Customer Reviews

Wagner - Gotterdammerung

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There is much to admire about this production. The singing is almost without exception on a very high level as is the orchestral playing. All the characters look their parts except the dwarf Alberich (maybe he's just big for his age) In the main Kupfer's penchant for keeping the characters moving does serve the drama although at a certain point one tires of all that lurching about. It begins to seem like all the characters are on the verge of attacking each other at any moment. By the time you've seen all of the Ring Cycle and get to Gotterdammerung Siegfried's silliness becomes a bit overdone. He seems more an empty headed jock than a hero of heros. Still, one could just justify it all. But then, at the very end of the opera, he throws in somthing so stupid and incongruous that it ruins the effect of the whole cycle. When are artistic administrators going to learn to say "enough is enough. Lets stick to the composer's ideas." Or doesn't the composer count?

Let's get the technicalities out of the way first. The source material was high resolution (analogue) video and high-quality multi-channel ambient sound. It has been ably converted to the DVD medium. I listened in DTS 5.1; apart from a few occasions where the orchestra overpowered the singers (which it probably did in the original performance), the reproduction is perfect. The lack of audience was perceptable in the rear channel, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's nice to hear the closing bars without the intrusion of early applause. And isn't it splendid to hear a Bayreuth production the way King Ludwig did?

The performances? Brilliant! Absolutely no cause for complaint. I'll just mention the highlights, but please don't interpret this as a criticism of the rest - they were all Ausgezeichnet!.

John Tomlinson's Wotan showed enormous presence, with a full command of the emotional range demanded by this part. Graham Clark's Loge/Mime was a clear indicator of the outstanding abilities of this character tenor. If you haven't seen it, check out his 'David' in Meistersinger.

Jerusalem was, er, well, Jerusalem. If you've seen him in the Met production, you'll be gratified that he may have gained a few years, but he can still portray the teenage Siegfried.

Waltraud Meyer, as Waltraute, was icing on the cake.

Now, the stage direction.

There were some surprising innovations, and if you'd like to see this production complete with surprises, please stop reading now.

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The non-speaking use of Wotan and Alberich was nothing short of genius. I won't go into too many details, but such scenes as the horn interchange between Siegfried and Wotan, the trick with the Waldvogel, Mime mouthing 'Wotan', Alberich and Wotan skulking around Mime's humble abode... All brought an extra dimension to the Gesamtkunstwerk. I think Wagner might have approved.

On the other hand, the beginning and end of the cycle were much less satisfactory. Others have already commented on the preamble to Rheingold, but I'll just mention the very end. In the lead up to immolation, Hagen hovered around Brunnhilde like a pickpocket. Quite a clever concept (since he was trying to snatch the ring) but bloody irritating!.

At the final moment, with Brunnhilde on the pyre, what should we see but a non-singing Greek Chorus wheel a bunch of TV sets onto the stage, and proceed to watch Valhalla's ruin, while sipping a cocktail. We, the audience, didn't get to watch the program. The 'making of' bonus track implied that it was an eerie premonition of 9/11. Yeah, well, personally I thought it was a loose end.

To sum up - if you aready have the two 'good' rings (you know which ones I mean) add this one to your collection

Wagner would be thrilled with this visual and vocal treat. Barenboim's nuanced interpretation at Bayreuth is stunning. The cast make the emotions in the music accessible--so the "big tragedy" is all the more shattering. Siegfried Jerusalem is heroic, yet tender as Siegfried. Check out his "birdsong" in act 3, and then his dying greeting to Brunhilde. It has been said before; this hero sings his heart out. Ann Evans is exquisite; a heroic voice and no skeeching! The production is uncluttered and evocative. For instance, notice how everyone who is related to Wotan are all redheads-just like him; a kind of inside observation for "Ring" fans...This is the final chapter for the Barenboim/Kupfer Ring, and should be viewed with the other three operas, equally entrancing!

Most productions of Gotterdammerung tend to drag until the exciting finale where Brunnhilde returns the Ring to the Rhein. Because of Barenboim's diligence in ensuring that all the leitmotif "signature tunes" come through, this Gotterdammerung is less susceptible to the dragging periods. Siegfried's and Gunter's swearing Blutbrudershaft is punctuated by leitmotifs recalling Alberich's curse and the doom that clouds this brotherhood. It is a reverse image of Wotan and Loge as they bargain with Alberich, way back in Das Rheingold. Barenboim sees that Wagner's leitmotif reminds us of that.

Just as Siegfried Jerusalem seemed born for the role of Siegfried (at least namesake wise), so Waltraud Meier makes an exceptional Waltraute. Her admonitions to Brunnhilde remind us of why Gotterdammmerung is taking place: the gold must be returned to the Rhein.

Gotterdammerung is only as powerful as its Brunnhilde. Anne Evans delivers that power, maintaining a stage presence and seizing Hagen's spear, even breaking it in two.

Perhaps it's Wagner's reminder to take a look at mankind's history of destruction, but in the bonus section, Daniel Barenboim explains how the final scene was filmed before the terrorist attack in New York on September 11th. Much as the world watched this horrible destruction on their tv sets, Gotterdammerung ends with "the cocktail set" watching the action on tv sets on stage. Wagner seems to have wanted us to watch and reflect on what we had just witnessed.

Having seen numerous Ring Cycles, live and on video, this set of performances is really one of the best and most satisfying. The singers are superb. The recorded sound could be better, but no real quibbles. Tomlinson and Evans as Wotan and Brunnhilde are magnificent.

Give me a break! For once I have to agree with those who carp about 'modernizing' opera productions. This Götterdämmerung, with its manifold attempts at relevance and meaningfulness, renders Richard Wagner's doubtful drama hopelessly kitschy and pretentious. So much of the stage business and 'acting' simply distracts one from the only really worthwhile element of the opera, the music per se. I put up with the modernizing in the first three DVDed operas from the Bayreuth Festspiele, but in Götterdämmerung it has gone too far. Indeed, as one previous reviewer groaned, what the devil was the stage business at the final curtain supposed to mean, when that crowd of everyday Germans of various ages trundled on stage with martini glasses and humongous TV sets? "Don't be frightened, little Elselein, it's only a movie! It's not the end of the world!"

Ah, if only Wagner had written symphonies instead of his interminable music-dramas! He was a symphonist of craft and 'Kraft'. He could have thrown in some choral movements, as Beethoven and Mahler did, setting poems by Heinrich Heine or Walter von der Vogelweide. Instead we have to suffer through his meretricious librettos and his pernicious philosophy in order to get a dose of his orchestral majesty. Had he written symphonies, even over-sized and over-stuffed symphonic poems, he might have been a composer stature equal to ... Berlioz? Sibelius?

[Yes, of course I'm being provocative. Take it with a grin. "Ein Lachs muss stromaufwärts schwimmen."]

Now, about that libretto ... The whole Ring Cycle is a sordid tale of greed and lust, perfidy and betrayal, mostly achieved through sleazy tricks. It's not a wholesome parable for children. Wotan is an inscrutable megalomaniac, a typical God in short. Siegfried first appears, in the second opera of the cycle, as a boyish simpleton, not unlikable, but by his appearance in Götterdämmerung, he's matured into a swaggering braggart without developing an iota of wisdom. His sheer narcissistic stupidity is the driving force in the plot. World Hero that he is 'anointed' to be, he's not truly Master of either his own Will or his own Fate. Der Willen und das Werden - vilja og verša - were the basic quasi-Manichean polarities of the old Norse/Teutonic mythologies, and to that degree Wagner was true to his sources.

And now, about that philosophy ... Wotan is of course the actual protagonist of the Ring Cycle, even though he doesn't get to sing in the finale. It's Wotan's over-reaching in the quest for knowledge, his hubris, that sets the whole conflagration going. The parallels with the Biblical account of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge cannot be ignored; mortals who aspire to be Gods will not be tolerated. Hey, Pride runneth before a Fall, nicht wahr? Oy, if only Wagner's 20th C German and Austrian admirers -- you know who?-- had understood that moral from the opera! But obviously Wagner was ambiguous even to himself.

On quite a different level, the Ring Cycle, especially its final installment, is a drama of racial conflict, essentially the subterranean Nibelungen versus the Upper Earth Humans and their lookalike Gods. And perhaps any racial conflict becomes a fight-to-the-death, a genocide, but what Wagner gives us is a Pyrrhic victory by self-destruction, self-cremation. How bizarrely prophetic! Wotan and the valkyries in their black leather storm jackets! Those black-shirted stormers would indeed get immolation returned in kind by the RAF in 1944. Don't blame me for linking Wagner and Nazi atrocities; the linkage is implicit in this very production from Bayreuth. I'm simply explicating it on behalf of directors Harry Kupfer and Wolfgang Wagner.

Watch it? Sure! Everybody ought to read Homer, the Bible, and Shakespeare. Everybody ought to visit the Parthenon and other heaps of classical rubble. Everybody ought to hear Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Ibbidy, ibbidy, ibbidy, that's all, folks!

I've never seen a better and more imaginative production than this one, yet nothing is overblown. It's a timeless production. One would never guess it was made almost 20 years ago. The singers, too, are superb. This is what I imagine Wagner himself would have liked: a Gesammtkunstwerk, or Total Artwork, combining the best in staging, voices and acting with an orchestra conducted by the incomparable Daniel Bahrenboim. Wagner 'groupies' like myself only wish we could have been there, in the Bayreuth theatre, to see the live performance.

I saw this on VHS complete many years ago, well when it first came out, and the production, the concept of Kupfer directly parallels what Herr Wagner wanted as well as Barenboim's large massive scale sound he prefers to Boulez's more chamber-like reading.Boulez also had faster tempi and Daniel. I am sure they both discussed it together. . . . What did Herr Wagner Want?, a scaled down stage, reduced to the elements, the natural elements of power, Wind, Light, Magic, Rocks, Maidens,Giants,Swords of Power, Wealth, Gold,each is a metaphor for contemporary globalized capitalism, if you know where to look.all the things necessary to rule the globe. Wagner knew long ago of the complexities, the dramatic traps in the stagecraft, stage productions, and He got tired of his deferring to his assistant with pen in hand (or plume then)taking copious notes while he was speaking during rehearsals. "Tell them not to move the Rhinemaidens so fast. . . " or "Alberich needs mores slim in his costume. . . ", and Wotan cannot sing in too far back on the platform. . . ",In this production, everyone seemed to miss the long vinyl leather coats here donned by Wotan and Brunhilde, with vinyl boots, shining provocatively and all. Hagen reminded me of Rob Snyder from "Saturday Night Live", he usually plays a good-for-nothing-mindless persona anyway, nothing amounts to much, self-centered and neurotic perfect for Alberich.The dragon was a nice touch as well, showing we know something of magic and the modernist canon; But then Alberich's ideology is what makes capitalism work well, so Herr Wagner seems to be telling us. So does Wotan, but Wotan needs a "reality check" at times, too much aristocratic baggage with too many of his "seeds" spread over the universe, but he is not one let a good deal, or a duplitous situation slip away from his staff,(the piece of wood) filled with past in default contracts un-honored for the most part.

The Rhinemaidens as well, here are not too slutty, nor intellectual, but more simply :water-children:Dippies ( Hippies who bath), AC/DC, slipping and sliding through the hydroelectric facility Kupfer provides, of large funnels, ducts and sewer pipes.We see them age when the gold is stolen and their longevity runs out. Likewise the rope of fate, where the Norns tell a tale, actually recapitualting the entire RING, so if you missed it, tune in to the First Act of Gotterdammurung. The gentle small white poles stringing this rope is wonderfully visual but from a distance.

The large continuous expanse of the stage the endless vast continuums of space is also a wonderful touch.Wagner's grandson Wieland in the early Fifties had a similar concept for the productions he mounted.Light LICHT, was the thing, Light gives the voice room to sing and develop. The RING (don't we know it) is about singing, and although Herr Wagner wanted to reach out his conceptual tentacles to a Gesamtkunstwerk, he hadn't the time, (nor the genius) to think through the concept's countless paradigms, while trying/claiming to serve all the Arts simultaneously, he served none of them, well, the music is powerful and glorious, and each part has a different orchestration so to give a kind of Timbral "signature" to the entire proceedings.Wagner thought of the Cinema but how much of this could have materialized. Ludwig of Bavaria was already spending too much of his Empire on this RING.
I prefer this Kupfer/Barenboim to the Boulez/Chereau, with all the finisse and detailed-oriented-ness of the French, it was not as provocative as this more larger strokes full-tilt one. Well TIME does that, we like something first then discard it, the FREE Market tells us this as well, consume, and this RING is well worth consuming.

Music is great-my favourite modern cycle. Now what in gods name does the end mean. And more than that-it distracts from one of the most glorious musical segments in history with an absurd and meaningless concept that really has no bearing on the rest of the opera(s). It really breaks all rules of good taste and shamefully disctracts the listener and viewer from what they should be feeling as Wagner concludes this epic. I am flabbergasted and appalled that such a crock of sh****T was allowed to ruin this otherwise wonderful production. I recommend the Die Walkure as the best part of this set.
The End--a group of people wheel out televisions and sip martinis while a blond boy and girl decide to hold hands.(In this ring--all walsungs have red hair so dont go there) It is even worse than what I have described because I am too upset to go on. FOR SHAME!!!!!!

This recording was fine. I want to write on the copy of Siegfried that I ordered from you. The DVD had obviously been repackaged. The warning and bar code tapes over the sides of the case were missing. Also, the disc sequence was different - side two was in the front holder and side one in the back. This has nothing to do with the quality but it does show that someone was playing around. I also received a message that I had the wrong region code DVD. All in all, it was very disappointing performance on your part and resulted in a loss of trust in purchasing from you. Clarence Bruce