Clarification

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:55 PM Eastern on 19 Feb. See below.]

My eMail tells me that this post requires some clarification.

My Yes! was not for Robert Wilson's production of Siegfried, about which I know little, but for his handling of the mise en scène as reflected in the posted images. The success or failure of the stage production (as opposed to the musical performance) would depend on just how Wilson choreographed the stage action; something about which the images give little indication. What they do indicate, or at least suggest, is that there are no lethally intrusive, imbecile and up-to-the-minute-"relevant" ideological "statements" involved in or made by this production, which is always encouraging and heartening news. Further, these images tell us directly that in terms of sets, costumes, lighting, and the disposition of the actor-singers Wilson has hit on a mise en scène that's at once beautiful, symbolically right, and evocatively "minimalist," which in turn suggests that it won't fight or get in the way of music and text (i.e., the drama), but exists solely to serve and support Wagner's underlying vision as reflected in that music and text rather than distract from it or impose on the production the director's vision in place of Wagner's. In this era of ubiquitous Eurotrash productions of Wagner's operas, that's cause for celebration; ergo my resounding Yes!

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Update (1:55 PM Eastern on 19 Feb): Some comments on the production by David Patrick Stearns, music critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

• [Director, Robert] Wilson's production is set nowhere identifiable, with dreamlike stage pictures full of saturated colors, horizontal columns of light suggesting end-of-the-earth Nordic twilight, and severe, angularly costumed characters singing in meticulously honed poses that resemble living tarot cards. Even a natural phenomenon has an imagination-provoking spareness: The Rhine River is conveyed by a pair of standard fog machines with strong blowers that suggest rushing water.

• "It's so pure," [Christoph] Eschenbach [music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor for this Théâtre du Châtelet production of the Ring] said of the staging. "It has no ideological interpretation. That's left open for the spectator. It also leaves so much room for the music. The space onstage inspires a sense of space in the music."

• Though Wilson gives each character a distinctive silhouette, more specific characterization is left to voice and orchestra - which, in a sense, roots it in an often-ignored Wagnerian tradition. Those silhouettes, however, are hardly traditional. The heroic Siegfried is usually an all-purpose brute. But Wilson and tenor West have pondered what someone constitutionally incapable of fear would really be like. The conclusion is animal energy mixed with gee-I-can-do-anything lack of focus. Siegfried's nemesis, Mime, usually a bumbling figure, is a smarter, stronger, near-equal foe as played by Volker Vogel.

[NOTE: This post was published originally on 14 February 2006.]