DRESDEN - Against a Semperoper audience as cold to music director Semyon
Bychkov and the orchestra as the German winter winds that just blew into
town tonight, I felt flushed with the pleasure of a "Die Walkure," unique
in my two-score-plus live "Der Ring des Nibelungen" experience.

Check this out for a confident minority report: four hours of Wagner
with every word of the text, each phrase of the music coming across with
clarity, caring, involvement and passion.

If this, the second performance of the second opera in the "Ring" is any
indication of what the full cycle will be like when it arrives in 2003,
the place for true Wagnerites to be is Dresden - the city which has been
waiting for a "Ring" of its own since 1943.

Bychkov not only produced a performance similar to the chamber-music like
Boulez approach, supporting voices above all, but he also parsed phrases in
a very different way from the usual interpretations.  He seemed to rethink
the work and present it as a "musical" - that is, music theater - not as an
"operatic," big-time symphonic" performance.  The great climactic moments
were still there, but not even these "stepped on" the text.  I cannot
understand how Bychkov succeeded where just about every other conductor
fails in holding the huge orchestra to a whisper, and yet not throttling
it.  Still, there it was: a "Walkure" clear and simple, communicating
consistently and fluently, hours of music coming across as an integrated
structure - absolutely wonderful, and if Bychkov is not a prophet in his
own home, so much worse for them.

Bychkov's quiet, low-key approach also did wonders for the uneven
cast, especially the Wotan, who sings a good portion of those four hours.
Peteris Eglitis, a bass-baritone perhaps at the beginning of a career as
the Wanderer, is precisely the kind of music-theater singer who fits in
perfectly with this production.  He has a warm, beautiful voice, great
diction - and a range of about five notes.  In the long Act 2 dialogues
with Fricka (the tonight-fabulous Iris Vermillion) and Brunnhilde (Deborah
Polaski, in fine form), and then in the heartbreaking Magic Fire finale,
Eglitis was superb; when it was time for music in the high range of the
role - there was trouble.  Also, if he had to run the usual struggle
against the 100-piece band, Eglitis would have been a disaster.  Instead,
Bychkov embraced and supported the voice, and the result was outstanding -
a believable, clearly communicating Wotan.

Help too came Robert Gambill's way.  He is a fine baritenor whose Sieglinde
seemed vocally and dramatically overwrought to me.  There is no reason to
huff and puff if there is no wall of sound from the orchestra to blow down.
The other singers, especially Eglitis and Vermillion understood this well;
Polaski belted it out at times (while blending her voice with the others
most of the time) simply because she can.  Another big voice, Kurt Rydl
(Hunding) did his part of belting, but for the bad guy, it's OK. I am not
sure if it was just tonight or if it happens frequently, but the quality
in Rydl's voice seems to have gone down several notches.  In the really bad
news department: eight terrible Walkyries, a bunch as bad as I have heard,
including one who was bleating hideously.  Unfortunately, Bychkov was so
consistent in his approach that he didn't drown out even the "Ride" - I
wish he had.

As goes the music, so goes the production.  Willy Decker's direction and
Wolfgang Gussmann's sets are simple, striking, in service of the text
AND of the work.  Many years ago, I saw a chamber-opera production of
"The Magic Flute" in Carmel where the set consisted of six chairs; it
worked very well, but I never dreamed of coming upon a "Ring" with
chairs.  Welcome to Dresden.  Yep, it's chairs, lots of them, in changing
configurations, used simply and imaginatively, and after a while, you
get used to them.

It is startling only when the curtain goes up for the first time, and
the stage appears as the continuation of the auditorium, rows of empty
chairs taking up about half of the stage's depth.  Wotan is sitting in this
"extended audience," reacting to the story, taking part in it, eventually
leaving.  The set itself is a shallow, striking room of bleached wood, a
mirror for the door, a wedding picture (of Hunding and Sieglinde) on the
back wall.  When "Wintersturme" arrives, instead of the door flying open,
the back wall disappears. . .  revealing more rows of chairs going upstage
into infinity.

The rows are later configured to be the battlefield or the rocky mountain.
In "Rhinegold," according to photos, the chairs made a pretty good river.
Still, everything is kept clear and simple.  Weird stuff is at a minimum,
but when Gussmann is having fun, so does the audience.  The Walkyries, for
example, descend on gigantic silver arrows, a bit like an old Monty Python
sketch - and it's memorable only because there are no other shticks or
tricks.  Thank Walhalla for that!

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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