My wife and I attended the first production in our Chicago Lyric Opera subscription for this season, Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Das Rheingold is the lightest opera in the Ring Cycle if such a word can be applied to any of the operas of the cycle, a tale of teasing Rhinemaidens, lecherous gnomes, deceitful gods, and menacing giants. In what Wagner referred to as the Vorabend to the Ring Cycle we learn how the great curse came to be.
Lyric’s Cirque du Soleil-influenced production has bungeed Rhinemaidens, laser-like lighting effects, puppet giants, projection effects of clouds and mists, and a luminescent shadow-puppet dragon.
The performance begins with a ghostly mask of Erde, goddess of the earth, the patroness of all life and mother-wisdom floating eerily on a scrim before us, and a brief cut-scene of her daughters, the three Norns, weaving the fate that rules both gods and men. As Anna Russell famously observed in her hysterically funny (and accurate) synopsis of The Ring Cycle, the action of Das Rheingold begins in the river Rhine. In it. In our production the curtain opens on a scene in a world-encompassing Rhine in which bungeed Rhinemaidens float and dart, guarding their magic gold.
My wife and I have seen this production before but I believe they’ve made some revisions in staging and set design. The first scene was incredible. I’ve never seen this scene more effectively performed.
James Morris is at the peak of his powers now and his portrayal of Wotan is incredible. Wagner’s king of the gods is a 19th century head-of-state juggling the survival of his regnum, a jealous, shrewish, and conniving wife, ill-considered treaties, his enormous ambition, and his own fallibility. I don’t know how he does it but Morris is able to express the complexity of this role. This is a man who can make you believe that he is a god.
The voices were excellent, well-matched and integrated with the music, not dominating it. Each player did not so much portray his or her role as embody it. Since Wagner likened his Ring to the Dionysian Cycle of ancient Athens this is clearly what he had in mind.
Wagner advocated something he called Gesammtkunstwerk, total art or, perhaps, wholistic art. With performances, music, sets, staging, and lighting all collaborating in harmony to reinforce each other, tell the story, and convey a distinct impression, this production must have been what he had envisioned. Wagner would have been proud.
