(Note: I started writing this as a diary, then published some of it as a comment in the Saturday Night Loser's Club diary. But I was encouraged to go ahead and complete the diary, so here it is.)
I wouldn't have missed it for anything. The Metropolitan Opera real-time HD transmissions to movie theaters is, IMO, an overall great idea, though I haven't been completely thrilled with what they've chosen to show (or, more importantly, omit) from each season. Important new productions have often been overlooked in favor of warhorse retreads.
But this season seems to show a better sense of priorities. Today's outing, the first of the new season, features the new production of Wagner's Das Rheingold that the Met opened its season with a couple of weeks ago. Of course, the production itself by Robert LePage of Cirque du Soleil fame was an object of intense critical interest. I was more curious to hear James Levine conduct the piece with a fresh new Wotan. It's been quite a few years since I got tired of James Morris' braying.
The Cast
Overall I liked Bryn Terfel. He sings the role seemingly effotlessly and is very careful with the text. The diction is crystal clear and full of nuance. And he has a fine physical presence on the stage. So why didn't I care about him more? In qualitative terms I would say it was short on majesty. Musically speaking I would say I wanted more legato and richness. But these are certainly quibbles, and I hope someone will step up in the comments and explain why I ought to have liked it better.
Stephanie Blythe was a fine Fricka. What really surprised me was how good she looked. She is a 'big girl' even by opera-singer standards and when I've seen her before (most notably as Azucena in San Francisco) she's seemed like kind of a lump onstage. But the costume she wore (a dress with no waist and bare shoulders) was tremendously flattering in both cut and color and she moved with ease and grace. She was even sexy-- at Wotan's 'Gleiche gier war Fricka wohl Fremd'), he came up from behind and held her by the shoulders with his head just behind the crook of her neck. I couldn't help noticing how beautiful her skin was.
My favorite of the cast was Eric Owens as Alberich. He has an appealing and expressive face that was in character at every moment. The pained look on his face after his rejection by the Rhinemaidens was truly pathetic. And he was overall a more sympathetic character than Wotan. His diction was every bit as clear as Terfel's though markedly less fussy. The voice is a bit gravelly, which is wholly appropriate to the character, but incapable of the lyricism of a Zoltán Kelemen.
I'm not quite sure what I think of Richard Croft as Loge-- one of my favorite roles in all of opera. (Was it my imagination or did I hear sustained booing at his first solo curtain call? chingchongchinaman confirms the booing.) In contrast to Alberich, this interpretation was all lyricism. I wanted a little more bite and menace. And then he seemed a bit tenative at some points (especially towards the end of the passage beginning 'über Stock und Stein'). I'm willing to cut him some slack for all the physical challenges the production required of him (about which more below), but still he is my least favorite of many Loge's I've heard over the years.
The rest of the cast were also quite good. Dwayne Croft (brother of Richard) is barely recognizable from the days (1997) he sang Billy Budd so exquisitely for a national TV audience opposite the late, lamented Philip Langridge's Captain Vere. But he certainly got the job done as Donner.
Patricia Bardon had a rich, lustrous contralto as Erda. I can't be sure, but it sounded to me like she was 'miked' in the House. Other thoughts on that point?
The Production
I kind of groan internally when I think of how much trouble the Met went through for this Production, including having to reinforce the stage to support the incredibly heavy set.
It's incredibly gimmicky. OTOH, Wagner poses many quite difficult scenic challenges on the theater and fresh approaches are certainly welcome. And in the pre-curtain feature we learned that the production team was definitely interested in conquering at least some of those scenic challenges. So, they are fairly judged, IMO, on how well they succeeded.
The essence of the set is that it is a series of slats running back from the audience that can tilt at a wide variety of angles and move independently. And many of the cast are suspended by wires so they can scale the walls or float independently.
The biggest benefit is to be expected in the opening scene with the Rhinemaidens swimming freely in the water. They even had bubble projections behind the singers that were in some way tied to the singing. But the bubbles were not convincing. It was fun to see the Rhinemaidens rise into the water from beneath the stage. But after that initial moment, they seemed in every way more constrained in their movements than Alberich.
And then when the Rhinemaidens were explaining the powers of the gold to Alberich he was sitting there with all four holding hands like a big, happy family. That was just wrong, IMO.
And then there were the 'little lights'. Loge had some in the palms of his hands. Fricka had an intermittently inandescent brooch. And the Ring itself had an on-off switch for its own internal light.
It's kind of fun to see the gods actually walking (nearly vertically) up the rainbow bridge, but then they can only climb a short distance before they run out of room. And the wires holding people up are very much in evidence.
Alberich's Tarnhelm transformations are every bit as clumsy as any more conventional production. And for Donner's thunderclap, we could see him waiting for the music to catch up when he was ready to strike with his hammer.
And the covering of Freia with the gold was the clumsiest business of all. Freia is suspended in a hammock and all these gold-colored plastic shields are kind of nestled alongside her. She is in no way hidden (nor nearly so) from any possible perspective.
One interesting touch was a bond of sympathy between Fasolt and Freia. It doesn't seem quite 'right', but it adds some depth to an often flat character.
But reverting to my doubts about the Met's expenditure here, the big question is: How much are people going to want to continue looking at this ten years from now? I know a stage director is generally treated as some kind of absolute artistic force deserving of complete deference. But I can't help thinking that it might have been better for someone to ask him some hard questions about the implications of this stage technology for the specific staging problems of the Ring before signing off on it.
James Levine
... gave a wondrous reading of the score, full of rhythmic life (I've never experienced Rheingold as such a toe-tapper). Of course, there's been much concern about his health. And he was quite visibly a much weaker man when he came out for his curtain call than I have ever seen him. It will be a great loss to the music world when he is gone.
The Subtitles
I'm always a bit fussy about the subtitles. These were rather too interpretive to my taste. And sometimes they were just outright wrong, as when the subtitles have Mime explaining to Loge that he couldn't use the Tarnhelm for his own purposes because it required the Ring to operate, whereas the text quite plainly states 'I didn't guess the spell correctly' and is in flat-out contradiction to the action of Götterdämmerung where Siegfried uses the Tarnhelm to disguise himself while Brünnhilde still holds the Ring.
I think it's better to stick closer to the text.
Anyway, I'm very interested to hear other reactions.
[Update: 11:57 pm CDT] I've never even gotten half this many comments on a diary before. Thanks everyone for a lively discussion. Am off to bed. Will check responses in the morning.