TOXIC ASSETS

Sam Shirakawa attended the Opening Night of this season's run of Das Rheingold at the Met on Wednesday evening. Here's his squib:

Das Rheingold

Season Premiere 25 March 2009
Metropolitan Opera

If Das Rheingold is on the boards, it must be springtime now and Ring time again at the Metropolitan Opera. Otto Schenk has returned to supervise the final incarnations of his grandly representational production dating from 1987. The new version of what one critic has called “the ultimate mini-series” is set for 2010 and promises to be something entirely different.

This year, there are extra performances of Rheingold and Walküre to supplement the usual three cycles beginning at today’s matineé broadcast and continuing through early May. Expect to hear a lot of Japanese, German, Brit-English and Russian spoken during intermissions. Even in these wretched economic times, the Met remains Mecca for financially intrepid Wagnerites.

The first performance of Rheingold this season turned out to be only the 150th time the company has mounted the work -- by far the least performed of the four Ring operas.

Many of the singers who appeared at the premiere of this production have long since retired, but in an age when change happens too fast and too often, it is comforting to many to have James Morris back once again as Wotan. The incursions of time have diminished his vocal powers, but he was able to summon the requisite strength at the most critical moments -- especially in “Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge” -- the god’s articulation of relief at the completion of Valhalla. The rest of the cast was about as fine as money can buy these days: Yvonne Naef (Fricka), Wendy Bryn Harmer (Freia), Jill Grove (Erda), John Tomlinson and Franz-Josef Selig respectively as Fafner and Fasolt -- all in fine form. In a cast of equals Kim Begley (Loge), Richard Paul Fink (Alberich) and the trio of Lisette Oropesa, Kate Lindsey and Tamara Mumford as the Rhine Maidens were incandescent.

The other holdover from the production’s premiere, of course, is James Levine. Of some 20 odd times I’ve been present to hear him conduct Rheingold in the house, Wednesday evening’s performance was arguably his finest to date -- primarily because he seems to have discovered, finally, the recondite magic and sad sense of wonder in the work, which he palpably missed in his previous excursions into Nibelheim.

All of which led me to reflect afterwards on what take-away the performance may have offered. If nothing else, Rheingold, indeed the entire Ring, is about the Grand-Daddy of all Toxic Assets. The forged ring ultimately ruins everybody in a cumulative tidal wave of devastating collateral. The dire warnings of this intermittently hummable tale, adumbrated so seductively in swathes of wicked harmonies, continue to go unheeded, as the world sucks itself into the Augean stables of fiduciary feculence.

Sooner or later, though, what may get even worse gets better: We are, it seems, living out the Shakespearean-Wagnerian Dialectic. But how long in really real time is the journey between that deceptive E flat pedal which begins the infelicitous tetralogy in whose midst we now find ourselves -- and our arrival enfin at the redemptive D-flat Major coda that only the love which transcends understanding can win?

© Sam H. Shirakawa

Mortal Longings

Sam Shirakawa attended the Opening Night of Rusalka on Monday night. Here's his squib:

Dvorak : Rusalka Season Premiere

Metropolitan Opera
9 March 2009

Why would an immortal want to shuffle onto this mortal coil? An answer is to be heard in Antonin Dvorak’s most famous opera Rusalka, now on the boards at the Metropolitan Opera.

Why, Love for a mortal, of course!

But renunciation on such a scale demands commensurate sacrifices. Once the beautiful water nymph Rusalka falls in love with a mortal prince, who has taken a dip in her pool, if you’ll pardon the expression, she must give up all her supernatural perks in order to join him in the earthly universe, as well as submit herself to being stricken mute.

As fairy tales would have it -- The Little Mermaid for example -- her beloved prince rejects her. Why any guy in a marrying frame of mind would snub a prospective spouse who can’t talk back or sass him is a mystery librettist Jaroslav Kvapil never solves. And the impediment also creates a problem for Dvorak because it prevents his lead character from uttering a peep for a significant portion of the opera.

But when Rusalka does speak, she sings gloriously, especially when she’s portrayed so movingly by Renée Fleming, who has also taken the role with success in the Met’s past two revivals of Otto Schenk’s delightful 1993 production. Now that she’s mistress of the part, the question is whether you like her interpretation. She’s not nearly as other-worldly as, say, Gabriella Beňačková, but you’re hard put to reject the passion she puts into a character, who gets the cold shoulder from the mortal to whom she is fatally attracted.

The object of Rusalka’s affections is taken by Aleksandrs Antonenko, making his Met debut. There’s no doubt that the young Latvian newcomer can interpret beefy parts, but the question is whether you like his voice. If you’re used to big-vibrato tenors from the former Eastern Bloc, Antonenko’s voice, despite an occasional squeeze at the top, will please you. If you’re accustomed to rapid-fire vibrato in your heavyweight tenors, you may find him an acquired taste -- though worth the required patience.

Stephanie Blythe drew audience appreciation for her humor-laced inflections as the witch with the right potion for what ails you. As the Foreign Princess, Christine Goerke effectively rendered a different kind of witch. Brenda Patterson made an impressive showing in her Met debut as one of Rusalka's playmates.

Apart from steering the performance with rhythmic incisiveness, Jiri Belohlávek inspired the Met Orchestra to produce waves of gorgeous sound.

Rusalka may be a fairy tale, but it speaks to every age. The Met’s revival also arrives at a moment in our history when it offers more than pretty music: The water nymph renounces her anxiety-free existence for an environment fraught with danger and damnation -- all for the sake of love. And what she ultimately gets is not love requited but its true and withering flip-side: indifference. Her story belongs to the long tradition of tale-telling that exposes the human soul alone, sliding into an alien societal conundrum, deprived of the assets and skills necessary for survival. Depressing maybe, if you care to view the tale as solely reflecting the maze of impecuniosity through which humankind willy-nilly is now groping. But it’s ultimately cathartic too, for unlike Rusalka, we are not, at least for the moment, alone.

Note: The Met's Rusalka has been performed whenever Schenk's Ring Cycle is mounted. Especially on matinee Saturdays. Are some or all of the sets by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen for both productions interchangeable? If yes, it's a shrewd move. Whodda guessed? And is Renée a standby for one of the Andrew Sisters in Walküre...?

©Sam H. Shirakawa