Word: sellarsization
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Obviously, Sellars resorts to this approach because he has to--the Metropolitan Opera today can't assemble a group of singers capable of doing the Ring justice, and the Loeb isn't even within striking range. But he's also making a point about other, more serious productions: most of...
STRAIGHTFORWARD enactments of Wagner's text complement the implicit parody of the hand-puppets and dummies. For the entry into Valhalla over the rainbow bridge in Rheingold, the bridge is projected through a transparency onto the rear wall of the stage; Brunnhilde's enchantment at the end of Walkure occurs...
The production savors the visual opportunities of Das Rheingold, wringing it of every bit of spectacle--including towering potato-sack giants. Die Walkure, the best of the four adaptations, flows well musically; Sellars cuts out nearly the entire second act. Though that act, with a 25-minute monologue from Wotan...
In any enterprise this huge, of course, there will be misses as well as hits, and Sellars has his share. Particularly in Gotterdammerung--where many critics say Wagner's inspiration failed him--Sellars falters too. Splicing in whole minutes of Kurt Weill music to back up the leather-jacketed, bar...
At the end of the evening, you are--as Sellars quotes Anna Russell (crediting her here, though he fails to elsewhere)--"right back where you started," only it's taken four hours instead of 15 for the gods to pass on, the world to burn up, and the ring to...