{"id":1172,"date":"2011-05-19T13:46:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T17:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2011-10-14T14:42:42","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T18:42:42","slug":"lepage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=1172","title":{"rendered":"Horse play"},"content":{"rendered":"

By James Jorden<\/strong><\/p>\n

The critics’ reaction to Robert Lepage<\/strong>\u2019s new production of Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em> at the Met leaves this contrarian reviewer in something of a quandary. Not only was pretty much everybody underwhelmed, but there was a consensus about what (they thought) was wrong: the clunkiness of The Machine, the lack of poetry in the latter part of the first act, the clumsy path to the final tableau.\u00a0 No, one doesn\u2019t want to just heap on the contempt, but at the same time it\u2019s not easy to build a case for Lepage\u2019s invention thus far in the Ring<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

There are some striking images, though that\u2019s in the sense of snapshots, frozen instants, rather than dramatic beats. That last glimpse of Br\u00fcnnhilde (or, rather, her body double) handing upside down from the cliff face, magma bubbling around her, is spectacular eye-candy, but, to be frank, it actually looks better in a photograph than it did in real time, at least from where I was sitting.<\/p>\n

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Or, to put it another way, that final image looks like a very expert realization of a concept sketch; the problem is, the concept sketch is only tangentially related to what we generally think is supposed to be going on in the scene. Yes, there\u2019s a woman in armor surrounded by magical fire (sort of) but the emotional sense of the last few moments is confusing.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m no stickler for following stage directions to the letter, it does seem fairly obvious what Wagner was going for in the last notes to this act:<\/p>\n

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Er <\/em>[i.e., Wotan] streckt den Speer wie zum Banne aus, dann blickt er schmerzlich auf Br\u00fcnnhilde zur\u00fcck, wendet sich langsam zum Gehen und blickt noch einmal zur\u00fcck, ehe er durch das Feuer verschwindet. – Der Vorhang f\u00e4llt.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Obviously the last thing we see as the curtain falls is the sleeping Valkyrie, but the last action<\/em> is assigned to Wotan: holding out the speak like a barrier, looking sadly back at Br\u00fcnnhilde, slowly turning to go, then looking back once more just before he disappears into the fire. (The vocal score indicates he \u201cdisappears\u201d only four measures before the curtain starts to fall.)<\/p>\n

Of course, there are ways to \u201cdisappear\u201d that don\u2019t involve a walk through a simulated\u00a0wall of flame. For example, in Phyllida Lloyd<\/strong>\u2019s 2004 production<\/a> for the English National Opera, the Wotan exited the stage down a flight of escape steps leading to the auditorium, passed through the front row of orchestra seats, and then departed up the main aisle of the theater. But the essence of the scene was intact: Wotan in motion, distancing himself from his abandoned daughter.<\/p>\n

Contrast this with what happens in Lepage\u2019s production. Having set the body double in place, Wotan (Bryn Terfel<\/strong>) climbs down the inclined rock face to the downstage \u201cdeck\u201d area of unadorned planks. The Machine pivots until \u201cBr\u00fcnnhilde\u201d is hanging head downward, leaving Terfel to sing his last line and then\u2026 kneel, facing upstage, immobile, until the curtain descends.<\/p>\n

So are we to assume that Wotan intends to stand guard on Br\u00fcnnhilde himself? Or is Lepage suggesting that Wotan is now completely broken, incapable even of making a dignified exit? Or is the problem simply that there is no safe path offstage, and Terfel prefers not to end his performance as his leading lady Deborah Voigt<\/strong> began hers, with a Machine-induced pratfall?<\/p>\n

The curious thing is, that non-exit was practically the only moment in the entire production that diverged from the canonical. Siegmund and Sieglinde met in a hut built around a tree impaled on a magic sword, Br\u00fcnnhilde yodeled her “Hojotohos” in a corselet of steel plates and a silk bustle, and Fricka arrived upon a ram-impelled vehicle\u2014though, to be sure, what Stephanie Blythe<\/strong> rode didn’t resemble a chariot so much as as a high-end mobility scooter.<\/p>\n

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So the issue here is hardly infidelity to the letter of the accreted tradition of Ring<\/em> presentation; rather I see two main and perhaps insurmountable stumbling blocks with Lepage’s treatment: lack of understanding of deeper meanings in the work, and sheer clumsy stagecraft.<\/p>\n

Symptomatic of the first problem is Lepage’s misplaced emphasis on eye-catching spectacle, or, to be more specific, the lavishing of resources on flashy but relatively unimportant details. It’s a neat trick to begin the opera with an apparently empty stage, and then,\u00a0in the course of the Vorspiel to Act 1, to have the Machine morph first into a blizzard-blown forest where Siegmund is fleeing his enemies, and then into the rough-hewn planks of Hunding’s hut. But this added pantomime doesn’t add anything profound to our understanding of the character and the situation: the “pursuit” is expressed perfectly well in the driving rhythms of the opening music, and the specifics of the situation are conveyed only a few minutes later in the text. In fact, it could be argued that Lepage’s “prologue” robs the first scene of some of its mystery: a strange exhausted man breaks into a house and collapses, a woman revives him and gives him water, he lets slip he is wounded…<\/p>\n

Of course, when we do get to the meat of Siegmund’s backstory, Lepage doesn’t leave that alone either. As the hero relates his woeful history, the planks of the Hut begin to shimmer in the firelight and then projected shadows act out the narrative. The problem is: the shadow play doesn’t offer us any additional information or emotional insight, and, for that matter, they distract attention from the text. Even worse, some of the younger Wagnerians present couldn’t help thinking that the director borrowed this visual device from a very different treatment of the hero myth.<\/p>\n