Conquering Wagner.

[Pianorak]

Thanks for the pictures and the YouTube link.

[Ferretfancy]

I saw Gooddal's Ring on stage, and still have the LP sets. In the Coliseum we were not really aware of slow speeds, the pace and the action seemed at one. Listening to the recording later it did seem slow when divorced from the stage picture.

I don't like James Cameron's movies much, but how about the Ring in iMax 3D? ( I'd probably still go for Keilberth though! )

[Mandryka]

Thanks for the Lang link! I believe it was mooted to be released on DVD a few years back, then the release was pulledW...I don't know why.

Getting back to Goodall.....many of those who saw the Sadler's Wells Ring maintain that it was recorded 'too late' and that by the time EMI got round to running the tapes, Goodall's interpretation had gone off the boil and succumbed to elephantiasis. Would anyone who was there at the time agree with this?

[Flosshilde]

by the way, I think the title of the thread is a bit out - one doesn't conquer Wagner, one is conquered by him! :)

[Bert Coules]

Getting back to Goodall.....many of those who saw the Sadler's Wells Ring maintain that it was recorded 'too late' and that by the time EMI got round to running the tapes, Goodall's interpretation had gone off the boil and succumbed to elephantiasis.

Really? I've never come across that opinion. In my experience, people who don't get on with Goodall felt that way from the beginning.

Would anyone who was there at the time agree with this?

Well, I was in the house from the earliest stagings of the single operas, though the first cycles, to the last - and if anything I'd say that overall the stature of the performances increased rather than the opposite. Certainly, the orchestra became more secure as the music got more and more into their bones: there were a few heart-stopping times at the start of the whole enterprise when things came perilously close to falling apart.

[Mandryka]

Really? I've never come across that opinion. In my experience, people who don't get on with Goodall felt that way from the beginning.

Well, I was in the house from the earliest stagings of the single operas, though the first cycles, to the last - and if anything I'd say that overall the stature of the performances increased rather than the opposite. Certainly, the orchestra became more secure as the music got more and more into their bones: there were a few heart-stopping times at the start of the whole enterprise when things came perilously close to falling apart.

Obviously, I never saw the Goodall Ring but I've always been impressed by the photos of John Blatchley's production, particularly Ralph Koltai's designs, which had the effect of making the Ring look like a space opera. The Gotterdammerung booklet also has a picture of a horse - did they really attempt to follow the stage directions? I can't imagine Rita Hunter riding into the flames atop a real horse! Even most naturialistic productions these day (eg the Met Ring) ask us to suspend our belief at that point!

[kernelbogey]

Whenever I hear the closing pages of Goetterdaemmerung I see the Covent Garden stage, completely bare of scenery, and with gymnasts in body-suits representing the Rhinemaidens. It still seems to me the perfect image. I think the production was by Goetz (have I got that right?).

[Flosshilde]

Whenever I hear the closing pages of Goetterdaemmerung I see the Covent Garden stage, completely bare of scenery, and with gymnasts in body-suits representing the Rhinemaidens. It still seems to me the perfect image. I think the production was by Goetz (have I got that right?).

Covent Garden had two productions by Gotz Friedrich - the first (which I saw 2.5 times) had a hydraulic platform replacing the stage. I think that's the one you are thinking of, Kernel. It had many memorable stage pictures, & is the one I probably have in mind most when I listen to the Ring.

[Bert Coules]

Mandryka, Rita Hunter's Grane was a projection: a short film-loop of a white horse galloping (which was actually first used in the Wells' staging of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust). It was a fleeting moment and not completely successful, but at least there was a horse: full marks to them for that.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Getting back to Goodall.....many of those who saw the Sadler's Wells Ring maintain that it was recorded 'too late' and that by the time EMI got round to running the tapes, Goodall's interpretation had gone off the boil and succumbed to elephantiasis. Would anyone who was there at the time agree with this?

I recall hearing this being said at the time of its release, but it didn't diminish its impact in any way.

[Mr Pee]

Covent Garden had two productions by Gotz Friedrich - the first (which I saw 2.5 times) had a hydraulic platform replacing the stage. I think that's the one you are thinking of, Kernel. It had many memorable stage pictures, & is the one I probably have in mind most when I listen to the Ring.

I saw that cycle as well- as a prommer- and it was a formative experience, kindling a love of Wagner that persists to this day. There were indeed many memorable stage pictures- one of the most striking that I recall was Wotan summoning Erda at the start of act 3 of Siegfried, when he was gradually raised way above the stage, on the very lip of the hydraulic platform, as Erda emerged below. It was a quite awe inspiring piece of stage- craft.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Covent Garden had two productions by Gotz Friedrich - the first (which I saw 2.5 times) had a hydraulic platform replacing the stage. I think that's the one you are thinking of, Kernel. It had many memorable stage pictures, & is the one I probably have in mind most when I listen to the Ring.

Flosshilde, I was trying to imagine how you could have seen it 2.5 times, but then I realised

The drawback of the hydraulic stage was that no attempt was made to hide its mechanism. I find that productions like this distract from the drama.

[Bert Coules]

The later ENO Ring performances (whether under Goodall or anyone else) did perhaps lose the incredible (and incredibly atmospheric) excitement of the very earliest ones, the feeling that the company was breaking new ground and was on something of a knife-edge, with every department pulling out all the stops, working not only to their limits but beyond that, to make the shows a success against the odds. Small-company Rings are reasonably commonplace these days, but back then Sadler's Wells was seen as taking a massive leap into the dark: it was definitely a make-or-break undertaking, with an awful lot of commentators believing that it would fail.

There was also a feeling that the audience, especially the younger part of it, was learning the works along with the company. It was a shared adventure. I suppose it's inevitable, but I've never felt the same way about a production since: I loved that Ring, and still love the memory of it.

Which is not to say that those later performances were in any way lacking, either musically or dramatically. They certainly weren't.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Would you have called Sadler's Wells a small company? It was the second largest in the country.

[Bert Coules]

It was definitely seen as a small company, with small resources. Don't forget that they'd only just moved out of the Wells: a tiny theatre in an obscure and (so many thought) inaccessible part of London. There was also the point that the big Wagner leads were regarded then as the exclusive province of a very few international stars: when the Wells Valkyrie was first announced the reaction in a good few quarters was "but how on Earth are they going to cast it?".