intent, I think.

With the exception of Susanne Resmar's Erda, sung with a strange, almost yodelling tone, the standard of singing is perfectly adequate, if not exactly stellar.

The acting, and general interpretation of the roles, was good. Stig Andersen ably stood up to the challenge of playing both Siegmund and Siegfried. James Johnson managed to preserve the dignity of Wotan despite the rather unpleasant makeup and costume. Michael Kristensen's Legal Loge was hilarious.

The orchestra was adequate, if occasionally out of its depth.The singers were drowned out a couple of times; perhaps Michael Schonwandt could take a few lessons from Barenboim. Tempos were fast, but they matched the general shallowness of the approach.

And as a bonus, there's a discussion between the director and the Queen of Denmark (who is a keen Wagnerite). How cool is that!

If you have all the traditional productions, and would like to see how the other half lives, give this one a shot. It won't be particularly inspiring, but you might find it entertaining.

If you think the Chereau Ring is controversial, give this one a miss.

And look out for the sequel: Son of Siegfried

The Royal Danish Opera clearly wanted to create for itself some international prestige, and went all out with a Ring production to compare to any other. There is a ton of scenery, a superb cast even without a single Big Star, wonderful conducting, and an intriguing director's concept. Even the most jaded Ring veteran will find many a detail to ponder--the Rhine gold as a naked swimming youth, or the way the ring leaves physical scars on those who wear it. By comparison, the Harry Kupfer Bayreuth staging is cheap and ponderous, with a kind of "I'm Bayreuth, I don't have to have scenery" feeling to it. Cheap, I call it. This one is elaborate and fascinating.

People are calling the Copenhagen Ring the feminist Ring and that is certainly true. The meta-structure is Brunnhilde discovering her heritage at the end of Act II of Gotterdamerung. That is certainly true. But it is also a relational Ring. I have seldom seen the level of interaction between characters in an opera. The video helps (or hurts depending on your prejudices) by its close ups especially of other characters than the one singing. For example in Rheingold Woman and Loge are casing Alberich's realm while Mime whines about his life.
It is also an extremely violent Ring. Many more characters die than in Wagner's libretto. Only Brunnhilde makes it out alive. The death of Siegfried is especially gruesome. But then so are all the deaths.
And finally it is an alcoholic Ring. Alberich gets staggering drunk in the first scene of Rheingold. Woman carries around a liquor flask from which he swigs frequently. Siegfried passes up liquor in the first act. Bit by Gotterdamerung he has developed quite a taste for booze.
The violence and the drink help to make the case for the brutality of patriarchy. Again and again the production team (and this is a team effort) delivers a shock. And then upon reflection you realize that although not in Wagner's libretto it is not against the plot or the music. Indeed some of the actions seem right on.
This is the most exciting Ring I have seen. You can't wait to see what they will do next. And for me most of the things they do add to my understanding of the work. Setting it in the 20th century brings home what it is about. They have taken Wagner's original as archetypes and then enfleshed them in concrete 20th century characters and situations. I feel it works very well. I'm not sure someone with no knowledge of the Ring would make of it, but for this confirmed Wagnerholic was an eye opener.
So what about the cast - the singing and acting. It is not the best sung on DVD. But it is damn good. The only flaw in the cast is Hunding who simply does not have the weight in his voice for the role. This is too bad since they have a great bass in Hunding who is truly menacing in this production. All the singer appear to be Danish or Scandinavian. The only one I know is Stig Anderson and I feel he delivers the finest Siegfried I have ever seen. He manages to incarnate a teenager wonderfully even though his face is a few decades older than Siegfried's 18 years. Then in Gotterdamerung he becomes the oaf: even before the magic potion he is cruising Gutrune. Someone has said that they find this Ring cold. I believe it is the first time I have actually shed tears a Siegfried's death. Brunnhilde almost matches him growing from girl to woman. Above all they can sing.
Approaching the end of Gotterdamerung every one wonders how they will bring it off, if they will bring it off. They bring it off, but before the transform the Immolation scene beautifully. This is usually a stand and deliver scene. Not here. When Brunnhilde addresses Woman she really does so. He is seated in a huge chair with this back to the audience waiting to die. Before Brunnhilde has addressed Siegfried's corpse. As Siegfried dies Brunnhilde is with him. Put these two scenes together and you have a final love duet - each singing to the silent partner. It you love the Ring you owe it to yourself to see this magical production from Copenhagen.

In many ways this by far the best Ring on DVD and I have had three others and parts of a fourth. One, the Levine, I gave away. While updated to the 20th century, this is NOT Euro-trash and all in all as drama it works splendidly, particularly in the so called "boring parts". A group of singing actors soar into the drama with no holds barred and they play to a very knowing camera crew who keep the drama of the moment alive by at times focusing appropriately on how an other character respond to what is sung as well as on the singer in question. Each singer is in character at all times. And the singing, with one minor exception, is first class. The staging is spectacular. Thus this is by far the best Sigfried I have ever seen. And I mention this because, before seeing this DVD, I had thought Sigfried the weakest of the dramas. You may have read of some of the gimmicks in this production such as the rheingold being a nude male swimmer. The fact is, though, that within the context of this production the so called gimmicks work. Everything is well thought out, even the makeup. It is surely one of the great opera sets on DVD.

I had heard so much about this Ring before purchasing the dvd set. I tend to like conservative productions of operas for the most part. When I saw the Met's Ring dvd set it opened my eyes to why so many people love this work. This Copenhagen Ring is completely different....almost a polar opposite of the Met's Ring. Still, I decided to give it a shot. I figured the price of the entire set was less than tickets to actually see a Ring. I actually loved this Ring. It makes you laugh a lot, and it is full of surprises. Just when I thought I wouldn't be surprised again, I was. This is a Ring that does not take itself too seriously, and you actually realize that there is humor in the Ring. However, there are very touching moments in this production also. I highly recommend it. It is a lot of fun and still touches you concerning the whole drama.

A Dane myself one could say that I am almost contractually obligated to love this Ring, but though I can't for a moment deny that this production has been a cultural exertion of a magnitude so far unheard of in this small country - and one crowned with considerable success - I still have serious reservations about a great many things when it comes to its conceptual scope.

Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" is without a doubt the most spectacular and demanding, longest and most complex work ever written for the stage, and when it was first performed in Bayreuth in 1876, the composer was indeed the first to remark that he doubted anybody would ever be able to stage it, in a fashion that would render it justice the way it was originally conceived. Well, since that time a good many have tried, and some rather more successfully than others. The first production I saw was the so called "Centenary Ring" staged in Bayreuth in 1976 by the French film director Patrice Chéreau, and as such that version, with its tense drama and naturalistic depiction of violence, will always be something of a reference to me. Unfamiliar as I was with the traditional ways of staging this work, I found the use of costumes and set pieces from the age of industrialisation during the last half of the nineteenth century quite fitting (after all, that is when the operas were written), and the rantings and howls of "sacrilege" trumpeted by the traditional Wagner fans left me utterly unmoved. As such I should feel great sympathy for Kasper Bech Holten, the producer of this Copenhagen version, who in conversation with our Queen (second disc of "Die Walküre") claims intending his staging for those whose minds are "not tied by traditional views of the operas". I frankly wonder if such an audience can be found at all these days, but mostly the remark to me certainly raises the greater question: won't these poor, innocent opera-goers be terminally confused when almost nothing in the sets or the action corresponds with what is sung anymore?

It was, I think, agreed early on that the lack of dwarfs and (especially) giants who could sing the various parts left producers certain liberties of interpretation, and with the Boulez/Chéreau Ring (Bayreuth 1976-1981) the much loved (but often ridiculed) tradition of using viking-inspired horns and hairdos was laid to rest once and for all. This production, however, retained the props (ring, weaponry, etc.) mentioned constantly in the text - and to great and dramatic effect. The action still took place in some mythical age and thus made the use of medieval pictures and phrases somewhat plausible, but when you set the action in the twentieth century (in the Copenhagen case from the 1920s to the 1990s) you unavoidably run into all kinds of trouble coming up with explanations for all those annoying anachronistic tools, such as helmets, spears and swords, that you can't just drop because they don't fit the new general concept. Holten is not the first to wrestle with these problems, but I am sorry to say that he has had no more luck than most other present-day directors coming up with consistent solutions. A man brandishing a sword in the middle of a cluster of uniformed sociopaths armed with automatic rifles is inherently silly (and to boot wide open to the old joke about bringing a knife to a gunfight!), and I seriously doubt there is much anybody can do about that. On top of this I always wince when I hear the word "hammer" and see a pump-gun, or the word "armour" and see wings with black feathers on them. Also many of Holten's personal touches and original ideas - a white dove being let loose before going into a coma, or sleeping people (being continually refered to as "sleeping") walking about the stage wide awake - find barren ground in my mind. Likewise, the decision to leave the sword-pulling in "Die Walküre" to Sieglinde is one of those seemingly anti-sexist gestures that by its very superfluity (not to mention going completely against the narrative of the entire opera up to that point) falls pancake flat on its face. In me pretentiousness like that only provokes a kind of embarrassed titter; it represents what I tend to call "artistic cramp", i.e. an irrepressable urge to do something in a new way, though it is in fact utterly unnecessary and in all likelihood less satisfactory than the way things have been done so far. I know I'm probably fighting windmills here, but looking ahead I all but expect to see the first act of "Siegfried" set in a nunnery next - with Mime in drag, and, unstopable evolution or not, that is leaving artistic license open to justified ridicule. When taking in the production for the first time I was sorely tempted to use the old phrase often quoted in the entertainment industry: there was much good and much new in the play, only the good wasn't new and the new wasn't good - but, in all fairness, that is not altogether true. Some things do work, and some actually work very well; only a pity so much else goes down in flames most horribly - given the end of "Götterdämmerung", no pun intended.

Now, you could say: this does not sound like a review that ends in four stars, and normally you'd be absolutely spot on, but this "Ring" has one colossal upside to it. It is on the whole - and I write this with utter conviction - dramatically as well as vocally one of the best "Ring"-versions in existence on DVD and CD alike. There literally (and VERY unusually for a big Wagner-production) isn't a bad performance within eye- or earshot! Some like Sten Byriel (Alberich), Christian Christiansen (Fafner), and Stig Fogh Andersen (Siegfried) are merely doing quite OK, but others like Iréne Theorin (Brünhilde), Randi Stene (Fricka), Stephen Milling (Fasolt/Hunding), and Guido Paevatalu (Gunther) excel and have not been seen or heard better for decades. And shining incandescently over them all is the magnificent true-barytone Wotan of James Johnson, defying belief in combining the gut-wrenching dramatic intensity of Sir Donald McIntyre with the vocal splendour and faultless German diction of Sir John Tomlinson. His performance in the third act of "Die Walküre" in particular is second to none, and leaves him on a par with masters like Hotter and Adam. Only the Hagen of Peter Klaveness presents a voice slightly too weak for the job, but he makes up for his vocal deficiencies by his first rate acting. The orchestra, very professionally led by Michael Schønwandt, lacks a bit of the edge a Levine might have produced, but it in no way detracts from the overall emotional punch, which is considerable.

Wagner used to say that he prefered actors who couldn't sing to singers who couldn't act; I sometimes wonder if he ever met anybody who in his expert opinion mastered both. Anyway, he would have truely loved this cast!