Florence Mehta’s Götterdämmerung

There just has to be a limit on what directors can ask opera singers to do. For example, I’m OK with naked Rhinemaidens in some performance but asking them to gaze at the audience while actually underwater wearing tasteless outfits then to surface in order to sing their parts is definitely asking too much! I hope the water in their fishtanks was warm!! Singers will often do anything to get the gig, but somebody has to step in to protect them.

Yes, it’s that ‘Ring’ again. It seems we cannot stay away from it. And of course, I just had to attend! I didn’t bother to book a seat because I knew that nobody ever bought the seat I wanted. I had seen (on television thank goodness!!) too many modern ‘Ring’ cycles to actually want to look at the stage too much.

So I turned up about half an hour before the performance to see an enormous line of people down the street from the Maggio ticket office. When I investigated, I found this was the line of people who had booked ages ago and were exchanging their eTickets for their real tickets!!! (Why can’t they be like the airlines and simply accept the eTickets?) When I managed to get into the office myself, I found I could walk straight up to the counter and buy a ticket.

Once again, I was amazed that they gave me a huge discount on my ticket. The Maggio website had promised that booking online was cheaper than buying at the box office. I even protested that they were charging me too little but the booking office person just shrugged and said, “That seat has the best sound in the house”. I then bought a programme for the performance and found it had 346 pages!!! Maggio doesn’t do things by halves!!!!

The Maggio orchestra is excellent full of wonderful players and, of course, Mehta is the ideal conductor to lead it. I wanted to hear them even if it meant losing some the voice in the balance. So my seat was in the stage box position on the second level. I chose the second level above the tubas and trombones because I wanted to be much higher than the orchestra and opposite the the woodwind and horns. Mehta had seven contrabassi and eight cellos in the centre of the orchestra splitting the violins left and right. As usual a Wagner orchestra cannot fit easily into even an enlarged pit so the opposite stage box had the two harp players. And Mehta could only reach the rostrum if all the seconds stood up and moved their chairs to let him by.

I was a little puzzled to see a separate set of performers’ monitors on a level with my seat. I soon found out why this was so. Much of the action took place way above the stage in the air, on top of the sets, and lifted by those fork lifts I have seen used to take cameras aloft for movies. Not only did I have an excellent orchestral sound but singers only a few metres from my seat!!

Let me say that this production – not the singing or the playing – was disgusting, ugly and, I feel, degrading to the singers. It was horrible in the extreme. I wish my seat had not enabled me to see any of the Stage Director’s ideas. I would have much preferred a concert performance. In the final scene, I actually shut my eyes to prevent that marvellous music from the extremities of visual pollution. I felt sick just before I shut my eyes at the end after Brunnhilde  had been carted around on a fork lift while roller skating figures cruised the stage, and other clever circus acts ensued.

Our Brunnhilde was one heap of woman with one heap of voice!!! Did she sing!!! Winderful!!! At a time when these idiot stage directors are demanding slim divas, the audience gave our Brunnhilde an ovation which must give these directors the message. This is music drama of the highest order. 

Our Gutrune, on the other hand, had a svelte figure admittedly with a large chest but with almost as much voice as Brunnhilde. So what did the Stage Director do with her? …. She descended from the sky in a translucent sphere in which she appears to getting fit with a treadmill. She communicated with the world through a window in her heavenly sphere. Actually I didn’t mind this as it was the most imaginative image that appeared on the stage.

The rest was ugly ugly ugly ….. except for some of the projections which were extraordinarily beautiful. But technicians strolled around the stage and, for much of the action, turned the excellent projection machines around so we were exposed to all the machinery and the people who operated them in a completely tasteless manner. There were a few interesting ‘cirque de soleil’ tableaux, sometimes vivant, as at the end but they seemed to distract from the performance rather augment the effect.

Why waste so much time writing about something so horrible? Well, it’s because the rest was SO marvellous! There were no really weak performers. The chorus was fantastic although they are not on the stage very long. (They were dressed wearing the old German college duelling sleeves each wearing glasses but NOT those funny duelling glasses they wear to get their cheeks cut for the traditional duelling scar) The acting was as convincing as we could expect in these extreme circumstances with machines running round the stage much of the time. 

The action opens with the three Norns literally hanging out together about level with my seat with the threads that must break (otherwise our the opera lasting more than sixteen hours will NEVER end!!!!!) hanging around literally. I was really worried and concerned about the strain that all that hanging around would do to them until they alighted from their hangings and we saw three rather comfortable IKEA chairs ascend into the heavens above the stage. (How crude!!!) I was also worried when some of the action took place on top of the projection sets. Sometimes the singers would even dangle their feet from them and sing. Siegfried’s scene with the rhinemaidens took place while he was there with some nasty drops either side. And listening to singers who are charging around the stage on forklifts is very distracting.

But those poor Rhinemaidens!! What they don’t have to do for their gold!!!! Each one had an individual fish tank large enough for them to dive underwater and gaze at Siegfried (and us) through the glass whilst remaining underwater. Now and then they came up for air and, for longer periods, they came up to do their jobs; that is, sing their parts. All this took place whilst their tanks were suspended way above the stage, level with my seat. (Think of the total weight of all that water!!!) They were great – real troopers who sang wonderfully! At the end of the performance, they appeared in dressing gowns to much appreciation for their endurance!! I saw their tanks being wheeled around at the end just before I shut ny eyes so I’m sure they got their gold back in a suitably tasteless manner.

I was in wonderment as Brunnhilde sang so marvellously in the final act as so much ugliness was going on behind her. I was sad when Gutrune emerged from her exercise sphere early on in red stockings, short skirt and strange outfit – in a city of fashion!!! And Siegfried didn’t look too happy when he ravished her on the kitchen table. But they all sang well and made the best of a difficult situation or maybe they are simply used to Stage Directors making silly demands of them.

Some people actually enjoy Wagner without the voices. Unfortunately this doesn’t include me. It’s music drama where the action is actually carried by the music itself. Wagner designed his own theatre for this opera with the enormous orchestra pit going back actually under the stage. But, unlike Wagner,I was really glad to hear the orchestra directly from the open pit although I didn’t expect to hear the flying singers even closer.

The Maggio orchestra is first rate, probably due to Mehta’s long association with it. That bass clarinet, so essential to this opera, had a broad, rich and juicy sound which projected extraordinarily well. The horns and woodwind played so neatly!! They have such a lot to play!! All those basses underpinned a beautiful string sound to perfection. Mehta conducts with calm precision for much of the time and the orchestra responds to every gesture. But the surprising feature is that he only really gets excitedly moving when he is looking for more richness in the texture. For example, he must have conducted Siegfried’s Funeral march hundreds of times. yet there he was teasing out every bit of richness that was possible. He’s 73 now and he doesn’t have a stool on the podium but sometimes rests back against the wall of the pit with an extremely straight back which looks a little inflexible these days. But he draws a very nice sound from his band of brothers.

Zubin Mehta, a Zoroastrian from Mumbai, will always remember the performance in 1981, when he tried to conduct ‘Siegfried Idyll’ in Israel but stopped halfway when a holocaust survivor jumped on to the stage displaying his injuries. Since then he has had a remarkable career even including gigs like the ‘ThreeTenors”! He must now be one of the most celebrated conductors in the world but he has maintained his position as chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino since 1985. No wonder the Florentines love him so much!!!!