Reviews
Met's 'Rheingold': The Critics Weigh In
As to Robert Lepage’s Big Deal production (known inside the house as “The Machine”), there’s quite a bit of hedging, a “wait and see” attitude, especially since technical glitches were apparent on opening night, the biggest being the opera’s end, when the family trundles off to Valhalla. Valhalla, it turns out, was stuck in a computer, unable to make its debut for safety reasons, we are told.
Lepage has certainly succeeded in creating a spectacle with his 45-ton, $16 million set, as designed by Carl Fillion. But stage direction?
“Essentially, he relegates his hapless singers to the foreground where they bumble in quest of motivation,” writes Martin Bernheimer in the Financial Times.
Heidi Waleson, in The Wall Street Journal, calls the production “a high-tech extravaganza oddly married to an old-fashioned stand-and-sing aesthetic.” As to stage direction: “Lepage leaves them largely to their own theatrical devices.”
At the other end of the opinion spectrum is Anthony Tommasini, in The New York Times: “Mr. Lepage deserves credit for coaxing vivid portrayals from his cast.”
Dazzlingly special effects punctuate this near three-hour “Rheingold.” Trouble is, when the set is not undulating to the overture or providing a path to the bowels of the earth, it just sits there – a great, gray hulking thing.
“The various but limited configurations of the set are everything,” writes George Loomis on MusicalAmerica.com,“with thoughtful staging of the principals in very short supply.”
“For long stretches, while Lepage as stagecraft wizard is sitting on his wand, presumably out of respect for the music, the system of planks looms austerely in a chilly gray,” writes Jeremy Eichler in The Boston Globe. “It dwarfs the singers, and at various points gives them a steep incline to make what became unintentionally comical entrances and exits.
“Overall, I’m not sure I have ever attended a production of any opera that made me think so much about the scenery.”
Associated Press’s Mike Silverman seemed quite pleased with the whole of the evening: "The 'Ring' has arrived, all 90,000 pounds of it. And, for the most part, it's worth its weight in gold.”
Silverman also reports “Lepage and his production crew were greeted mostly with cheers when they took their bows. There were some boos, but…”
Some boos? I heard quite a few. So did Bernheimer: "Lepage, who was booed at his curtain call, doesn't really tell the story of 'Rheingold.' He seems too busy playing with his toys."
And then there is James Jorden’s New York Post description of Francois St-Aubin’s costumes, “which suggested a retrospective of late 20th-century fashion faux pas.
“Fricka, queen of the gods, modeled one of Mamie Eisenhower’s old cocktail dresses; trickster god Loge rocked a Gary Glitter jumpsuit, and the thieving dwarf Alberich sported MC Hammer pants.”
We certainly do have some clever critics in our midst.
Getting back to basics, musical values were top drawer. “There was strong singing and brilliant orchestral playing,” reports Eichler.
Tommasini cites Levine and “the splendid performance he drew from the superb Met orchestra, which played brilliantly, and the excellent cast, as strong a lineup of vocal artists for a Wagner opera as I have heard in years.”
And reminding us that gala tickets cost $5,500 a piece, Bloomberg Muse Editor and Critic Manuela Hoelterhoff writes: “Everyone sang exceedingly well, urged on to ever greater glory by James Levine, celebrating 40 years at the Met. He didn’t conduct like someone who has recently endured back surgery and serious ailments. Perhaps he has access to Freia’s magic apples?”
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