continuing on from my last post...
the sound of the orchestra blew me away. i honestly think it's better than the tso. and it was so amazing that they were in the pit and there were no mics (i actually checked during the two intermissions). seems awfully crampy down there though. anyhow, the only visible parts of the stage during the opening music were what looked like junk. there was a lamp on its side on the left and dirty card-board/plywood pieces littered about. when the curtain rose, we could see that the centre was covered with dirt - a campfire site, where sieglinde is busy. i was rather disappointed that adrianne pieczonka was sick and didn't play that part because i'd read some raving reviews about her performance. but her understudy did awesome, so it turned out to be quite a great performance either way. in stumbles clifton forbis as siegmund. they're both wearing what looks like early 1900s industrial revolution lower class rags. and what's visible of the set is not much because of the deliberate lighting. we can see shadows of what looks like scaffolding strung across from the top to the bottom of the stage and ladders too framing the stage.
they sing to each other and the orchestra is playing throughout all 4 and a half hours of the opera. i thought forbis was amazing. he really brought out the character well, and he sang it so convincingly when he tells sieglinde that his name is wehwalt or sorrow. the english surtitles (basically, subtitles) were really really necessary, otherwise nobody would understand what they were singing. there were two screens at the top of the stage, with one further up and out and one that was further in. the second one was more in use and it worked really well.
hunding comes in with game over his shoulder and a long conversation ensues. i thought hunding would have a greater part, but he really didn't sing much. his presence was more important than anything he expressed verbally. there was a really cool part, where siegmund is telling sieglinde & hunding about how when he was little, he and his father out hunting or something and came back to find their house set on fire, his mother dead, and his sister kidnapped. the back part of the stage was cast in red light and people appeared like shadows, threatening and menacing. then hunding walks to the back of the stage and kind of reenacts siegmund's story. because they're both kinda wearing the same thing, it works out pretty well.
the siegmund & sieglinde leitmotif was so pretty ^___^ i don't know if it's actually called that, but it's certainly nice. lighting changed to show night and day, with yellow light coming from the right side to express the coming of spring.
there's a big tree trunk around the centre of the stage, cut off so that we can see the stump and the rest of it lying behind it. the sword nothung is hidden at the base of the trunk, and i think the director had it covered with dirt so that sieglinde simply brushes it off to reveal it to siegmund. the lighting was again effective when siegmund awakes to find a strange light on the tree stump.
the stage is tilted forward, towards the audience, so that we can see all the way to the back of the stage. and there's a very strange wall at the back that doesn't span the whole length of the stage. it's like a partition of some sort, white and looks like the doors at my house w/ those panels that kinda look victorian. the gods come from behind there, like the valkyries and fricka. after act I ended, there was intermission, and then act II started off with the valkyries...well...mostly brunnhilde, played by frances ginzer. wotan was supposed to descend from above and he does, seeming to come down from heaven on the scaffolding. huge industrial looking lights range all over the scaffolding, some giving off white light, others yellow. all are on for the scenes @ valhalla (wotan's hall). peteris eglitis was well-chosen for wotan's part: he had a powerful presence and really expressed the anguish and inner conflict of the character. he was carrying a very tall spear.
brunnhilde was in a black dress with a very long train - a welcoming sight compared to metal breastplates and horns, which are what other productions dressed the valkyries as. here they're much more feminine, so much that i actually would have liked to see something more amazonian on them. fricka too was in a black dress and the conversation between her and wotan reminded me a LOT of zeus & hera fighting. it sounded exactly the same lol...wagner sure knew his epics. deciding the walsung's (siegmund's) fate was really hard for wotan, and it showed movingly. we're not really sure whether the gods are living in our world, or in their own realms. there are what looks to be two bodies lying asleep in the centre of the stage, that we assume to be sieglinde and siegmund, because wotan actually watches over them and covers them with a blanket, they being his children.
when wotan has finally given in to fricka and promises to destroy the walsung, he takes a shovel and starts to dig behind the bodies. then, when fricka leaves and brunnhilde tries to convince him to not destroy the walsung, he is angry and kicks (well, rolled) the bodies into the grave that he's been digging. it's really effective.
so then the next scene is back on earth (or some earth equivalent), where siegmund and sieglinde are fleeing away from hunding. the great thing about the set is that the whole scene changes, or we understand the transition at least, by simply changing the lighting, so the scenes flow seamlessly one into another. sieglinde falls asleep and brunnhilde appears to siegmund to warn him that he will die when he fights with hunding. she comes from behind the wall (because she's immortal, like fricka), and carries a white shroud folded in her arms. she climbs onto the tree stump and then unfurls the shroud so that it hangs down, covering her from her face downwards. then the image of a flickering flame was projected onto the shroud and her conversation with siegmund begins.
when siegmund threatens to kill himself and sieglinde rather than be separated from her, brunnhilde relents and promises to not let him die, against her father, wotan's, will. as a sign of her promise, she takes some red ribbon that is wrapped around all the valkyries' hands and wraps his hand with it around nothung, his sword.
when hunding appears, sieglinde begins to have visions of siegmund's death and tries to stop them from fighting. brunnhilde takes her to the side and tries to help siegmund, but wotan strikes nothung with his spear, and it shatters. i'm really not sure how they got it to shatter so well, but it fell apart right on cue. siegmund is killed by hunding and sieglinde is, of course, hysterical. wotan and brunnhilde are in grief but remain in the background, while hunding approaches for a final stab at siegmund. then hunding kinda hovers about the stage, and slowly makes his way off stage. wotan grieves over siegmund and then extends his hand towards hunding so that hunding too dies. the choreography was very sensitive to the music and vice versa.
second intermission ensued....then act III started with the valkyries at valhalla. there was a HUGE pile of what's supposed to be dead bodies of heroes (or their souls, at least). they're represented by these white bags that cover corpse-like shapes, which was brilliant because it was obvious that they're dead bodies, but they didn't have to go to all the trouble of actually putting detail onto them. besides, they were really light ^___^ two valkyries were swinging 'em around hehe. they brought them down from the scaffolding, handed them around, got them from the sides of the stage...it was quite a busy scene.
8 women singing at the same time was quite a sound. the scene of brunnhilde carrying sieglinde on her horse towards them is completely shown only in their expressions, as they looked towards the audience and described the scene. when they get there, brunnhilde tells them how she defied wotan's will and is trying to save sieglinde. sieglinde doesn't want to be saved, but brunnhilde tells her that she will bear a child of siegmund's and he will be a great hero - siegfried, the one truly free being. then wotan approaches and brunnhilde hides by covering herself with a white shroud so that she blends in with the rest of the "corpses". he comes in, angry, and her sisters try to protect her. at the end, she reveals herself, and all the rest of the valkyries are driven off by a very wrathful wotan. he punishes brunnhilde by removing her immortality, symbolized by unwrapping the red ribbon around her hands and condemns her to sleep until awakened by a man who will become her husband.
some very beautiful conversations follow, as brunnhilde tries to persuade him from his decision. at the end, he promises to encircle her with a ring of fire so that only a hero can get past it and win her. *cue siegfried leitmotif here*. brunnhilde goes to sleep and the valkyries come in with two torches each, encircle brunnhilde, then place the torches in some hidden torchholders that we can't see. they all move to the left of the stage, ready to depart, and that's the end of the opera.
we gave them a standing ovation, as the cast came back out one last time, and then we all cleared outta there hehe it was 11:30.
okay, lemme fill in some more interesting bits: there was this guy sitting beside me, who seemed soooo bored, even though he kept on telling whoever he was with that he thought the opera was great. trust me, he wasn't even looking at the stage. he was staring at the frickin' ceiling lol. and then he started leafing through his program, like...riffling the pages, and the lady in front was pretty pissed. she called him on it during the first intermission hehe. i was amused...quite amused... anyways, second intermission everybody was roaming around w/ their cell phones, trying to figure out how the leafs game turned out. i didn't have to leave my seat to overhear lol: 4-1 ^___^.
so by the end of the opera, it had been approx. an hour and a half since the leafs game ended. the second we stepped out of the building, all we could hear was honking. the traffic was jammed and ppl in leafs gear were prancing up and down the street. trust me, there was no car moving on yonge. it was pretty crazy...and everybody was going nuts, the hummingbird centre being next to the acc. but hey it was cool hehehe...crazy...crazy ppl....
for more on die walkure and the ring: the coc and the ring
Steph snoozed @ 22.4.04 |
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