OPERA REVIEW : A Reactionary ‘Ring’ at the Met

Lincoln Center appears to be gripped with that familiar and popular Wagnerian disease, “Ring” fever.

The plaza outside the Metropolitan Opera House was mobbed Monday night with people trying to get in and people hoping to get in. The fact that Bette Davis was being feted by the film society next door at Avery Fisher Hall seemed purely incidental.

The Met, capacity 4,000, was hopelessly sold out. With a good orchestra-level seat costing $95, price obviously was no object.

It wasn’t as if New Yorkers were just making the acquaintance of Wagner’s mighty, massive, sprawling, convoluted, irrational, impossible, swollen, poignant 16-hour tetralogy. The mythical saga of love and lust, trust and betrayal, godly mortals and all-too-mortal gods, giants and dwarfs, superheroes and supervillains, mermaids and Norns has been an active part of the Met repertory, in one form or another, since 1885.

The current production--conducted by James Levine, directed by Otto Schenk, designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen (sets), Rolf Langenfass (costumes) and Gil Wechsler (lighting)--was begun in 1986 and just completed this season. The various components have been offered to local audiences individually, and, once, in consecutive installments of Saturday matinees.

But now, for the first time in 50 years, the company is venturing the cycle as the composer intended, with all four operas staged within one week. And now, for the first time ever, the cycle is being performed uncut within one week.

For those who revolt against such a heavy Wagnerian diet, the Met is offering the caloric compensation of a little Donizetti. Stellar performances of “Elisir d’amore” with Luciano Pavarotti and Kathleen Battle are being interspersed between “Walkure” and “Siegfried” and “Gotterdammerung.” They don’t do that in Bayreuth.

The “Rheingold” that opened the festivities Monday attracted a lot of international press. The visitors from Europe will no doubt be taken aback by the look of this show. Show is very much the operative operatic noun here.

At a time when foreign companies try desperately to rethink the “Ring” in terms of modern psychology, textual abstraction, universal symbolism, sociological subtexts, political analysis and high-tech agitpropery, the Met blithely concerns itself with the re-creation of a lavish fairy tale. The primary concerns here would seem to involve picture-postcard vistas, kitsch literalism and traditional poses.

The result is naive, quaint and, for most of the wrong reasons, charming. To note that this is an old-fashioned, romantic-reactionary “Ring” is tantamount to noting that our President is a Republican, that New York is crowded and the skies tend toward blueness. There are no surprises here.

Wait. There is one surprise. Despite the myriad wonders of contemporary technology, the recent advances in futuristic stagecraft and the outlay of about $4 million, the Met has not come to grips with Wagner’s demands for fantastic credibility.

If we must have a “realistic” “Ring” in 1989, we should at least have a right to expect some inventive once-upon-a-time effects. No such luck.

The Met’s Rhinemaidens don’t fly or swim; they merely flap their arms frantically as they run around some cardboard rocks. The nasty dwarf Alberich doesn’t turn into a serpent; he just hides behind some smoke while a stagehand waves a canvas snake on a broomstick through a crevice. The rainbow bridge that is supposed to take the gods to Valhalla is no bridge at all, and it leads nowhere. So much for illusion.

Under the circumstances, one is best advised to relax, sit back, listen to the majestic music and enjoy the Disneyesque tableaux. The Disney people would, of course, have managed the magic tricks better, but Manhattan isn’t Burbank.

Levine might have had his mind on Berlin rather than the Rhineland on Monday. After all, his career could be drastically affected by the sudden Gotterdammerung of Herbert von Karajan. Tension sometimes flagged between the mighty outbursts, and on this occasion the Met orchestra did not invariably play up to his loftiest standards.

Nevertheless, Levine savored the grandeur of the score, the vast expressive contrasts and the ultimate climax. He also dared revert to the slow tempos that have fallen from general favor in the post-Furtwangler era.

The cast, though hardly one to rival golden-age constellations, turned out to be strong by any present-day standard. Although James Morris as the young Wotan did little but clutch his spear and glower behind his eye-patch, he sang with astonishing ease, generosity, power and finesse. Franz Mazura, a veteran sometimes cast as Wotan himself, provided a converse set of values as Alberich. His crusty dramatic portrait was compromised by recourse to the time-honored Wagnerian bark.

Helga Dernesch was the intelligent and authoritative if hardly fresh-voiced Fricka. Siegfried Jerusalem, probably the finest Siegfried of the day, seemed clumsily hearty as the mercurial Loge. Graham Clark, cast here as the pitiful Mime, might have been more effective as the god of fire.

John Macurdy and Matti Salminen stalked the boards imposingly as dark-voiced, undifferentiated, teddy-bear giants. The agitated Rhinemaidens--Kaaren Erickson, Diane Kesling and Meredith Parsons--sounded a bit shrill. The junior gods--Mari-Anne Haggander, Gary Bachlund and James Courtney--performed modestly. Birgitta Svenden introduced the paradox of a vocally and physically lightweight, even sexy Erda.

This wasn’t a great beginning. Still, it was a safe and solid beginning. It made a lot of conservative New Yorkers very happy.