Word: wotan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...strong, consistent guidance if a production is not to degenerate into a series of pretty stage pictures. Characters must be sharply focused, their complex relationships made clear. They cannot be allowed to wander aimlessly across the stage, as Hall lets them do in Rheingold, or strike arbitrary, stylized postures: Wotan singing to Brünnhilde while lying flat on his back in Die Walküre, for example...
...gambled that the French enfant terrible would inject bold ideas into the family opera enterprise. He was right. Chéreau began by setting the legend during the social upheaval of the Industrial Revolution. His Rhine maidens are a trio of prostitutes frolicking by a hydroelectric dam, and his Wotan is decked out as a rich capitalist. In 1976 audiences were outraged, but by the end of the run in 1980, when the production was filmed, the Ring was hailed with an hour of bravos at the final curtain...
...perhaps even more effective on TV than in the opera house. What is sacrificed in scenic grandeur, such as the looming pile that is Valhalla or Hunding's chilly glass-paned palace, is gained in unorthodox but expressive detail that may be overlooked in the theater. In Wotan's sorrowfully reflective second-act monologue in Die Walküre, Bass-Baritone Donald McIntyre stands before a full-length mirror; tearing off the patch that covers his lost eye, Wotan searches for his soul and finds only an emptiness that foreshadows the twilight of the gods...