Halfway through the Ring

Ransom and I are in staying in New York for three days as we enjoy Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen for the first time together; it’s at the Met; we’re at the Comfort Inn, Central Park West. All the glamour is on the stage; the hotel is convenient and the room is unbelievably tiny.

Saturday night was Das Rheingold, the opener. We had seen it via the Met in HD transmission last year, but that doesn’t prepare one for the live reality. I thought it was fantastic. Ransom was less thrilled with the orchestra, but he agreed that the staging and the singing were exceptional.

Though I am a minor Ring devotee (this is my sixth cycle) I had reserved judgment of this new Met production. Robert Lepage’s famous/infamous “machine” has dominated the talk of this Ring ever since Rheingold opened in September 2010. The machine is a 45-ton contraption that serves as the set for all four operas. It consists of twenty-four huge metal planks that are connected on a central axis and can rise, lower or revolve, individually or together. Characters stand on it, climb it, descend it as a stairway and even swim against it. Projected on it are some of the most sophisticated videos I have ever seen. (One example: as the three Rhinemaidens cavort underwater, bubbles are seen to rise, but only from their mouths. It’s quite remarkable).

Rheingold flies by, at least in comparison to the others. At two and-a-half-hours it is less than half the length of the others. Die Walküre last night was five hours, ten minutes. The remaining two are longer yet.

Walküre was spectacular, though, as I always experience with the Ring, it seemed endless at times. In the final scene Wotan, about to put his daughter into a magical sleep and surround her by a menacing ring of fire (that only the bravest hero can cross in order to wake her) sings “Hence from thee now, far from thee fare; too long I sat with thee here.” Too long indeed!

But I put up with the often too-long duets because the music itself is so spectacular and, in this case, the staging is breathtaking. The picture below doesn’t do the scene justice, but if you look closely, and perhaps enlarge the image, you can see the machine with its many planks in different positions and in the middle Brünnhilde hanging upside down almost vertical. Brilliant!

For his part, Ransom thought Deborah Voigt’s Brünnhilde was a disappointment. I was only vaguely aware that she was not the best I’ve ever heard, but I was still enthralled.

After the performance we headed to Koreatown for dinner, sitting down at midnight-o-five. Some fried dumplings and bowls of bibimbap – the perfect coda to five hours of German opera!

Brünnhilde's punishment at the end of Die Walküre

The opening scene of Das Rheingold, offering a sense of perspective

And, for more perspective, our hotel room. All of it!