Word: staging
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sellars boasts, with obvious irony, that his is "Boston's first complete Wagner Ring cycle." It is actually an anthology of the Ring, the most famous and most inspired passages spliced together from each opera, with the gaps in the music and plot filled in either by stage gimmickry or by Sellars' own entertaining, if self-conscious, narration. He uses good commercial recordings of the works, and provides surprisingly good reproduction for them. The cutting is drastic, though, and will disturb those who know the music too well. Sir Thomas Beecham used to complain of the "bleeding chunks of Wagner...
...actors at the Loeb become little more than menials on stage, pushing about various inanimate objects in time to the music. Only a couple of performances have much character--Paul Redford's cigar-chewing Loge and Grace Shohet's teasing Brunnhilde stand out. This is one show where the technical crew deserves more credit than the performers; Eric Cornwell's lighting, Antony Rudie's technical direction, and Jennifer Schreiber's stage-managing must all be epic efforts...
...that a claque was planning to boo her. It was signed "Enzo Grimaldo," the character played by Pavarotti. Scotto's husband accused Pavarotti of sponsoring the claque and alerted Adler and the San Francisco police. At the first sign of trouble, he vowed, hiss wife would walk off the stage...
...Stage presence is one thing, acting another. Pavarotti is often an indifferent actor, though in a broad role like the bumpkin in Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment he can be an effective comedian. His chief asset, especially in romantic roles, is his height, which offsets his distinctly un-dashing waistline. "I never look at how wide they are, but how tall," says Soprano Beverly Sills. "It is a relief to be able to put your head on a tenor's shoulder." What carries Pavarotti through is his patent sincerity and gut-level identification with his characters...
...Vost's prissy, virginal middle age is soon disrupted. He accidentally learns that his daughter is a prostitute; catatonically, he submits to the ministrations of one of Mirabelle's schoolmates before going off to report his daughter to the police. When the women of La Violaine stage a revolt, Vost is among the volunteers who enter the prison, armed with long sticks, and try to beat the women into submission. They fail, and Vost embarks on a nightmare journey over the terrain of lust...