LA Opera’s production of “Gotterdammerung” completes Wagner’s “Ring” cycles
John Treleaven (Siegfried), Alan Held (Gunther), and Eric Halfvarson (Hagen). Photo by Monika Rittershaus
The best cure for thinking that time moves too quickly is to sit through an opera. “Götterdämmerung,” the concluding chapter of Richard Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelungs,” stretches out over five hours, or is it five days? – and those who emerge pale and blinking at the end of it may think they’re in need of a change of clothes and a shave.
Wagner puts us through the wringer, pun intended, in the 15 or 16 hours that encompass this work, from the very beginning when the Rhine Maidens lose their gold to the end when they get it back, and all the havoc in between wrought by greed and base desire.
But there are insights and intricacies in the plot and in the music – all those locomotifs pulling us this way and that! – and in addition to LA Opera’s mighty undertaking (artistic and financial) we have Achim Freyer’s fantastic if somewhat harebrained vision. The characters – whether Brünnhilde (Linda Watson), Siegfried (John Treleaven), Hagen (Eric Halfvarson), Alberich (Richard Paul Fink), etc. – are gussied up like figures out of Pepperland (you know, “Yellow Submarine”), where they’re cartoony but eminent, poetic, and tragic in the same breath. Gunther (Alan Held) and Gutrune (Jennifer Wilson) could pass for siblings of the Pillsbury dough boy.
Alberich (Richard Paul Fink), Eric Halfvarson (Hagen). Photo by Monika Rittershaus
The Ringworms – as opposed to the Ringheads – have a hard time with this, thinking maybe it’s disrespectful or forgetting a thing called “artistic license,” but the characters by and large transcend what they look like. This is particularly true for Gunther and Gutrune, and for Siegfried when, as darkness closes his eyes, he regains his clarity (smeared by an evil potion), and becomes at last the heroic, tragic figure for which he was destined.
The same consideration applies to the sets, which aren’t so much theater or even movie sets so much as artistic tableaux. Stills don’t capture the essence of the opera when geometric lines are sliding or swirling over the scrim that veils Freyer’s world from ours, and which interacts with the generous use of neon tubing. How can photographs catch or describe the soft, sublime glow? You’ll have to imagine self-activating Mondrians over Tanguy backdrops. But then Freyer is by trade a visual artist, and his personal language – even if to our eyes sometimes quirky and puzzling – plays counterpoint with Wagner’s. Each partner makes the other look good. On opening night Freyer stepped out to a strong mix of bravos and boos, but they were the sort of boos that signaled victory (the way that people tearing up chairs in Paris assured Stravinsky that “The Rite of Spring” would emerge as a succès d’estime).
At the end of the opera, Brünnhilde – the most tragic of all the tragic figures here (and especially so in “Die Walküre”) – returns the Ring to its rightful owners and the two ravens, who have perched like temple guardians on either side of the stage, fly to Valhalla to announce its impending devastation. There are cataclysms in opera – as when Samson pulls down the temple in “Samson and Dalilah” – but none has even been so remarkably conveyed. Deluge and conflagration!
The singers are uniformly compelling; no superstars to steal the show, just fine singers all the way around. And James Conlon, conducting with grace – and passion and patience, where needed – has done the entire “Ring” a great service and made it a memorable experience, even if, at times, a trying one. Few works of art make such great demands, but the rewards are abundant.
Götterdämmerung is onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles in the Music Center. Performances, Sunday at 1 p.m.; Saturday, April 17, at 1 p.m.; Wednesday, April 21, at 5:30 p.m.; and Sunday, April 25, at 1 p.m. Tickets, $20 to $260. Easy Reader Opera Tip #37: Drink lots of coffee before, and during intermission! Okay, now the good stuff: From May 29 until June 26, LA Opera will be presenting three complete “Ring” cycles – meaning that we can undertake all or some of the four operas (“Das Rheingold,” “Die Walküre,” “Siegfried,” and “Götterdämmerung”) within only two or three days of one another. This historic event concludes and coincides with “Ring Festival LA,” in which some 116 arts organizations are participating. Wagner remains larger than life and as controversial as ever; he’d probably have expected nothing less. (213) 972-8001 or go to laopera.com. And for the full platter: ringfestivalla.com. ER