OPERA
Ringing off?
Rodney Milnes
This year's performances of Wagner's Ring at Covent Garden — we are three-quarters of the
way through — are probably the last of the Schneider Siemssen decor and Hans Hotter production, a fact that has excited much relieved comment from many colleagues. Just to be difficult, and With precious little musically to distract me, I found myself at last growing rather fond of that great metal ring, having heaped my fair share of abuse on it in the past. Rearing on its supporting pistons, it Provides a rich variety of shapes and Planes that may have hampered past producers by limiting the acting area, but even this could conceivably be put to dramatic use by an imaginative director, and I wonder whether what is needed is not so much a new production as a new Producer, new costumes and a totally new lighting plot.
As it is, the Royal Opera seeks to sustain interest in the undertaking with an adroit mixture of visiting guest stars and of more-or-less resident singers Undertaking new roles. For instance, John Lanigan and John Dobson have over recent years built up extremely worthy Interpretations of, respectively, Loge and Mime. This year they have swapped round, to the particular advantage of no one, and it might be more satisfactory if these first attempts at new roles, like Donald McIntyre's first complete Wotan, which may be stoutly sung but seldom comes Within hailing distance of an adequate interpretation, were tried out quietly during the ordinary season rather than in the full glare of these annual ring-dings, With single seat prices of up to e7.80. The guests have provided rather more interest. Even at a time when Heldentenors are no longer music hall jokes, Helge Brilioth's Siegfried stands out as being exceptionally fine-looking, and he acts the Part with a natural ease unequalled in my experience. Unlike many Siegfrieds in this Production, he was not forever twitching the skimpy tunic down over his knees like some nervous debutante, but was happy to display enough healthy Scandinavian thigh to merit the attention of Lord Longford, But all Siegfrieds are some sort of Corn. promise between leg and lung, and Mr Brilioth is no exception in that by Act 3 lungs and larynx started to sound extremely weary, and though this by no Means affected his acting, which continued to show up everyone else's to an almost embarrassing degree, he is a singer who needs (and deserves) far more considerate accompaniment if he is to get through this Opera unscathed.
Otherwise, Karl Ridderbusch has contributed a magnificent Hunding, Helga Dernesch a well sung but routinely acted Sieglinde, and Richard Cassilly a Siegmund Whose noble bearing and beautifully
moulded phrasing far outweighed the odd wrong entry. The greatest single disappointment has been Edward Downes, whose conducting of the Ring I have much admired in the past, but who has rattled through the score at high speed, and in no sense given the meaning of the drama anything like its full weight.
If only the Royal Opera had spent half the cost of mounting this tarnished Ring on giving the splendid English Opera Group a London season of more than just eight days, then we would be operatically the richer. Their new production of The Turn of the Screw finds Colin Graham on absolutely top form, and Yolanda Sonnabend's cunningly contrived series of moving trucks and screens, as lit by Robert Ornbo, is surely the best operatic decor seen in London since the Svoboda Pe'leas. Britten conducted an ideal cast and this hideous little masterpiece was properly gripping.
A Guardian writer thought my sour reference some weeks back to The Rape of King Arthur was a misprint. He obviously hadn't seen the EOG's version of the Purcell Dryden entertainment. I cannot see the point of destroying the formal structure of the work — the main characters speak, while singing is properly reserved for the various magical elements — by interpolating from elsewhere airs for the leads that simply hold up the action. The result is to turn a difficult play into an indifferent opera. As the group is rich in singers who can deliver spoken dialogue, a rare opportunity has been missed.
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