Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. Balcony (Seat E115, $152.50).
Story. See previous
post. Also see my short summary below.
Conductor – Philippe Jordan. Woglinde – Amanda Woodbury, Wellgunde –
Samantha Hankey, Flosshilde – Tamara Mumford, Alberich – Tomasz Konieczny,
Fricka – Jamie Barton, Wotan – Michael Volle, Freia – Wendy Bryn Harmer, Fasolt
– Gunther Groissbock, Fafner – Dmitry Belosselskiy, Froh – Adam Diegel, Donner –
Michael Todd Simpson, Loge – Norbert Ernst, Mime – Gerhard Siegel, Erda – Karen
Cargill.
Depending on how one looks at it, this is my third ring
(I did also want a full additional cycle, although not all within a week.) The last ring was in 2013 (also at the Met),
and I last heard Das Rheingold was “in concert” with Alan Gilbert conducting
one of his last concerts as music director of New York Philharmonic. That was in 2017.
I must say for me this ring has gotten off to a shaky
start. But that’s my problem: I couldn’t
help dozing off a bit at the beginning of the opera. I certainly got enough sleep the prior
evening, so may be I was bored (things did seem to happen slowly), or I didn’t
have enough caffeine in me: I made sure to stay away from coffee since early
afternoon so I could last through the 150 minutes.
Despite that, I found the story quite easy to follow:
Alberich steals the Rheingold; Alberich enslaved the Nibelungs to mine gold, he had a ring made, and took the Tarnhelm from his brother Mime; Wotan had the giants build Valhalla
and wanted to renege on his promise of Freia to them; Loge appears and together
with Wotan they captured Alberich and took all his gold, the tarnhelm, and the
ring; Alberich places a curse on whoever owns the gold; the giants Fasolt and Fafner agreed to take the gold and the ring as substitute
payment for Friea; Wotan wanted to keep the ring but Erda’s appearance
convinced him to give it up; Fafner kills Fasolt to claim the treasure all to
himself; people are seen to walk towards Valhalla as the opera concludes.
The 24-plank (articulated, mind you) set, part of the $40
million (or is it $45?) production continues to be a topic of amusement and
discussion. I was wondering if they
moved around less during the second year, but I am sure they got full use out
of it this evening. And I must say it did
its job without too much complaint (in the form of creaks), with the (possible)
except that Erda took longer to emerge. The
gentleman next to me and I concluded that if the Met as rumored retires the set
after this season, then they will have used the set around 60 times, which
works out to $600,000 to $750,000 per use.
We were wondering if they refreshed the costumes. We certainly didn’t remember the suits worn by
the Rhinemaidens were black.
The most surprising aspect was how well the sound came
across. We heard the singing clearly
most of the time, even when the full orchestra was playing. Was it the better positioning of the singers against
the planks that projected their voices, or was a sound enhancement system
used? The only one who was consistently
weak was Loge; his role was quite prominent tonight.
I do have a few questions. I am sure Erda said she had three
daughters. I assume two of them are
Flicka and Friea, but who is the third?
The people “climbing” towards Valhalla at the end of the opera, are they
“random” dead people, as I stated earlier?
Towards the end I was sure Notung’s leitmotif was played, my question is
why?
Curtain Call.
In a couple of hours we will start for New York again,
for Walkure. I didn’t get enough sleep
last night, and it is going to be 5 hours.
CS also had tickets to this Ring, so we rode up together.
He just arrived in the morning on a
red-eye flight from San Francisco. We
had dinner at Francesco’s.
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