Wagner's The Ring Cycle. Kirov Opera at NYC's Lincoln. 16-19 July 2007

With a group of six other opera enthusiasts, we attended The Kirov Opera's performance of Wagner's The Ring Cycle this week at Lincoln Center. Though I'm pleased to have seen a production of the entire cycle, I am sorely disappointed with the quality of the production the Kirov Opera brought to New York. Not surprisingly, the music was wonderfully performed. Opera, however, is not solely a listening experience but also a spectacle that should delight the eyes as well. For this reason, this production falls short of the grand opera long associated with Lincoln Center.

I do not claim any expertise regarding either opera in general or Wagnerian opera in particular. I do, however, absorb lots of theatre every year, and I expect that my experience in the theatre should be better than listening to a recording or reading a text. With this in mind I want to discuss three aspects of the experience: (1) the drama as written by Wagner, (2) the musical performances, and (3) the production values.

(1) Wagner created an series of complex characters whose motivations are not consistent. More on this later.

(2) The musical values were of a high caliber. I especially appreciated the performances of XXX (Brunnhilde in Die Walkure), XXX (Sieglinde in Die Walkure), XXX (Wotan in Siegfried), and XXX (Siegfried in Gotterdamerung).

(3) I'll assume that I don't know enough about Russian folklore to understand the little ET-like stones or the Transformer-like giants or the ICU-patient dragon or the goldish lattice-ball Rhinegold. And I simply mention my disappointment with the fire encircling the dreaming Brunnhilde and my puzzlement that Siegfried's pyre is just a dirt-pile. I'll also pass over a couple of questions about costumes: why did Brunnhilde have to look so ghastly Goth and why doesn't Siegfried ever progress from little-boy overalls? The greatest weaknesses of the production values lies primarily in the quality of sets. Granted, sets are all about deceiving the eye: making fiberglass and paper look like walls of stone and forests of trees. And much of this deception rests of the shoulders of the lighting director. In this case, too much of the lighting was focused on creating dazzling moods and too little on making us believe that large totems were made of stone rather than fiberglass.

All in all, I'm glad we made the effort to attend this operatic marathon. I do wish, however, that our efforts were more richly repaid.