At the Met: The Planks Plunk On

NEW YORK -- When the Metropolitan Opera announced it would present Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” in a new production by Robert Lepage promising state-of-the-art technological wizardly, one naturally thought of those impossible scenes where Wagner’s imagination seems to run wild. Take the close of “Götterdämmerung,” for instance, in which, among other things, Brünnhilde rides her horse Grane into Siegfried’s funeral pyre, the Rhine overflows and floods the Gibichung Hall, and the gods are spotted up in Walhalla being consumed by fire.

Would we at last see a reasonably accurate representation of such moments? The September 2010 “Das Rheingold,” the first installment of the Lepage “Ring,” largely dashed hopes that we would, even if it promised a “Ring” high in spectacle. The two operas that followed “Das Rheingold” gave one a pretty good idea of what the “machine” (as designer Carl Fillion’s 45-ton, 24-plank, $16 million contraption quickly became known) can and cannot do, which may be why Lepage engineered a surprise for the close of “Götterdämmerung” that had nothing to do with the machine, as seen at the new production premiere on Friday (Jan. 27).

But Lepage’s surprise is not a pleasant one. When Brünnhilde calls for her horse Grane, whom she honors by including in her self-immolation, he (or is it a she?) actually appears—a magnificent, full-scale, utterly realistic hobbyhorse that would be the envy of any six year old. Its head and neck even move up, down and around like a real horse. We had seen the animal earlier, on a bobbing raft with Siegfried during the Rhine Journey. But when Deborah Voigt, our Brünnhilde, climbs on and the two roll into the (pseudo) flames, you wonder why she isn’t wearing her buckskin costume from last summer’s “Annie Get Your Gun” at the Glimmerglass Festival.

If anything sums up Lepage’s sophomoric approach to the “Ring,” this is it. And it shows he is tone deaf to the music, for this moment begins one of the most sublime and probing musical episodes opera has to offer. Lepage similarly spoiled the ominous, atmosphere-setting orchestral prelude to the Alberich-Hagen dream scene with extraneous stage action. And when, during the orchestral recap of themes in Siegfried’s Funeral Music, Gunther picked up the sword Nothung just as a trumpet blared out the sword motif one glorious (almost), final time, the association was so obvious--as if he had learned the leitmotifs in a Music Lit class.

Similarly, the Grane episode shows that Lepage has nothing meaningful to say about the “Ring”’ drama beneath the surface glitz of the production. As in the earlier operas, he and associate director Neilson Vignola give the principals only rudimentary direction. Now and then, a moment of insight comes along that shows what is missing the rest of the time. When the valkyrie Waltraute nears the end of her litany of problems afflicting Wotan and the other gods, Brünnhilde abruptly turns away and clasps her hands, a telling gesture signaling that she realizes Waltraute was after the ring even before she broached the subject. The ring, by the way, is a red luminous dot, so that when someone wears it, it looks a little like he or she is holding a lighted cigarette.

As for the machine, it still hasn’t learned how to go about its business silently, the noise being especially intrusive during the quiet dawn music of the Prologue, but the lighting by Etienne Boucher and the video images of Lionel Arnould, in his Met debut, are always stimulating. To form the Gibichung Hall, some of the machine’s planks are arranged vertically and some are at an angle to form a kind of roof; in Act 2 guards are precariously stationed atop the latter. If the Met gets through its three complete cycles this spring with no one suffering serious bodily harm, we should count ourselves lucky.

Musically, the performance was not one for the ages either. Conductor Fabio Luisi, who took over “Ring” assignments from the ailing James Levine, made a strong impression in “Siegfried” last fall in part because he kept things moving in an opera where Levine had tended to dawdle. Here Luisi never fell below a high level of competence, even with the benefit of the Met’s excellent orchestra (although the horns did not have a flawless night). Tempos were well-judged. But overall his performance was more efficient than revelatory and seemed to lack long-range structural goals.

Voigt decisively proved wrong the naysayers (I was one of them) who doubted she could get through the taxing role of the “Götterdämmerung” Brünnhilde unscathed. Operating in her best form, she grabbed hold of the music and held on tenaciously for more than five hours. Now we know she can sing anything. But can she sing it well? The voice has simply become too edgy to give much pleasure. A second-tier German house would be thrilled to have her, but she’s not one for the Met, where the audience puts a premium on vocal beauty. Or so one would think. She won a big ovation, and it got even bigger when she jerked her arms up as if to say “Yes!!” It was a gesture analogous, I would think, to one that would land an overly effusive football player in hot water.

Voigt was well-matched by the Siegfried of Jay Hunter Morris, who similarly demonstrated an apparent incapacity to tire. If only he could sing consistently with the clarion tone he brings to about 20 percent of the music. He also looked like an aging hippie in drab attire (costumes by François St- Aubin) and long blond hair. Still, an audience always appreciates a heldentenor who gets through a long role without serious mishaps (inability to sing those devilish high C’s probably shouldn’t count as serious). But let’s not mistake adequacy for excellence. Nor was Hans-Peter König an excellent Hagen. The voice is plenty big, as he demonstrated in the Call of the Vassals, and it is dark. But it was employed in too monochromatic a way, and too many key phrases came and went untinged with menace.

There was excellence in the smaller (but no less important) roles, particularly the Alberich of Eric Owens, who sang words as if he really meant them. So did Waltraud Meier as Waltraute. Iain Paterson did a fine job as Gunther, the well-meaning monarch whose ploy for greatness collapses in disaster, and Wendy Bryn Harmer sang his sister Gutrune with bright, firm tones. Erin Morley, Jennifer Johnson Cano and Tamara Mumford did first-rate work as the Rhinemaidens. Maria Radner, in her Met debut, brought a luminous mezzo to the music of the First Norn; Heidi Melton, as the Third, sounded like one destined for important things as well.

A few boors started to clap during the final serene chord but were promptly shushed. Don’t Wagner’s final chords deserve the same respect as Mahler’s? This time the shushers won. Yay! But it would have been nice if they hadn’t been necessary.