Self is sure someone else has expressed this idea better than me:
"The more elements that a system has, the more chance that any one element can go wrong and disrupt the whole system."
With so much in modern society these days so dependent on computers, that quip is especially the case with anything involving computers and electronics. One case of one element going wrong in a very complicated system recently in real time, in front of about 3000 people, happened in New York City early last week, at the Metropolitan Opera, the opening night of the new Robert LePage production of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold. So what happened? And what does this have to do with rainbow bridges? Well....
It probably would help to explain the story, which is where the the wikipedia entry on Das Rheingold becomes useful to save self the trouble of spelling it out (lazy loser, that 3CM, as usual). Skipping to the end, after all the stuff about Rhinemaidens, dwarves, gods, all-poweful gold and the ring to control the world made from it (sound vaguely familiar? But remember, Wagner preceded Tolkien), with a little bit of fratricide near the end over said piece of jewelry, here's the relevant bit:
"At last, the gods prepare to enter their new home. Donner [god of thunder] summons a thunderstorm to clear the air. After the storm has ended, Froh [god of spring] creates a rainbow bridge that stretches to the gate of the castle. Wotan [king of the gods] leads them across the bridge to the castle, which he names Valhalla."
Except that on the first night at the Met's new production, things didn't quite work out that way, per both the first night review from Anthony Tommasini and a separate article from Daniel J. Wakin, both from the NYI:
Tommasini: "And the machine worked. Well, almost worked. There was one serious glitch at the end. The 'machine' is what the cast and crew have taken to calling the 45-ton gizmo that dominates Mr. Lepage's complex staging, the work of the set designer Carl Fillion.....
Alas, the machine malfunctioned in the final scene, when the planks did not move into place to form the rainbow bridge to Valhalla. So the gods just wandered off the stage. Given the complexity of the device, it’s a wonder that it worked so well on its debut night."
Wakin: "At the new Metropolitan Opera production, the divine ones are supposed to traverse a section of a giant set that tilts into a passageway toward the back of the stage.
At the opening on Monday night, the moment fizzled....The vast platform of the 45-ton set did not move upward from the back as it was supposed to, so the bridge section could not be formed. Valhalla was nowhere in sight.
The only signs of a bridge were multicolored strips of light projected onto what would have been the walkway. The lost moment followed an evening of technological wizardry and sometimes stunning images produced by the mammoth set."
So what was the glitch? According to Wakin:
"The Met blamed an error in the computer program that controlled the set's movement. Not enough room was allowed for the tilting platform to clear the stage floor, so safety sensors automatically shut down the movement."
Go back for a moment to a bit of throwaway text above, the "45-ton" bit. You can read more about that new set, and the engineering work that had to be done to the Met's stage to be able to support it, from this June 2010 article by Wakin in the NYT, and also another Wakin article from a few weeks ago:
"The set consists of two 26-foot-tall towers holding an axis, which can move up and down driven by hydraulics. Twenty-four planks, actually in the rough form of severely elongated triangles, are attached to the axis at their thickest points, like seesaws. When at rest, they create a platform that fills most of the stage. But the planks can revolve around the axis together or independently, producing myriad shapes, and they serve as both stage architecture and canvas for projections."
However, large machinery has its risks, as pointed out by Wakin in his 9/19 article:
"The Rhinemaiden descended by a cable to the floor of the Metropolitan Opera stage. She extended her body just in front of a hollow beneath part of the set for Wagner's Rheingold. Slowly, inexorably, the edge of a 45-ton structure tilted down toward her.
'Get her underneath,' a stagehand said urgently into a walkie-talkie. 'Manny, get her underneath.'
'Now!' he added, his voice rising in panic.
The Rhinemaiden, a k a Jennifer Johnson, was soon dragged to safety, eliminating the danger of a squashed mezzo-soprano."
Fortunately, at the second performance 3 nights later, the rainbow bridge worked out as planned, per Anthony Tommasini at this blog post from the NYT's ArtsWatch blog:
"On Thursday, it was good to see Mr. Lepage's climactic stage effect the way he conceived it – an impressive, if somewhat cumbersome, theatrical feat.
At first, a narrow group of planks in the center of the machine were bathed in a spectrum of streaming lights. Then the planks on either side turned upward and took on the look of marbled grey castle walls. As the planks forming the rainbow bridge lifted into place, the singers portraying the gods watched in awe (and, no doubt, with enormous relief). The planks rose so high that the rainbow path was almost upright. After the singers descended into a dark space below the stage, a roster of acrobatic body-doubles appeared on the pathway, hooked up to cables for security. Taking the place of Bryn Terfel's Wotan, Stephanie Blythe's Fricka and the other gods, the doubles walked gingerly up the shimmering, colorful bridge."
In one sense, an even more high-stakes performance than the 2nd night (besides opening night itself, of course) was the one today, the Saturday matinee, because this performance was the first of the Met's HD-digital moviecasts from NYC to selected movie theaters around the world. If the computers had failed at that or any other moment, the glitch would have occurred in front of the collective largest audience ever to "see" Das Rheingold live, counting both the people at the Metropolitan Opera itself (the true live, in the same space audience) and everyone watching the HD screenings in cinemas (the "virtual live" audience, not actually physically present in NYC, with the slight time delay from the moment actually occurring in NYC). So what happened?
Fortunately for the Met, everything worked just fine. The singers did very well, all the set changes of "the machine" happened on cue, and no one fell victim to "the machine", as might have happened to Jennifer Johnson had stagehand Manny Ferrigno not pulled her to safety. Also, given the long-standing health problems of the Met's (not to mention the Boston Symphony Orchestra's) music director, James Levine (SNLC'ed back here), it was good to see that Levine led this performance, and from how the orchestra sounded, very nicely indeed. He is not nearly as light on his feet as before, as noted at the recent Boston Symphony performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 at Symphony Hall, in the midst of the Rheingold run, reviewed by Jeremy Eichler, where:
"For the first time this season, the conductor entered from the wings carrying a cane, which upon reaching the podium he neatly leaned against the railing."
Back at the Met, at the end of today's Rheingold matinee, when he took his curtain call with the cast, Levine stood at the far edge of stage right/house left, on the arm of Stephanie Blythe. Blythe and one of the other gods (can't remember which one right now) helped support Levine as he left the stage after the last curtain call. (BTW, Levine still hasn't apparently signed on the dotted line in Boston.)
With all the technical headaches of the new set, learning to navigate it, not to mention the fundamentals of knowing the music and the lines cold, Blythe kind of sums it all up from Wakin's 9/19 article:
"It's all very new, and it's a new experience for all of us. But you know, it's all theater, man."
Could apply to the rest of us in daily life too, I guess.
With that, if you're still here (if you're not a Wagner-ite or a Ring-head, that is), 'tis time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week below. Actually, in the Ring cycle, given what happens to the gods at the end, not to mention everyone who comes in contact with the ring before the end....well, in short, they all qualify as candidates for Loser's Club.