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Review of Gotterdammerung
The modern staging of the COC Ring operas is controversial and provides an interesting contrast with the "naturalistic" (traditional) Ring that the Seattle Opera Company presented last August. (Each of the four COC operas has a separate artistic director, while Richard Bradshaw, the general director of the COC, conducts the entire Ring.) Swords, spears, magical steeds, dwarfs, Rhine maidens, and celestial castles do not easily lend themselves to bourgeois (as distinct from heroic or mythical) settings. Still, the comments that I picked up from the audience during the intermission of today's performance of Die Gotterdammerung were that the modern costumes "worked."
What counts, finally, is the music, plus the story (Wagner's philosophy of life and death). The music, all nearly five hours of it, is magnificent and is resplendently performed by Bradshaw and the COC orchestra, which includes four exotic French horns called "tuben," a kind of "tuba" that Wagner created specially for his Ring operas. The COC acquired four new "tubens" for its Ring from a distinguished instrument maker in Germany - as tested by members of the horn section of the Berlin Philharmonic.
The ensemble singing in the opera (the three Norns, the three Rhine Maidens, and the chorus of the Gibichung men) is excellent. The major soloists (Frances Ginzer as Brunnhilde, Christian Franz as Siegfried, Mats Almgren as Hagen, John Fanning as Gunther, and Joni Henson as Gutrune) are perhaps not always inspiring. But they rise to the great moments created by Wagner, especially in the final act (involving the death of Siegfried and the immolation scene sung by Brunnhilde).
Finally, let me indicate that I find highly suspect the philosophy of life (and death) that is central to the Ring operas and to the other operas that Wagner wrote from the 1850s on (except for Die Meistersinger). He was deeply influenced by the life-denying philosophy of Schopenhauer. The idea that the curse of the Ring (human evil) can be overcome only through death - the death of the gods, the death of Siegfried, the death-suicide of Brunnhilde, through, finally, the destruction of the entire world - is repugnant to me.
Is it true that life can be purified solely by the annihilation of life, by the repudiation of life, by nihilism? Still, the musical achievement of Wagner is of such grandeur that he challenges each of us Ring aficionados to meditate deeply on the relationship of heroic action and sacrifice, of love and betrayal, to life and to death and thus also on the place of music, whose texts celebrate death, in the life of humanity.
Brayton Polka
12 February 2006
A little background. I live in Toronto and will be attending the COC's Ring cycle in September of this year, while offering my services as "art consultant" to any of the Valhalla Opera Tours members who will be attending the COC's Toronto Ring and would be interested in having me give them an informal tour of the Art Gallery of Ontario and/or the Royal Ontario Museum while they are in Toronto. I am a retired professor of Humanities at York University in Toronto. I plan to attend the post-breakfast lectures that Jonathan Dean will be giving on the Ring operas. (Let me add that I shall be joining the Valhalla Opera Tours' Kirov Ring in Costa Mesa, Orange County, California, from 5-14 October 06.)
The COC is resident in Toronto, and the three cycles of its Ring (in Iater September and earlier October) will inaugurate Toronto's new opera house, to be called the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. In each of its last three regular opera seasons the COC has successively introduced the three big Ring operas (Die Walkure in 2003-04, Siegfried in 2004-05, and Die Gotterdammerung in 2005-06). I have seen all three operas. (Das Rheingold has not been performed separately and will first be introduced during the three Ring cycles in September/October.)
Click here to go to back to the Toronto Tour.
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Toronto Ring Cycle
September 25 to October 2, 2006
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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| Join us for Canada's FIRST complete Ring Cycle. This is an occasion so monumental that the Canadian Opera Company is building a new Opera House that will open in September 2006 with Wagner's Ring Cycle. |
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Wagner's Ring Cycle
October 5th to 14th, 2006
Los Angeles, California
Kirov Opera Company
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| Be present for the long-awaited American premiere of the Kirov's acclaimed production of Wagner's Ring Cycle. As a special bonus, we will also be attending Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, by the premier Russian Opera Company - the Kirov. |
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Lyric Opera of Chicago Production
Wagner's Ring Cycle |
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| For their 2005 Ring revival, Lyric Opera of Chicago assembled a Valhallan cast - possibly the best Wagner cast assembled in the past 40 years.
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Seattle Opera Production
Wagner's Ring Cycle |
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| In August, 2005, nine Winnipeggers joined with two "Ringheads" from Chicago and one from Florida to see Seattle's famous Ring Cycle by Richard Wagner. The tour was sponsored by Manitoba Opera, Continental Travel and Valhalla Opera Tours. |
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