The Merry Nibelungs, Shelton Theater, June 23 2011

Die lustigen Nibelungen is a one-act operetta written in 1904 by Oscar Straus as a send-up of Wagner’s mighty Der Ring des Nibelungen, though it is more Nibelungenlied than Götterdämmerung. A modern translation/adaptation, The Merry Nibelungs, is being given as part of San Francisco Opera’s Ring Festival. Since I had so much enjoyed seeing Das Barbecü (a light-hearted retelling of the Ring in a country-western style) in Seattle, I hoped that The Merry Nibelungs would be similarly entertaining. Not. The singing was undistinguished, the acting subpar, and the adaptation full of crude attempts at sexual and potty humor.

There was one redeeming feature. Die lustigen Nibelungen lasts only about an hour, so in order to make a more substantial evening, the producer introduced several interstitial scenes in which the character of Cosima Wagner, in period costume, recalls various events from her life. I presume that the text was taken from Cosima’s diary. It was not a reading from the diary, it was more like we had Cosima herself telling us (in accented English) about interesting events in her past. While not the most inspired acting I’ve ever seen, Esther Mulligan’s Cosima was head and shoulders above what should have been the main event. A delta, at best.