Metropolitan Opera – Wagner’s Die Walkure. May 5, 2011.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center – Family Circle Seat I218 ($27.50).

Story. See previous blog.

Conductor – Derrick Inouye; Siegmund – Jonas Kaufmann, Sieglinde – Eva-Marie Westbroek, Hunding – Hans-Peter Konig, Wotan – Bryn Terfel, Brunnhilde – Deborah Voight, Fricka – Stephanie Blythe.

The Yangs couldn’t make this opera because of the birth of their granddaughter (good excuse), and they gave their tickets to CM and his daughter Faith. Because of President Obama’s plans to be in New York City, we were a bit worried about traffic so we left at around 3:45 pm for the 6:30 concert. I really wanted to drive in and park at Lincoln Center because the opera was going to end late at around 11:45 pm. Turned out there wasn’t really that much traffic, so we got to Lincoln Center at about 5 pm, and had enough time for me to buy tickets for a couple of upcoming ABT performances, and a quick dinner at Ollie’s.

In the Playbill there is an insert saying James Levine is ill, and Derrick Inouye will be conducting. I tend to believe these announcements, but recall a conversation with Sharon at another opera where they had a substitute for Gergiev where she insisted they put out these big names to attract patrons while planning to make the substitutes all along. If this happens again I will begin to adopt Sharon’s view.

The same 24x3 plank arrangement was used for the second of the Ring operas. Among the different scenes were: forest, Hunding’s house, rocks, mountain, and horses. Given where we sat (way up in the Family Circle section), the lighting gave a 3-dimensional effect to the flat surfaces. They had this painted-on feel to them; one could tell they were projections because of the shadows cast when people walked in front of them – most of the time they hid it well with spot lights on the people. Anne, who saw this set for the first time, was quite impressed. In fact the arrangements were simpler than those in Das Rheingold, but I am still somewhat impressed with what they managed to do with it. Still not worth the $15M. Even though the scenes still evoked Cirque de Soleil, they were not nearly as overt. No marching people, much less use of wires to suspend actors, and generally not as much rhythmic movement.

This is the third time I saw this particular opera. The first was about three years back, at the Met, with Lorin Maazel conducting, and Deborah Voight singing the role of Sieglinde (she is doing Brunnhilde this season). The second was part of the Seattle Opera Ring Cycle we went to a couple of years ago. I don’t remember it very well, but I think the Maazel performance was the best one. Perhaps other factors contributed to how I feel: it was the first Ring opera we saw, we were seated in a box which had a clear view of the conductor and how he engaged with the artists (even though they were partial view seats), the set was a “realistic” one so I didn’t have to spend mental energy conjuring things up, and I may simply go with the reputation of the conductor (can’t be, can it?).

In general the singers did very well. Teufel had a lot of lines and in general did quite well, although his voice was inexplicably weak in some places. Konig as Hundig sang strongly; Westbroek (Sieglinde) had a sweet voice and rendered an appropriately helpless Sieglinde caught up by fate. Kaufman, Voight, and Blythe all sang beautifully although Kaufman was weak compared to Konig.

The first act began a little slowly. There isn’t a lot of action in this act, so if one is not caught up in the story or the music then one has to struggle to stay away. I indeed found myself drifting off a couple of times. Things improved as the performance went on though, and some of the dialog in Acts 2 and 3 was very engaging.

One scene worth mentioning is the beginning of Act 3. The eight Valkyries were riding horses (inverted Vs formed by planks, naturally), and they slid down to the main stage. At first I couldn’t quite tell what they were doing, but via binoculars found out they were collecting skeletons into sacks; macabre, yet clever. And I also thought they would lead the dead warriors to Valhalla in human form. And the eight ladies could make a lot of noise. Many Wagner scholars (and some nuts) try to distinguish the characteristics of each of the eight Valkyries, I think it is a waste of time. (I may have remarked on this before, but I am inside a plane right now – CO99 Newark to Hong Kong – and don’t have access to my prior posts.)

Even though this is the third time I saw this opera, there were still things I didn’t know until now. Brunnhilde is actually the daughter of Wotan and Erda, and Hundig is the son of Albrecht the Nibelung. Just in this opera Wotan has three wives (third one being the twins’ mother), I wonder if he had others in the other three operas. I also didn’t know Brunnhilde explicitly told Sieglinde she would try to save Siegmund despite Wotan’s explicit instructions to the contrary (that would explain Wotan’s wrath). There is also a major inconsistency: Brunnhilde said another who saw her face would die, but that evidently didn’t apply to Sieglinde. The Program Notes also says this story happens on earth: not quite true as I assume the start of Act 3 took place in Valhalla. Interestingly I don’t remember being puzzled by references to Das Rheingold when I saw Die Walkure for the first time, I now have more questions about the consistency of the story. Also, what happened to Siegmund after he was killed, was he brought to Valhalla?

It also occurred to me one reason I am finding new things about the opera is that there were invariably periods I dozed off during a performance (it is five hours long, after all) so some details would elude me. Of course, being forgetful could also explain some (or most) of it.

One nice surprise was our seats were quite decent, given how inexpensive they were. The acoustics was good – understandable since we could practically touch the ceiling, and with a good pair of binoculars we could see quite a bit of details.

On our way back we got to talk about this a bit. Faith was particularly enthusiastic, wondering how these singers managed to sing for so long. She is taking voice lessons and is considering a major in voice in college. We were surprised how busy traffic was close to midnight, perhaps residual effects from the Presidential visit. We got home before 1 am, driving in and parking at Lincoln Center worked out for us.