The Great Reckoning of Ragnorak
By Ed Rampell
L.A. Opera’s culmination of Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungen is not only the fourth, final and finest installment of the four part Ring Cycle, but goddamn, Götterdämmerung is the greatest opera I’ve ever seen in my entire life!!!
In terms of its breathtaking design, staging, mise-en-scene, special effects, costuming, performances, hidden message and of course Wagner’s virtuoso music, director-designer Achim Freyer surpasses himself with his tour-de-force Twilight of the Gods (as Götterdämmerung is called in English).
Götterdämmerung is the endtimes gospel according to the ancient Germanic and Nordic myths, as retold in libretto and stirring musicality by Wagner, and here intepreted by the brilliant Freyer. The complex, intricate plot of the gold stolen from the Rhinemaidens and forged by the dwarf Alberich into a magical, omnipotent ring that begins in the Ring Cycle’s first installment, Das Rheingold, which L.A. Opera opened back in February, 2009, reaches its conclusion in Götterdämmerung. The Ring’s second installment, Die Walkure, depicted Wagner’s rousing "The Ride of the Valkyries," as the chief god Wotan punishes his daughter the winged women warrior Brünnhilde (soprano Linda Watson who reprises her role in Twilight) for perceived disobedience. In Siegfried, the third installment, heroic but not too bright Siegfried (heldentenor John Treleaven also returns in Twilight) rescues and weds Brünnhilde.
Götterdämmerung unfolds with all the high drama of Shakesperian tragedy: If Wotan’s (aka Odin, as all Thor comicbook readers know) misbegotten treatment of Brünnhilde suggests King Lear’s similarly misguided actions towards his loving, loyal daughter Cordelia, Twilight calls to mind Othello. As in the latter, wherein the insidious, envious Iago schemes to split Othello and his bride Desdemona up, the misshapen Alberich (baritone Richard Paul Fink in his L.A. Opera debut), Hagen (bass Eric Halfvarson, who has also played several other roles in L.A. Opera’s Ring Cycle) and Gunther (bass-baritone Alan Held, who previously portrayed Wotan) cunningly conspire to divide Siegfried and Brünnhilde, with similarly disastrous results. Siegfried may have brawn, but not enough brain, and this Twilight tale ultimately, inexorably leads to what Christians call The Apocalypse, and ancient Scandinavians and Germans called “Ragnorak”: The destruction of the gods’ fortress of Valhalla and the deities’ downfall.
Much has been made of Freyer’s avante garde style and sensibility, with a Star Wars and Blue Man Group panache replacing traditional iron horned helmets, breastplates and other operatic conventions, which opera purists scorned. But what I think is far more important is the content of the Cycle and Freyer’s interpretation of it, and why this opera which premiered in 1869 remains relevant for our times. The key is that Freyer, born in Germany in 1934, was a “meisterschuler” -- a sort of star stude-- – of leftwing playwright Bertolt Brecht, arguably the 20th century’s Shakespeare. Freyer presented productions at the fabled Berliner Ensemble, which is to Germany what the Group Theatre is to America. However, unlike the Group, which was chronically plagued by underfunding, the Berliner Ensemble was the German Democratic Republic’s national theater, and with the GDR’s state subsidized support, the Ensemble could rehearse shows a full year before premiering them.
The anti-fascist Brecht, who’d married Jewish actress Helene Weigel, fled the Nazis in 1933, relocating to Denmark until Hitler invaded there, moving on to Finland until Germany struck, then crossing the vast Soviet Union until he departed on the very last passenger ship out of Vladivostok before the Nazis invaded the U.S.S.R. Brecht wound up at Santa Monica, co-wrote Fritz Lang’s 1943 anti-Nazi film, Hangmen Also Die!, but then fled persecution by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Eventually Brecht established the Berliner Ensemble at East Berlin, in the GDR (aka “East Germany”).
Consciously, unconsciously or both, Freyer appears to bring a leftist sensibility to Wagner’s Ring Cycle. It’s deities toppling tale symbolizes the current collapse of capitalism that’s still unfolding. Once known as “masters of the universe,” like Valhalla’s gods, Wall Street’s financiers have been brought down by the financial meltdown. The omnipotent Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008; this April the Securities and Exchange Commission charged godlike Goldman Sachs with fraud. Just this month, as Greek workers battled imposition of austerity measures with Siegfried-like heroism, the stock exchange plunged with its steepest ever decline, almost 1,000 points in a mere matter of minutes. And so on, from Asgard and Valhalla to Wall Street; o, how low the mighty have fallen! We’re witnessing the Götterdämmerung of capitalism and the capitalist class.
In terms of form, Freyer seems to have deftly deployed Brecht’s well-known “alienation effects” via the Ring Cycle’s wildly imaginative sets, costumes (devised with his daughter, Amanda Freyer, co-costume designer), lighting (co-created with lighting designer Brian Gale), etc. While it’s true that Freyer’s far out aesthetic “alienated” many opera traditionalists, Brecht’s alienation technique was intended to emotionally distance audiences from productions they observed. In this way Brecht theorized viewers would use their intellects to discern lessons to be learned from Lehrstücke, or teaching plays, intended to bring spectators to a higher awareness. Thus, the formal, modernist mode Freyer uses for the almost 20-hour Ring Cycle aims at making audiences think, as well as feel, and perhaps to reflect on the contemporary relevance of the catastrophic collapse of the gods in our own age of ongoing turmoil.
Returning to content, Wagner’s Ring Cycle also has much to say about Germany’s collective psyche. In Siegfried Kracauer’s brilliant 1947 From Caligari To Hitler, A Psychological History of the German Film -- arguably the best book of cinema criticism ever written -- Kracauer showed how the procession of movie monsters and tyrants of the pre-Hitler, Weimer screen were forebodings, predictions and projections of Nazism from Germany’s collective unconscious. These terrifying premonitions included 1914’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Dracula drama Nosferatu and Lang’s M in 1931. starring Peter Lorre (a frequent Brecht collaborator) as a psychopathic pedophile and serial killer. But as the Ring Cycle’s obsessions with world conquest and domination based on ancient Aryan legends reveal, the Germanic fixation on “tomorrow the world” was reflected in mythology, epic poems and operas long predating the advent of films.
Much has also been made of the $32 million budget of Freyer’s Ring adaptation, and detractors have tried to use its pricetag against him as a sign of extravagance. However, if put into perspective in the L.A. entertainment scene, this is less than the budget of the average Hollywood movie. In any case, L.A.’s first ever complete production of the Ring Cycle has generated lots of buzz and 115 cultural, artistic and educational institutions have joined forces to create Ring Festival LA, which is presenting related “symposia, panel discussions, lectures, art exhibitions, concerts, films, theater, educational events and tours” through June, according to Festival leader Barry Sanders. Placido Domingo, the Eli and Edythe Broad General Director of L.A. Opera, calls this “the largest, most significant cultural festival in Los Angeles since the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival.”
Accordingly, the presentation of Freyer’s unconventional Ring Cycle helps to push L.A. Opera towards the front ranks of world opera. Starting this May, fans won’t have to see the Ring Cycle on the installment plan, minus intervals of months between the mounting of each production. Starting May 29 and through June 26, opera lovers will be able to choose between three different Ring Cycle cycles in order to see the four part work in its entirety within days. And yes, Placido Domingo also returns as Siegmund in Die Walküre.
As for moi, the entire experience has turned me, musically, into a Wagnerian.
For more information on shows and showtimes please go to: http://www.laopera.com/
