The ‘Ring’ reaches first plateau
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The L.A. “Ring,” which began over the weekend with “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walküre,” is a no-host event. The Music Center is a poor place for hanging out; Patina’s dinner break options are pathetic (the lines for the beer garden in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Sunday night were outrageous). In the television capital of the world, this “Ring’ is not televised. In a city of riches, the support of arts is sadly inadequate. But the “Ring” sprawls like no other in the performing arts repertory, and it fits the Southland sprawl in many intriguing ways. Achim Freyer’s crazy “Ring,” loved and loathed, is upon us, as is an anarchic city-wide festival with activities that put Wagner in perspective and those that jubilantly rob his work of perspective altogether.
Los Angeles Opera has now reached the first base camp of this particular lyric stage Everest, and the view is mostly inspiring, if the oxygen occasionally thin.
-- Mark Swed
Related:
Theater critic Charles McNulty on Freyer’s “Die Walküre” and “Das Rheingold,”
Complete Times coverage of the ‘Ring’
