Conquering Wagner.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

But it was effectively 2 companies, with the touring branch eventually leading to the formation of Opera North.

[Bert Coules]

Certainly, and the two companies were combined for the famous Mastersingers. But that didn't affect the perception of the company as a whole, at least not in my experience.

Incidentally, I've just obtained (but haven't read yet) Opera for Everybody by Susie Gilbert, a lengthy history of the Wells/ENO. Looks good, at first glance.

[Flosshilde]

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.

Yes, I saw it first from the Amphitheatre, then promming in the stalls area, while I worked in a public library & could take a week off work to queue. The next prom performance I was working in a school, & couldn't take time off, so I just saw Rhinegold & Gotterdammerung.

Promming was a wonderful experience - both for seeing the perfromances & for the cammeraderie. A group of chums (met during the queue) & I slept out on the pavement to be first in the queue for Gotterdammerung (just for the hell of it). I also had a brief (unfortunately) affair with someone I met elsewhere who recognised me from the prom. (oh dear - nostalgia is a terrible thing sometimes!)

Alpen - I don't remember the central pivot for the platform being very obtrusive. Perhaps it could be regarded as the modern equivelant of the stage machinery in 18th century theatres - the workings are obvious & everyone knows it's there, but it's ignored in appreciation of the spectacle.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Alpen - I don't remember the central pivot for the platform being very obtrusive. Perhaps it could be regarded as the modern equivelant of the stage machinery in 18th century theatres - the workings are obvious & everyone knows it's there, but it's ignored in appreciation of the spectacle.

I suppose this wasn't the best example, as it could be pushed into the subconscious fairly easily, but I recall an Opera North performance of Mozart's "Figaro" with Opera North. Hiding behind a bush was done by grabbing a cut-out model of a bush, rather like a large hand-mirror, and covering the face with it.

[Bert Coules]

You can either buy into that sort of theatrical artifice or you can't - and if you can't, then it must take you out of the drama, I suppose. But the theatre has never been about absolute realism.

The platform and hydraulics in the Ring were fine, I thought, and rather impressive in the big moments. For a less happy bit of basically similar (if smaller in scale) stage mechanism, there was the earlier Flying Dutchman, which reviews of the time pegged as pretty unfortunate: ugly and juddering and prone on occasion to not working at all.

[kernelbogey]

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.

Thanks, Flosshilde - that's the one. I, too, prommed for that cycle. Both at the time and on reflection I think the ingenuity of that revolving, tilting platform remarkable. I remember the gods ascending it, very slowly, at the end of Rheingold. The final stage-picture of Goetterdaemerung was so striking for me because the gymnasts cartwheeled and danced around with the stage stripped quite bare - as though the artifice of drama, of Gesamtkunstwerk itself had been ended with the destruction of Valhalla. Deeply memorable.

I'm not in agreement about that platform's mechanics being intrusive. A bit like modern dress (etc) productions - doesn't it all just force us to really look at the drama afresh? My hunch is, Richard Wagner would have approved.

[Mandryka]

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.

Thanks for that, Bert: that pic of the horse in the booklet always looked a bit 'filmic' - now I know why!:)

[kernelbogey]

The tv documentary on the recording of the Solti Ring showed the engineers in a beezer jape bringing a live horse into the studio during the immolation scene. Solti wasn't hugely impressed. 'Sehr schoen,' he said, turning back to the orchestra.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

According to John Culshaw, in Ring Resounding, the VPO liked to play childish tricks on Solti, such as painting the tip of his baton.

[Flosshilde]

painting the tip of his baton.

& yes, that's a childish response!

[Mr Pee]

& yes, that's a childish response!

The same thought crossed my mind, Flossie!!

[Bert Coules]

I'd dearly love to see a real horse at the end of the Immolation scene. Alberto Remedios's triumphant entrance on horseback in the Covent Garden Boris Godunov is an image that's still sharp in my memory.

If I recall correctly, the splendid 1955 movie Interrupted Melody about the Australian dramatic soprano Marjorie Lawrence depicts her saddling up and heading full-tilt into the flames, after scornfully refusing to sedately lead her horse off as she'd been directed to do.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I'd dearly love to see a real horse at the end of the Immolation scene. Alberto Remedios's triumphant entrance on horseback in the Covent Garden Boris Godunov is an image that's still sharp in my memory.

While we're at it, how about real flames? I'm all for realistic sets, but it can go too far. One of the drawbacks in Wagner is that much of the action is quite slow.

[Bert Coules]

Several Ring productions have used real fire in various places, with varying degrees of success. The use of practical flames doesn't have to equal realism, of course - it all depends on how they're employed.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Of course, real fire is possible in theatre. I just didn't think was a great idea in close proximity to a live animal.