Metropolitan Opera - Wagner's Siegfried. April 21, 2012.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, Balcony (Seat F20, $95).

Story.  See previous post.

Conductor - Fabio Luisi.  Mime - Gerhard Siegel, Siegfried - Jay Hunter Morris, The Wanderer - Bryn Terfel, Alberich - Eric Owens, Fafner - Hans-Peter Konig, The Forest Bird - Erin Morley, Erda - Patricia Bardon, Brunnhilde - Deborah Vight.

Sports fan debate if it counts as a grand slam if a tennis player wins the four majors over the course of two years.  The purist would insist all of them must be won in the same year.  In the same regard I didn’t see the Ring for the second time even though with today’s performance I saw all four operas with the new production.  I have an even weaker case as I saw Gotterdammerung before seeing Siegfried, thus I didn’t even see the four in the right order.

This time I went by myself.  One reason I got the ticket was because Anne had to be in Flushing for most the day, so I was going to be by myself anyway.  Having gotten back home Friday night at about 11:30 pm, I had to catch the 9:14 am train from Metropark Saturday morning.  Meanwhile Joe and Jess were staying over, which made for quite a bit of schedule juggling.  And their dog Ruby ate a tube of antibiotic cream to boot!  (They had to make her vomit, but she is okay.)  All of us (including Ellie and Kuau) did meet up for dinner at the Korean Tofu restaurant in Edison, which made for a nice conclusion for the day.

I had re-read my writeup on the last Siegfried I saw (Seattle), the gist of which is that I wasn’t particularly impressed.  The tenor singing Siegfried was not feeling well and turned in a very weak performance.  Siegfried himself was naïve and somewhat crude, and thus not a very sympathetic figure.  On top of that we were quite tired as we were shuttling between Seattle and San Francisco between operas.  I even made the remark that it was quite unlikely I would see the opera for a second time.

I need to re-assess some of those sentiments.  With this second hearing, the music made a lot more sense to me.  The leitmotifs were clear, and sometimes I thought even over-repeated a bit – perhaps inevitable as for the five-plus hour opera we have only a few characters.  Siegfried came across as much more reasonable.  What I am curious about is whether this is due to more familiarity, different performers, or because I was simply more awake.  Nonetheless, it made the story more plausible.  And I probably should eat my words about not going to see any Ring Cycle ever again.  For now I will revise it to “I won’t mind seeing another Cycle if is done by another cast.”

For this opera the multi-million dollar set was again used mostly as a screen, although the planks were lined up every now and then to form a cave or a path.  I was quite sure we would get a staircase for Siegfried to run up to the mountain, but we got this row of Xs instead.  It was quite clever how they presented Brunnhilde by making her more visible as the last scene progressed.  If I am not mistaken, I heard more creaks and groans from the planks as they were being rotated.  Also, the dragon looked more like a big snake.  I found it somehow incongruent with the impressionistic set.

The singing was generally quite good.  Although how the sound came across was affected substantially by how the planks were arranged.  For instance, when Siegfried and Brunnhilde first began to sing together, they were directly in front of this row of planks, and the voices came across very well.  As they moved away from the planks or to other parts of the set, their voices dropped off quite a bit.  I must say Voigt’s performance was most impressive.  She only appeared towards the end of the opera, so the demands on her were relatively modest; but she managed to make the whole thing look easy.  I remember feeling sorry for Stig Andersen who sang the title role in Seattle, that sentiment wasn’t at all necessary for Morris.  Mime and Siegfried actually acted as percussionists when they were forging the sword Nothung.  I must say Mime did a better job than Siegfried.  Finally, the horn solo (Erik Ralske) was just amazing, I didn't know you could play the horn so soft and steady.

I do find seeing Seigfried after Gotterdammerung was illuminating, somewhat like watching a movie that tells the story in reverse chronological order.  In the case of the Ring, this is how Wagner wrote the stories anyway, starting with Gotterdammerung and ending with Das Rheingold.

In any case, I do wonder if my attitude towards the Ring Cycle would continue to evolve if I get to see it again.

The New York Time review is from an early performance with this set.  The reviewer goes into quite a bit of detail into every aspect of the opera, including how Morris was the second substitute for that role.   Most (but not) all of the artists are the same as today’s, and I assume many of them are more settled in their roles by now.