It’s a far cry from the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney Hollywood movie where the two kids say “Let’s put on a show,” but the start of the 2013 Ring Cycle just outside the Cotswold village of Longborough has the same defiant D.I.Y. attitude.
Martin and Lizzie Graham have been thinking about Wagner’s operas for 30 years, and in 1998 they mounted – in a converted hen-house on their farm – their first, but miniaturised, Rhinegold. Now the shed has become a rural opera house, with all the appropriate
theatrical paraphernalia, and (perfectly comfortable) red-plush seats rescued from the renovation of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
Now, 15
years on, the Grahams are triumphantly hosting their first complete and full Ring
cycles – three of them. What is more, these are the only complete Ring cycles in Britain in the Wagner bicentenary
year. (They are also celebrating by staging a new production of Puccini’s La Bohème – a Verdi or Britten opera
might have been more appropriate, as it’s also their bicentenary and centenary,
respectively – but there are plenty of both composers’ operas being performed elsewhere
this year.)
Of course
alterations have had to be made. Director
Alan Privett and conductor Anthony Negus, though they have used the full score,
have had to simplify the staging, taking it back to its essentials, which is no
bad thing. For example, props have been reduced to a non-distracting minimum:
no golden apples, no Nibelungen hammering at their anvils; and designer Kjell
Torriset’s simple and refined costumes are also a help, rather than a
hindrance. Ben Ormerod’s clever lighting therefore does a lot of the dramatic
heavy-lifting.
Manager
Philip Head’s orchestra arrangements are the most interesting feature to me.
The pit manages to accommodate a very big band, but with 70, not the 110 players
specified by Wagner. This there are four, not eight double basses, and two
harps, rather than Wagner’s extravagant six (plus one offstage). The only brass
missing is the contrabass trombone. In my wonderful seat at the end of row C, I
missed the mighty rumble of the bass instruments that I could feel through my
feet at the last Ring cycle at Covent Garden (conducted by Pappano). But the
Longborough pit is partly covered by the stage, only a little less so than the
infamous inferno of the orchestra pit at Bayreuth itself, and has some of the
same magical feeling of the initial E-flat on the cellos coming from nowhere.
On the other hand, from where I sat, the orchestra seemed a bit subdued even in
fff passages.
Anthony
Negus is steeped in Wagner: he worked with the leading British Wagnerian,
Reginald Goodall, on the near-legendary late-1970s ENO Ring. Apart from a bit
of wobbly ensemble in the first minute or so, and though it failed to blast me
from my seat in the loudest moments, the orchestra was thrilling, as were
almost all the singers. The most remarkable part of the production is that
nearly all the performers are British – which would have been unthinkable not
very long ago. As Sir George Christie, formerly the head of Glyndebourne
Festival Opera, points out in a generous programme tribute, one of
Longborough’s real glories is the “discovery of young singers capable of
meeting Wagner’s daunting demands.”
Indeed, in this respect if no other, the Grahams’ madcap enterprise is
hugely to the benefit of opera everywhere.
In Rhinegold I found outstanding the
performances of Alison Kettlewell’s warm Fricka, Mark Le Brocq’s naughty Loge,
Anna Burford’s deeply coloured Erda, and Andrew Greenan’s bumbling but
malicious Alberich (the last allowed, justifiably, to take pride of place in
the curtain call). The Rhinedaughters, Gail Pearson, Sara Wallander-Ross and
Catherine King were terrific movers as well as lovely to listen to. I expect
Jason Howard’s Wotan to get even better in Die
Walküre, as I do Julian Close’s Fafner in Siegfried. The sole lapse in direction I noted was Howard’s
sometimes failing to sing to Fricka,
when the libretto has him directly addressing her. On the whole, the performers pay attention to
the dramatic situation, and direct their attention to the person or group to
whom they are singing; almost The larger Giant’s part of Fasolt was sung
mellifluously by Geoffrey Moses, though I wasn’t convinced of his lust for
Freia. I sometimes thought I was spotting a new star in Stephen Rooke’s
white-haired Froh, and was much taken by his acting in the small role.
Special
kudos to choreographer Suzanne Firth, as she and the other two actors provided
continuity as well as a bit of scene-shifting in some very appropriate and
graceful slithering and sliding across the smallish stage. Mr Privett and his associates have slimmed
down Rheingold in a wonderfully
thoughtful manner – a completely satisfying and polished version of the
production whose first outing I saw in 2007; and I can scarcely wait to see
what happens in the next three operas.
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