DVD Review: We Ain't in Valhalla No More

The Copenhagen Ring concludes. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen
(This is the fourth and final installment in our ongoing review of the Copenhagen Ring Cycle, directed by Kaspar Bech Holten. Featuring the Royal Danish Opera conducted by Michael Schønwandt. Read the reviews of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre and Siegfried, also on Superconductor.)

Peter Klaveness, (Hagen) Guido Paevetalu (Gunther) and Stig Andersen (Siegfried)  in Act III of Götterdämmerung.
Photo by Martin Renne © 2006 Royal Danish Opera/Universal Classics.

In the final chapter of the Ring, director Kaspar Bech Holten updates this story of marriage, betrayal and murder on the banks of the Rhine to the 1990s. Mr. Holten poses modern problems for these heroes of German myth. Sometimes, he ignores the finer points of the libretto, but the result is worth seeing, a powerful operatic experience and an interesting spin on the whole saga. 

DVD Review: Bringing Up Knucklehead

The Copenhagen Ring continues with Siegfried.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

(This is the third installment in our ongoing review of the Copenhagen Ring Cycle, directed by Kaspar Bech Holten, performed by the Royal Danish Opera conducted by Michael Schønwandt. Read the reviews of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, also on Superconductor.)

Chalk talk: Siegfried (Stig Andersen, right) explains genetics to Mime (Bengt-Ola Morgny.)
Photo by Martin Renne © 2006 Royal Danish Opera/Universal Classics.

This third opera is the "light" chapter in Wagner's mythological drama. But Siegfried presents the director with a mighty set of challenges. It is to Mr. Holten's credit that he ignores them, re-imagining the opera as a situation comedy. This approach is clear from the set designs for Mime's cave: a low-rent townhouse complete with an attic bedroom for the restless young hero, with comic books, posters, and a guitar on the wall.

DVD Review: A Valkyrie with Broken Wings

The Copenhagen Ring: Die Walküre
(This is the second installment in our ongoing review of the Copenhagen Ring Cycle, directed by Kaspar Bech Holten, performed by the Royal Danish Opera conducted by Michael Schønwandt. Read the reviews of Das Rheingold and Siegfried,, also on Superconductor.)

Siegmund (Stig Andersen, left) and Sieglinde (Gitta-Maria Sjöberg) outside Hunding's hut.
Act I of Die Walküre from The Copenhagen Ring
Photo by Martin Mydtkalov Rosne © 2006 The Royal Danish Opera/Decca Classics

This Danish Die Walküre places the struggles of the Gods squarely in a banal world of family drama, like a TV network movie-of-the-week, shot on a low budget. It opens with a striking bourgeois image. Hunding's "hut" is an art deco apartment. Sieglinde as a cowed, bullied hausfrau desperate to get out. When Siegmund (Stig Andersen) enters, and she immediately seizes upon him as the means of escape. Hunding (Stephen Milling) is a loutish, violent alcoholic. The escape from his apartment is quite literal: Siegmund throws a chair through a plate-glass window and they find the sword stuck in a tree in the front yard.

DVD Review: The Horror of Das Rheingold

Part One of the Copenhagen Ring.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Danny Olsen as the swimming title character in Das Rheingold. 
Photo by Martin Mydstkov © 2006 Royal Danish Opera/Decca

In a world where opera companies fall over themselves to stage Wagner's four-part Der Ring des Nibelungen, it is rare to see a new production that actually has something valid to say. If this  Das Rheingold (filmed at the Royal Danish Opera in 2006) is any indication, director Kasper Bech Holten may have accomplished this difficult feat with his Copenhagen Ring, available on DVD from Decca. He stands on the shoulders of directors who have come before (particularly Patrice Chéreau and Harry Kupfer) but fuses these theatrical ideas into a new, exciting whole to make an impressive start to this Ring.