Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, Family Circle (Seat
F108, $57.50).
Conductor – Fabio Luisi; Woglinde – Disella Larusdottir,
Wellgunde – Jennifer Johnson Cano, Flosshilde – Renee Tatum, Alberich – Richard
Paul Fink, Fricka – Elizabeth Bishop, Wotan – Greer Grimsley, Freia – Wendy Bryn
Harmer, Fasolt – Franz-Joseph Selig, Fafner – Hans-Peter Konig, Froh – Richard Cox,
Donner –Dwayne Croft, Loge – Stefan Margita, Mime – Robert Brubaker, Erda – Meredith
Arwady.
Story. See
previous post.
I am “home alone” for a couple of weeks, so when I saw
that reasonable priced seats were still available for the Ring cycles, I bought
the tickets to the four performances that will constitute the last of the Met
three cycles this season. (The entire
order with seats in Family Circle and Balcony came to less than $400.) As part of our subscription I will also be
going to “Dialogues des Carmiletes” this Thursday, making it five operas in
eight days. It is going to be
interesting to see how this will work out.
I saw a complete Ring cycle in Seattle during the summer
of 2009, after which I wondered if I would ever do it again. When the new Met production came out, I also
managed to see all four operas, although not in one sitting, nor the same
order. My overall reaction was generally
much more positive.
The insert in the Playbill said Stephanie Blythe was ill
and would be replaced by Elizabeth Bishop.
Blythe is one of the names I recognize, and she usually does very well,
so I was somewhat disappointed. At the
end I think Bishop filled that role very well.
The Met’s website shows Blythe as Fricka for this evening’s Die Walkure.
My plan for this series of blogs is to simply to record “new”
findings about the operas; we will see if I succeed. Of course these findings have been around for
a long time, it is just that I can only absorb so much new information at one sitting.
My awareness that the operas were written in reverse
order was only partially correct. Per
the Playbill, only the lyrics (poems as Wagner called them) were written that
way, the music was composed in the order the stories unfold.
Thanks to the Playbill, I also got to appreciate how the
entire opera begins with an E-flat major chord.
The good news is now I am also beginning to recognize more of the
leitmotifs. To my disappointment, the
acoustics for my seat half-way up the Family Circle wasn’t as good as I
expected; oftentimes the singers were overwhelmed by the orchestra. Nonetheless, most of them did well. An exception would be Grimsley in the role of
Wotan: his voice was on the weak side.
My recollection of the (now not so) new set was that it
was put to some use in the first opera but became more and more of a projection
screen in subsequence episodes. My
reaction this evening was even in this opera it was not used that much. Thus the longer term verdict from me is getting
to be less positive.
We shall see how things go, starting with this evening’s
Die Walkure. As I type this (Monday May
6) I am actually quite looking forward to them.
Since I was by myself, I took the train in. When people were about to go into the
auditorium, they were told that there would be no intermissions for this 2 ½ hour
opera. So a lot of them turned around to
hit the washroom. Perhaps because of
that, the opera started about 10 minutes late, and didn’t end until 10:45
pm. I was in a middle seat and didn’t
want to run out during curtain call, so I didn’t get to the subway until about
10:55 pm. Good thing the train came in
about two minutes, so I managed to catch the 11:07 pm train back to NJ instead
of having to wait another hour. (For the
record, the subway ride took 6 minutes; my walk up from NY Penn earlier that
evening took 45 minutes because of the crowds.) I was all sweaty from the running,
though. I plan to drive in tonight.
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