Entry of the Xenomorphs into Valhalla

Wagner and Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant
by Paul J. Pelkonen
"One wrong note eventually ruins the entire symphony."--Walter, Alien: Covenant

Piano android: Michael Fässbender in Alien: Covenant.
Photo © 2017 20th Century Fox.

The search for the meaning of mankind's existence may have inspired the creation of that greatest of operatic works, Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. It also is a central thread of Alien: Covenant, the new film in the Alien franchise that serves as a sequel to the 2012 Prometheus and as a lead-in to the original 1979 horror classic Alien. Unexpectedly, it starts with...Wagner.

DVD Review: No Glove, No Love

Daniel Barenboim conducts the La Scala Das Rheingold.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A game of thrones: Johannes Martin Kränzle as Alberich in Das Rheingold.
Photo by Koen Broos © 2013 La Scala ArtHaus Musik.

(This is a repost in anticipation of forthcoming reviews of the rest of this Ring  later this week.)

There are a lot of familiar theatrical ideas at work in this Das Rheingold, a DVD issue of the 2010 La Scala production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Digital back projections, dancers serving as scenery (and occasionally, props and furniture) and little square pools of water onstage for the singers to splash in are not new. However, director Guy Cassiers succeeds in combining all these elements to present the "preliminary evening" of the Ring in a fresh and intelligent way. With an emphasis on acting and singing over technology and spectacle, this is a production for these economically uncertain times.

The Ring Goes West

First images of the new Bayreuth Ring revealed.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

The New York Stock Exchange features in Götterdämmerung, possibly
standing in for Valhalla. Photo by Enrico Nawath © 2013 Bayreuth Festival.

The Bayreuth Festival has let slip stage images from the new production of Wagner's Ring, directed by German conceptual artist Frank Castorf.

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.

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.

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.