In other news...
As I referenced in my first post, I attended a performance of Richard Wagner's
Die Walküre last night at The Metropolitan Opera. This is the second installment of Robert Lepage's new
"Ring" Cycle for The Met.
Das Rheingold premiered last fall, and the final two operas,
Siegfried and
Götterdämmerung, will appear next season. -With complete cycles being presented next spring.
The multi-ton "Machine" worked last night - at least mechanically speaking. There were some wonderful effects, but there were also some truly strange moments - included some projected avalanches which just seem to happen for no particular reason. And, as I felt during
Das Rheingold, I felt that the machine should have been used more, or, at the very least, been more active during some of the more static scenes. Maybe Lepage is making sure that the focus remains on the singers, the voices. And as for the voices, well...
It's quite well cast vocally. Alas, it's not ideally cast vocally. There's only one
true Wagnerian voice in the cast - as soon as Hans-Peter König opened his mouth as Hunding - WOW! There is a true heft and gravitas to his voice. The rest of the cast does sing quite beautifully at times - sometimes too beautifully - and even though Deborah Voigt's "Brünnhilde" may have been a bit small-voiced - especially compared to everyone else on stage - I thought she rose to the challenge of her first Brünnhilde quite nicely.
And it was nice to see Maestro James Levine back on the podium. He was in fine form last night as were his players in The Met orchestra.