Opera North: Ring

[Flosshilde]

And yet that scene includes one of the most vital, pivotal incidents in the whole of the drama, as Siegfried becomes the first person to willingly give up the Ring.

True, but compared with significant moments in the previous operas - the recognition of Nothung, or Brunnhilde telling Sieglinde that she's pregnant with Siegfried, for example, it seems to go for little among all the other stuff going on. Acts 2 & 3 settle down and are much more focused - Wagner seems to try & pack too much into Act 1 with the result that it's too long & difuse.

[jonfan]

Now, THAT is what Radio 3 is for.

A truly memorable week, live, immaculately presented by Donald Macleod, and so exhilarating that a British company can mount so brilliant a production, nay, take it on a mega-tour and excite audiences all over the country. Logistics on a colossal scale.

Heartfelt thanks to all.

[Bert Coules]

True, but compared with significant moments in the previous operas... it seems to go for little among all the other stuff going on.

I see your point but I can only say that I don't find that myself: I think the act (which is actually in two parts, since after Siegfried's departure Wagner specifies that the curtains should close for the first and only time during a scene change) is very carefully and cleverly structured and does hold the attention. That Siegfried's presenting of the Ring to Brünnhilde is almost a throwaway gesture is surely an extremely deliberate dramatic decision on Wagner's part, illustrating the character's innocence of what it is and what it does.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I see your point but I can only say that I don't find that myself: I think the act (which is actually in two parts, since after Siegfried's departure Wagner specifies that the curtains should close for the first and only time during a scene change) is very carefully and cleverly structured and does hold the attention. That Siegfried's presenting of the Ring to Brünnhilde is almost a throwaway gesture is surely an extremely deliberate dramatic decision on Wagner's part, illustrating the character's innocence of what it is and what it does.

Dramatically, The Ring is too short - there are plot flaws and unexplained and unexplored character developments that a stage drama wouldn't get away with (though they provide Anna Russell with superb ammunition! )

Musically, The Ring is perfect: not a semiquaver is wasted, and Götterdammerung is the composer at the height of his powers - the span of the First Act over the course of a day (the Norns at night-time; the lovers rising with the Dawn, the Gibichung Hall in he afternoon, Brunnhilde and Waltraute in the evening, and Siegfried/Gunther as night falls. And the play of Tonal movement in the Prologue; shifting between keys a minor third or tritone apart and those a semitone away from each other. And how Wagner builds this into the overall structure of the Ring: this "Tonal play" continues from the C major at the end of Siegfried into the Cb major (via a Gb major dyad) at the start of the Götterdammerung "Prologue". The keys of the "Rhine Journey" - Eb, E, F, A, Eb, F#; and seemlessly into B minor for the Gibichung Hall and Act One. And such thematic and melodic and harmonic delights all along the way: I wouldn't lose a note of it all. (And in the Town Hall, everybody was saying how quickly the two hours had shot past.)


Oh; and a final word in defence of Mats Almgren - I commented in #37 on his "rather ... odd"-sounding voice (fine for a Giant and/or a dragon, but most peculiar as Hagen), but whilst over the airwaves he didn't sound evil enough, on stage his physical presence (looking not unlike Max Schreck in Nosferatu) didn't allow for any sense of agonised rams!

[ostuni]

I absolutely agree about Almgren's stage presence: dramatically, he was a superb Hagen. What worried me most about his voice was his diction: the extreme mangling of those vowel sounds. I can't see how he has got so far in his career when you can't understand the words he's singing.

But yes, the orchestral playing was just brilliant, throughout. We heard the cycle in the uncomfortably clinical acoustic of the Lowry, Salford: a bit of a shock after having heard both Rheingold & Götterdämmerung in Birmingham's Symphony Hall. It did mean, though, that you could hear every detail of the orchestration (follow every one of the divided cello parts in Walküre's Act 1, for instance): we marvelled at the control Farnes achieved over his players, the blend, balance, etc.

After the final performance, I bumped into one of the players who's been a sometime colleague of mine - and his first question was 'why did you come to this particular cycle?' (well, it was the only one that suited our available dates). The band (and, no doubt the singers too) find the Lowry's sound difficult - and, apparently, ON had wanted to use the Bridgewater Hall for the Manchester cycle. But this had been vetoed by Elder: Wagner in the Bridgewater is reserved for the Hallé and Elder...

[Darkbloom]

Musically, The Ring is perfect: not a semiquaver is wasted

I don't know about that. The last part of Siegfried - after Brunnhilde wakes up - always feels like Wagner was struggling to find the right level of inspiration to pull it off, and it's the part that I find suffers most often in performance. In fact, Siegfried as a whole occasionally has the sense of the composer being a little unsure of himself, and it's no wonder he put the work aside for so long to concentrate on other work. Even in a work as close to perfection as Walkure you can feel the strain a bit, with the Wotan-Brunnhilde dialogue in Act 3 getting a bit too close to recitative for comfort.

I don't think there's anything wrong in acknowledging that a masterpiece has flaws. It puts things into perspective and makes us appreciate all the other ways in which he succeeded.

[Bert Coules]

Dramatically, The Ring is too short - there are plot flaws and unexplained and unexplored character developments that a stage drama wouldn't get away with...

I'd be interested in some specific examples of both of those.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't know about that.

I do.

The last part of Siegfried - after Brunnhilde wakes up - always feels like Wagner was struggling to find the right level of inspiration to pull it off,

No it doesn't.

and it's the part that I find suffers most often in performance.

Search harder.

In fact, Siegfried as a whole occasionally has the sense of the composer being a little unsure of himself

Where are these occasions - and who "senses" them?

and it's no wonder he put the work aside for so long to concentrate on other work.

Money - and a need to move from the perfect language of Siegfried to the very different perfection of Tristan.

Even in a work as close to perfection as Walkure you can feel the strain a bit, with the Wotan-Brunnhilde dialogue in Act 3 getting a bit too close to recitative for comfort.

I object to your opinion being foisted onto me, sir! Performed as sensitively as it was in this production (and on the Leinsdorf recording amongst others) Wagner's superb writing here is very apparent. And who finds recitative "uncomfortable"?

I don't think there's anything wrong in acknowledging that a masterpiece has flaws. It puts things into perspective and makes us appreciate all the other ways in which he succeeded.

But - joshing aside now - the "flaws" you have cited are subjective opinion; you have not selected (a) passage(s) and demonstrated that the use of harmony, melody, structure, rhythm, instrumentation, texture, tonality are in any way "flawed". How would any such passages be improved? And what happens to the overall structure of the Ring if these sections are removed/improved?

Which is not to say that it's all on the same "level" of immediate heightened intensity - that itself would be a flaw: Music needs to breathe, and (to mix a metaphor) whilst the diastolic moments are less "flashy" than the systolic ones, they are perfectly calculated to contribute to the course of the whole, twelve-hour work.

[ahinton]

Dramatically, The Ring is too short - there are plot flaws and unexplained and unexplored character developments that a stage drama wouldn't get away with (though they provide Anna Russell with superb ammunition! )

Musically, The Ring is perfect: not a semiquaver is wasted, and Götterdammerung is the composer at the height of his powers - the span of the First Act over the course of a day (the Norns at night-time; the lovers rising with the Dawn, the Gibichung Hall in he afternoon, Brunnhilde and Waltraute in the evening, and Siegfried/Gunther as night falls. And the play of Tonal movement in the Prologue; shifting between keys a minor third or tritone apart and those a semitone away from each other. And how Wagner builds this into the overall structure of the Ring: this "Tonal play" continues from the C major at the end of Siegfried into the Cb major (via a Gb major dyad) at the start of the Götterdammerung "Prologue". The keys of the "Rhine Journey" - Eb, E, F, A, Eb, F#; and seemlessly into B minor for the Gibichung Hall and Act One. And such thematic and melodic and harmonic delights all along the way: I wouldn't lose a note of it all. (And in the Town Hall, everybody was saying how quickly the two hours had shot past.)

The only small thing which which I feel inclined to disagree here (though how I dare do so I cannot imagine!) is that, for me, for all that Wagner is indeed firing on all cylinders throughout the entire work, I always come away with a mild sense of frustration and disappointment that, given its scale and scope, it seems to end with such comparative abruptness; the music itself doesn't sound abrupt, of course - very much the reverse, obviously - but that its serene end stikes me as though truncated might almost give rise to irreverent wonderment as to whether the composer had simply run out of manuscript paper or composing time or even both...

(I'll probably get myself banned from the forum for that...)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... it seems to end with such comparative abruptness

That's life, innit.

[Bert Coules]

It's interesting that Alberich is the only truly main character who doesn't suffer a definite and visible demise, though the Rhinemaidens and (possibly) Gutrune and the assembled Gibichung populace manage to survive, too. The first Götz Friedrich Ring at Covent Garden brought Alberich back on at the very end, to the evident puzzlement of many in the audience.

[vinteuil]

It's interesting that Alberich is the only truly main character who doesn't suffer a definite and visible demise, though the Rhinemaidens and (possibly) Gutrune and the assembled Gibichung populace manage to survive, too. .

... I feel sure Loge wd have found a way of escaping the consequences of the final cataclysm...

[Bert Coules]

Interesting thought. To create the fire around Brünnhilde's rock, Wotan summons Loge. To destroy Valhalla, Wotan stabs Loge with his broken spear. Can an elemental demi-god survive a stabbing?

The suggestion seems to be that Loge himself is present in fire and flame whenever and wherever they occur, so even if part of him doesn't live through the final conflagration there's still plenty more of him to go round. Which is fortunate for us, really.

[DracoM]

But what is Alberich's state at the end?

Utterly loveless, son killed, pointless, stateless, yes, his enemies destroyed / overthrown, but......he lives to manipulate and destroy, and Wagner seems to be saying there IS nothing left to manipulate! Nay, having renounced love on page one, he has to witness his son Hagen's ineffectual rage and despair in the triumph of love - Brunnhilde's undying love for Siegfried? How frustrating is that? All his and his son Hagen's plans set at nought - the Gods dismembered, yes, BUT the ring returned to the Rhine, and a self-sacrificing love held up for universal acclaim?

PS I fear that after having to suffer Mats Almgren's appalling, unspeakable noise throughout this Ring cycle.......then, surely, as said upthread, he HAS to modify / improve his German vowels. It was a real blight for me. A Fafner maybe, just about, but Hagen???? Such a pivotal role.

On stage he may LOOK the part, but is Wagner opera about the look, or is it about the sound?

[Darkbloom]

But - joshing aside now - the "flaws" you have cited are subjective opinion; you have not selected (a) passage(s) and demonstrated that the use of harmony, melody, structure, rhythm, instrumentation, texture, tonality are in any way "flawed". How would any such passages be improved? And what happens to the overall structure of the Ring if these sections are removed/improved?

Which is not to say that it's all on the same "level" of immediate heightened intensity - that itself would be a flaw: Music needs to breathe, and (to mix a metaphor) whilst the diastolic moments are less "flashy" than the systolic ones, they are perfectly calculated to contribute to the course of the whole, twelve-hour work.

As Wagner was always aiming to create a total work of art I think it's perfectly fair to talk about whether it succeeds as a whole, rather than focus on certain aspects at the expense of others. Even a detailed musical analysis doesn't prove objectively whether something is good or not, ultimately it comes down to opinion. Verdi often reached similar levels of inspiration (yes, my opinion again) using very different means, and comparatively crude ones - albeit more economical - compared to RW. We are talking about theatre, and the most important thing in theatre, as a rule, is whether a piece 'works'. What does that mean? Well, you know it when you see it, or hear it.

Actually, I have a pretty accurate way of telling whether a performance succeeds or not: by sitting (or standing) during a performance. If I start to wonder what I am going to have for dinner, or whether I left the cooker on, then it's fair to say that I haven't been totally gripped. A reasonable performance of Walkure Acts 1 and 2 never does that for me. It's only the part in the middle of Act 3 that I may lose interest slightly. Likewise the bits of Siegfried I mentioned.

I think Furtwangler recognised the problems with Siegfried too, because he blazes through the final part of Act 3 in the Scala recording in a way that almost make me forget that I don't like it very much. I think part of the problem with the Ring as a whole is that the poem was written first rather than in parallel with RW's musical development, and at times you can hear the join where the strain of marrying different aspects of his musical/dramatic personality can show through.

Edit: I think the biggest flaw with the Ring is that it contains too many parts that are virtually unsingable for normal mortals. You might be playing the parts of gods, but you shouldn't have to be superhuman to perform them. That leads to all the trade-offs that we have become used to. So, Brunnhilde is given a lowish tessitura for Walkure, before having to crank it up to high soprano for the others. Wotan needs to be both deep bass and baritone all at once. Siegmund is a notorious killer role too. At times Wagner actively wrote against the voice, so that all but a handful of people are able to bring them off.