Die Walküre, San Francisco Opera, June 29 2011

As befits a proper Ring cycle, it’s back to San Francisco the day after Das Rheingold for the second (and most popular) installment, Die Walküre, the one in which Wotan causes the death of his son Siegmund and banishes his daughter Brünnhilde for trying to save him, all to some of the most glorious music ever written.

Act 1 opens with the orchestra portraying Siegmund running through a violent storm, with an immediate musical tie-in to Donner’s “He da! He da, he do!” of the end of Das Rheingold. Here our attention is diverted from the orchestra by projections depicting roiling seas and a run through the redwoods. I preferred to shut my eyes and immerse myself in the music. When the curtain goes up, we see the outside of Hunding’s hut, actually a simple frame house that I would place in the 1930s South. The hearth at which Siegmund collapses is a large barbecue pit, just outside the house. When Sieglinde invites him inside, the side of the house is whisked into the rafters, and we get a diagonal perspective of Hunding’s living room, with taxidermied deer on the walls, a tall hutch with domestic knickknacks, a sword hanging on the wall, and a two-dimensional cutout of a large tree in the middle. There is no sword in the tree—that comes later, about the time that Siegmund cries out, “Father! Where is the sword you promised me?” The sword has apparently been hanging vertically behind the tree; now it falls to the right, with an audible “clack!”, and its hilt is now visible. Sorry, but that’s the least successful sword that I’ve ever seen. When it’s time for Winterstürme and Du bist der Lenz, the two sides of the living room are pulled apart so that the audience sees them edge-on (and so they are as out of sight as possible) and a projection of a very large full moon appears at the back of the stage. After they (yes, here Siegmund and Sieglinde together) pull Notung out of the tree, the tree is whisked into the rafters, giving the pair plenty of room to paw one another before rushing off upstage.

Act 2 brings us inside Valhalla for the confrontation between Wotan and Fricka. Wotan has an office high above a large industrial city, with its skyscrapers far below and embedded in industrial pollution, as seen through half a dozen tall plate-glass windows. In front of the windows is a loooong black table, which Wotan uses as his desk. For scene 3 we move to a no-man’s land underneath a decaying freeway, littered with old tires, an old bench seat, and other detritus of urban life.

Act 3, which opens with “The Ride of the Valkyries,” is the most successful. We see a large concrete structure that echoes the gun emplacements overlooking the Golden Gate, with a circular gun platform in the middle, a concrete wall in back that slopes down to the right and then continues sloping down as it comes downstage; on the left there is a metal staircase that descends downstage. These Valkyries are World War II paratroopers, dressed in Amelia Earhart-like garb. Doubles slide down ropes, starting high above the middle of the stage and landing at stage level, just behind the curtain walls; the singers then rush on stage, dragging their parachutes behind them. (The audience applauded, both at the appearance of the first paratroopers and again at the end of The Ride.) In lieu of bodies or body parts of dead heroes, the Valkyries carry close-cropped photos of American soldiers killed in the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also photos of Hunding and Siegmund (despite the fact that Wotan tells Brünnhilde that he has no use of Hunding in Valhalla). The fire that Wotan causes to spring up around Brünnhilde surrounds her on only three sides: lines of gas flames proceed up the metal staircase, down the back edge of the rear concrete wall, and then down toward stage level on the right.

Our cast:
Siegmund: Brandon Jovanovich
Sieglinde: Heidi Melton
Hunding: Daniel Sumegi
Wotan: Mark Delavan
Brünnhilde: Nina Stemme
Fricka: Elizabeth Bishop
Gerhilde: Sara Gartland
Helmwige: Tamara Wapinsky
Ortlinde: Melissa Citro
Waltraute: Daveda Karanas
Rossweisse: Lauren McNeese
Siegrune: Maya Lahyani
Grimgerde: Renée Tatum
Schwertleite: Cybele Gouverneur
Conductor: Donald Runicles
Director: Francesca Zambello

And what a cast it was! I was tremendously impressed with Brandon Jovanovich’s Siegmund, a good-looking heartthrob of a guy with a clear, powerful tenor to match. I can remember being equally impressed by two previous Siegmunds: Placido Domingo in 2000, and Jon Vickers in 1976. He may have tired just a little bit right at the end of Act 1, but the audience exploded in the biggest burst of applause in this entire cycle when the Act 1 music concluded. Heidi Melton certainly deserved some of it, but I was cheering for Jovanovich. He is on record as having a Lohengrin in his future; I would love to see that in San Francisco!

Also worthy of particular note was Elizabeth Bishop’s majestic Fricka. As a group, the Valkyries were outstanding. It was as though the chorus master, with only eight women to guide, could spend lots of time with each one. Much praise is being heaped on Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde, and deservedly so, but I found myself thinking on occasion, hmmm, that note would be worthy of Rita Hunter. Not all of them, but some of them. Rita Hunter was the Brünnhilde in my very first complete Ring cycle, and she thrilled the entire Seattle audience with one of the greatest voices I have ever heard. It got me to wondering: if your first Brünnhilde was Birgit Nilsson, or Kirsten Flagstad, would any other Brünnhilde ever measure up? That may be the box that I am in.

Act 1, an alpha. Acts 2 and 3, not quite.