Chéreau's Centennial Ring

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:22 PM Eastern on 29 Nov. See below.]

In the comments section of a detailed post on Mostly Opera that praised the Chéreau Centennial Ring as,

Simply the finest Nibelungen Ring production in the Centenary history of the work. Even after more than 30 years the power and freshness of this staging is virtually undiminished. As directorial concept and execution it remains unsurpassed....

I wrote in response:

Like all Konzept stagings of the Ring, the Chéreau Ring is a horror as a staging of WAGNER'S Ring. Chéreau's Konzept takes that universal, timeless, cosmic tragedy, and hugely diminishes it by fixing its meaning, and by fixing its action to particular times and places. By so doing, it robs Wagner's great tetralogy of precisely that which makes it the great cosmic drama that it is — or would be without the self-involved, self-indulgent, self-important corruptions of directors like Chéreau: it's universal, timeless, multiplicity of meanings and levels of understanding. And that's not to even speak of Boulez's absurdly passionless, chamber-music-transparent reading of the score which is one of the most perverse readings on record.

There really ought to be a law — literally! — prohibiting the perpetration of such monstrosities.

which brought the following comment in response:

Someone would have been very glad to live in Germany between 1933 and 1945.

In response to a comment further on down by a professional stage designer defending the Chéreau production, and which included the assertion that,

[Wagner] told the company after the run [of the first Ring] had closed that next time it would be all different--and he was the creator. He changed his mind about a lot of his stagings over the course of his life.

I wrote:

As I begin to get a whiff of the favorite straw man of defenders of Eurotrash ... let me put a stop to it right now.

First, as Wagner was the Ring's creator, he had the right to alter anything in any way he saw fit. Postmodern vandals such as Chéreau do not. An opera director has the obligation — the duty — to present on stage NOT his own concept of the work to hand, but the concept of the work's creator — which is to say, the composer — in the most effective and vivid way possible. That does NOT mean the opera director must slavishly follow a composer's stage directions, most especially when those stage directions were written to accommodate a stage and stage techniques that existed over a century ago. What it does mean is that in staging an opera, the director must stage the work so that it embodies as fully as possible the composer's concept as expressed in an opera's text and music. In the case of the Ring, that means, first of all, that it must be staged in such a way that the staging is absent any indication of an identifiable time and place as that was Wagner's specific intent. It's no accident that Wagner chose a mythological subject and placed it in "a cultural period that is remote from any experience or reference to an experience" as he put it in his instructions to his costume designer, Carl E. Doepler; instructions Doepler, to Wagner's extreme displeasure, flagrantly disregarded.

Wagner arranged things so that everything in the Ring plays itself out on a world stage that can't be located in any identifiable era or in any identifiable location beyond being set in the deep prehistoric (literally pre-historic) past in the vicinity of the Rhine river. That was a purposeful creative act on Wagner's part; a creative act that's responsible for much of the timeless and universal resonate power of the Ring. Any staging of this work that places it in a specific identifiable era — past, present, or future — or in a specific identifiable location is fundamentally faithless to Wagner's intention and to the dictates and requirements of the score (text and music). Further, the central player in the world-drama of the Ring is Nature itself; Nature in its most primal state and at its largest scale and in its most profound depths; Nature in direct contact with man. Any staging of the Ring that doesn't realize that in its staging -- either representationally, abstractly, or by suggestion – is, again, fundamentally faithless to Wagner's intention and to the dictates and requirements of the score.

Chéreau's grotesque Konzept fails on all counts. His staging is instead an act of rank vandalism; a hijacking of Wagner's text and music to put on stage Chéreau's own, postmodern "vision". In short, it's a horror, as I've already termed it.

which brought the following response:

All that begins with: "Like all Konzept stagings of the Ring..." to the end, should have read: "crap, crap, crap, crap, crap".

All that begins with: "As I begin to get a whiff of the favorite straw man of defenders of Eurotrash..." to the end, should, of course, have read: more crap, more crap, more crap, more crap, more crap, obviously, annoyingly, fastidiously, bothering, definetively [sic] even more absolutely not worth reading crap.

Anyone here have any equally, um, impassioned comments to make on what I wrote? If so, make them below.

---

Update (7:22 PM Eastern on 29 Nov): More here (and it's a doozie).

Comments

[Marc Geelhoed]

You want a Ring that's not in any identifiable place, and that's also not entirely abstract, that allows that nature is a focus of the cycle, but that we can't locate where that nature is other than that it's near the Rhine, and probably also want the river to be the Rhine but not necessarily able to tell that it's the Rhine, that Erda is spinning a rope but that it not be too thick, because of course a woman wouldn't be strong enough to spin a thick rope, only a thin one, and that Siegfried's sword be of the type cast in pre-historic eras, prior to the Iron Age, and that Wotan's eye-patch be of the type worn by a blind man in the time of....Yeah, I can see how you're going to be hard to please. When did you last see and hear a live Ring cycle? Have you seen any of these Konzepten in their theaters, or do you judge from afar?

[A.C. Douglas]

"You want a Ring that's not in any identifiable place, and that's also
not entirely abstract..."

Where did I say anything about "not entirely abstract". Answer: Nowhere. Entirely abstract is just dandy as far as I'm concerned — as long as the abstractions are consonant with the score (text and music) at all points, and contradict it at none.

"...that allows that nature is a focus of the cycle..."

Nature is NOT "a focus of the cycle." Merely an all-pervading presence.

"...and probably also want the river to be the Rhine but not
necessarily able to tell that it's the Rhine..."

Oh, most decidedly the Rhine, and not, say, the Mississippi or the Colorado (or something equally as silly) as one imbecile Eurotrash production has it.

"...[and] that Erda is spinning a rope but that it not be too thick, because of course a woman wouldn't be strong enough to spin a thick rope, only a thin one...."

Erda spins nothing in the _Ring_ — not, that is, in Wagner's _Ring_.

"...and that Siegfried's sword be of the type cast in pre-historic eras, prior to
the Iron Age..."

Oh, without question.

"...and that Wotan's eye-patch be of the type worn by a blind
man in the time of....Yeah, I can see how you're going to be hard to
please."

If you must have an eye-patch, any old eye-patch will do as long as it's not secured by Velcro or some other such contrivance.

"When did you last see and hear a live Ring cycle? Have you seen
any of these Konzepten in their theaters, or do you judge from afar?"

See a _Konzept_ production in the theater? Have you lost your mind? Don't be absurd. I'd have to be paid serious money — up front and in cash — and supplied with a ticket before I'd spend so much as an hour of my time attending any of these outrages (and if you're reckless enough to ask how I can judge these outrages without actually seeing them staged, you'd better be wearing a cup).

ACD

[Lisa Hirsch]

I'd like to see the answer to the first part of Marc's question: When did you last see and hear a live Ring cycle?

[Marc Geelhoed]

You crack me up. Calm down, Grandpa, and take your medicine. You say absolutely abstract is fine, but you'd pitch a fit if the Rhine were gone.

We can go over the niggling details point by point, but the larger issue is this: No one can knowledgeably criticize an entire form of operatic production they haven't experienced in the theater. Listeners need to be in the same space as the singers to form a judgment of both the singing and the production. This is an elementary, fundamental part of discussing opera. It's why the put the newscasters where they can see the Thanksgiving parade, and get them out of the TV studio.

Clearly you disagree. You are like people who form opinions about authors based on reading reviews and author interviews without reading their books, and criticizing literary theory without reading the fundamental texts. Actually, these are the basis for understanding.

I'm completely reckless enough to ask how you can judge them. How is it? Tell me, because it would have made my life as a critic so much easier. Newspaper barons will pay you substantial sums to learn how they can have arts and features staffs that don't have to go to stuff. They'll save a fortune.

What was the last live opera production you saw that you would characterize as Eurotrash and that you didn't hear about second-hand? Bring it, old man. Hit me below the belt.

[A.C. Douglas]

"I'd like to see the answer to the first part of Marc's question: When did you last see and hear a live Ring cycle?"

Sure. I'd be happy to answer -- after you first tell me why you want to know.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

"You crack me up. Calm down, Grandpa, and take your medicine. You say absolutely abstract is fine, but you'd pitch a fit if the Rhine were gone. We can go over the niggling details point by point, but the larger issue is this: No one can knowledgeably criticize an entire form of operatic production they haven't experienced in the theater."
---------------------------------

Bullshit, sonny.

First of all, I didn't "criticize an entire form of operatic production." I criticized the imbecile Konzept as that's all that's under discussion. With a Konzept as imbecile as Chéreau's, it would make no difference whether all the sopranos were Nilssons, all the tenors Melchiors, all the basses Papes, the orchestra the VPO, and the conductor Thielemann. I would love to LISTEN to such a production live, but I don't actually have to be in the opera house to know that the Konzept is imbecile. I need merely have a trustworthy physical description of such a Konzept to know it to be imbecile no matter how well it was executed on stage in the theater. (With this one, I've seen the DVD, and that changed nothing.)

"I'm completely reckless enough to ask how you can judge [the staging without being in the theater]. How is it? Tell me, because it would have made my life as a critic so much easier. Newspaper barons will pay you substantial sums to learn how they can have arts and features staffs that don't have to go to stuff. They'll save a fortune."
---------------------------------

As a paid critic, clearly one must actually attend a live production in order to render a criticism of that production in whole. But, once again, that's not the case here. Here, the subject is the Konzept alone, NOT "an entire ... operatic production."

One, for instance, does not have to actually attend a live production of _Parsifal_ where the Grail Knights are clothed in WWI uniforms (complete with gas masks, if I remember correctly), celebrate the third act ritual of the unveiling of the grail in a 20th-century railroad shed complete with steel tracks and a choo-choo train cum steam locomotive, and where, at opera's end, Parsifal walks off along those tracks out of the shed and into the sunrise hand in hand with Kundry, to know with absolute certainty that the Konzept (this by Nikolaus Lehnhoff) has nothing to do with Wagner's _Parsifal_, and is both imbecile and an outrage.

Nor does one have to actually attend a live production of a _Fliegende Holländer_ where there are no ships and no sea or even abstract representations of them, but where all the action takes place in a red-light-district bar peopled by corrupt, violence-prone machos sporting backward-worn baseball caps; where the Senta dresses like a modern-day high-school teenager and obsessively listens to strange music on her Walkman and who is sold by her brutish pimp father to the Dutchman; and where, at opera's end, instead of redemption via Senta, the Dutchman is beaten to death by xenophobic skinheads to know with absolute certainty that the Konzept (this by — surprise! — Katharina Wagner) has nothing to do with Wagner's _Holländer_, and is both imbecile and an outrage.

See now how that works?

Sure you do.

ACD

[Jenni]

While I agree with most of what you say (I, too, hate Konzept-y nonsense), the Chereau/Boulez Ring Cycle DVDs aren't really on par with some of the other operatic travesties I've seen. At least the "interpretation," imbecilic as it is, makes "sense" on a crude level, and the acting (if not always the singing) is up to scruff.

The Levine Ring is as traditional and faithful to the text/music as we've got out right now, but, in my opinion, no one but a masochist would watch those terrifically boring things over Boulez'. I've seen the atrocities that are the Audi and Copenhagen Rings, and Boulez' is infinitely to be preferred, even if one hates one's Wagner dry (as I typically do). Almost nothing in my life has moved me as deeply as the end of Boulez' "Die Walkure."

Barenboim is the logical alternative of Boulez these days, but I can't stand Barenboim's staging, even though the music is generally better. The end of his "Gotterdammerung" is so godawful that I've been repressing it ever since I saw it. Something about a TV, and an old couple. . .

I'm not saying Boulez and Chereau are good, I'm saying that their Ring Cycle is the best and most entertaining and enlightening that we currently have. I hope, of course, that that will change one day. . .but judging from the relative dearth of great Wagner singers/actors lately, it doesn't seem likely.

[A.C. Douglas]

Jenni:

Entirely apart from the imbecile Konzept, the Chéreau _Ring_ has a couple of worthwhile things going for it: absolutely splendid stage sets, singer-actors that look passably as they should physically, and first-rate acting, the latter a rare thing indeed in opera even today, and especially critical in a Wagner music-drama.

But even those admittedly worthwhile things are overshadowed by the uneven singing, and the thoroughly perverse reading by Boulez which sinks the entire production musico-dramatically as the very core of the (music-)drama resides in the orchestra as it does with all Wagner's mature works.

For my part, even ignoring the Konzept completely, I simply cannot get past that last.

ACD

[daland]

If we think in relative terms, I tend to share Jenni’s points: Chéreau’s Ring (at least that one we have available today in DVD, that is NOT the original 1976 production, but the revised 1980) is perhaps one of the best, after summing-up staging, directions, scenes and musical performance.

Certainly I prefer Chéreau’s Ring to any Eurotrash garbage. Because, in my opinion, the french director is today (as he already was 30 years ago) a genuine genius, surely not a charlatan. His problem is that he thinks that - being a genius - he can “improve” anything he touches, including Wagner’s dramas. Which is, in my opinion, quite impossible to achieve. Not only, but in building his own masterpiece, Chéreau is unavoidably corrupting the original, to a small or large extent.

Besides that, and particularly à propos of the Ring and mythology, Chéreau has a philosophical approach totally different from Wagner’s. In that he denies - read his interviews and comments - any soundness to the “Zeitglosigkeit” of the myth, in asserting that any myth derives from a given context, and therefore has to be represented in that context. This explains why his Ring is placed in Wagner’s times and venues. And why in his Tristan - that I saw at LaScala earlier this year - a dirty cargo replaces the royal ship and a bare white bowl from the crew’s supply replaces the golden cup of the toast.

Back to Wagner’s Ring, has anyone asked himself why, in the very first caption on the Rheingold’s score we read that the river’s waves must be seen flowing from right to the left?

[A.C. Douglas]

As might be expected, I get a number of requests for recommendations for the _Ring_ on DVD each year, and I always find myself begging off by suggesting they make do with a CD instead and use their own imaginations for the staging as the only reasonable representation of the _Ring_ on DVD is the Levine/Met production, and, sad to say, that's quite second-rate, musically, dramatically, and theatrically. I keep hoping that one of these days a real winner will emerge, but I don't really expect that to happen any time soon. I often daydream of a _Ring_ production done by Julie Taymor who would be an absolutely perfect match for the _Ring_ as everything I know of her work tells me she takes ALL her staging cues from the score itself (text and music), and is adamant that the score, and the music most particularly, be the sole authority for the staging. How splendidly that works out can be seen in her brilliant production of the _Magic Flute_ for the Met (the full version). As things stand today, however, I can't find it in me to, in good conscience, recommend any DVD of the _Ring_, especially for newcomers to that work.

ACD

[Lisa Hirsch]

Why I want to know: I've been reading you for four years, during which you have not once blogged about a current concert you attended. You have all sorts of opinions about the current musical scene, particular singers and other performers, and productions, but don't appear to be attending concerts or opera performances.

I respond differently to live, recorded, and filmed opera and concert music. It's useful information to have in evaluating your opinions and how you reached them.

[Marc Geelhoed]

Your arguments show that you want literalism. If there's a boat, then for God's sake, there had better be a boat somewhere. If they are Knights of the Holy Grail, they had better look like Knights. I'm fine with that, but I'm willing to think a little, too.

You don't like metaphor, and you don't like directors bringing their own thoughts and knowledge of drama and stagecraft to the opera house, specifically Wagner. I'm not fine with that. The end point of this is a reductio ad absurdam to the most literal production imaginable, which will be stultifying to singers and boring to audiences. If that's your train, then by all means, get on board. You don't attend live performances anyway, so it isn't that big a deal if directors heed your call.

You still don't know how these work in the theater, which is where opera lives. A DVD is mediated. Admit it: You've never been face-to-face with a director's concept and been forced to come to terms with it in real time. You make up your mind about an opera in your living room.

Nice touch with the profanity, too. You stay classy.

[Lisa Hirsch]

First, let me be clear that I agree with Marc about how these productions (Konzept, Regietheatre, Eurotrash, whatever you want to call them) work in the theater. You do have to experience them. That widely-criticized Alcina in SF - I saw it, and I agree with much of the criticism, but it was also gripping theater with great performances both musically and theatrically.

ACD, you're wrong about the Lehnhoff Parsifal. I saw it in SF, twice in fact. No WWI uniforms. They were much more abstract than that; in fact, the production appeared to be set outside space and time. Wait, doesn't Wagner say something about that?

The production was also incredibly powerful and affecting. I hope to see it again some day.

[A.C. Douglas]

Lisa: Thank you for your response.

You're quite right that in the past 20 years or so, I've not attended a single live performance of anything anywhere. That's due partly to my move then to the deep boonies of New Jersey with no ready transportation anywhere civilized, and due partly to the expense and to my disgust with contemporary audiences.

If you've read S&F over the years, you must know that I consider there's no real substitute for live performance of anything in classical music, opera very much included. Live performance was my mother's milk growing up and through my middle years, and there's simply nothing that can adequately replace it. But for the subject of this thread, attending a live performance is necessary only in those very rare cases where a mere physical description of a Konzept is insufficient to determine whether it's flat-out Eurotrash or something worthwhile seeing.

To answer your original question, the last live _Ring_ I attended was the Met's 1975 cycle with Nilsson (and with Jon Vickers doing a Siegmund that was so grotesque dramatically that I still can't get that image out of my mind whenever I hear the man singing any role). The staging was unimpressive but not imbecile as was the cycle musically and dramatically, generally speaking. Nilsson, however, was spectacular vocally — there's simply no other word for that voice live — and she alone made both the trip and the expense worth the making.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

"Your arguments show that you want literalism. If there's a boat, then for God's sake, there had better be a boat somewhere. If they are Knights of the Holy Grail, they had better look like Knights."
-------------------------------------

That's absolute rubbish — totally. If you imagine that "[my] arguments show that [I] want literalism," I suggest you reread those arguments — and keep on rereading them until you get it. Your mindless charge is no surprise as it's perhaps the most frequent straw man thrown up by champions of Eurotrash against those of us who refuse to put up with the self-indulgent, self-important postmodern imbecility perpetrated by these Eurotrash vandals. But your charge is empty when directed against anything I've had to say on the subject either in this comments thread or on S&F over the years.

ACD

[Marc Geelhoed]

"Nor does one have to actually attend a live production of a _Fliegende Holländer_ where there are no ships and no sea or even abstract representations of them,..."

Hello? Wanting literalism? Realism? Anybody home? I only had to read that once. Nice job eschewing profanity this time. It's been said that arguing with you is like arguing with a tennis-ball machine, but it's just so much fun to keep dropping the balls in.

[A.C. Douglas]

What part of "abstract representations" don't you understand?

Or perhaps you simply don't understand that a ship and the sea in some sort of representation are central to the music, text, and symbolism of _Hollander_.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least given your comments here.

And what do you have against profanity appropriately used as I always use it?

Please keep your schoolmarm scolding to yourself, son.

There's a good fellow.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

(Oops. Missed this.)

"ACD, you're wrong about the Lehnhoff Parsifal. I saw it in SF, twice in fact. No WWI uniforms. They were much more abstract than that...."
-----------------------------

The three reports I read at the time (the premiere) all described them as WWI uniforms (I always insist on at least two agreeing physical descriptions of the staging of any production not seen by me at firsthand before making any judgment).
.
.
"The production was also incredibly powerful and affecting."
-----------------------------

There's of course no way of evaluating and no gainsaying such personal responses which is why I pay no attention to them when making a judgment concerning the staging of an opera production not witnessed by me at firsthand.

ACD

[Daniel Wolf]

daland wrote:

Back to Wagner’s Ring, has anyone asked himself why, in the very first caption on the Rheingold’s score we read that the river’s waves must be seen flowing from right to the left?

There are two explanations, which might usefully complement one another in a production. The first is that it corresponds to the positions of the instruments in the Bayreuth pit, so the rise in tessitura in the prelude is reflected in a right to left motion. The other is that a right-to-left flow tells us that we're viewing the Rhine from the west bank.

ACD wrote:

"the thoroughly perverse reading by Boulez"

Could you back this opinion up with some concrete examples, i.e. measure numbers?

[A.C. Douglas]

"Could you back this opinion up with some concrete examples, i.e. measure numbers?"
----------------------------

Sure. From measure 1 of the _Rheingold_ all the way through to the last measure of _Gotterdammerung_.

Boulez should never be permitted anywhere near the podium when any Wagner is being performed. His modernist hatred of and contempt for the Romantic and Romantic rhetoric -- especially the Austro-German sort -- is positively visceral.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

"The first is that it corresponds to the positions of the instruments in the Bayreuth pit, so the rise in tessitura in the prelude is reflected in a right to left motion."
------------------------------

Ingenious speculation, but, alas, it makes no sense. There is no "rise in [instrumental] tessitura" in the Bayreuth pit from right to left.

Going from front to back, first fiddles are on the right, second on the left in the first two rows. Third and fourth rows have the violas and cellos, respectively, the double basses ranged in the same row as the cellos on both ends. Fifth row is the woodwinds, flanked by the harps. Sixth and last row contains all the brass and percussion.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

Oh, and I should have added to my last above, that the _Rheingold_ prelude was written some 20 years or so before the design for the Festspielhaus and its pit was even put on paper.

ACD

[daland]

On Daniel Wolf’s two explanations of the Rhine’s flow: as ACD points out, Rheingold was written in 1854, when the Festspielhaus wasn’t even a dream in Wagner’s mind, but this could in fact support the explanation linked to the instruments’s position on the pit in german theaters then, where - I might be wrong - tha basses are at the extreme right, the horns at the right and the winds at center-left. The second explanation, that I had already in mind, tells us also something about the movement of the sun: we have it in front, straight in our eyes, when it rises, then it moves to the top, illuminating the front scene, and is at sunset when Alberich grasps the gold, since darkness suddenly fills the whole scene.

[Daniel Wolf]

The effect is not in the strings, which, with the divided bassi provide the initial background, against which the movement is quite vivid, or was as least vivid when I heard it in Bayreuth. In particular, it is the the left to right movement among and from the horns — which are on the right — then to bassoons then clarinets, low brass, and so on until by the time the entire ensemble is engaged, the sound is essentially mixed.

Worrying that I might have been imagining things, I called a friend from the HR Symphony who is a member of the Festspiel Orchester. As a player on the left hand of the pit, he waits out much of the Vorspiel, and he confirmed the effect.

[Daniel Wolf]

ACD wrote:

"From measure 1 of the _Rheingold_ all the way through to the last measure of _Gotterdammerung_."

That's not a serious answer. I want to know of specific instructions in the scores which are not followed by Boulez and which go against either the letter or spirit of the works.

"His modernist hatred of and contempt for the Romantic and Romantic rhetoric -- especially the Austro-German sort -- is positively visceral."

This is a cartoon version of Boulez's aesthetic. It was Boulez, after all, who decisively, as a composer, abandoned the constructivist/pointillist style (even withdrawing his Donaueschingen orchestra piece, Polyphonie X) in favor of a more connected, indeed lyrical, style. This change was informed by his experience as a performer. One has only to compare the complete Webern recordings of Craft with those of Boulez to realize that Boulez is fundamentally of a romantic — and romantic rhetorical — character. (The inclusion, on the Boulez set, of the recording of Webern himself conducting the Schubert Dance arrangements, with the wild application of Wiener espressivo in rubato, tempi and dynamics, was clearly meant to signal Boulez's affinity for the style the Is he clear, precise, and economical in his conducting style? Absolutely. Is his orchestral sound any more contained in expression because of this discipine, i.e. less "romantic" when playing romantic repertoire? Absolutely not. "Romantic rhetoric" is not an excuse for playing out of tune, playing wrong rhythms, or getting tempi, dynamics, or balance wrong; all of those qualities are in fact predicate to getting the rhetoric.

That said, there are definitely aspects of Boulez's reading that need to be questioned as to accuracy, but one has to be specific here, to identify these places, and then make the case that they are either negligible or do service or disservice to the works.

[A.C. Douglas]

"That's not a serious answer. I want to know of specific instructions in the scores which are not followed by Boulez and which go against either the letter or spirit of the works."
------------------------

Boulez's mangling of a Wagner score has nothing to do with his not following "specific instructions" in the score. It has to do entirely with what I said it had to do with. Boulez is a modernist zealot still, even decades after that movement died a deserved death, and he has nothing but contempt for the Romantic and for Romantic rhetoric of which Wagner's scores are an apotheosis, and he attempts to eradicate those tendencies wherever he finds them. His perverse notion that Wagner should be rendered precise and transparent is a crime against the spirit of every measure of a Wagner score. Wagner's musical aesthetic is realized in the massing, NOT in the details of inner line, and in the give and take fluidity not precision of tempi and even of note values from measure to measure. Boulez is the sort of conductor that Wagner contemptuously — and justly — labeled a "Quadruped", and he should never be permitted anywhere near a podium when Wagner is being performed, as I've already asserted.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

"The effect is not in the strings.... [I]t is the left to right movement among and from the horns — which are on the right — then to bassoons then clarinets, low brass, and so on...."
-------------------------

Except for the horns, the movement you describe is from back to front and back again, not right to left. In any case, Wagner could not have known anything about that when he wrote his right-to-left wave instruction as that instruction was written decades before the instrument layout in the Festspielhaus pit was even imagined.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

Now that I think about it, Wagner could have been thinking of a right to left movement just within the horn section itself when he wrote that instruction.

That would make sense.

ACD

[Daniel Wolf]

"In any case, Wagner could not have known anything about that when he wrote his right-to-left wave instruction as that instruction was written decades before the instrument layout in the Festspielhaus pit was even imagined."

You've got this backwards: knowing what was needed for Rheingold was certainly a consideration in the decisions that led to the final pit layout. The hood over the pit seems to have been orginally intended to hide the desk lighting and numerous adjustments were tried over time to find optimal placement due to acoustical characteristics which were not altogether forseen, but could ultimately be used to some advantage, particularly in the balance (though not always the coordination) between instruments and voices. Not only was the placement experimented with, but also the substance of the instruments themselves, including the use, for a time, of larger-bodied "viola altos".

The right-to-left motion definitely continues beyond the horn section. Further, a back-to-front motion would be imperceptible among the instruments behind the railing which separates the violas from the cellos and basses. Beyond the railing, basically everything is acoustically within the cavern, in strong contrast to the violins which strongly reflect off the front of the hood and sidewalls of the stage, sometimes making the preceived position of the violins opposite to their actual position. This may play a role in the reversal of the usually violin section placement, but there are sufficient reasons of instrumental contrast (violins to treble winds) and complementation (violins and horns) to justify this.

[A.C. Douglas]

"You've got this backwards: knowing what was needed for Rheingold was
certainly a consideration in the decisions that led to the final pit
layout."
———————————————

Well, knowing what was needed for the *entire tetralogy* was certainly a major consideration in the final pit layout. I mean, the whole house was built for that purpose. It's far too much to suggest, however, that that single wave instruction was a consideration. It almost surely was not.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that wave instruction was written with the horn section alone in mind.

ACD

[Daniel Wolf]

The question I have not been able to answer concerns the seating within the horn section itself. Normally, the odd numbered horns are high horns and the even, low (orchestral horn players specialize), but that does not necessarily mean that the seating order corresponds to score order. Unfortunately, I don't have a Bayreuth hornist to call up and settle the matter.

Again, my conviction (and my own experience of Rheingold in Bayreuth) is that all of the winds participate in the motion.

[A.C. Douglas]

I think it's the repeated staggered *entrances* of each of the eight horns that was in Wagner's mind when he wrote that right-to-left wave instruction as the actual horn section seating could later easily be made to conform.

Merely speculation on my part, of course.

ACD

[billy]

Not to sound crazy or like some kind of anti-Wagnerian iconoclast, but maybe there wasn't a specific reason behind Wagner's designation of right to left? It could be arbitrary and simply to assist the initial staging. If modern directors don't do it, is it a huge loss? Does it become Regietheater and Eurotrash if it goes left to right?

[Marc Geelhoed]

I'm going to start calling this disorder of deep-seated caring and zero first-person understanding, followed by lashing out at the cold, unlistening world, "ACD." Maybe Ritalin will help.

[Marc Geelhoed]

I take back that last comment, which is out of line. I disagree with virtually everything here, but can't stand by that last post.

[Lisa Hirsch]

I've already been around the bush with ACD over Boulez's Wagner, which I like very much. ACD's arguments are exactly what they were two or three years back, and they're still made by assertion rather than evidence, other than the generalized hand-waving in the direction of the scores and what he thinks they prove.

But there's this:

"There's of course no way of evaluating and no gainsaying such personal responses which is why I pay no attention to them when making a judgment concerning the staging of an opera production not witnessed by me at firsthand."

Of course there's a way of evaluating: by reading someone's views over a period of time, triangulating with others' views of the same works or productions, and calibrating accordingly. I do it all the time, especially with films, and can therefore make a reasonable judgment about how much I would like a given production (or film) based on what certain reviewers say.

[A.C. Douglas]

"I've already been around the bush with ACD over Boulez's Wagner, which I like very much. ACD's arguments are exactly what they were two or three years back, and they're still made by assertion rather than evidence, other than the generalized hand-waving in the direction of the scores and what he thinks they prove."
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Of course my arguments are the same as they were two or three years ago. Why would you expect them to be any different? Boulez's Wagner is the same today as it was two or three years ago, which is to say an unqualified abortion.

And what sort of explicit evidence would you expect other than what I've already provided when a man's reading of a score is as wrongheaded and an insult in spirit from first measure to last everywhere one touches it? This is music, not molecular biology we're talking about. One has only to listen to, say, a Solti reading of a Wagner score (_Parsifal_ excepted; that score was somehow beyond his ken in the outer acts) which is to say near perfect in terms of Wagnerian rhetoric, massing, and fluidity of tempi and even of note values as are the readings of Thielemann today, and then compare those with the arid precision and transparency of a Boulez reading to see clearly why the Boulez reading is such an unqualified abortion. Boulez's precise, transparent, swift-tempi Wagner readings may be more in sympathy with today's postmodern aesthetic sensibilities, but that has nothing to do with Wagner whose musical aesthetic is that postmodern aesthetic's very antithesis.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

"Of course there's a way of evaluating: by reading someone's views over a period of time, triangulating with others' views of the same works or productions, and calibrating accordingly. I do it all the time, especially with films, and can therefore make a reasonable judgment about how much I would like a given production (or film) based on what certain reviewers say."
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The matter in question was not one of "liking" or not liking, but a matter of cold fact; viz., a physical description of an opera's staging. How that staging affected someone emotionally on a personal level is totally beside the point, and less than worthless for the intended purpose.

ACD

[daland]

If you look at Salvador Dalì’s Gioconda, how do you react?

Possibly it depends on the fact of knowing, or ignoring, Leonardo’s original. If you know it, maybe you can like Dalì’s Gioconda. If not, you’ll possibly dismiss it as lunatic garbage, or be enthusiastic for such a foolish surrealistic picture.

It looks like a paradox, but many of those who like lunatic "konzept" stagings of Wagner’s dramas are those who know perfectly the original (meaning by that: everything written in the score, and its implications) because its corruption someway forces one to think to the un-corrupted (but at the end... boring, like the Gioconda, after you have seen it 20 times at Louvre) version.

Those who ignore the original - and some critics are part of this set - can react in any possible way, but that’s totally groundless an issue.

[Lisa Hirsch]

"How that staging affected someone emotionally on a personal level is totally beside the point, and less than worthless for the intended purpose."

Yeah, okay, you just wanted to know whether they were wearing WWI uniforms. How the staging affects people emotionally is exactly the point in evaluating the effectiveness of the staging.

It's nice that you're hauling out Solti again. He is a far from idea Wagner conductor; in Tristan, he never realizes the proportions of the score correctly, and nearly the whole thing sounds slightly "off," especially when compared with Kna, Kleiber, or Furtwangler, all of whom are much better Wagner conductors. (Goodall understands the proportions of the works as well as any, but his tempos disqualify him from grouping with the ideal conductors.) He is weak in the more introspective moments of all Wagner operas (I direct you to "O ihr der Eide" in the Immolation, as an example) because his strength is in the flashier and more overtly theatrical points of the scores.

You're still making assertions rather than providing real evidence of what Wagner should sound like. You keep talking about "aesthetic" and waving the score without providing measure numbers or close analysis of how different conductors approach those scores.

Real evidence: the sound of a 19th century orchestra, much more transparent and less massive/wall-of-sound than 20th and 21st century orchestras. There are enough recordings and performances by the New Queen's Hall Orchestra, the ORR, and other such groups that no one discussing this area should ignore them, and you do.

[A.C. Douglas]

"Yeah, okay, you just wanted to know whether they were wearing WWI uniforms. How the staging affects people emotionally is exactly the point in evaluating the effectiveness of the staging."
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No, it's not. It's how vividly the staging realizes the concept of the creator as expressed in the score (music and text) that's the measure of the staging's effectiveness. How any particular individual responds to a staging is that particular individual's business and concern exclusively, and no one else's (commercial interests excepted, of course).
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"It's nice that you're hauling out Solti again. He is a far from idea[l] Wagner conductor; in Tristan, he never realizes the proportions of the score correctly, and nearly the whole thing sounds slightly 'off'...."
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I have no idea what you mean when you say "the proportions of the score" (do you?). As to the reading "sound[ing] slightly 'off'," that's rubbish. It sounds splendid from beginning to end as far as Solti's work is concerned, and was, at the time, perhaps the richest realization of that score on record.
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"You're still making assertions rather than providing real evidence of what Wagner should sound like. You keep talking about 'aesthetic' and waving the score without providing measure numbers or close analysis of how different conductors approach those scores."
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Don't be absurd. I'm neither being paid for this nor am I writing a thesis, and have already given my response to that blockheaded, missing-the-point demand for measure numbers. If you don't understand what's meant by the Wagnerian aesthetic, then I suggest you need to hit the books and the scores, and spend several decades learning what it means and entails.
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"Real evidence: the sound of a 19th century orchestra, much more transparent and less massive/wall-of-sound than 20th and 21st century orchestras. There are enough recordings and performances by the New Queen's Hall Orchestra, the ORR, and other such groups that no one discussing this area should ignore them, and you do.
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Those "period authentic" readings are grotesque caricatures of Wagner. That idiot Norrington idea would have sent Wagner into a rage. Wagner thought the sound emanating from the Bayreuth pit was an ideal realization of the sound he heard while writing his scores, and God Almighty couldn't get that sound to sound transparent without grossly distorting the orchestral balances (you know, like Boulez does) except in those places where Wagner himself scored the transparency into his orchestration directly, and even in that case the Bayreuth pit often presents an impediment to transparency.

ACD

[A.C. Douglas]

Oh, I missed this little gem:

"He [Solti] is weak in the more introspective moments of all Wagner operas (I direct you to 'O ihr der Eide' in the Immolation, as an example) because his strength is in the flashier and more overtly theatrical points of the scores."
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Your above is an almost verbatim parroting of the current crop of Solti bashers in the British critical press. It's of course patent rubbish generally speaking, and absolutely wrongheaded, not to say tone deaf, in the case of Solti's reading of the Immolation episode. Solti's reading of that episode, "O ihr, der Eide" very much included (and the whole of _Götterdämmerung_ as well, for that matter), is, hands down, the richest, most powerful, most nearly perfect Wagnerian nuanced reading on record, bar none, Thielemann's Bayreuth readings alone perhaps excepted.

I'm fast getting the impression you simply don't like Wagnerian music-drama very much, and prefer to hear those works sound as emasculated and un-Wagnerian as possible.

ACD