For me and perhaps others who overdosed on Robert Lepage’s new production of Wagner’s “Rheingold” at the Metropolitan Opera this fall, a repeat showing of a “Rheingold” from the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan, originally broadcast live in May and to be presented at Symphony Space on Sunday afternoon, provides relief of a sort from any remaining withdrawal pangs. The film, seen in a preview this week, also reopened windows on staging possibilities obscured in my case by a three-pronged experience of the juggernaut Met production (the opening, on big screens in Times Square through a teeming rain; the third performance, in the house; and the fourth, via HD broadcast at a theater in Ellsworth, Me.
For New Yorkers in general, the film offers an opportunity to catch up with Scala’s unfolding “Ring” cycle before the live broadcast of the second installment, “Die Walküre,” when it opens the Scala season on Dec. 7. The “Ring” production, also being presented by the Berlin State Opera, is directed by Guy Cassiers and conducted by Daniel Barenboim.
As with Mr. Lepage’s “Rheingold,” Mr. Cassiers’s relies heavily on lighting and projections to make its effects, but this is an altogether lower-tech (and undoubtedly less expensive) affair. Mr. Cassiers makes liberal use of dancers to shadow characters (sometimes literally, in silhouette, as in an especially striking rendering of the looming giants) and otherwise move the action forward or merely add flourishes.
Special effects are often fudged. It’s not altogether clear what is happening when Alberich, with the aid of his magic golden helmet (depicted with a laying-on of multiple hands by dancers), turns himself into a giant reptile. Donner somehow manages a hammer stroke without a hammer. And if it’s visual splendor you look for in a Valhalla, you won’t find much here.
But in this more intimate setting, the voices of the Rhinemaidens intertwine sensuously in a way that the Lepage levitation discourages. And vivid characters are allowed to emerge and develop free of the distractions of towering, creaking stage machinery.
As at the Met, the cast is generally good to excellent. René Pape, whose Met activities this fall were directed to “Boris Godunov” rather than “Rheingold,” is a resounding yet vaguely sympathetic Wotan, more changeable of mood than the Met’s unrelievedly dark Bryn Terfel. And even New Yorkers spoiled by Eric Owens’s powerful Alberich at the Met should quickly warm to a very different portrayal by Johannes Martin Kr?nzle. Doris Soffel, as Fricka, was loudly booed by some in the Scala crowd, though she fared better vocally than some: Timo Riihonen, for example, a physically imposing Fafner with an unimposing voice (in contrast to Kwangchul Youn’s Fasolt, strong of voice and small of stature: reason enough for those giant twin shadows).
The “Walküre” to follow promises the same production team but an entirely different cast. Then it is on to Mr. Lepage’s “Walküre” at the Met in April. Oil up the machinery.
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