OVERNIGHT REVIEW: Los Angeles Opera's "Siegfried" at the Dorothy Chander Pavilion

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Siegfried by Richard Wagner
New Los Angeles Opera production
Wednesday, Oct. 7; Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Final performances: Oct. 11 at 2:00 p.m.; Oct. 17 at 5:30 p.m.
Information: www.losangelesopera.com
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When Richard Wagner composed his massive four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, he envisioned that it would be performed within the space of a week during a festival in a theatre he had constructed in the small German town of Bayreuth. And, of course, the best way to get the full impact of Wagner’s labyrinthine psychodrama, is to see it as Wagner conceived it (even if it’s not in Bayreuth).

However when a company is mounting the Ring for the first time, there’s a lot to be said for performing each opera independently before putting them together and that’s what Los Angeles Opera has been doing during the past and current season. Siegfried, the third opera in the Ring, opened last month at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and continues through Oct. 17. The final segment, Gotterdamerung, opens April 5, 2010. The company will then mount three complete cycles beginning May 29 of next year.

Some of those advantages are readily apparent in Siegfried, which I caught last night. The first involved Music Director James Conlon’s original decision to cover the orchestra with a scrim, hoping to approximate the feeling in Bayreuth where the orchestra is invisible behind a gigantic cowl. Unfortunately in Das Rheingold and Die Walkure last year, the scrim did too good a job and, as a result, the orchestra saw much of its sweep and power disappear into the fabric. For Siegfried, Conlon punched a hole in the scrim, which kept the visual effect but significantly added to the orchestra’s presence throughout the evening. As has been in the case in the first two productions, Conlon’s conducting and the orchestra’s playing were a strength in Siegfried.

Whether it’s because we’re getting more used to Achim Freyer’s staging concept or that Freyer is making adjustments, Siegfried was the most insightful, colorful and powerful of the three productions. Freyer continues to find ways to emphasize the timelessness of Wagner’s epic by having nonsinging actors moving slowly across the stage (mostly from left to right — west to east, as the directional sign noted). These acting doubles also keep the singers facing forward most of the time, a significant help given the Pavilion’s less-than-desirable acoustics.

The production uses a steeply raked turntable that occasionally rotated slowly back and forth, particularly during the Q&A between The Wanderer and Mime in Act I. It’s also in motion for the many times that Wagner retells the Ring story and the flashback sequences at the back were particularly well done last night. The lighting from Freyer and Brian Gale is highly atmospheric during most of the evening, particularly highlighting Freyer’s concept of the forging scene at the end of Act I.

As was the case in Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, there continue to be perplexing moments in the staging. As one example, in the third act we get not one floating eye (symbolic of the eye that Wotan lost in the prequel to Rheingold) but two. We’ve had to learn to get past these idiosyncrasies; perhaps by the time we get to the total Ring in May, we’ll have learned what most of them mean.

Nearly all the cast has sung in the previous operas; the one exception is British tenor John Treleaven, who sings the title role. As we learned when he sang Tristan in LAO’s 2008 production, Treleaven is not a power-laden heldentenor (there aren’t many of these ringing, heroic voices singing these days). He was at his best during the introspective moments of Act II and managed to reserve enough voice to stand up to soprano Linda Watson, who returned as a powerful, albeit somewhat barking, Brünnhide. Treleaven also gets extra marks for working despite twisting an ankle in Sunday’s performance; he limped noticeably during curtain calls.

Graham Clark continues to be a superlative Mime and Vitalij Kowalijow was again stellar as The Wanderer (a.k.a. Wotan). Oleg Bryjak returned as Alberich, Eric Halfvarson reprised his role as Fafner and Jil Grove again portrayed Erda. Stacey Tappan sang lusciously as the Woodbird.
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Hemidemisemiquavers:
• Given that this was the third performance of the run, there appeared to be a surprisingly large number of technical snafus in the performance. In particular, the applause sequences at the conclusion of each act were handled in an almost amateurish manner.
• Freyer did not join the cast for curtain calls at the end; he reportedly received a smattering of boos at the conclusion of the first performance, but that ought to be expected given the nature of his production concept — we’re not talking Luc Bondy in the Met’s Tosca, for goodness sake.
• I sat in a seat near the end of row G of the orchestra. One issue for LAO to ponder is that the supertitles are hard to read from that row and for the six rows in front would be even worse. Given that a remodel of the Pavilion with seatback supertitles is years down the road, management may want to consider small supertitle boxes closer to stage level on the left and right to help those who, presumably, will have spent significant amounts of money for those seats during the upcoming cycles.
• Conlon’s preconcert lecture continues to be an excellent reason to extend the performance timeframe from five hours to six.
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(c) Copyright 2009, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.