# Met Rheingold on PBS - Much Better Than The Critics Said !



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Well, I finally got to see Das Rheingold from the controversial hi-tech Met Ring on PBS last night, the beginning of the whole shebang . By golly, the production is much better than the carping critics said it was ,at least in my humble opinion .
The kinks in the technology seem to have been corrected, and the notorious planks did not sound distractingly noisy ,at least on television . I found the conception by Robert lepage interestingly different , and fortunately not one of those awful Europtrash travesties of Wagner. 
On the documentary "Wagner's Dream" shown on Monday night as a prelude to the telecasts, the moving planks of the set were interestingly compared to the moving plate tectonics on Iceland, which is partially the source of the Ring story . 
There were interesting special effects, such as the way Alberich was actually slipping and sliding on the bed of the Rhine as the libretto has him complaining about this while trying to reach the Rhinemaidens, the way Loge actually looked as though he was made of fire , and the gods seeming to be transported up to Valhalla as if on the original Star Trek , etc. Somehow, it worked for me, and Lepage got first-rate acting out fo a strong cast ,led by Bryn Terfel, Stephanie Blythe ,and Eric Owen as a very human Alberich you could actually feel pity for . I can't wait to see the rest of this Ring, and hope it will be as good . I know, technically, there aren't any humans in Das Rheingold, and humans don't appear until Die Walkure, but picky,picky,picky.)


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

I'm glad someone weighed in on this- I was beginning to wonder if there were too few people paying attention. [Well, no matter what happens, there ARE too few people paying attention... but you know what I mean...]

We had a pretty good thread about this specific performance back here. About everything that I posted then applies now, I think- but there are two additions-

1) Makes me miss Levine's absence from the Opera scene even more.
2) Sounds like 'Kevin' and/or his friends sound-dampened much of the booing for the Loge with the TV-DVD release. 
As you can read in the linky, I thought the booing was unjustified-- but I'm a little ambivalent about this 'sanitation.'


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

I'm listen/watching gotterdammerung right now. I am unimpressed with set. It is noisey, and actually distracting. It's like waiting to what wiz bang thing it will do next, at the expense of the singers and music. The Siegfried in Siegfried always comes of a juvenile delinquent stuck in a mans body. I too miss Levine. Terfel has been the best part of this for me. Alberich and Mime have also been quite good.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Recovering from a week of late nights here after watching all four evenings plus the documentary. I had also seen the original cinemacasts of Rhinegold and Seigfried. I agree it was a story very well told, at least on the small and big screen. Usually I have a hard time staying with opera on a TV screen, but I have to say it kept me actively engaged thru the end of each night, in spite of the late hour. It's hard to say what the in-person experience would be like.

And I agree the cast was uniformly strong. I thought Jay Hunter Morris really embodied the manchild hero, particuarly in Seigfried - to the extent that he even lent Deborah Voigt's Brunnehilde more credibility (as did Waltraud Meier's Waltraute).

As far as the production, the only disappointing bit for me was the final act of Gotterdammerung. From Seigfried's funeral march on out, it seems like they ran out of ideas or money or time, and settled for bog standard convention for the most part. I mean, compare Siegfried's Lincoln Log funeral pyre to Brunnehilde's momumental magic fire. 

It was definitely a treat to get the four night experience, if only virtually. My only other Ring experience was the early 2000's Chicago Lyric Opera version, in installments and out of sequence, over a few seasons. It also helped that my better half had thoughtfully checked out all four scores from the library and had them laid out for my sofa viewing pleasure on Monday evening.


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