A complication relationship with Wagner
Can the Houston Grand Opera really put a Ring on it? Spectacle presents theultimate price challenge
Wagner's "Ring Cycles" is a spectacle worthy of Stars Wars or Lord of the Rings.
The author's first introductuion to Wagner came through Bugs.
Fritz Feinhals as Wotan in Wagner's "Der Ring das Nibelungen"
Amalia Materna, the first Bayreuth Brünnhilde with Cocotte, the first BayreuthGrane
National arts guru Michael Kaiser would be proud of the Houston Grand Opera'sapproach.Ilan Mizrahi
We all have an intimate, and perhaps somewhat nostalgic, relationship with classical music. You just may be not aware of it.
My first encounter with the music of Richard Wagner was what could be considered musical blasphemy through my child obsession with Warner Bros. cartoons: Kill the Wabbit. Although disappointed and confused by modern cartoons, weekend mornings are spent perusing channels in hopes of finding something familiar — even better if it includes a dose of classical music.
Sitting on my couch in a morning slumber pre-caffeine in the company of a myriad of unnecessary technology I cannot live without, I explode in musical delight attempting to belt a high note in my nanny-goat falsetto (with vibrato) as I learn about a rather epic Houston first.
Embracing a herculean undertaking that only four companies in the United States have accomplished — San Francisco, Seattle, the Metropolitan Opera, and recently, L.A. Opera — the Houston Grand Opera recently confirmed plans to bring Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle to our lovely city co-produced with Opera Australia and presented over a period of four seasons starting in 2014 — if they can raise the money, of course.
This means four operas starting with Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods) spanning about 15 hours of intensely rich music with slightly expanded orchestration — an understatement. This is Der Ring des Nibelungen: a drawn out story of power, love and conquest through three generations of gods, mortals and those in between, whose lives are affected by the all-powerful ring, stylistically somewhere in between Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.
Aside from the usual battery of instruments, two tenor Wagner tubas, two bass Wagner tubas, bass trumpet, contrabass trombone, six harps with one additional on-stage, 18 anvils, thunder machine and three steerhorns are summoned. A mob of singers with rather robust voices to cut through an 80-piece orchestra — now classified as Wagnerian — a men’s choir and a small women’s choir make putting a ring on it quite a financial challenge.
LA Opera’s recent run had a $31 million dollar price tag. San Francisco estimates $26 million for its. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, refused to discuss budget while Placido Domingo postponed the National Opera’s Siegfried and demoted Götterdämmerung to a concert version.
Can Houston pull it off?
Michael Kaiser, considered the master of the nonprofit turnaround, would be proud. His motto is simple: Produce great art and market it well. HGO is obviously not wasting any time getting a four-year head-start. And given the economic climate, their somewhat commitment-phobic announcement allows HGO an out in case Anthony Freud, HGO’s general manager, and his development team are not successful.
Or perhaps it is a call-to-action; a teaser that will encourage those with pockets and an aching love for opera to own a piece of history. After all, the history of The Ring and its premier were filled with artistic success and financial chaos.
In a span of 26 years, Wagner wrote the libretto and the operas based loosely on Norse mythology finishing in 1874. It was also his vision to design a theater specially to showcase his works and accommodate his rather enormous orchestras. After years of delays due to construction and fundraising challenges, Wagner established the Bayreuth Festival, where the complete Ring had its debut in 1876 in the presence of nobility, his friend Friedrich Nietzsche and colleagues Anton Bruckner, Edvard Grieg, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Franz Liszt.
It is perhaps in this spirit that the Met spent $125,000 in steel beams, not including engineering and labor fees, to support the final fate of The Ring’s characters: the flaming destruction of Valhalla, the hall of the gods.
Bayreuth was perfect for Wagner. The city had no other prominent cultural assets, enabling his festival to be the area's sole identifying factor. Geographically, it was outside areas where Wagner had sold rights to his works earlier to take care of other pressing financial obligations.
But as successful as the festival was, financially, Bayreuth was not in the black until many years later. Wagner was forced to cancel plans for the 1877 festival, and Bayreuth only survived thanks to state funds and the help of prominent supporters.
Although critics of the institutionalized classical arts tend to find this sort of endeavor narrow and elitist — and perhaps wasteful — Wagner’s music philosophy uncovers similarities in aesthetic in this post-post-modern art world and conceptual age.
One has to love the Germans for their innate linguistic ability to create rather large compound words that are precise in their meaning. Wagner used the term Gesamtkunstwerk to describe the complete work of art: One that synthesizes many art forms to create a holistic experience for the viewer.
We love the interdisciplinary, and for some this plurality is a “a defining characteristic of contemporary art practice.” Technological innovation has certainly added tools and creative media. These new mediums are expanding and questioning the definition of art, and their successful application is a much needed skill for the modern artist.
The orchestral score is more than accompaniment but one that uses symbols and reoccurring themes called leitmotifs to tell a larger truth, add to the drama and sometimes contradict the events on stage.
Wagner’s vision was always interdisciplinary and one that made audience members shut up, sit down and listen — for a long time. In centuries past, it was common to think of opera as entertainment where socialites went to see and be seen while chatting, gossiping, even making business deals during the performance.
I have had a bittersweet relationship with Wagner, man and music, perhaps tainted by cultural pressures that expect me to dismiss him. Growing up in a Jewish household, Wagner’s music was akin to Nazi ideologies through his own anti-Semitism and Hitler’s appropriation of his style as the German ideal. Throw in some racism and a paternity dispute, and we have what could possibly be a really dramatic Jerry Springer episode.
Performances in Israel were met with controversy, and Daniel Barenboim’s first attempt to program Wagner in 1992 was cancelled. It was holocaust survivor Mendi Rodan that was able to break through conventions in 2000. Incidentally, having played Mahler's Symphony 5 under his baton during my senior year at the Eastman School of Music in 1999, I understood that his balance of paternal support and volatile personality is perhaps an attribute in his success.
But the allure and romantic mysticism of seeing The Ring is enough to allow me to abandon preprogrammed ideologies and giddy with delight at the prospect to see the whole thing, and proud of Houston for reaching yet another cultural milestone. Patrick Summers helped me do that with his deliciously epic Lohengrin, which also reminded me how many popular tunes from my nostalgic childhood past have their roots in an art form from which some feel disconnected.
Casting has not yet been announced. I feel teased. But I like it.
