Recording Recommendation: The Shoe-String Ring

Valhalla on just $1.50 a day.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The original cover of Die Walküre. Clearly not marketing the music.
All Photos by Christopher Whorf © 1968, the artist.

Hans Swarowsky's recording of the complete Ring Cycle was made in 1968 in Nuremberg. The sessions were a by-product of the Soviet invasion of Prague, which forced most of the Czech Philharmonic to flee to southern Germany. Under Mr. Swarowsky, the so-called "South German Philharmonic" dashed off these recordings quickly, releasing the entire cycle on the budget Westminster Gold label as a bargain-basement alternative to the Decca Ring with Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic.

DVD Review: Fire, Flood, and Formaldehyde

The La Scala Ring ends with Götterdämmerung.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A wall of corpses: Lance Ryan (left) and Iréne Theorin in Götterdämmerung.
Photo © 2014 Teatro Alla Scala/ArtHaus Musik. 

Richard Wagner originally planned the Ring Cycle to be one opera, Siegfrieds Tod, which would tell the epic story of Siegfried and his adventures among the Gibichungs, a grasping, Rhine-dwelling royal family who figure prominently in the German national epic the Nibelunglied. However, he wrote the music for the retitled Götterdämmerung last in the Ring, meaning that the epic, sweeping music propels a libretto that could be suitable for French grand opera. This stylistic dichotomy is never easy for any conductor to resolve, but on this 2014 Blu-Ray filmed at La Scala, conductor Daniel Barenboim does a pretty impressive job.

Opera Review: Countdown to Extinction

The Met presents the last Götterdämmerung of 2013.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A fine romance: Brunnhilde (Deborah Voigt) sends Siegfried (Lars Cleveman)
off to battle in the Prologue to Wagner's Götterdämmerung.
Photo © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

At the time of this writing, it is uncertain if Saturdays matinee performance of Götterdämmerung at the Metropolitan Opera, was the final performance ever of the company's current production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. If this was the last performance of Ring (which premiered with Das Rheingold in 2010) before the Met decides to cut its losses, the quality of this performance may have earned a stay of execution, if not an acquittal for this troubled show.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Götterdämmerung

The last chapter of Wagner's Ring returns for another burn.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Gibichung Hall in Act II of the Met's new Götterdämnerung.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2012 The Metropolitan Opera.

The six-hour final chapter of Wagner's Ring is in some ways the most conventional opera of the four. That's because Götterdämmerung (the title translates as Twilight of the Gods, though the opera was originally called Siegfried's Death) was the first libretto written. Twenty-four years later, this was also the last opera of the Ring to be completed, so it has the most complex music.

Brunnhilde Falls From (a metaphorical) Horse

It's Hip Surgery for Deborah Voigt
by Paul Pelkonen

Fire woman: Deborah Voigt torches the Ring. The diva will have surgery tomorrow.
Photo by Ken Howard from Götterdämmerung © 2012 The Metropolitan Opera.

Deborah Voigt has cancelled her first concerts in Australia due to necessary emergency surgery on her hip.

According to a report in Limelight magazine, an Australian entertainment periodical, the singer has to undergo the operation as soon as possible, forcing her to cancel appearances at the Utzon Room of the Sydney Opera House and a concert with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The surgery is scheduled for tomorrow.

Opera Review: The Machine of the Nibelungs

We break down (poor choice of words) the Lepage Ring.
by Paul Pelkonen

The new Ring cost millions. Hope rich Uncle Pennybags™ likes opera.
Card from Monopoly™ © 1936 Parker Brothers Games.

So now that Götterdämmerung has been broadcast in the movie theaters, it's time to take a look at all four parts of the Metropolitan Opera's multimillion dollar production of Wagner's Ring.

Canadian director Robert Lepage came to Wagner's operas with what seemed to be a deliberately naïve view: to use high technology and digital projections to recreate a fairly literal version of the Germanic myths that inspired the composer. The costumes were directly drawn from old productions of the Ring, right down to the little metal helmets worn by the Valkyries and Wotan's undersized partisan-shaped spear.

To be sure, this cycle developed over the year and a half it took to premiere, with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung showing advances in technology that solved some of the serious problems existent in the earlier opera. But the biggest problem with this cycle is Mr. Lepage's decision to minimize the acting surface of the Met stage, giving his singers almost nowhere to go except the narrow grey board-walk of planks that stood on the lip of the stage underneath the Machine, or a trench underneath that hid the singers' legs from the view of the audience and made it harder for them to sing.

Opera Review: The Last Plank

The Met opens Robert Lepage's Götterdämmerung.
by Paul Pelkonen

Wedding interrupted. Act II of Götterdämmerung with Deborah Voigt (center) as Brunnhilde.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2012 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera unveiled the final segment of the company's new Ring Cycle last night with the house premiere of Götterdämmerung. This is the Robert Lepage production, featuring a frequently moving unit set ("The Machine") that reconfigures itself as needed to serve as a huge projection screen for digital imagery by Ex Machina, Mr. Lepage's Canadian production house.

This is not the best cast ever put onstage for Götterdämmerung. Deborah Voigt's performance had its rough moments, thanks to a dodgy middle register and a wide vibrato that threatened to degenerate in Act II. But the red-wigged diva pulled her performance out of the fire, even as she rode a giant robo-horse into the flames, singing an impressive, noble Immolation Scene.

Jay Hunter Morris continues to impress with his energetic Siegfried, although his diction still sounds a little weird at times. (Maybe it's a Texas thing.) His voice is a little small for the part, but with careful conducting from Fabio Luisi in the pit, he navigated the role's rough spots or in one case (the Act II "impossible" octave drop) avoided them altogether. 

How to Survive the End of the World

A quick guide to Götterdämmerung.

by Paul Pelkonen. Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Promotional image of Deborah Voigt as Brunnhilde in the Met's new Götterdämmerung.
Photo by Brigitte Lacombe © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera.

Gött-er-dämm-erung. Even the name sounds intimidating, pronounced with an "er" on the first syllabule and a slightly elongated nasal "a on the third. The English title, "Twilight of the Gods" also sounds kind of scary.

So you've decided to see it. Whether you're a die-hard Wagnerite with six Ring cycles under your belt or a novice going to the opera for the first time, here's a quick survival guide to one of Wagner's most imposing operas. Well, not that quick: Götterdämmerung is really long.

This is the last chapter in the Ring of the Nibelungs, a four-opera cycle dealing with the legends of Siegfried, Brunnhilde and various dwarves, giants and gods feuding over possession of a magic ring that allows its holder to rule the world. It's also a powerful evening of opera, with rape, betrayal, murder and redemption coming in surprisingly quick succession over the course of a long opera.

Here's an opera-goer's synopsis:

Although it is performed in three acts, the first part of Götterdämmerung is really a combined Prologue and Act I. At two and a half hours, it is long as a Puccini opera. There are no stops for applause, and no bathroom breaks. You can't leave the theater until intermission. In other words, pee before it starts.

The opening scene (a prologue to the Prologue) with the Norns may sound boring. It's not--there's some really neat music, but it's basically set-up for everything that follows. Wagner wrote this scene originally to explain everything that was about to happen to the audience--who Siegfried was. He later wrote prequels to the libretto for the original Siegfrieds Tod--and it is those prequels that make the first three parts of the Ring.

Next the tenor and soprano take the stage and sing a big love duet with lots of "Heils." As this is high, exposed music, you can soon assess whether these are singers that are worth your time or whether it's time to start rooting for Hagen. The duet is followed by the Rhine Journey, a mini-tone poem for orchestra that covers the scene change.

The action then moves to the Gibichung Hall. The descending theme of the Gibichungs marks the proper start of Act I, although the music never stops. This is your chance to see if the bass singing Hagen has a black, rounded tone in his instrument, necessary to express what an evil bastard this character is. Then Siegfried shows up, and promptly drinks a potion of forgetfulness. He then falls in love with the first available woman, Gutrune.

The toughest stretch of Act I comes in the scene known to Wagner geeks as "Hagen's Watch." The opera's bad guy sits himself down, and in a long bass aria, explains who he is and what his evil plan is to the audience. There is then a long orchestral passage while the scenery transforms before your eyes, from the Gibichung castle on the shore of the Rhine, back to Brunnhilde's fiery rock. 

Wagner follows these two slow passages with a long dialogue between Brunnhilde and her Valkyrie sister Waltraute, about how their father Wotan (king of the Gods) wants to kill himself and end the world. Things pick up again with the arrival of the drugged, disguised Siegfried, who is wearing the Tarnhelm, Elmer Fudd's original magic helmet. Disguised as Gunther, the poor tenor has to pretend to be a baritone in order to kidnap his soon-to-be-ex. This deception sets up the crisis in Act II. 

Here's the good news. If you've made it through these two long scenes, the rest of the opera (though long) is easy.

Act II is an hour, and gripping from start to finish. Hagen sings the Summoning of the Vassals, bellowing over a huge orchestral outburst. This brings the chorus onstage. There's a big wedding procession, and then Brunnhilde realizes that Siegfried was the one who kidnapped her. Her reaction isn't good. The act ends with a vengeance trio as Brunnhilde, Hagen, and Gunther (Hagen's wimpy brother) plan to murder Siegfried.

Act III is basically three scenes. It starts with the still-drugged, newly married Siegfried confronting the Rhinemaidens (with some pretty music) and is followed by the hunting party where Siegfried gets stabbed in the back. The tenor takes about five minutes to die. Next: the funeral music, which allows the orchestra to show off.

Finally, we come to the Immolation Scene. This is essentially a 20-minute scena for the soprano that sums up and wraps up all the plot points of the Ring before she jumps on her horse and rides it into Siegfried's funeral pyre. Hopefully, there's some cool conflagatory business going on for you to look at.

Once that conflagration happens it's home-stretch--there's just five minutes to go in the Ring. Sit back, enjoy the cascading chords as they resolve around you, and be proud--you've just made it through one of the toughest German operas ever written. Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Opera Review: A Man, a Machine, and a Big Snake

The Met unveils its new Siegfried.

Snake-handler: Tenor Jay Hunter Morris confronts the serpentine Fafner in Act II of Siegfried.
Photo from the dress rehearsal, by Ken Howard © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera.

Even the most ardent Wagner addict finds Siegfried a tough pill to swallow. The necessary "middle chapter" of the Ring has a male-dominated cast, and its story of a genetically perfect super-man killing off dwarves and dragons presents problems for both the singers and the director.

Descent Into Nibelheim

An examination of intervals in the score of The Ring.

Page from the score of Götterdämmerung belonging to a sound effects engineer.
From Bamboquiri's Flickr.com page, © the photographer.

The other night, I was listening to the 1967 recording of Das Rheingold, specifically to the opening scene, when I heard something new in the score. This recording, made at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus and conducted by Karl Böhm is an old friend--I've owned one copy of it or another for the last 15 years. 

The Prelude to Rheingold is a single E♭ Major chord, played by a pedal contrabass tuba and eight horns. The horns play the chord in an ascending eight-part canon for the first 90 seconds of the opera, breaking the chord into three notes: E♭, G, and B♭. This pattern repeats and overlaps as the horn calls sound together. 

Then Wagner pulls the most extraordinary sonic trick. As each horn climbs the ladder of the chord, you hear an artificial interval created: descending from B♭ back down to E♭. This new interval foreshadows all the descending figures that will appear in the score of the Ring, from the atonal interval that indicates the enslavement of the Nibelungs by Alberich, to the minor-key drop intervals that characterize Mime (a third) and Hagen (a fourth) in the later operas.

It's no coincidence that the "rising" figures indicate Wagner's heroic characters. The Walsung motif ends on a higher note than its start, and the Sword theme (heard in the first act of Die Walküre) rises up a steep three-note climb. Siegfried's horn-call is another rising figure, as is the brash "heroism" theme that appears when he is first mentioned in Die Walküre. It only acquires any sort of descent when it it heard in Götterdämmerung, having been influenced by Brunnhilde's basket of motives and indicating the mature hero ready to do battle.

Those descending themes come back in force in the score of Götterdämmerung, chiefly surrounding the evil machinations of Hagen--Alberich's son. This grim figure's music dominates the latter half of the first act and all of the second, from the swirling "Hagen chords" that dominate the begining of that act to the great battle cry of "Hoi-ho!" Even Siegfried, confronted by the plot against him, has to pull off an octave-drop in this scene (kind of the sword theme in reverse) to try to get out of the trap he has fallen into. It doesn't work.

With all of these ups and downs (and yes, I'm aware that the 12-note scale indicating Wotan's spear is a descending figure) what of items like the Ring, Valhalla, and the Tarnhelm? These are all represented by figures that undulate up and down, indicating their neutral status in the battle of good vs. evil. It's also interesting that the "Redemption of Brunnhilde" theme heard at the very end of the cycle ascends and descends before landing on the D♭ Major chord that brings the Ring Cycle to an end.