The Lepage Staging Of Die Walküre: A Brief Rant

We just had our first extended look at the Robert Lepage staging of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for the Met via a YouTube video of the complete Met HD film of Die Walküre and it's even worse than we imagined it to be from the manifold verbal descriptions read and production photos viewed. This Die Walküre staging is, in short, the most wooden, most vapid, least evocative, and most utterly empty staging of a Wagner music-drama it's ever been our displeasure to witness, Le Machine accomplishing nothing but constrain the action of the singer-actors (who moved to and fro seemingly willy-nilly along the thin strip of real estate provided them downstage doing vaguely appropriate things most, but by no means all, of the time) and make itself impotently conspicuous merely by its looming, hulking, contribute-nothing presence.

What a colossal and colossally expensive blunder on Peter Gelb's part. We can only hope Mr. Gelb has the courage and nerve to accept the blunder head-on, retire this entire Ring production from the Met's stage forever after this year's complete cycle is concluded, and not attempt to amortize the cost of Le Machine by mounting revivals of the production in future.

What an appalling squandering of time, talent, and money.