Only at a Seattle Ring

It's coming round again - The Seattle Ring - the 'green' Ring that looks to the gorgeous natural setting of this Pacific Northwest City for its inspiration, will be back in August 2009. There's a major cast change - Janice Baird replaces Jane Eaglen as Brunnhilde but the sensitive, intelligent and beautiful production by Stephen Wadsworth will be unchanged. On its last outing, Wadsworth had given the end of Gotterdammerung (sorry can't find umlaut key) a rethink and had come up with what is, for me, one of the most moving and visually stunning Ring finales ever. Last time I attended this Ring, I had the good fortune to find a houseboat on Lake Union (through good old Craigslist). What better way to spend a hot August week than listening to Wagner's music, lectures by Seattle's education guy, Perry Lorenzo and a cast of guest speakers from across the globe, then return to the house on the water and go for a swim.

Seattle is unembarrassed in its celebration of Wagner during Ring Week. I'm pasting a shaky (sorry) video clip of the fountain behind the opera, here as an example.
I can't imagine this ever happening in Germany!

"Wagner without Fear" - my favourite guide to Wagner

This is not a new book. I was surprised to see that the first edition goes back to 1998 but William Berger's "Wagner without Fear" is one of the most enjoyable, informative, loving and entertaining books on this very trying genius that I have ever read. I picked it up at Seattle Opera last summer. I was in town preparing a feature for BBC Music Mag (US edition) on Seattle's ongoing, rather astonishing passion for Richard Wagner. I'd taken in a Ben Heppner recital, the International Wagner Voices Competition and a knock-out Aida with my best-ever Amneris, Stephanie Blythe. For the sake of my bank balance, I try to stay away from the shop at Seattle Opera. Their Ring-related stock is tasteful, often beautiful, sometimes amusing. There's a little corner for second-hand books on opera that often throws up a treasure I can't afford. And anyone passing through should treat themselves to Seattle education director Perry Lorenzo's insightful and entertaining CD guide to the Ring.

But this summer, I wandered in - I always do, and there was William Berger's 442 page guide to Wagner. I'd intended to save it for the bus journey back up to Vancouver. It looked like a dip-in kind of a book. I read it in one go. Berger welcomes us to the art of Richard Wagner and takes us on through his 'strange life and career', all the operas, guides to 'Wagner Issues' (anti-Semitism, nationalism among others) Wagner on CD, Wagner on Film, Wagner Soundtracks and rounds it all up with "Making the Hadj" - a pithy guide to a trip to Bayreuth.


If this all sounds like standard fare for a Wagner guide, Berger's combination of vast and deep knowledge with a sense of humour and an awareness of how uncomfortable and absurd Wagnerian ecstasy can be, make this the one book to buy for any of your friends who are contemplating a plunge into the Wagnerian ocean. Not only does he explain the plots and tell the reader what to listen for musically, he also provides sections such as: "Basics: When to Eat, Drink And Visit the Restroom", "Lobby Talk" (In Walkure this is "a note about horses and music") and, my favourite, the refreshingly honest: " Rough Spots and How to Get Through Them."

Seattle Opera Re-opens - The American Bayreuth?

“Seattle is a city that is given to earth tones,” says Speight Jenkins, general director of the Seattle Opera. “I’ve never liked that. So when we were remodelling the opera house,I told them that I didn’t want an earth tone in the house.”

Seattle Opera’s general director Speight Jenkins is a man of immense passion and enthusiasm and one of his greatest passions is for the work of Richard Wagner. So when his newly renovated opera house re-opened on August 2 with a performance of Parsifal,it came as no surprise to see a Rheingold rainbow in the form of a light show playing on the metal arches and scrims that project from the façade.

As for the interior decor, Speight Jenkins got his wish – he usually does; there are no earth tones to be seen in the building that has emerged from the shell of the old theatre. Instead the curving glass façade, the silvery grey of the foyer and the teal green seats in the auditorium itself all reflect the colours and moods of the surrounding Pacific Northwest with its rains and ocean and forest. That same natural setting contributed to the first Seattle Ring back in the seventies when company founder, Glynn Ross, another passionate Wagnerian, realized that the region’s mountains, lakes and forests were reminiscent of the Alpine landscapes that inspired Wagner.

When he also realized that, apart from New York’s Metropolitan Opera,no other North American house was mounting a full Ring Cycle, he took a very courageous leap and, to the astonishment of the opera establishment, launched the complete Ring of the Nibelungen in his small, geographically remote company. The tradition grew with the arrival of Speight Jenkins and went on to encompass other Wagner operas. Today, with the exception of Bayreuth itself, Seattle Opera has become the opera house most enamoured of Wagner’s work. After the 2001 Ring Cycle, the Times Literary Supplement said that “Jenkins’ version of the great Nibelungen Cycle reaffirms his company’s stature as North America’s pre-eminent Wagner house.”

In the land of Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks and Grunge rock, the locals have caught Speight Jenkins’ enthusiasm and flock to performances of the difficult German genius’s music. And Jenkins does not patronise his public. Productions are sometimes traditional, more often modern and, in the case of the current Parsifal, more than a little ambiguous in their interpretation of Parsifal’s meaning. Jenkins and his company do, however, provide a variety of lectures, symposia, free CDs etc to prepare the public for what they will see. And, if they still have any remaining questions after the five hour performance, Speight Jenkins himself hosts a question and answer session. In the old theatre that was held over a cup of coffee in the foyer. Now there is a lecture hall specially set aside for the purpose.

Microsoft has sponsored the new season. Wagner, who in his lifetime, struggled endlessly to obtain the patronage of the rich and successful of his world, would be amused but probably not surprised to see that the most contemporary citizens of one of our most modern cities have taken it upon themselves in the 21st century to support him.

Seattle Ring Cycle 2005

Seattle Opera - McCaw Hall
Wagner
DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN G.Grimsley, S.Blythe, RP Fink, M.Plette, S. Milling, G. Saks, P.Kazaras, T. Harper, E.Podles, R. Berkeley-Steele, MJ Wray, J. Eaglen, A. Woodrow. Dir: R.Spano. Dir.esc: S. Wadsworth. 7,8,10, 12, 15, 16,18,20, 23, 24,26,28 August

Seattle loves Wagner and has been presenting Ring cycles in the city of Boeing and Microsoft since 1976. Director Stephen Wadsworth has repaid that love with a green and loving Ring. Green in the realistic sets – the gods dwell in a forest glade based on a local beauty spot. And loving in the relationships between these oh-so-human deities – Wotan and Fricka exchange frequent embraces between marital arguments. Conducting his first Ring, Robert Spano brings finely judged pacing, sparkle and weight to an orchestra that benefits from the excellent acoustic in the renovated McCaw Hall. The other major debut is Greer Grimsley in his first Wotan. He has an oaky, tireless bass- baritone that occasionally echoes the sublime George London. His Wotan remains a work in progress, lacking a little in presence as if Grimsley does not yet believe that he is the god of all the gods.

Richard Paul Fink’s powerful, assured Alberich commands the stage in Rhinegold. In the opening scenes he has to compete with the production’s stunning Rhinemaidens – suspended on harnesses, swooping, soaring and somersaulting as they sing. Stephanie Blythe’s glorious mezzo brings warmth and compassion to Fricka but the most dramatic moment belongs to Ewa Podles’s Erda who emerges out of the mossy forest floor to bring her own brand of velvet-brown, sexy contralto comfort to the troubled Wotan.

In Die Walkure, Margaret Jane Wray’s thrilling, laser-like soprano lacks the doomed Sieglinde’s vulnerability. Wray is surely just passing through Hunding’s hut on the way to Brunnhilde’s summits. Siegmund on the other hand, as sung by Richard Berkeley-Steele is lyrical and tender but lacks the heroics necessary for Die Walkure’s great sword declamations. The immense Stephen Milling is a stentorian, menacing Hunding. Seattle loves Jane Eaglen’s Brunnhilde. And when she is singing full throttle this reviewer loves her too but there is a worrying gap in the middle range of her voice that renders it almost inaudible at times. Alan Woodrow’s Siegfried acts with jaunty confidence and humour, singing heroically if not always beautifully but growing in vocal stature to deliver a moving death scene in Gotterdammerung. In the revised (since 2001) immolation scene, the cavorting Rhinemaidens reclaim their Ring as the grey, ageing gods rise on a pedestal amidst the smoke of Valhalla’s ruins. Wotan and Fricka embrace - recalling bad Hollywood films where family values must survive but by now we don’t care for the rapturous love theme brings with it the pristine forest of Rhinegold. Now fresh shoots grow on the logs. In Seattle’s green Ring, beyond the destruction caused by gods and man nature returns, nature endures.

Seattle Ring 2001

The Ring Cycle - Seattle Opera -13, 14, 16 and 18 August 2001:

Long before Boeing , long, long before Microsoft, the city of Seattle lived off lumber from the great forests that cover its nearby mountains. And then came word that gold was to be found in those same mountains and desperate men thronged to the town. In their wake, came women brought in to be married off , not always willingly, to these wild woodsmen. For a while Seattle mined the gold miners selling them provisions before they set out on an invariably vain quest out into the unwelcoming forests where even today bears still roam and occasionally show up in suburban back gardens. A hundred years ago the centre of the original city was much lower and parts of this underground world can still be visited beneath the hollow sidewalks of downtown’s Pioneer Square.

Dark forests, mountain summits, bears, gold, unwilling wives and a hidden underground world. Is it any wonder that the Seattle Opera has established itself as one of the leading proponents of Wagner’s Ring Cycle? When General Director Speight Jenkins was casting around for a director for this new Ring production seven years ago, he expressed a wish for a “green Ring” in a naturalistic setting that would correspond to the surrounding Pacific Northwest landscape. His team of director Stephen Wadsworth, designer Tom Lynch and lighting director Peter Kaczorowski has given us a Ring that after years of Rings in space-ships, tunnels, Victorian drawing rooms is refreshingly free of any concept. From the moment of the exquisitely realized Rhine Maidens entry on to the scene ( securely attached by harnesses and moved around on wires by hidden helpers in the flies, the fearless and excellent singers swoop and dive and turn several complete somersaults 20 feet above a stage of iridescent deep-water blue), Wadsworth draws us so deeply into the emotions and psychology of Wagner’s characters both divine and mortal that no additional theories need to be grafted on to this colossal work. Stick with us, the whole Seattle team seems to be saying , with these gods and mortals and the nature that we now know so well and Wagner’s epic will flow as naturally as the Rhine itself. It does. The longeurs that this spectator has so often experienced in the first act of Gotterdammerung were absent. And even Siegfried, often a low point for any but the most dedicated Wagnerian, was the fastest-moving and most engaging that I’ve every experienced.

Lynch’s beautiful naturalistic sets from those watery Rhine depths up to Brunnhilde’s rock and the frozen winter world of the Norns support Wadsworth’s strong dramatic reading. The characters kiss and hug a lot in this Ring. Wotan, Phillip Joll, and Fricka, the wonderful, opulent-voiced Stephanie Blythe, continue to embrace and show genuine affection as they sing through their conflicts in Walkure’s Act 2. At one point he courts her with a flower picked from Valhalla’s slopes. A cynic could call this a West Coast “touchy feely” Ring but by showing a still-loving if disenchanted Fricka, Wadsworth gives this often shrewish character a pivotal role as the moral centre of the drama. When the gods ascend into Valhalla, Fricka holds back anxious and unsure. When her wish for Siegmund’s death is granted, she is there on stage to witness his end.

Wadsworth has said that he doesn’t want any of the women in the Ring to appear to be victims. And certainly the two most likely candidates, Freia, (Maria Plette) the gentle goddess of youth and Sieglinde, the doomed twin (sung with warmth, power and beauty by an utterly secure Margaret Jane Wray) are both feisty, independent women. Faced with a brutish Hunding who makes a point of imposing his kisses on her in front of Siegmund, this Sieglinde sweeps the table clear of all its symbols of her imposed domesticity before running off to share a night of love with her brother.

As the cycle progresses, British soprano, Jane Eaglen’s Brunnhilde emerges as a warm, loving Wonder Woman character. Both General Director, Speight Jenkins and Wadsworth have expressed the opinion that the supposed “redemption through love theme” that closes Gotterdammerung is more a celebration of Brunnhilde. Vocally the clarion-voiced Eaglen is increasingly worthy of celebration, particularly in Gotterdammerung where with Nilsonesque assurance she commanded the stage from the moment of her entrance. On the previous two days, the contrast between her loud and soft passages was occasionally too marked. Under Wadsworth’s sensitive coaching her acting has improved tenfold since I saw her Brunnhilde in a Scottish Opera Ring several years ago.

A cruel twist of fate helped to make this a woman’s Ring. In what could be the worst nightmare of any opera house director attempting to present the tetralogy , Speight Jenkins lost his Siegfried, the longest role in the cycle. Canadian tenor Alan Woodrow, who sings regularly at ENO, was the hope of many as a great new heroic tenor. But, alas, 24 hours before his debut, he tripped over a treadmill while accompanying his wife to the gym and severed a quadriceps muscle. Unable to walk, he sang through the first cycle from the wings while his cover, English tenor, Richard Berkeley-Steele, acted his part on stage. Jenkins later decided that this would be an unsatisfactory solution for the two remaining cycles and with some extra coaching from the director, the valiant Englishman went on to sing a part for which he had never rehearsed with an orchestra.

He showed no sign of nerves and if not quite a heroic tenor, he acted with ease and agility and gave us the rare sight of a slim, strong, youthful Siegfried.

The British contribution to this Ring was completed by Welsh baritone Philip Joll in the role of Wotan. Lacking in some majesty and a lot of volume in Rheingold, Joll summoned the necessary warmth and power to make Wotan’s Farewell the essential emotional climax of the Ring that it must be if the rest of the cycle is to move us.

Outstanding male performances came from Richard Paul Fink as Alberich and the exciting young Danish bass, Stephen Milling, as a volcanic, menacing Hunding and an equally stentorian but deeply vulnerable Fasolt.

Replacing an ailing Armin Jordan, Franz Vote conducted a sensitive, balanced Ring that perhaps lacked fireworks and was occasionally let down by the horns but grew in assurance as the days progressed.

At the end of their previous Ring Cycle, Seattle Opera earned admission to the Guinness Book of Records by staging the biggest fire on a public stage. Wadsworth and Lynch decided, wisely, that they could not follow such spectacle. Instead the scene literally flows from a distant, smouldering funeral pyre behind a carved wooden screen in the Gibichung palace, to a brief glimpse of the gods in the depths of the Rhine and on to the rebirth of nature and life as new young trees appear on the slopes of what could be Seattle’s own Mt Rainier.

A few final words on the driving force behind this Ring, the extra ordinary general director, Speight Jenkins. Where in Europe would a general director conduct a question and answer session on anything pertaining to the Ring day in question? On each performance day, Jenkins arms himself with a microphone, stands in the foyer of his theatre and for 90 minutes, answers the most obscure and erudite questions. When he was preparing this Ring, Jenkins asked for a commitment from his production team to return in 2005, 2009 and 2013. On this first showing, they have given us a Ring that confirms Seattle’s emerging reputation as an American Bayreuth. Tickets sell out a year in advance so mark those dates in your calendars now.