Review: With Chicago Lyric Opera's Rheingold, the majesty is all in the music

This review originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

The giants
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

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It's always good to see a well-sung and expertly played production of Wagner's Ring cycle, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago's mounting of Das Rheingold, which opens a four-season run through the entire thing, is certainly that. In addition, the libretto's focus on the cost of abusing power and personal trust feels very relevant in our current political environment.

A high-powered cast is led by bass-baritone Eric Owens, whose solid and voice and dramatic conviction give real gravitas to the role of Wotan, who wakes from his dream of power to learn that the giants Fasolt and Fafner have finished the construction of Valhalla. Bass-baritone Samuel Youn is also compelling as the dwarf Alberich. He's a complex character-an unscrupulous bully but also wronged by the gods and less deluded than they about the cost of the Ring's power-and Mr. Youn gives him real nuance.

The Rheinmaidens
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Tenor Stefan Margita is a wonderfully wily Loge, making the most of the character's dry, self-aware humor. Mezzo Tanja Ariane Baumgartner gives impressive voice to Fricka's misgivings over her husband's infidelity and dubious bargains. And tenor Rodell Rosel makes a strong impression as the querulous dwarf Mime.

Soprano Laura Wilde as Freia, tenor Jesse Donner as Froh, and baritone Zachary Nelson as Donner round out the cast of gods very effectively. Soprano Diana Newman, mezzo Annie Rosen, and mezzo Lindsay Ammann perfectly captured the allure and cruelty of the Rheinmaidens. And mezzo Okka von der Damerau was appropriately ominous as Erda.

That said, I wish director David Pountney and his design team had taken the whole project a bit more seriously. They have elected to make all the mechanics visible, bunraku style, so that (for example) the Rheinmaidens in the first scene float around on massive metal platforms manipulated by visible stagehands.

Nibelheim
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

It works well there and in the Nibelheim sequence, which looks fittingly hellish; less so for the giants Fasolt and Fafner, who are nothing but huge platforms with plastic heads and inflatable arms that flop around absurdly. Fafner's murder of Fasolt ought to be chilling, as it's the first evidence of the ring's curse. Here, as the stagehands toss around inflated arms and boots, it just looks goofy. So does having Wotan tear Alberich's arm off to get the ring. Giving the audience a cheap laugh at that point makes no dramatic sense.

Other moments of imposed comedy feel equally out of place. But the concluding entry of the gods into Valhalla retains all of its musical and visual power, with the orchestra's brass ringing out as the gods literally ascend towards their gleaming (if skeletal) home. I'm willing to forgive a lot for that. Besides, the orchestra under the sure hand of Sir Andrew Davis does very well by Wagner's score throughout the evening, and that's a huge plus.

The gods enter Valhalla
Photo: Todd Roserberg

In an interview at the Lyric Opera web site, Mr. Pountney says that his staging of the Ring operas will be “united by a single theatrical device. We keep trying to go back to an empty stage to show, in the end, that this is all just a stage, just a theater. However splendid the effects are, when we roll them up and whisk them away, we go back to an empty stage." I'm not convinced that kind of Brechtian distancing serves Wagner all that well. We'll see how it works for Die Walküre next year.

Performances continue through October 22 at Lyric Opera's home in the magnificent Civic Opera House in the Chicago Loop. Information on Das Rheingold and the rest of the current season is available at their web site.

Strong performances lend power to an abridged "Götterdämmerung" at Union Avenue Opera

L-R, foreground: Neil Nelson and Clay Hilley
Photo: JohnLamb

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This weekend, Union Avenue Opera concludes its 22nd season with "Götterdämmerung" ("Twilight of the Gods"), the final installment of the most ambitious project in the company's history—Wagner's mammoth operatic cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ("The Ring of the Nibelung"). It's a strong production, thanks to tremendous performances by the singers and clear, focused stage direction by Karen Coe Miller.

Using editions of the operas prepared in 1990 by British composer Jonathan Dove and director Graham Vick for companies that lacked the facilities and budgets necessary to produce Wagner's massive "music dramas" in their original form, Union Avenue Opera has proved that you can retain the narrative drive and much of the dramatic power of these works while still making substantial cuts. "Götterdämmerung" has the most drastic edits of them all, eliminating several characters and cutting the overall running time in half, from over six hours to just under three.

L-R, foreground: David Dillard, Rebecca Wilson
Neil Nelson, Clay Hilley
Photo: John Lamb

That makes the plot-heavy second act, with its memory-erasing magic potions and backstabbing (both metaphorical and literal), so quick that it feels almost telegraphic. And the smaller orchestra can't quite produce the impact required for big moments like Brünnhilde's famous "immolation scene" or Siegfried's Act I Rhine journey and his Act III funeral music. But everything is sung and acted with such conviction that those are ultimately secondary considerations. Solid dramatic values go a long way towards compensating for a lack of spectacle.

Besides, as I noted back when the series began, to a certain extent the lack of theatrical flash sharpens the focus on the plot, the characters, and their implicit commentary on matters of morality and power. Wagner's libretti for the "Ring" operas starkly illustrate the cost of abusing power and personal trust—highly ironic, given the way Wagner the man did both.

Alexandra LoBianco
Photo: John Lamb

Heading the cast is the remarkable Alexandra LoBianco as Brünnhilde, the role she played in "Walküre" and "Sigfried." If there's any justice in this world she will, at some point in her career, get a chance to sing the full-length version of this role on a major stage. She has the vocal power and sheen of a first-rate dramatic soprano and the acting skill to make even the biggest moments credible.

Tenor Clay Hilley returns as Siegfried, once again matching a heroic voice with a convincing character. Bass-baritone Neil Nelson's Hagen is a captivating study in emotional conflict and avarice, delivered with a big, powerful voice that easily handles the low notes of this bass role.

Brünnhilde's sister Valkyrie Waltraute could almost be a throwaway part since she's essentially there just to deliver a lot of exposition about how Wotan is pining away in Valhalla, but alto Melissa Kornacki makes her fascinating nevertheless—beautifully sung with real depth of character.

Clay Hilley and Vassals
Photo: John Lamb

Baritone Timothy Lafontaine schemes and wheedles wonderfully as the dwarf Alberich. David Dillard and Rebecca Wilson round out the supporting cast in fine form as Gunther and his sister Gutrune, both of whom are undone by their dishonorable plotting.

Conductor Scott Schoonover has apparently beefed up Dove's reduced orchestration a bit and, some intonation issues in the brasses not withstanding, the ensemble as a whole played quite well on opening night. I missed the big emotional catharsis of the final moments, but the responsibility for that mostly lies with Mr. Dove and the small size of the orchestra pit.

Patrick Huber's unit set is the same one used for the first three operas. It's dominated by a huge screen on which images and video (designed by Michael Perkins, whose innovative work has graced many a local stage) take the place of the elaborate scenery envisioned by Wagner. They generally work well, especially in the Gibichung palace scenes in the second act, and are very effective in creating the right moods and sense of place. The screen, the catwalk above it, and the stairs to either side take up so much room that most of the action is played out in a fairly shallow area downstage. Still, Ms. Miller manages to create decent stage pictures most of the time, which is impressive.

Melissa Kornacki
Photo: John Lamb

Teresa Doggett and company have done their usual fine work with the costumes. Hagen and the pedestrian Gibichungs are done up as early 20th-century European royalty, complete with brown-shirted Vassals who look eerily like Hitler's infamous paramilitary Sturmabteilung. That immediately sets them apart from country boy Siegfried and emphasizes their division from the supernatural characters who surround them.

Union Avenue Opera has done local opera fans a real service with its four-year traversal of the Ring operas. Yes, Dove's scaled-back versions are no substitute for the real thing, but taken on their own terms they're compelling theatre. And in any case, no local opera company has a theatre equipped for the Full Richard.

If you have any interest in Wagner's "Ring" operas at all, you definitely owe it to yourself to see this "Götterdämmerung." If nothing else, it will give you bragging rights when Ms. Lobianco goes on to her inevitable stardom; you can say you saw her when. Final performances are this Friday and Saturday, August 28 and 29, at 8 PM at Union Avenue Opera, 733 Union at Enright in the Central West End. For more information, visit the company web site. Note that there is a parking lot but it tends to fill up quickly, so you'll want to get there not later than 7:30 if you can.

Dim and dimmer: "Tannhäuser" at Lyric Opera of Chicago

Act II of Tannhäuser
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

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Who: Lyric Opera of Chicago
What: Wagner's Tannhäuser
When: February 9-March 6, 2015
Where: Civic Opera House, Chicago

I have a dream. I dream that some day I'll be able to walk into an opera house and not be faced with a production in which the stage director has imposed some sort of high concept on the piece that is either irrelevant to or openly contradictory to the intentions of the composer and librettist. Alas, as the Lyric Opera of Chicago production of Wagner's "Tannhäuser" demonstrates, that's still a dream.

For those of you not familiar with it, "Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg Castle" (to quote the full title), first performed in 1845 and revised in 1861 and 1875, concerns the titular medieval knight/minstrel who, after months of libidinous frolicking with Venus in her subterranean grotto, becomes spiritually weary and returns to Wartburg castle, where he had won both the singing contests and the heart of Elisabeth, niece of Hermann, the Landgraf of Thuringia and lord of the castle. In the heat of a singing competition in which the goal is to compose the best song on the true nature of love, he reveals where he has been for the last several months. His only hope of salvation, he learns, is a pilgrimage to Rome and a pardon from the Pope.

The Venusberg ballet
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

All does not go as planned, and while Tannhäuser finally achieves his salvation, it comes at the cost of both his own life and Elisabeth's.

Wagner, who wrote his own libretto, based on a variety of sources, set the action in a semi-mythical version of the 14th century, in which the prosaic reality of Wartburg could co-exist with the fantastic world of Classical legend. Stage director Tim Albery, in his Lyric debut, has elected to jettison all that and instead move the action to what appears to be a contemporary guerrilla camp in Afghanistan. The Wartburg grand hall in the second act becomes, in the hands of set designer Michael Levine, a ruined theatre complete with a collapsed proscenium and the third act—originally set in the Wartburg valley in autumn—appears to be taking place on top of the flattened ruins of the hall under a blanket of snow.

Venus' domain is represented by a gilt false proscenium arch with scarlet drapes that flown in from above. She and her attendants are decked out in slinky black gowns. The residents of Wartburg, by contrast, are in drab earth tones and look like refugees. And everyone is so dimly lit that facial expressions were often difficult to discern, even from our excellent seats on the orchestra floor.

John Relyea and Amber Wagner
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

None of this serves the material very well. The lack of visual interest and the often static staging—there's a great deal of planting of feet and singing downstage—destroys any dramatic momentum. And turning Wartburg into a contemporary armed camp with shabby fighters toting automatic weapons only serves to underline how much (to quote my wife) their moral rigidity resembles that of the Taliban.

Perhaps that was Mr. Albery's point but if so, it was an unnecessarily heavy-handed way to make it. And it's certainly contrary to Wagner's intent.

The one exception to all this is the opening Venusberg orgy sequence. Jasmin Vardimon's energetic, erotically charged choreography perfectly matches Wagner's increasingly frenzied music and is an ideal introduction to mezzo-soprano Michaela Schuster's impressively seductive Venus.

The theme of the conflict between sacred and profane love was one to which Wagner, who was certainly guilty of his share of the latter, would return to often in his operas, along with the notion of redemption through love. Not surprisingly, given Wagner's psychology and the time in which he lived, that redemption usually involved selfless sacrifice on the part of the female lead.

In "Tannhäuser" that thankless task falls to Elisabeth. The role isn't especially large but it's dramatically crucial. Happily, Lyric has mezzo Amber Wagner in the role. Her big, luscious voice is an attention grabber and makes all of her scenes compelling. In her program bio, she is quoted as describing Elisabeth's music as "achingly simple, yet substantial and full of its own longing." You can hear all that and more in her performance.

Gerald Finley
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Bass-baritone Gerald Finley shines as well as Wolfram, Tannhäuser's friend who carries a torch for Elisabeth. His "O du, mein Abendstern" ("O evening star," often performed as a standalone piece) was a high point of the final act. John Relyea, who was such an imposing presence as Henry VIII in Lyric's "Anna Bolena" this season, radiates gravitas once again as Hermann. And soprano Angela Mannino has a nice cameo as the voice of the Shepherd, whose simple song is the first thing Tannhäuser hears on his return from Venusberg in the first act.

I haven't said anything about the South African tenor and Lyric veteran Johan Botha, this production's Tannhäuser, for the simple reason that I didn't see him perform. The night we attended, the role was sung by Richard Decker, an American tenor brought in as a last-minute substitute while Mr. Botha recovers from what the program describes as "a severe throat infection." Mr. Decker, at least when we saw him, seemed not entirely comfortable in the role and had noticeably less vocal power than his co-stars. This was especially apparent in his second act duet with Ms. Wagner.

As this is being written, Lyric's "Tannhäuser" has only two more performances (March 2 and 6), so I don't know whether Mr. Botha will be returning to the role or not.

Act III of Tannhäuser
Photo: Robert Kusel

If I have major misgivings about this production's dramatic direction, I have none whatsoever about its musical direction. Under the capable baton of Lyric's music director and principal conductor Sir Andrew Davis, Wagner's mammoth score got a well thought out and polished reading, with good tempo choices and excellent vocal/instrumental balance. Working with a substitute lead must have been a challenge, but everyone clearly rose to the occasion. The Act II "entry of the guests" (often heard in a stand-alone concert piece), with its offstage brass and full chorus, was a joy to hear.

The Lyric Opera season at the Civic Opera House continues with its production of "Tosca" and Mieczyslaw Weinberg's "The Passenger" in March. It wraps up with Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" in April and May, followed by a special recital with pianist Lang Lang on May 9th. For more information: lyricopera.org.

Opera Preview: "Siegfried" at Union Avenue Opera

Marc Schapman as Mime
David Dillard as Wanderer
(C) John Lamb 2014

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Union Avenue Opera is nothing if not fearless, often taking on works that strain the company's space at the Union Avenue Christian Church to the limit. This weekend and next, the company follows its highly praised productions of Verdi's "La Traviata" and Andre Previn's "A Streetcar Named Desire" with the final production of its 20th anniversary season, "Siegfried." It's the third installment of its most ambitious project yet—Wagner's mammoth four-opera cycle “Der Ring des Nibelungen” (“The Ring of the Nibelung”).

The story of the "Ring" is an epic fantasy involving clashes among gods and heroes over a magic ring that gives the wearer nearly unlimited magical power but also carries with it a terrible curse. There are dwarves, giants and (yes) even a dragon—but no hobbits or elves.

As did Tolkien for his "ring" cycle, Wagner (who wrote the libretti as well as the music) used stories from Norse and Scandinavian mythology to forge a tale of the passing of the old gods and magic and the rise of humanity. For both Wagner and Tolkien, great power comes not only with great responsibility, but with certain doom as well.

To get a feel for just how ambitions a "Ring" cycle is, consider the sheer scope of the project. The four epic operas of the "Ring" were intended to be performed as a single theatrical unit over four days, running a total of around 15 hours. The shortest of the four, "Das Rheingold" ("The Rhine Gold") runs around two and one half hours while the longest, "Götterdämmerung" ("The Twilight of the Gods") clocks in at around five hours, not including intermissions. For both performers and audience members, it's a major commitment.

Clay Hilley as Siegfried
Marc Schapman as Mime
(C) John Lamb 2014

The version of the "Ring" Union Avenue is presenting is not, I should point out, Wagner's original. That would be far beyond the technical capabilities not only of Union Avenue but, indeed, of every other opera company in town. The nearest city with a large and well-equipped enough opera house to mount a full production is the Lyric Opera in Chicago, and they won't be doing one until 2016. Even Wagner had to have his own theatre built for the purpose—the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, where the "Ring" and other Wagnerian operas are performed every summer at the Bayreuth Festival.

Instead of the originals, Union Avenue is using reduced versions of the operas created in 1990 by British composer Jonathan Dove and director Graham Vick for use by smaller companies without the resources to mount full-scale productions. They're noticeably shorter, but that's not the sacrilege you might think. Wagner the librettist does not always serve Wagner the composer well, and there's much in the texts or the originals that is redundant and discursive.

This reduced "Ring" is still a big deal for a small company, though, and Union Avenue deserves a lot of credit for taking it on.

Union Avenue's "Ring" got off to a somewhat rocky start in August of 2012 with a production of “Das Rheingold" marred by some technical glitches and sluggish tempi. Things improved noticeably in last year's "Die Walküre", which packed a considerable dramatic punch. Will "Siegfried" continue that trend? The only way to find out is to see it. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., August 22-30, at the Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 Union at Enright in the Central West End. For more information: unionavenueopera.org. Note that there is a parking lot but it tends to fill up quickly, so you'll want to get there not later than 7:30 if you can.