Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen - Complete Ring Cycle (Levine / Metropolitan Opera)

I saw this production of the Ring when it showed on PBS in 1990, and I’ve owned the videotape edition for some years. Finally breaking down and acquiring the DVD, with superior picture and sound, inspired me to write a review.Logically, it would seem strange that an opera production based on the composer’s precise and detailed stage directions should be viewed as controversial, But that was the case with this Met Ring, filmed in 1990. As we all learned in Music History, Wagner’s artistic ideal, especially in the Ring, was the “Gesamtkunstwerk”, the total work of art, with all elements blending into a greater whole. His stage directions were considered as important as the words and music. But since World War II is has been a rare director that paid any attention to what Wagner wrote. Some productions were worthwhile - for example the one mounted by Wagner’s grandson Wieland for the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival in 1951. It replaced a traditional representative staging with an abstract one, featuring measured, almost ritualistic movement and a very innovative use of lighting, without violating the spirit of the original.. But what we mostly got was directors who made the wrong assumption that they were creative, rather than re-creative, artists, and used Wagner as a vehicle to foist upon us their own psychological, sexual, and political hangups. Part of the problem was that most had little or no musical training. I know from personal experience that a director who is not a musician cannot comprehend how music functions in an opera, articulating and interpreting what happens on stage. Unfortunately, the critics jumped on the bandwagon to support this directorial self-indulgence. Especially in Europe a production without a “concept” is ridiculed. I have a very sad book about the 1983 Bayreuth Festival, for which the great English director Peter Hall set out to mount a representational Ring, using technology borrowed from the film industry to realize Wagner’s effects. He was obstructed by the administration and savaged by the critics, and neither he nor conductor Georg Solti returned to the festival. The English writer Barry Millington, an alleged Wagner expert, noted that this Met production “is of interest only to those for whom the theater is not a cerebral activity”. Well, it seems to me that it’s more of a “cerebral activity” to see what an author wrote and interpret it oneself than to be beaten over the head with some director’s half-baked idea of what it all means.Be all this as it may, this production takes Wagner’s stage directions seriously and realizes them through beautiful, representational designs in a thoroughly Romantic style. For me, it works beautifully. Every time the curtain rose I thought “That’s precisely what I’ve been reading in the score and seeing in my mind’s eye for years.”Fortunately, the production is musically excellent as well. James Levine has never been my idea of a great Wagner conductor; he seems more comfortable in Italian opera.. His Ring could charitably be described as “eclectic” - he takes Solti’s tempo here, Furtwängler’s in another place, Karajan’s in another. And he consistently seems to equate increased speed with excitement, a mistake seldom made by the older Wagner conductors. But he does nothing objectionable, he supports his singers sympathetically, and he draws beautiful playing from the Met orchestra. And he rises to the challenge of the most difficult operas, “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung” with effective pacing and good control of the long structural line. The cast is about the best that could have been assembled at the time and is consistently excellent. Hildegard Behrens was a legitimate Brünnhilde in vocal terms, and, unlike many of her predecessors, was a fine actress and looked young and attractive on stage. Siegfried was sung by the appropriately-named Siegfried Jerusalem. He sang the role only for a short time, and it would be silly to compare him to Melchior or even Suthaus or Windgassen. But his voice had the right color and still had a youthful bloom; he was also a sensitive, intelligent musician, and his stamina was most impressive. He also doubled as an effective Loge in “Das Rheingold.” James Morris was a fine Wotan, looking the part and singing powerfully and intelligently. Ekkehard Wlaschiha was a fine Alberich, singing rather than barking the music and creating a thoroughly evil character - as did Matti Salminen as Hagen. Jessye Norman sang gloriously as Sieglinde and was more into the character on stage than in her earlier audio recording. Gary Lakes was not a great Siegmund, but he sang the music reasonably well and was large enough to partner Norman convincingly. It was good to see the veteran Christa Ludwig, still singing and acting well, as Fricka and Waltraute. Kurt Moll was a definitive Hunding and Heinz Zednik a brilliant Mime.If you want a Ring that presents something close to what Wagner intended, this one is recommended.The only other video Ring I’ve seen is the Bayreuth Centennial production of 1976, staged by Patrice Chereau and conducted by Pierre Boulez. Chereau had the interesting idea of setting the Ring at the time it was written, the mid-nineteenth century, which allowed him to emphasize the social and political subtext. Not that this was anything new; in the 1890s Bernard Shaw published a little book called “The Perfect Wagnerite”, in which he brilliantly analyzed the Ring in terms of radical politics. Chereau’s problems are with the detail. He show himself as another non-musician director who makes hash of Wagner’s stagecraft. He seems unwilling or unable to hear what the music clearly tells us, and he consistently misses obvious musical cues. He is not helped by his proclivity for filling the stage with people, whether justified or not. The cast is no great shakes, either, and the better performances are more notable for acting than singing. There are some good moments, usually when Chereau leaves the singers alone and allows them to use their skills. For example, Gwyneth Jones and Donald McIntyre make the end of “Die Walküre” a beautiful and moving scene, abetted by a particularly felicitous stage setting. But these moments are usually overshadowed by the general ineptitude of the production.The conducting is also problematic. As much as I admire Boulez as a musician, Wagner was never his metier. He announced before this production that he planned to “cleanse” the Ring of bad old tradition. But old tradition is not necessarily bad, and Boulez tends to throw the baby out with the bathwater. To his credit, he induces a less-than-great orchestra to play with remarkable precision and tonal beauty. But his light, clear, swift performance robs the music of its power and grandeur; he positively races through the big moments, as though embarrassed by them.

I have been to several Rings -- 2 in San Francisco, 4 in Seattle and even the 1990 Met production on this DVD. I have also seen several versions of the Ring on DVD, including Stuttgard and Bayreuth productions. Of all the Rings I have seen this Met production is the only one that meets Wagner's standard as he wrote it -- with the visuals true to his directions. It is this version of the Ring that I show to my local opera group, and the only one I recommend as an introduction to the greatness and immensity of the Ring itself. The other versions, though excellent productions in themselves, are not produced the way Wagner wrote it, as Nordic mythology, but as a contemporary interpretation of this amazing work.This production is as good as any opera you would expect from the Met. Because the Met has all the latest equipment and technology available to them to really put on an incredible show you should expect nothing less but breathtaking -- and all the special effects are there (no horses, however). The most disappointing character, however, was the dragon. It was pitiful! (We call it a crab or Dungeness dragon at our house!) Shame on the Met for not having more imagination and giving us a truly awesome dragon. They certainly have the talent to pull it off much better than they did. Seattle's dragon was the best I have ever seen -- and they were able to keep it a secret from the audience up until its amazing debut. Kudos to them! The Fire Music at the end of Die Walkure is breathtaking, and you are left with the feeling you have truly seen the best there is. Siegfried was a lot of fun to watch. Mime was fabulous and with all his antics it was hard to remember that he is a good tenor in his own right. The only frustrating thing was in the third act, Siegfried's ring kept mysteriously switching from one hand to the other and it became distracting. I actually counted eight times the ring switched hands -- my suspicion was that it was two takes that were spliced together. But why Siegfried can't remember which hand he had originally put the ring is beyond me.I was at the 1990 Met production and got to see the Immolation Scene at the end of Gotterdammerung from the back of the orchestra section. It was truly stupendous! I kept poking my mother saying, "They really pulled it off! Wow!" The DVD version was less spectacular, however, with the camera intent on getting close-ups instead of just backing up to a full stage and letting the special effects run their course. You lost the continuity of the staging, suddenly finding yourself underwater with the Rhinemaidens, and not knowing how you got there. It's a shame that they didn't duplicate the experience I saw being in the audience. It's hard to describe to anyone watching the DVD.The singing, though not really spectacular except for the brilliance of James Morris, Matti Salminen and perhaps Jessye Norman, was more than adequate. Although the singing took a back seat to the "Dream Team" of Kirsten Flagstad, Lauritz Melchior and Frederich Schorr, the singers were always on key and certainly gave it their best professional performance. Hildegarde Behrens will never be another Birgit Nilsson, but she certainly made up for it in her exquisite acting ability, her loveliness and her physical agility. She was a believable Brunnhilde, and that's hard to find in today's buxom bunch. The close-ups of her facial expressions and body language were truly hypnotic. Siegfried Jerusalem was also very believable as his name-sake, superbly pulling off his role, though you could see how increasingly tired he was getting by the end of Gotterdammerung. He acted the true teenage brat and jumped over logs in the forest with ease. Matti Salminen was a sinister Hagen. Not only was his deep voice magnificent, but his acting was also wonderful. In the dream sequence with Alberich he did not blink once, but just stared straight ahead. It was riveting.James Levine is still the master of conducting The Ring. His orchestra was in top form and was rich and exciting. In the Solti recording, however, they used real alpen horns in Gotterdammerung, making the vassal scene a bit more realistic.In general, other than some minor criticisms, this is a superb "traditional" production and should be shown before you see any other contemporary interpretation. As they said in Seattle, "Sometimes you just want to see 'it' and not an interpretation of 'it.'" This is really a wonderful production and Wagner himself would have been proud. My opera group loved it and couldn't stop talking about it, and I guess that's the real proof.