Customer Reviews

Wagner - Gotterdammerung

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

 

 

As the world of the Gods comes crashing down at the end of Wagner's tetralogy, one should feel as if something has been lost with the end of the age of divinity and the advent of the human era. Certainly something momentous has occurred. While I was watching Deborah Polaski as Brunnhilde negotiate this 4 1/2 hour opera in the biggest pair of pants I've ever seen, reminding me of the Talking Head's David Byrne and his "Big Suit", I couldn't help thinking what a sense of relief she felt because the new human era meant a change of clothing. Her big pants are a hoot: she wears several different pair, and if they are meant as a symbol, all that I can think of is that they symbolize an amazingly successful diet. Like much set and costume design coming out of Europe these days, this stage production features abstract geometrical shapes in an austere, minimalist set and strange costumes suggestive of a sharp break with the past (their function, presumably, given the controversial past of this composer and this opera).

Gotterdammerung features some of Wagner's most glorious music. I am happy to report that, although Levine conducts the Bayreuther Festspiele using exceptionally slow tempi, the musical performance is splendid. Levine imparts a Furtwangler like grandeur to the opera. It is truly monumental in scope. He carefully articulates Wagner's lengthy melodic lines, making them even more stately and emphasizes the opera's profundity. This is a titanic Gotterdammerung, worthy of the Gods. But such monumentality is frequently undercut by Alfred Kirchner's totally abstract staging and set/costume designer Rosalie's (Gudrun Muller) slightly bizarre sartorial choices. Levine's musical conception, though grand, is traditional. The staging most definitely is not. That makes for an uncomfortable hybrid, at times. I was certainly conscious of it when my attention should have been focused on the opera itself.

Bayreuth's beautiful and unique acoustics were splendidly recorded for this 1997 performance. Listening in the crystalline multispeaker DTS 5.1 format, there is a wonderful "you-are-there" feel to the recording. On a good system it sounds great. Levine's musical conception strikes me, at least, as better than the Met performance recorded a decade earlier. He plumbs the depths of Wagner's lofty conception, revealing some of the musical profundity that is not always brought out in lesser and shallower performances. Levine imparts a "lived-in" feeling to this score: he knows it well and has obviously thought about it deeply and for a long time. He has something to communicate and he does so without dawdling or noodling around, despite the length of the performance.

The singing is very good, helped by Bayreuth's glorious acoustics. The aforementioned Polaski is excellent, as are Hanna Schwarz as Waltraute, Wolfgang Schmidt as Siegfried, Falk Struckmann as Gunther, Eric Halfvarson as Hagen and Ekkehard Wlaschihaas as Alberich. The combination of Levine's more traditional musical conception, Bayreuth's uniquely 19th Century musical and acoustic atributes and some exceptional singing almost completely offsets the occasionally pointless (if not silly) abstractions that a tradition-denying Europe seems wedded to at this moment in history. The opera runs a lengthy 275 minutes (see what I mean by grand and stately?) spread across 2 discs. It is recorded in 16:9 widescreen, digitally remastered on region code 0 (worldwide) DVDs. The usual menus and languages as well as DGG previews are here.

Whatever shortcomings I found in the production design, dwindle in the face of such glorious music. This DVD release is a good investment for all Wagnerians. Not indispensible but certainly desirable. Recommended.

Mike Birman

Wagner - GotterdammerungThis final installment of the Ring cycle is the designer version of the opera, or, as noted by another reviewer, it's Brunnhilde meets David Byrne in Stop Making Sense. Brunnhilde asks Siegfried: Honey, do I look fat in these pants? The answer is "yes", but to be fair, I think they were meant to represent a horse, since her Valkyrie sister Waltraute also has big pants. Maybe if they trotted around the stage it would look more realistic.
Hagen, played by Dick Cheney, is the most convincing actor in the opera, partly because his costume is less outrageous than the others and partly because he conveys a visage of pure evil. Siegfried, played by Opie, could not look less like a hero in his blue polyester play suit.
The set is about as minimal as it gets (we don't even get a hint of fire when Siegfied goes to rescue Brunnhilde, for instance, and Siegfried's sword looks like a crosscut saw). In short, like Heaven, this is a place where most of the time nothing happens. Which is a long time, since this opera is VERY LONG.
On the other hand, this production looks good on an HDTV, the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, conducted by James Levine, sounds very good, and the singing is excellent.
To tell the truth, I don't miss the old standard version of husky singers in helmets with horns bellowing out their numbers in order to be heard above the orchestra, but Rosalie's costumes don't do it for me either.
The final scenes of the opera, where Brunnhilde, sung beautifully by Deborah Polaski, brings Siegfried's body to the funeral pyre, returns the ring to the Rhine Maidens, and dies in a glorious conflagration is well worth watching again and again.

When this production of Wagner's RING was introduced at the Bayreuth Festival it caused quite a stir. People really discussed it and debated it at every intermission and end of performance. Rosalie's sets and costumes were the main topic of discussion. People were not sure how to take them. Today, they don't seem all that controversial to me; in fact they seem tame compared to some of today's Euro Trash Abominations. In my humble opinion they are not my favorite but, they work. I've seen a lot worse. This would not be my first recommendation; yet, I don't find the concepts offensive at all. A creative mind has definitely done some real thinking and applied it to solving some of the Ring's challenges. Many of her solutions really work. I would be interested in seeing the rest of this production; but that has not been recorded or filmed.
Now to the music and artists. With James Levine all matters orchestral and musical are in a well seasoned MAESTRO'S hands. He is excellent with a slow, broad interpretation; almost a Furtwangler or a Knappertbusch. Deborah Polaski is a rich voiced Brunnhilde with plenty of stamina and rich focused tone. She leaves all current Wagnerian Sopranos in the dust. She is just the best we had then in 1997. I didn't expect to enjoy Wolfgang Schmidt's Siegfried. I heard him do a disastrous performance of both Siegfrieds in San Francisco and it was horrible. He pleasantly surprised me with a much better performance here; not one of the greats but, more than just acceptable. In fact, he does some lovely mezza voce singing.
In conclusion, this is not one of those ESSENTIAL recordings or interpretations yet, I am very glad I watched it and will return to view it again.

The DTS surround sound, which is pretty good, is nonetheless SYNTHESIZED, as the remastering credits on the last page of the booklet make perfectly clear. On the other hand, the PCM stereo soundtrack, which presumably served as the basis of the of the multichannel synthesis, sounds like it derived from a low-bitrate webcast (like MP3 or WMA running at 44 kbps) and is disgracefully bad from such a prestigious company and such a modern recording. The Barenboim ring (Warners) sounds better in stereo and has true surround sound. Besides the DG technical quality, I enjoyed the performance, the minimalist, non-Eurotrash staging and the unobtrusive video direction. The opening Norn scene, which has been tough to bring off on video, I thought particularly well handled. The shark-fin shape shown on the cover derives from the Wieland Wagner's 2nd Bayreuth staging (1962) of Tristan Act III. It also serves as a handy reflector for the voices standing in front of it.

I don't regret the fact that only 'Gotterdammerung' from the 1994 so-called 'designer "Ring"' was filmed during Bayreuth's 1997 season: not that I object to its minimalist and lightweight staging (Kirschner) or strange (slightly ridiculous) costumes (Rosalie), but (this primarily being an 'audio' work) imagine what happens when you get to hear (for more than 4 1/2 hours) vibrato-ridden performers like Schmidt (Siegfried), Struckmann (Gunther), and Halfvarson (Hagen). The Levine-directed orchestra, the chorus and the rest of the cast - including the Norn and Rhinemaiden trios - are truly outstanding: Polaski (occasionally struggling with a handful of Brunnhilde's top notes), Schwarz (Waltraute), Wlaschiha (Alberich), Schwanewilms (Gutrune), Svenden and Naef (1 and 2 Norns), and Turner (Flosshilde). Theatrically, the most memorable part is the Alberich-Hagen encounter: the dwarf strives to awaken his insomniac son, who (about to fall more than once but supported by his father) responds with closed eyes throughout the scene (a masterstroke which you can check on YouTube). While Schmidt is a ropy actor, Halfvarson and Struckmann are marvellous, but pity about their raw vocal cords (the tenor's current Bayreuth Mime, which I have heard live on radio, is more disastrous than his Siegfried here, those signature decibels having worsened and become really unbearable).

PS What was the point of including the audience murumur and orchestra tuning up before each curtain up when obviously the whole performance was recorded without an audience? If it were, why cut the curtain calls?

The 1995 Bayreuth Götterdämmerung.
A minor chapter in the history of Wagner Ring cycles at Bayreuth has finally arrived on DVD: a performance of Götterdämmerung from the infamous 1995 production of the Ring cycle directed by Alfred Kirchner and designed by German fashionista Rosalie. (That's "Roh-zal-yah" by the way, not "Rosalie")

I had read about this strange production over a decade ago, and like most Wagnerians, was curious to see if it was actually as bad as I had heard it was. Happily, the verdict, at least as far as this 2-DVD Götterdämmerung is concerned, is that the production is less than a total disaster. That is to say, musically speaking, it's pretty good, with one glaring exception.

Luckily, this is Deborah Polaski's Brunnhilde at a vocal peak, before her big soprano voice began to suffer from a regular wobble. She sings beautifully in comparison to her Siegfried, (considering that it's Wolfgang Schmidt, that's not difficult) and tries to act through the onstage silliness. Her apotheosis won't make anyone forget Nilsson (or even Anne Evans) but she sings well enough.

Vocally, Schmidt is the primary culprit here, although compared to a 1997 performance at the Met he is in passable voice. (That's not a compliment.) His is a tight, compressed instrument, given to stentorian shouts and squally notes, with very little legato and no room for the voice to expand and blossom. It's interesting that after he drinks the love potion in Act I, his singing gets worse! This is one of those performances where the audience feels pretty good about Siegfried getting speared in the back.

With a bad tenor and worse designer, Hagen becomes the hero of the evening, ('cos he gets to kill Siegfried!) I am happy to say that Icelandic bass Erik Halfvarson gives an iconic performance as the spear-wielding party-loving Son-of-a-Nibelung. His resonant tones and rolled deep notes are a welcome distraction--almost enough to make you forget that he is wearing roller-derby shoulder-pads and a fetching half-leather full-length black skirt.

Unfortunately, no one thought to hire Hagen to put a hit on Rosalie. Her strange costume ideas include:
* A metallic "fake muscle" chestpiece for Siegfried, worn under an electric-blue vest with paper pants. (Little Lord Fauntelroy in disposable clothing?) I'm not even going to mention the sword which looks like a gigantic delta-vee cheese-grater. Mangia parmagiana!
* Brunnhilde, decked out in four-foot-wide silver "diet pants" topped by a blue and white plasticized, fake-nippled corset. (This accentuates Deborah Polaski's considerable physical assets, inspiring the title of this review--I couldn't stop laughing.)
* A quilted nylon mattress pad/cloak for Gutrune, which predicts the exact shade of Christo and Jean Claude's "The Gates," ten years before that project launched.
* A single bright orange accordion sleeve for Gunther that looks like it will zip out at any moment like an Extend-O-Glove and pop Hagen on the nose.
* The three Norns, looking like the inspiration for the forest critters in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. However, these costumes appear to be made from brightly-tinted bubble-wrap with over-long sleeves. Eek!
Falk Struckmann (who has since graduated to singing Wotan) is an excellent baritone and a solid actor when not encumbered by his costume. Anna Linden's Gutrune is more erratic than erotic (blame the quilt) and Waltraute is the ever-reliable Hanna Schwarz. The Bayreuth choral forces are able and willing, no matter how silly the production.

One wonders if the rest of this cycle is slated to be released on DVD, or if this was the only one of the four operas staged that summer to be deemed worthy of posterity. It's worth hearing for Halfvarson, Polaski, and James Levine's superb, if slow reading in the famous Bayreuth pit. Given some of the strange fashion choices made by designer Rosalie, the other three operas might be worth seeing, if only on Mystery Science Theater 3000.