ohhhh, “political correctness”, just a miracle Die Walküre hasn’t been “abridged”yet. I guess Fricka saves it in Act II, Scene 1

since Wagner’s libretto is so poetical, so magical, so deep I am going to print the whole libretto in German and see the encore HD presentation (and all other “Der Ring des Nibelungen”) with it …there!

the worst is to be able to understand the original and then read a bad translation in the subtitle …Bruennhilde sings “whilzu verstossen dein trautestes Kind” in 3rd scene, 3rd act.
English translation says “to abandon your favourite child”….favourite!? instead of “most trustworthy”? …whole underlying values (loyalty, trustworthiness) lost in the use of such a bland word “favourite” …ahhhh

yes, yes but!
“you have to assess Radvanovsky’s Verdian singing taking in account the competition these days” doesn’t apply to me …
have been “brain washed” with Zinka…

I feel guilty for saying “you’re welcome” to your “thank you”, because I am afraid I dislike Lepage’s Ring. I understand all your considerations – that it should be didactic for new audiences, that it should incorporate technology – but I don’t know why all this means that he should: a) have very basic stage direction; b) avoid having a concept. Characters go on and off stage and you don’t really learn much about who they are but for Wagner’s words and music, something like a concert version with old costumes and a big machine in the background.

Your description of the eye effect in act II is very apt, but really – if one doesn’t know the text as you do, it means nothing; and if you do know the text, so what? It is just illustrating something without any added insight about it. I am not saying that Lepage should do a Regie production German-style, but my impression is that he has not really delved into the text to form his own understanding of Ring as a whole – what it means historically, philosophically, aesthetically, psychologically whatever – and just contented himself with “Brünnhilde is torn between her duty to her father and her sympathy for Siegmund”, “Wotan is devastated because he lost both his favourite children in one day”. There has to be more than this. If it were as simple as that, believe me: people would have stopped bothering about Wagner’s Ring a long time ago… This does not mean either that it should be a complicated staging with an incomprehensible Dramaturgie. You’ve mentioned the Chéreau Ring – that is a classic example of a sophisticated concept that works very clearly and understandably on stage. You don’t have to go into historiography to “read” it, but if you do, it delivers even more meaning and insight. In other works, it works in different levels for different people.

As you’ve mentioned, some of the images and symbols in Lepage’s Ring are beautiful and even powerful, but they really are isolated effects that do not relate to a coherent and profound core of meaning in the end. And, once you’ve spent a million dollars in a staging, I guess that too should be included in the package…

Of the numerous reviews/critiques of the production I’ve read, most seem to have ignored what the visual plays reveal about Lepage’s understanding of the text, e.g.:

– the golden “eye” in Act II visually quotes the Rhinemaidens’ own description of the Rhinegold in _Das Rhinegold_: “des Goldes Auge, / das wechselnd wacht und schläft”. Here, Lepage uses what is ostenibly Erda’s own eye, emerging cthonically (and hinting that she very much sees all), to illustrate what Wotan details to Brunnhilde. The eye’s iris turns rainbow when he speaks of building Valhalla, offers images of his two ravens when he speaks of the process, and culminates, fittingly, in the spears of teh Valkyries Wotan sired with Erda herself (and which make perfect sense appearing in Erda’s own eye).

– Voigt’s slow approach at the beginning of the Todesverkündigung scene revealed her dual emotions: her literal lstalking of the leeping pair, and her reluctance to do what she has been bid as she sees Siegmund and Sieglinde together and comes to see, for the first time, a love different than filial.

– the avalanches projected onto the Valkyries’ crag occurr at two key points in Wotan and Brunnhilde’s dialogue, when Wotan’s wrath seems literally to melt toward his daughter once he learns of her motivation.

– etc.

Also, Lepage has a massive task before him, as he outlines in several interviews: to introduce Wagner is specific, and opera in general, to a new generation used to totally different methods of storytelling than their parents. I’ve argued this point endlesly with workmates, and have come to insist: “purist” and “Wagnerite” are incompatable. How much of Wagner’s own theoretical writing — from “Kunstwerk du Zukunft” to _Oper und Drama_ to “Kunstmusik” — advocated technological advance toward the gesamtkunstwerk? Wagner is the only operatic compser to create something like Beyreuth specifically to house what was, in his own time, oprea’s most cutting-edge mechanical and technological stagework. He knew that tradition for its own sake frequently kills art. There are certainly universally-agreed missteps but wvwn those are re-evaluated as time passes (remember the blathering in the wake of the now-praised cenetennial Chereau/Boulez Beyreuth production?).

As to the singing, Jonas Kaufmann’s Act I spooked the hell out of me: I thought I was hearing Fritz Wunderlich returned from beyond the pale.

Thank you, though, for your careful consideration of the Lepage production.

I won’t say today’s broadcast was the worst Walkure I’ve ever had but it was far, far from being the best. I’m glad I didn’t waste time trudging to the cinema to see the HD presentation of a production that I did not like when I saw it live shortly after it premiered.

Back in 1997 Voigt was a very good Sieglinde. The roundness limited today to her top notes could be heard in the whole range and, well, this was 14 years ago, I had the impression that her whole approach was more natural. If there is one recording by Voigt that shows her at her very best, it is, in my opinion, Sinopoli’s Gurrelieder. Listen to it and compare to what to her Brünnhilde and you’ll see the difference.

As for Radvanovsky, well, she was a good Elisabetta in Don Carlo (2005) – some exquisite high mezza voce. I saw this Trovatore in the original run, but not this time (same cast and I wasn’t really impressed last time). I guess that you have to assess Radvanovsky’s Verdian singing taking in account the competition these days…

Has The Met gone crazy?