Resounding Rings

A major event in the history of opera in America has been taking place in Seattle over the past two weeks. The Seattle Opera Company presented the four operas of Wagner's Der Ring der Nibelungen in German within a week. That is the way the Ring is regularly performed at the Wagner Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, but almost never in the U.S. Then the Seattle company spun around and repeated the cycle in English. That bilingual trick is a feat that no other company in the world has equaled.

Wagner knew exactly what he was doing at Bayreuth. Heard in quick succession, Das Rheingold, Die Walkure and Siegfried have a staggering cumulative effect. By the tune one settles in for the 4 1/2-hour finale, Die Goetterdaemmerung, the ear reverberates with leitmotivs; and Wagner's gods, earthlings, dwarfs and dragons seem familiar, necessary, among the mind's permanent emotional reference points. One gasps at the death of Siegfried, even if he is the sort who will take a drink from anybody. One worships Bruennhilde as the lover and idealist in all of us.

New Trend. The Seattle Ring has a predominantly young cast, with just enough veterans to glue things together. Among them is the stage director, George London, 55, one of the great Wagnerian bass-baritones of the 1950s and '60s. If London has his way, he may start a whole new realistic trend in staging the Ring. After the innovative Wieland Wagner began presenting his grandfather's works as absorbing formal abstractions at Bayreuth in the early 1950s, the imitators began falling into line. Says London: "Soon everyone was in a culdesac, with no place to go. That is when the gimmicks started popping up. In one Ring in Germany, for example, the Valkyries came in on motorcycles. In France, Wotan wore a top hat and tails. Enough. It's poisonous. We have to go back to the source now."

In London's Ring a sword is a sword, a spear is a spear, and Fafner the dragon is a proper dragon--a 35-ft.-long by 15-ft.-high beauty of a monster that requires eight stagehands to operate. London's conception is not perfect: he may not put the Valkyries on wheels, but having them cavort like chorus girls is not an improvement. There is no bear for Siegfried to tug, alas, nor does Bruennhilde ride a horse into the pyre. But she does sleep on a genuine jagged peak--not just some symbolic platform. Reversing another current fashion, London puts light rather than gloom on everything, and the operagoer does not have to view the whole show through a front scrim.

In the German version of the Ring especially, one could see and hear London's influence on the singers' diction, gestures and all-round Wagnerian style. Where his touch left off, Conductor Henry Holt's picked up. The Vienna-born, Los Angeles-reared Holt, 41, has been the Seattle Opera's music director for nine years. His Wagner may lack Sir Georg Solti's dynamism. But it has warmth, coherence and authority.

The cast is strong. At 6 ft. 10 in., Harvard Graduate Noel Tyl, 38, is easily the most imposing Wotan in the business. Since there are few good Wotans around now and since Tyl has a rich Heldenbariton, he seems to have a bright future. As Bruennhilde, Norway's Ingrid Bjoner sings the music with yearning and power. Germany's Herbert Becker (Siegmund and Siegfried) is not the most passionate Heldentenor around, but he sings all the music--and that in itself is no small achievement--with taste and control. The character parts are well cast, particularly the dwarfs Alberich and Mime (Malcolm Rivers and Paul Crook) and the scheming Hagen (William Wildermann).

The English Ring has again raised the old opera-in-English controversy. The translation used is that of British Writer Andrew Porter, who is now music critic at The New Yorker. Commissioned by the Sadler's Wells Opera and first performed as a cycle in 1973, the translation is a conscientious job and has already been used by several American companies for individual productions. Sometimes Porter has to change the meaning to get the meter right. As Hagen strikes down Siegfried, the vassals cry out: "Hagen! was tust du? Was tatest du?" Literally that means: "Hagen! What are you doing? What have you done?" The Porter: "Hagen! You've killed him. You've murdered him."

Porter does well with Bruennhilde's noble, ardent "Willst du mir Minne schenken" sung to Siegfried in Goetterdaemmerung. Wagner wrote:

Willst du mir Minne schenken, gedenke deiner nur, gedenke deiner Taten, gedenk' des wilden Feuers, dasfurchtlos du durchschrittest, da den Pels es rings umbrann!

A literal translation is:

If you would woo me, Make mention only of yourself, Make mention of your deeds, Make mention of the wildfire, You fearlessly strode through, When it burned all around the crag!

Porter's version:

Ah, but to prove you love me Remember only yourself Recall your deeds of glory Recall that raging fire Whose fury could not fright you When it blazed around my rock

The objections to opera, including Wagner, in English are formidable but not necessarily insurmountable. From the practical point of view, there is the problem of the babel of accents in the international casts that might be found at, say, the Met. Probably the inanities and repetitions found in most operas would be unacceptable in English for pragmatic American audiences. Anyone seriously following the plot might walk out on il Trovatore.

Another argument goes like this:

Well, it is all academic, since most of the words--in any language--cannot be heard over the orchestra anyway. That seems to be more a problem of bad interpretation than anything else. At last week's Das Rheingold in Seattle, recognizable English phrases--"Help me, sister" (Freia), "Back to the mines" (Alberich), "What, yield my ring?" (Wotan) --were few and far between. But by Die Walkure, diction and audience comprehension had picked up considerably. How does the composer himself feel? Almost everyone who has ever gone on record about the matter, including Wagner, Verdi and Puccini, speaks desperately of his desire to have his words understood, in whatever language.

The cast--with Becker replaced by California's Claude Heater as Siegmund and New York's James McCray as Siegfried, and Bjoner by England's Anna Green--did not seem overly happy about the English. One would think that an American would love the idea. Not so. Says Tyl, one of several singers who appeared in both versions: "Any American who has learned a role in German has two tapes going in his mind--the original and the English he thinks by. When you throw in a third tape [the Porter], man, you've got trouble."

Hip Huckster. The Seattle Opera is accustomed to thinking along several lines. In only eleven years it has become one of the major U.S. companies, largely due to the efforts of a former Golden Gloves lightweight from Omaha named Glynn Ross. He has been called everything from a publicity hound to the hip huckster of grand opera. He loves promoting. "Get ahead with Salome," read the shameless pun on one poster.

But his musical goals are both grand and serious. The Ring will become a summertime staple of what is being called as of this season the "Pacific Northwest Festival." The legislature has already appropriated $100,000 to lay the groundwork for a new summer-festival center. Ross hopes for a 1978 opening. Ever practical, he explains: "Our first three years were aimed at survival. Then came a period when we were out for national attention. Now I believe we occupy an important position hi the international firmament of festivals." That

Seems a fair claim.

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