Continuing the mash-up of SNLC with regular DK-er Demi Moaned's SN@TO series on the Metropolitan Opera HD-casts in movie theaters, 3CM asks, to start today's round:
Did anyone here see the Met Siegfried today?
If you didn't, feel free to move to the next diary, as usual. But if you did, feel equally free to hang out, to talk about the "third day" of the opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. However, I'll really need the help here of people who've seen the HD-cast today, because....
.....I actually didn't see it today, as something else was going on at the same time. So I can't comment on the production, and will have to wait for the encore presentation. But there's a hitch about the encore showing, namely that the date hasn't been determined for it yet. The reasons are understandable, namely:
1. The Met-HD encores are on Wednesday nights.
2. However, the total time for the HD-presentation of Siegfried is 6 hours. You can imagine that multiplexes are a little leery of screenings that run past midnight, which aren't specifically midnight matinees.
So how can 3CM comment on the screening when he hasn't seen it? The obvious answer: he can't, so he won't. That's where anyone here on DK who actually did see the HD-cast (all 2 of you?) come in, and can take over discussion of it.
However, even without having seen the actual show, there was plenty of loser-tinged stuff about this production before the screening to lend itself to a loser diary. To wit:
a. The original Siegfried, for the last 2 operas of the Ring cycle, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, was scheduled to be Ben Heppner. However, he bailed back in February. Gary Lehman was drafted to take over.
b. The original conductor was supposed to be James Levine, the Met's music director since the 1970's. However, Levine has had major health issues for some time now, as SNLC'ed here, and withdrew from the fall 2011 schedule, with Fabio Luisi, the newly appointed principal conductor at the Met, taking over.
c. However, just about 2 weeks ago, Lehman himself withdrew from this production of Siegfried, from evident virus-related problems. The Met drafted Lehman's understudy, Jay Hunter Morris (now there's a name for an opera singer), to fill in.
Fortunately, if one believes the NYT review by Anthony Tommasini, JHM did well, as did Luisi. However, please note this bit, with relation to "the machine", the ginormous and ridiculously heavy set designed by Robert Lepage for this new production of the Ring, and which has caused no end of headaches (such as noted in this past SNLC):
"For all its niftiness, the machine, which has a history of malfunctioning, is too distracting. In Act III, during the scene change to a mountain summit, besides all the creaking, there were crashing sounds from backstage, which took attention away from the glorious orchestra."
That history of malfunctioning continued this past Tuesday night, as blogged by Daniel J. Wakin at the NYT's ArtsBeat blog here:
"At the performance on Tuesday night a malfunction prevented the set from creating the proper configuration for the final scene between the title character and Brünnhilde, when Siegfried awakens her from sleep amid perpetual fire around her and they sing a love duet, the Met said in a statement."
You can get a sense of how Met opera goers felt from the comments, from the reactionaries who want the old-school Otto Schenk production back to a doggerel-writing pretentious doofus who constantly writes at best, twee, and at worst, annoyingly unfunny, poems on the ArtsBeat blog posts related to opera, and who shall remain nameless (but Larry Eisenberg is pretty close).
Actually, there's one more tiny bit of loserness to note, in the pdf notes from the Met on this HD production. One cast member was omitted, namely the Woodbird (Waldvogel), but to give credit where credit is due, as Tommasini did, her name is Mojca Erdmann. Obviously the loser is the Met for leaving her off the roster, not Ms. Erdmann.
BTW, if you read AT's review, you may note one sentence:
"The opera is about the maturing of a young, fearless and somewhat witless demigod."
I almost see that sentence as an homage to the one and only Anna Russell, who (for those who don't know) performed a number of classical music comedy routines (yes, there are such things) in her entertainment career. Perhaps her most famous single routine is her 20-minute analysis of Wagner's Ring (yup, about 20 hours summarized in 20 minutes), which you can enjoy here:
The bit about Siegfried starts at 8:16 or so in the 2nd video clip:
"And he's very young, and he's very strong, and he's very brave, and he's very handsome, and he's very stupid....
(Audience laughter)
He's a regular Lil Abner type."
AR's sketch dates from the 1950's, as if you couldn't guess. On the other hand, if you think about the plot of the Siegfried (wikipedia explains it for you here), you need to remember that his parents were the Volsung twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. In-breeding does have consequences even in opera, it seems.
Hmm, pretty impressive to put together a diary for something that I haven't seen, don't you think? At least haven't seen yet, 3CM hopes. So in addition to the question posed at the start, for those who did see this HD-cast (or better yet, those in NYC who saw this in the house), did "the machine" function OK? I haven't seen anything on the NYT ArtsBeat blog to indicate any machine malfunction.
With that, time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week, or alternatively, actual discussion about this production.