Kip Cranna moderated a panel discussion on Das Rheingold yesterday evening at Herbst Theatre. The panelists included conductor Donald Runnicles, baritone Mark Delavan (Wotan), baritone Richard Paul Fink (Alberich), mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore (Fricka), and associate director Christian Räth. There was a fair amount of good natured teasing between the singers and conductor. Everyone was quite excited about the new production, the so-called "American Ring." In this production Das Rheingold starts off in the United States around 1900 and ends in the 1920s, though it sounds like the giants were modeled after a photograph of American construction workers from 1932. Räth was specifically asked about how Erda was to be portrayed, and he said she has been changed from being a Native American to being something "more general."
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Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
8 responses to “Das Rheingold Panel Discussion”
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Did the discussion include any dialog about the non-traditional design (i.e., regietheater)? I'd like to know what your reaction is Tattler?
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The discussion was focused on how this Ring was going to be accessible to Americans. Personally, I find the story very accessible anyway, but it will be nice to see a different take. I’ve seen a Regie production in Munich, and a traditional one in Seattle, so I can’t imagine Zambello will fall outside of those two extremes.
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I saw it on Saturday’s final dress rehearsal and found the production mostly wonderful. The idea of Erda being an old American Indian earth woman is actually a great concept, but they did retreat from it in this version. She’s in a toga thing instead, coming out of the usual trap door.
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She looked like a Berkeley hippy dressed in a Native American inspired outfit to me. I have very mixed feelings about the production, still sorting it out at the moment.
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I saw it last night & I’m feeling a bit underwhelmed by the American concept at the moment. When I saw Erda, I was thinking that maybe I was supposed to think she was a Native American princess, but I wasn’t quite sure. I could read Alberich as a grimy prospector, the giants as construction workers, & the gods as guests at a croquet game on the Great Gatsby’s lawn, so at least these things were clear. But just because the setting is American doesn’t automatically make it more “accessible”.
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I think it is an interesting idea, but did not entirely cohere.
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All of these comments are very interesting. Like OT, I think Das Rheingold has a very accessible story. I also wondered whether Erda as Native American makes this more accessible. And is a story about the violation of natural law a traditional American story? Aren’t those usually about the nationalization of space and American exceptionalism (excepted from usual course of political and social development)? Hmm, I haven’t seen this production, but the comments suggest that it lacked coherence.
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I do find the original costume design for Erda very striking, I know when it was mentioned during the panel discussion I could visualize the image very clearly, even though I hadn’t seen it in well over a year and had completely forgotten that it was part of this particular production. It does smack of tokenism, so I do understand why they made it less pronounced.
Well, maybe they will pull it off in the end, we do still have three more operas to go. But as it stands now, I’m not convinced, but the production doesn’t get in my way as far as the music is concerned, so I can’t complain too much.LikeLike
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