‘Das Rheingold’ – Another point of view of the ROH live broadcast, October 2023, by Minnie Biggs

(A Quickie on a Biggie) Or A Few Words About a Big Production

By Minnie Biggs

Some production!

Kosky and Pappano speak with clarity about how they work together, every detail with attention. what they want to achieve, and they do that. They achieve what they intended. The singers are actors, the words and the actions are in tune, well expressed. The music, well, I did not really get the music except that it did not actually sound /feel very Wagnerian. It was hard to listen with so much else happening. And I was distracted by the close ups of the orchestra players during the musical intervals. Normally I love watching the musicians, but their faces and instruments were not where I wanted to concentrate at those moments.

The beautiful opening notes, those chords, are usually played in darkness as we wait for it all to begin. But the curtain is up and there is the stage with a draped broken tree and Erda, naked Erda, walking across the stage. While that divine music plays.

The much discussed naked Erda who wanders through the whole opera does not actually sing her role when the time comes. And she certainly did not have the body of a Wagnerian singer. An old wrinkled woman, not exactly my idea of the mother of the earth unless we consider all the children she bore and the resulting sagging of her body. She actually seemed to sing along with the Rhine maidens at the beginning which was odd. And dressed and acting as a maid at the picnic? Erda with sunglasses on perched on the gold making contraption in the Nibelheim? The Tarnhelm did not produce very a convincing wurm or toad.

The picnic in view of Valhalla was cute and appropriate , the squishy golden, actually green, apples effectively squeezed, but later the rainbow bridge was just a sprinkling of glittery confetti.

While the story is vividly told, acted and sung, there was rather too much acting for me. Busy busy, never a pause. I also wondered at the similarity of Alberich and Wotan, both big bald men. In suits. Alberich with an exposed prick, why? Wotan sang strongly but never persuaded me he was a God. The God.

While I enjoyed, I was never moved, never transported. (Bring on other opinions!)