Wagner - Siegfried / West, Gasteen, Göhring, Schöne, Waag, Jun, Herrera, Zagrosek, Stuttgart Opera

Rating:
Summary: OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE EMOTIONAL SPECTRUM...
Review: AS ABOVE,SO BELOW,HERMES TRIMEGISTUS WENT...WELL,HERE IT IS:WHEN I SAW this production's RHEINGOLD I HAD A HEARTY LAUGH AND WALKURE ALMOST MADE ME PUKE.THIS IS A TYPICAL EXAMPLE OF THE
CURRENT MEDIOCRITY THAT GOES AROUND NOW NOT ONLY IN TERMS OF EUROTRASH BUT ALSO IN SEVERAL OTHER POINTS OF THE GLOBE,MAKING THE PREVIOUS ALTERNATIVE VIDEO-RECORDED PRODUCTIONS BY CHEREAU,KUPFER AND LEHNHOF LOOK LIKE CLASSICS.THE NAMES RANG THE BELL...JOSSI WIELER AND SERGIO MORABITO,YES,THESE ARE THE CLOWNS'DUETTO WHO RUINED THE 2001 ARIADNE AUF NAXOS UNDER VON DOHNANYI,I KNEW I HEARD THESE "ICONOCLASTIC NAMES" SOMEWHERE ELSE,BUT OBVIOUSLY FOR THEIR LACK OF IMPORTANCE COULD NOT PINPOINT THE SOURCE...BOTTOMLINE,A TOTALLY SKIPPABLE VENUE WHICH I STRONGLY RECOMMEND TO BE AVOIDED BY TRUE ADMIRERS OF THE GENIUS OF BAYREUTH/LEPIZIG.IN SPITE OF THE VOMITIVE PRODUCTION SETS AND THE LOWER-THAN-AVERAGE SINGING THE ONLY RESCUABLE THING IS THE SOUND OF THE ORCHESTRA,IN SPITE AGAIN OF ZAGROSEK'S VOLATILE TEMPI."IN SOMMA":I ENJOYED THE VIDEO IMAGES OF THE STUTTGART'S OPERA HOUSE SHOWN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE DVD BETTER THAN THE "BRAINSTORM" PRODUCTION BY FRAU WIELER AND SIGNORE MORABITO...RATE:ABSOLUTELY EXPENDABLE....TOO BAD THEY DON'T HAVE MINUS STARS HERE @ AMAZON!THIS ONE WOULD TAKE THE CAKE AND EVERYTHING ELSE!

Rating:
Summary: A whacky interpretation, but a very good performance
Review: I stumbled on this version of The Ring through Netflix and, out of curiosity, rented it. I had no idea what I was in for. I am very familiar with several versions of The Ring - the Met production (which I attended), the Chereau production, San Francisco and Seattle. But this interpretation, whacky as it might be, was intriguing. My husband and I really enjoyed it! It was so different in leaving the formality behind that it gave us some good laughs. I couldn't wait to see what they were going to come up with next.

On the music end, Siegfried (though I felt I could actually smell him through the TV) was a superb singer and actor. He stayed in his role throughout Act III, and his voice remained strong throughout. Though if I were Brunnhilde waking up after 18 years, after seeing him, I would head for the nearest exit. Lisa Gasteen as Brunnhilde had a surprisingly glorious voice, the best I've heard since Nilsson, though in her first 10 minutes she tended to go flat on her upper notes, but improved as she warmed up. I'm looking forward to seeing her career as Brunnhilde flourish. It's been a long time since we had that kind of quality. Wotan was fabulous in the first act, but seemed to fatigue and become overwhelmed by the orchestra by the third act. Mime and Alberich were both good, and Fafner had a great voice. The orchestra was superb as well and, musically I felt it was equal to any production I have heard.

So, all that's left is the interpretation. I guess you either bite the bullet and enjoy it or get disgusted and assume Wagner would have rolled over in his grave. Actually, I think Wagner would have loved it for its sheer boldness and creativity. Some parts of the production I felt were amateurish, such as having Alberich chain-smoking for a good five minutes until Wotan showed up. I wanted to grab the cigarettes and stomp on them myself. And I could have lived without Mime's masturbation scene. Unfortunately, the music took second place to the shocking performance on stage, and that was a shame. The act with Erda was a bit disappointing, partly because Wotan was struggling. The most fun was Brunnhilde's awakening, flopping her rather large self all over an equally large Siegfried. Also, having her put on makeup and brush her teeth was a touch of sheer genius.

To sum it up, I really enjoyed the novelty and the quality of the singing. The production moved along very quickly and the time flew by. Some parts were silly, but most of it they pulled off rather well. I just ordered myself a copy from Amazon.

Rating:
Summary: Naturalistic
Review: Reading the previous reviews here I was very worried to buy this DVD but seeing its cover in a CD store I finally decided to buy it. First of all, I was surprised by very good sound, Dolby Digital remastering and excellent orchestra playing. For me there is nothing wrong with the stage design and the overall direction of this opera. Yes, it goes FAR away from Wagner's direction but creates an interesting and dark picture of something like 1950-60 period.
Every evaluation depends on your own taste and mood. If you are like me, bored by the "classical" performances which try to show you "real" dragon and inocent love of Siegfried and Brunhilde, etc. then you find this performance very interesting.
(...) :-), Siegfried is wearing for more then 1/3 of the opera T-shirt covered by Fafner's blood (but he really killed the dragon and, but nearly everyone is killed in The Ring, so it is not gentle opera) and Wotan is more like maffia boss (but he REALY IS). So, if you think now "hmmm, interesting" then you will like it!


Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The Stuttgart -- seven DVD -- version of Richard Wagner's four opera Ring cycle, has made its somewhat disappointing 2004 premier.
An ambitious project conceived by Klaus Zehelein, the plan was to turn the Ring tetralogy over to four separate Designer/Director teams giving us four very personalized and single focused operas - the first time in the Ring's history that this has been done.
Theoretically, it was probably hoped that each team would be creative and not follow any preconceived model of what the Ring should look like, but instead, operate independently of each other and give us something that would be stylistically different while maintaining the thematic continuity and cohesiveness envisioned by the composer. The overall concept sounded promising, but a fault line ran through this cycle and ultimately consumed the idea and doomed it, giving us considerably less than what would be expected from such a grand and promising undertaking. The complete review of this seven disk set appears in the August 1st 2004 edition of OperaOnline.us


Rating:
Summary: This DVD has got to be a joke
Review: This is not really a one star DVD, it is really zero stars. The costumes and stage design are the most ridiculous I've ever seen. Be warned!

Rating:
Summary: The Most Laughably Awful Opera Production I've Ever Seen
Review: This production of 'Siegfried' has everything wrong with it but the music. The singing is generally quite good, the orchestra is spectacular under the direction of Lothar Zagrosek. But this 2002 production from the Staatsoper Stuttgart is so grotesquely awful that I will admit that I did not watch every last moment of it. After the shock of the first few scenes I was only able to bear skimming the rest of it, although I did settle down for such things as the Forging Scene, the scene with the Woodbird, the Wanderer's monolog, and much of the Third Act. Still, it was painful.

Where to start? Well, the settings are grotesquely (and obviously purposely) inappropriate in the extreme. The opening scene, in Mime's cave, is set in a kind of kitchen/workshop that looks like it came out of the 50s, and perhaps the 1950s is when all this is supposed to be taking place. Why? In the opening scene Mime is peeling potatoes - the anvil strokes called for in the libretto and score are done by Mime hitting the side of a metal bowl with a potato peeler - you think I'm kidding? - I'm not. Siegfried, sung (well) by the more-than-morbidly obese Jon Frederic West, is kitted out in jeans, tennies and a grotty white teeshirt with the words 'Sieg Fried' written on it. [For some reason, the Dragon also has on a tee shirt with 'Sieg Fried' in mirror-writing.] Siegfried's blond hair is long, ratty, and even from a distance looks like it hasn't been washed in six months. He wears this same outfit through the whole opera; it is splattered liberally with Fafner's blood after he kills the him and through the rest of the opera we have a hero with a gruesomely bloody shirt. Ewwww! Wotan, as The Wanderer, is a motorcycle dude, in cycle boots, jeans, leather jacket, ball cap. This might not be so bad except that Wolfgang Schöne, the excellent bass-baritone who sings the character, looks embarrassed as he swaggers around; can't say I blame him. Then we are treated to a scene of Mime, erm, pleasuring himself rather vigorously. Right, we needed THAT. The Forest Bird appears to be a blind boy. Don't ask me why. Erda is an old woman who the booklet notes say is supposed to be a socialite, but she actually looks like someone's grandmother in her nightgown, sitting there writing in her diary. And finally, Brünnhilde, sung gloriously I must say, is played by Lisa Gasteen in another old nightgown; well, yes, she has been asleep for a long time, thanks to her old man, but still... It might not be so bad if she weren't, erm, rather more than zaftig. The scene with her lying on top of Siegfried (a beached whale) on the floor shows rather more fleshy leg than one could possibly want to see. Her 'Heil dir, Sonne' is sung while Siegfried is hiding in a closet. Hmmmm.

My own take on all this is that the director and dramaturg of this mess, Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, should be given a slow poison, hung from the yard-arm, and shot at dawn, and, if they should survive it (and they probably would - sigh) never never never be given another opera to produce.

I had thought that the recent Salzburg 'Fledermaus' was the worst production I'd ever seen, but this one trumps it. I can easily see the DVD of this production becoming the 'Plan Nine from Outer Space' for the cynical opera set, with pitchers of martinis to compliment the hoots and hollers. Party on!

Scott Morrison