Well, in the first instance, when the new Royal Opera season was announced back in April, I took one look at the report concerning the start of a new Ring Cycle and quailed somewhat.
For a start, I looked at the cast and, while they are all excellent performers, I would not have said of any of them that Wagner was their fach. They were going to be called on to project their voices in an opera house which is large in size over a very large orchestra producing a 20th Century scale of volume under the baton of Antonio Pappano, a conductor who likes to unleash a torrent of sound when he can. I felt that, unless the performances were being given with period instruments and/or the conductor had changed his spots, the singers were not going to be heard at all.
Then, there was the Director. Barrie Kosky of the Komische Oper Berlin is a literate, informed, arresting theatre director with a highly attuned sense of the visual. Some of his work is refreshing and breathtaking: some of his work is outlandish and misguided. It is not always easy to guage which way he will jump.
I warned Roland not to go as I feared the worst. I explained that I would wait for the reviews and then attend a cinecast if I felt so inclined. In the event, Roland opted for a Dress Rehearsal which was an excellent compromise.
And, having experienced the performance, he said that he was quite taken with it and he doesn't often gush like that.
So, I decided to go with Roland to my first cinecast opera of the new season and watch the show for myself.
And I was impressed.
Firstly, I have to say that a Cinecast never gives a faithful rendition of the sound quality in the House itself. In fact, sitting in the House doesn't either as the orchestral/voice balance varies enormously depending on where you are sitting. Same is true of the visual aspects. Covent Garden cinematographers are, however, much less hyperactive with the cross cutting and much less inclined to use extreme facial close-ups than are their counterparts at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Those caveats side, all of the singers acquitted themselves well. Christopher Maltman (Wotan) and Christopher Purves (Alberich) excelled themselves. I also loved Sean Panikkar's Loge and Brenton Ryan's Mime. They all sang clearly audible words and sang them as though they were singing a theatrical text - with meaning, with characterisation and as a spur to motivation. They behaved on stage as a company ensemble never dropping out of the moment when they were not singing.
The over-arching idea that the four narratives are being remembered and half-dreamed by an ancient Erda will no doubt expand and take on more substance as each opera is presented but the basics are already there. This is a universe in which Nature is in peril, the World Ash Tree is already blasted and the golden sap drained from the tree's roots is brought out of the Rhine to produce the magical artifacts which will help to end everything.
The understanding of the characters was excellent. For the first time, I saw Rhinemaidens who were deliberately deceiving Alberich into thinking that he was desired and I saw an Alberich who had been aroused and then wounded by the betrayal of his feelings. So, I experienced Alberich's renunciation of love as an inevitable reaction to the anguish he felt. And I could see that the immediate outcome of this act was his redirection towards cruelty and oppression in the place of love. Which sounds so simple. And yet it's not. Even though everything that happens thereafter is created/caused by that first twenty minutes of music/action.
So, it was a good afternoon out. Roland and I enjoyed the whole excursion and even found time for a relaxing pint after a certain amount of prior negotiation.
David: Shall we imbibe before, after, during or throughout?
Roland: I do like your sense of humour. After, I think.
David: What makes you think that there was even a scintilla of humour in that statement?
Roland: Because I chuckled.
David: I chuckle when people fart. That doesn't necessarily make the event humorous.
Roland: As kids that was called gutter humour.
David: I may have the gut these days but it's still not necessarily humorous.
Roland: If I remember right FACT allow drinks to be taken into the cinema. Should you wish to slurp through the performance, I'll allow you to have the aisle seat.
David: Having, in 1976, quaffed two pints in advance of Das Rheingold at Covent Garden and had to excuse myself from the middle of a row in the Rear Amphi during the descent to Niebelheim, I shall be cautious.
Roland: And your bladder retention was so much better in your youth.
David: It was not so much retention as having the space for expansion. There was much less fat in those days to produce a contained enclosure.