WETA FM 90.9 Blog

Wagner is, like few other composers, the subject of controversy, emotions, and ideological battles. And that’s just among those who already proclaim to be fans. In heated discussions over whether Hagen should be more Sprechgesang or rather approached with Bel Canto in mind, small arms fire is a distinct possibility. Stage direction and design are perennially contested.

Perhaps no other composer’s work asks more for constant renewal and innovation than Wagner’s – and among his works none more so than the tetralogy that is Der Ring der Niebelungen. And yet, for no other works will you find more fanatics that ardently condemn even the smallest changes.

Washington will have the opportunity to see its opera-inclined citizens invigorated and split into factions as the Washington National Opera presents the second installment of its “American Ring” this month when the curtain to an all-new Walküre rises on March 24^th. Directed by WNO favorite, Francesca Zambello, the Washington Ring Cycle (co-produced with San Francisco, who get second dibs) opened to a cautiously positive, if mixed, reaction with the Rheingold last year. Chock-full of ideas and iconography – much of it good, some of it superfluous, a few bits distracting – it promised that this Ring Cycle should be the catalyst for much debate and discussion on the highest level.

Does Mme. Zambello ravage the master’s work to force her own agenda upon it, or does she free the Ring’s inherent messages for consumption by the Washington audience (especially those not already obsessed with Wagner) by translating them into a symbolic and visual language that we, 21^st century Americans and Washingtonians, speak? No one will seriously argue that that language is a different one than the one spoken and understood by the audience that Wagner had in 1876 Bayreuth, Bavaria.

Language never stays the same, ideas do. (Those ideas could also be called “truths”.) And more amenable to change than spoken language still, is visual language. If no one but a handful of scholars read Shakespeare in the actual original, should it be surprising that a work like the Ring, in sum much more complex a work than even King Lear (with all due respect to the great bard), gets – theatrically or visually – heaved into the 20^th or 21^st century every so often? And yet, “deviation from the original” is tantamount to capital crime for many a self-declared “Wagnerian”.

‘Wagnerianism’, like any ‘-ism’ is an ill, albeit less harmful than, say, Fascism or Communism, or Protectionism, or Militarism. But unlike ‘isms’ that do ill by radicalizing an inherently noble aim (like Pacifism, for example), Wagnerianism is the radicalization of a fictitious ideal muddled by “tradition” which, in this case, is the accumulation and reinforcement of bad habits, intellectual laziness, and little else. Wagnerians, although by and large unaware of their malaise, don’t love Wagner, per se, but their own idea of Wagner. That idea more or less corresponds to how Wagner was performed 50 years ago in America, or between the wars in Germany and is often justified with the claim of truly harking back to Wagner’s time.

This brand of ‘operideology’ is best described as “traditionalist”. The traditionalist glorifies the past, reminisces about the last “Golden Age” of whatever is his or her particular obsession, which, roughly goes back 50, 60 years prior to that person’s artistic conscience maturing. Most knowledge about that Golden Age is, not surprisingly, anecdotal. Wagnerian traditionalists (today, at least – “traditionalism” by its nature is subject to cyclical changes) like to claim to seek a pure, ‘original’ version of the art Wagner created… in accordance to the wishes and intentions of the artist himself. That claim alone is untenable, but it also misleads one to think that the traditionalist is in fact an “originalist” who seeks out the actual state of creation of a work, no matter when that took place. Indeed, they are very distinct. The latter would make up the “Historical Performance Practice” crowd which stages the St. Matthew Passion with two singers to a part and ‘original instruments’. In comparison, the traditionalist – Wagnerian or not – generally prefers his Bach à la Solti or Weingartner. Telling, indeed.

“Traditionalism” contrasts with two other easily generalized approaches to opera in general and to Wagner in particular: the “Modernist” and the conservative approach. In its simplest form, modernism is just the rejection of tradition… practically it involves a (willful) reinterpretation of the given material, the introduction of wholly new elements to a work, and the recasting of an opera in the image of its director. The conservative approach, in contrast, entails preserving the core idea (call it the ‘essence’ or ‘truth’, if you wish) and adjusts the outer form (staging, design, direction) to that effect.

An opera that has a message that goes beyond the literal story it tells (and all great operas do), needs to be allowed to get that message across. And whatever means conveyed that message three-, two-, or one-hundred years ago are not likely the means that convey it nowadays. Points of reference change, symbols and conventions change. Scenery depicting a depraved society in 1850 looked different than such scenery would look in 1980 or 2007. An audience today would merely see costumes and conclude: “pretty” – but hardly register a social critique.

It is any good director’s job to identify the message(s) of the opera at hand, and then find a way to translate this into a language that is understandable to the audience. To merely re-create a version of the past, making sure not to introduce any new idea and add new fancy trims is the traditionalist’s choice; insufficient to anyone who wishes opera to be more than merely a museum of former art. To treat opera this way may have its justifications for works that have little meaning at heart to begin with, and are mostly appreciated for musical (or sentimental), not theatrical value. To treat Wagner this way would be highly inappropriate and unfortunate. Similarly it wouldn’t do to force alien or scantly related elements into the structure, although that’s very tempting, apparently.

The difficultly for a director who wishes neither to embalm the opera, nor to impose him- or herself on it, lies in translating the core elements of the opera into a modern language without making the latter dominate the meaning. Different interpretations of an opera’s core and meaning meet different attempts to interpret them and various different nuances and accentuations that give it a particular flavor. These legions of possibilities are exactly what make opera so attractive and exciting, even if only a few of them actually work well. This challenge is only more attractive (and perilous) in the most demanding and complex of operas, the Ring.

Francesca Zambello sets out to meet this challenge with her “American Ring” in a particularly daring and reasonably novel way. Instead of trimming localisms away in order to hone in on the message, alone, she aims at presenting the Ring’s truths in a new, familiar localism, a quintessentially American vernacular. This should be less daring than it may seem at first, given that the Ring is much less quintessential German than it is universal, even if the Rhein flows prominently through it, everywhere. (The supertitle translation by Cori Ellison takes care to remove all mention of Rhein/Rhine, often replacing it with “pure” which in German – “rein” – is homophone to the river.)

The themes of power (and its abuse), love (and its abuse), wealth (and its abuse) and social rules (and their violations) that run through the Ring are universal enough to survive a trip into outer space (Bavarian State Opera, David Alden) and they are certainly universal enough to survive a trip to the Yuba River Valley. Of course, mere survival is not the issue that concerns opera goers. The strength of Wagner’s music and drama is so great that it would survive even the most hackneyed and intrusive approach. Zambello’s goal is to clarify, not confuse. Dressing some of the references to no longer familiar Norse myths in an native garb with images and symbols of the American past (or, as Mme. Zambello adds), “present, and – God forbid – future”, is supposed to make accessible the obscure and stimulate thought, debate, and possibly controversy. In short: the stuff that living art is made of, and that which, if without it, makes it appear stuffed. Since theater must not be relegated to an expensive form of taxidermy, this is to be appreciated in principle, regardless of whether the result is deemed an unqualified success or ambitious failure.

George Bernard Shaw interpreted the ring as a socialist allegory over 100 years ago, and directors still find this an appealing idea around which to stage the ring. (This is Patrice Chéreau’s approach in his Bayreuth production from 1976-80; to this day the best acted opera performance available on DVD.) In a 1989 Washington Post editorial, Fred Smith and Mark Jones vividly paint the Ring as a “Free Market Classic”, a cautionary tale on the importance and social necessity of rules and contracts. The “American Ring”, curiously, takes more from Shaw’s interpretation than the free market spin. The reminders of Slavery, industrial exploitation, “American fascism” (whatever exactly that may be; “abuse of power”, presumably), the subjugation of native Indians, and the ‘pillaging’ of the environment are always close by.

There are a great many opportunities to disagree with this approach. Are these really the core ideas of the Ring? If they are, do we agree with the chosen analogies? But the point of a direction like Zambello’s is not whether we agree with all the points she makes, but whether she makes those points well and congruently as part of the opera. Do her chosen images and narrative strengthen, correspond with, and support the story Wagner tells?

Certainly a few particular political ideas that are on Mme. Zambello’s mind (even if not all make it directly into the opera) might ruffle some feathers. When talking to her after the WNO roundtable at the Goethe Institut last week she cast Wotan in a particularly bad light, accusing him of being “like Bush; a hideous leader, someone who destroys his society, destroys his family, sacrifices his children…” (Although both have fathered twins who occasionally act out, some viewers in Washington might be uncomfortable with taking such analogies too far.) That “the gold can be seen as a metaphor for oil” is almost too obvious to be spelled out… but barring heavy-handed hints like oil derricks in the first act of Siegfried it may well make a point we can well relate to. (Especially with that SUV parked in the Kennedy Center garage.) If all of Mme. Zambello’s modern-day analogies can be achieved while sticking to her dictum that there will be no “imposing [of] any extraneous agenda” remains to be seen on any of the seven dates between March 24^th and April 17^th. Meanwhile her remark that as a director “you need to be consistent in your storytelling and you need to be clear about what conceptual path you’re following” already points to the most important aspect of any successful Ring. It will be put to the test in the 2009/10 season when the WNO stages the complete tetralogy, of which Die Walküre is but the second step.

With a cast that was wonderful in the (different) 2003 WNO production (Alan Held – Wotan, Elena Zaremba – Fricka, Anja Kampe – Sieglinde, Plácido Domingo – Siegmund all return), this Walküre is bound to offer something to everyone, taken as separate from the complete cycle or part of a greater project. (Traditionalists might want to close their eyes, though.)