The Classical Review CDs/DVDs

More than a few stage directors have wrecked themselves on the shoals of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen by settling for an epic sound-and-light show while ignoring the human story at the center of the work. The Ring that director Carlus Padrissa staged with his company of acrobats, aerialists and actors, La Fura dels Baus, at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, Spain, between 2007 and 2009, certainly doesn’t skimp on the sound and light. But it explores the human angle too, and often in ways you don’t expect.

Now captured on a set of stunning new Blu-ray discs from the C Major label (also available on standard DVD), we see members of the Fura troupe hanging by their feet from meat-hooks on a Nibelung assembly-line, and by their waists on a gargantuan mobile that suggests the gyroscopic machinery that runs Valhalla. A cluster of performers cling to a chained ball (Pendulum? Wrecking-ball?) swinging above the cavorting Valkyries, while others with flaming torches hoist the large disk bearing the sleeping Brünnhilde, Atlas-like, onto their shoulders. The river grasses at the bottom of the Rhine are human-operated steel poles, and the castle of Valhalla is, quite literally, embodied by a suspended web of mute performers, limbs interlinked and writhing like some immense, bio-engineered structure.

Are we meant to see those bodies as the breathing fabric of the natural world – crude building material to be exploited by Wotan and Alberich in building their empires? The production’s video component cranks up the metaphorical weight of those bodies. Across a stage-filling panel of gargantuan screens – which creates an Imax-like visual backdrop for all four operas – ultra-hi-def video imagery (designed by Franc Aleu) shows us the human animal writ large: racing blood corpuscles, drifting anatomical drawings, 3-D computer mapping of the human body. When Wotan speaks of Valhalla, we don’t see architectural forms emerging, but human ones. And – in the production’s most telling visual conceit – the Rhine-gold is seen as a progeny of golden, human foetuses expelled from the Rhinemaidens’ bellies, and abducted by Alberich for genetic engineering.

Interestingly, for all of Padrissa’s big-screen focus on humanity, there’s less attention paid to the smaller interactions between singers. The cast seem engaged enough, and they hit all their important emotional marks. But much of the blocking is paint-by-numbers stuff, and the decision to harness the gods to individual jib-arms that roll about the stage and crane them up and down as the moment warrants makes it hard for, say, Wotan and Fricka to build a dramatic head of steam with each other. Nevertheless, there’s genuine heartbreak in the Wotan-Brünnhilde encounter at the end of Walküre, and some nice tension built in Act 2 of Götterdämmerung. And, despite being confined to separate water tanks, the Rhinemaidens manage to create a real theatrical frisson, diving underwater before splashing to the surface in time for their vocal entrances.

Given the attention-grabbing mise-en-scène, it’s gratifying to find a cast that’s anything but a perfunctory afterthought to all the pretty pictures. In an ensemble that really has no weak link, Peter Seiffert and Petra Maria Schnitzer make a commandingly sung pair of Walsung twins – here in tribal tattoos and dreadlocks, and given to much feral crouching and crawling. Jennifer Wilson’s Brünnhilde is as ample of frame as many of her golden-age forbears, but happily, just as ample of warm-toned, gleamingly forthright voice. Her smiling, eager portrayal contrasts nicely to Juha Uusitalo’s rather dour, if handsomely sung Wotan.

Lance Ryan’s acting provides little more than hunky bluster in the title role of Siegfried, but he sings the part with uncommon vocal security and a generally attractive tone, and becomes markedly more interesting to watch after making his transition from tribal love child to corporate pawn in Götterdämmerung. The incomparable Matti Salminen once again proves himself the greatest Wagnerian bass since Gottlob Frick, as Fasolt, Hunding and – painted like a Kabuki warlord and adorned in monetary symbols and corporate-logo buttons – a chillingly robotic Hagen.

It’s hard to gauge just how busy and distracting a production this was in the house. (Beyond the imagery already mentioned, the video projectors are rarely still, launching us over mountaintops, dropping us down fissures in the earth, and hurtling us into solar eclipses.) But as directed for home viewing by Tiziano Mancini, a keen balance is struck between an audience perspective and cinematic close-ups (which do no favors for Chu Uroz’s strikingly conceived, but ill-fitting and ultimately trashy-looking costumes). Often, Mancini creates an evocative layering of images so that the Rhinemaidens are engulfed by rippling currents and the gods can float weightlessly in deep space.

There’s even face-time for the orchestra – a young, terrifically disciplined ensemble playing their hearts out for Zubin Mehta, who is here doing some of the most arresting and lovingly nuanced work of his career. With its multi-layered, multi-media storytelling, the Valencia Ring – in its Blu-ray incarnation at least – comes as close to Wagner’s concept of “total-artwork” as we’re likely to see for some time.

2 Responses to “WAGNER Der Ring des Nibelungen”

1. Posted Nov 21, 2010 at 1:27 pm by David W Wilson

   Thanks for a very helpful review.

2. Posted Nov 22, 2010 at 2:29 pm by John G

   There is also a cheap sampler disk ($10 for the Blu-Ray version in Canada) that gives a good idea what to expect without shelling out for the full set.

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