# luisi/lepage Gotterdammerung



## AmericanGesamtkunstwerk (May 9, 2011)

i'm going to die tomorrow! 

way up in the family circle. 

i'll let you know how it is!


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## eorrific (May 14, 2011)

Please do! 
I'll only be listening to the online stream.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

You're going to die? Are they using a real fire without taking the proper safety precautions?


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## AmericanGesamtkunstwerk (May 9, 2011)

my favorite scenes have always been the Norns and Waltraute, and luckily with this production they were the highlights. 

Luisi is the weakest link. he doesn't believe in wagner, he doesn't even understand wagner. who decided he should be here anyway! (possible depression or something in the orchestra too, in the words of an obnoxious and pretentious neighbor, the whole musical dimension had a severe lack of "rismo") (and some hiccups in the brass. really guys?)

Lepage and design crew have unfortunately regressed from previous installments. (some would call that an understatement)

cast rocks, simply put. Jay Hunter Morris - Perfection, in this age of singers, perhaps the ideal. Voigt - nailed it, (yaknow I'm startin to think that whole Walküre was just an off-night). Konig - awesome. Owens - Awesome. Gurtrune - nailed it. Waltraute - hot. norns and mermaids - all great. I do not believe there was a weak link among 'em. Though I really didn't "get" or sympathize with Gunther in any way. (like in the Boulez/Chereau, they make my disdain turn into pity turn into sympathy, that's kind of what I look for in my Gunthers.) 

I remember a particularly Lepage-bashing Walküre review said that it reminded us that an opera belongs to the singers. That the singers can take any situation and make something out of it. Perhaps some will say the same here.

it was a really amazing evening, for me! The thing about Wagner is, a "bad" production must be a wholly incompetent or inaccurate production, short of that it's still a Wagner. at even a merely-competent event, the audience is privileged to experience the peak of human craft and expression, so I was impressed and inspired. I wasn't floored in transcendence, but Götter rarely gets there for me anyway, just in the nature of the material. (it is some of the highest caliber operatic crafting in history, yet I agree with Shaw that it is "just" opera.)

Thinking I'll probably head back to the broadcast. Surely there won't be those hiccups in the light machines and brass. 

I'm sure other reviews won't be so kind as I, but like I said, it's still Wagner so I love it.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I haven't heard Luisi conduct Wagner yet, so I'll have to withhold judgement. But he seems like a really fine conductor, and I've really enjoyed his recordings of such Verdi rarities as Jerusalem (the French revivion of I Lombardi, Aroldo, and Alzira, as well as Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini.
Speaking as a former horn player, you should remember that if there are some bloopers in the brass in any Wagner performance, it's because they are unbelievably exhausting to play for all the brass . 
Wagner makes life incredibly tough for brass players in the orchestra, especially the horns. Sitting in the pit there is a musical marathon . I studied with a horn player who use to play in the Met orchestra long ago , and he told me that when you play a Wagner performance there "Your lip is tired before the curtain goes up !"
The first horn player in the Met needs an assistant principal so he can stop playing intermittently to save his lip when he does Wagner. It's that grueling !


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

superhorn said:


> I haven't heard Luisi conduct Wagner yet, so I'll have to withhold judgement.


 Well, I (and doubtless many others here) heard him conduct the MET in HD _Siegfied_. I was encouraged by the results.

In my latest issue of "Wagner Notes," they cover the mid-October "Met talk." In it, Luisi is quoted as saying "If you just trust the music, you cannot fail... we just trusted Wagner."

Of course, _Götterdämmerung_ is another challenge still. It seems that it attracts more interpretational strangeness than any other Wagner opera. [Levine, much as I admire him, is not wholly exempt from that impression, from my perspective.] Or, maybe it could be that the Solti recording set such an impossible standard that it unduly colors our viewpoint on other performances (particularly live ones!).

For those of us who are going to the MET in HD theatre-cast, we're ALL going to be able to make up our own minds about this, in just a few short hours...


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

well, where are all the reviews?


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Doesn't get shown in NZ until 10 March. We're still on Faust.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Itullian said:


> well, where are all the reviews?


I decided to sleep on it before writing at length...

First, the production- Robert Lepage is, of course, French-Canadian... and a French phrase stuck in my mind while seeing the production. The phrase is _faux de mieux_, which can be serviceably translated as "in the absence of anything better." Not much more faint praise can be given- but for the staging to accomplish what it does _without_ the wearisome intrusion of strident personal beliefs has to make the setting one of the very best _Ring_ stagings currently available on the boards, and pretty much by default. I suppose I could pick this or that scene that failed to fire, for me... but I'd rather dwell on the positive- which includes the scene transitions (that were never less than interesting, and at their best very fine), and an actual _Grane_ sighting- for once a non-invisible _Roß_.

I think I approached the assessment of Fabio Luisi's musical interpretation relatively free from adverse prejudice, having been generally impressed with his work in the HD _Siegfried_ earlier. After hearing Act I, I was wondering if a new and not-so-welcome MET tradition (perhaps aided by Levine) was coalescing towards over-broad readings of _Götterämmerung_'s Act I. I don't think I'm misapprehending here. In addition to my multiple recordings of the opera, I also have a (well-perused) study-score. At the risk of sounding a little nebulous, I think the challenges include clarity without clipping, and, if seeking to let the music breathe, have it subtly breathe in the pitch-shifts between notes, and not just with bar-line-like open spaces [G_d, this is *so* important in the Waltraute monologue, especially!]

I won't go as far as to say that it sounded like a different conductor in the other two Acts... but many of my initial reservations were cleared up upon hearing a musically rewarding Act II, with the only real carp being minor instrumental balance issues- which of course may have been sound-engineering peccadilloes rather than conducting ones. At the intermission between Acts I & II, Maestro Luisi was asked which portion of _Götterdämmerung_ provided the most challenge- and he replied that it was sections of Act I. "And it _shows_," I immediately quipped.

The musical pursuit of Act III was of similar quality to Act II, I thought. I wonder if (when you catch musicians who aren't dyed-in-the-wool Wagnerians), you'll find that they like-appreciate-love the music of Act III [e.g.: Siegfried's Funeral and the Immolation Scene] measurably more than the other Acts- and that feeling translates into their performance?!

Among the core of singers, First Star of the Night goes to Hans-Peter König's *Hagen*. A great "Summoning of the Vassals" performance was arguably the highlight of the night. Wendy Bryn Harmer sounded great and looked fetchingly telegenic as *Gutrune*. Between Acts, she let it slip that she'd like to step up to Sieglinde next. I wonder how many additional people had the "why not?!" thought-balloon over their heads? One doesn't think of a _Götterdämmerung_ performance as requiring a significant contribution from _Gunther_... but Iain Paterson hit good notes musically and great notes as a singing actor in this role.

Eric Owens, I've said before, bids fair to become a generational Alberich. He served well in his 8-9 minutes on stage.

This, of course, leaves us with our male & female leads- Jay Hunter Morris as Siegfried and Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde. Hunter Morris also hit great acting notes in his role, and made the right musical sounds as well. If one small reservation is to be noted, it's that he may need a little more time with the German diction coach. This stuff normally matters very little to me- but if _I_ can notice it, it must be 'coal-pile-in-ballroom' obvious to native speakers and serious students of German.

If I can be so gauche as to refer to Deborah Voigt's voice with a performance car analogy (and I don't think it's all that gauche, since singers frequently refer to their own voices as if it were an inanimate entity), she doesn't have a great 0-60 time, but is capable of outstanding cruising speed-- and so it was again with this performance. I've read a lot from people who've had reservations about her essaying this role- but (particularly when combined with the visually expressive element) I'm grateful that she's performing this part.

Finally (and contrary to a lot of observers), I wasn't enraptured by Waltraud Meier's Waltraute- though (as I hinted earlier) I don't think she was helped by the accompaniment.

In summation, there's much of this _Götterdämmerung_ that has the feel of excellent finished product. The great caveat is that Act I is possibly a work-in-progress-- and I think that in an honest moment, Maestro Luisi might well concede that point. This is a _Göttterdämmerung_ that's shaping up nicely- but has room to grow. I hope that it can REALLY bloom in time for _Der Meister_'s bicentennial next year.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

*Luisi* - Sucks. His interview was disheartening. I'd like the German heaviness with extra heaviness, thank you very much. I *don't* think Wagner intended the spiralling cataclysmic chaos at the end of the opera to be read like a Mozart Symphony. He's a small, timid, academic type; I could see him shine conducting _Rosenkavalier_ or something but he's totally wrong for Wagner. Dump him, Met.

*Singers* - Something should be said for the fact that visually they all fit their roles like a glove, and this is a well-acted _Götterdämmerung. _Singing is about what you would expect: good by modern standards, nothing on historical. Ignore Chi, Meier was fabulous.  Voigt and Hunter Morris got the job done.

*Lepage *- or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the Machine_. _I think Lepage gets too much flack. With the size of the thing and the nature of the music it must be tempting to get carried away and go for excessive spectacle. Instead, Lepage has the machine mostly do its graceful thing (and it's not easy for anything 45 tons to be graceful, but it is) during interludes and then settle down so we can focus on the singing and the drama. The presentation has just enough abstraction to find a happy medium between ridiculous-looking realism and loosing all sense in over-the-top modernism. We get Wagner's drama in a very fundamental presentation, free from surgically stage-director-injected "interpretation".


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

yeah, his "chamber music" remark was telling.


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## jflatter (Mar 31, 2010)

Itullian said:


> yeah, his "chamber music" remark was telling.


It was like one of the worst HIP conductors like Norrington getting their hands on it.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

*Trivia Time!*



Couchie said:


> I'd like the German heaviness with extra heaviness, thank you very much.


What famous person gave the following advice prior to a historically significant performance of the _Ring_ cycle?


> "REMEMBER: CLARITY! The big notes will take care of themselves;
> it's the little notes and the words that accompany them that are important."


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## AmericanGesamtkunstwerk (May 9, 2011)

(message is too short please enter in 10 or more characters)


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