Perfect

That was the first Siegfried that I've actually enjoyed, I usually experience it as something to be endured between good bits. Even my father, a notorious finder of imaginary faults, gave it 10 out of 10.

I was much happier with Frances Ginzer's Brünnhilde tonight than in Wednesday's Die Walküre, perhaps she is settling in to the role. She was an unsatisfactory demi-goddess but a great newly-created human woman*. There was a self-help book published some years back under the title "Feel the fear but do it anyway," which could have been taken as Brünnhilde's motto: delighted to wake to find herself human, scared stiff at the unknown life which lies ahead, but determined to grasp it with both hands.

With each Ring, I hear pieces of music that I hadn't heard before, or understand aspects of the story that I hadn't grasped before. I had somehow not really registered Wotan's long duet with Erda that begins the second act, although it is central to the story of the entire cycle.

The production design (by Michael Levine) was excellent: a nearly bare stage, most of which was in absolute darkness most of the time, with very simple costumes (pure white except Alberich and Brünnhilde) and few props or decorative elements. The lighting (by David Finn) has been uniformly excellent, but only this opera has really put his talents to use. There was one cleverclogs moment: a treestump on which Siegfried sits and dreams in Act One, is seen turned on its side (as though we were in midair looking down at the saw-cut face) in Act Two - with Siegfried still sitting on it dreaming, except that he's now lying on his back in midair! The Gods are at right angles to reality, as it were.


* For those who don't know the story: as punishment for disobeying her father Wotan's command (to cause the death of Siegmund and thus prevent Siegfried's birth) she was stripped of her demi-divinity and put to sleep within a ring of fire, to be the wife of whichever man could brave the flames to wake her. Naturally the first such fearless hero to pass by is Siegfried himself.