Free from the Met, "Der Rosenkavalier"

The free opera tonight from the Metropolitan Opera is "Der Rosenkavalier." I watched half of the first act while I was cooking dinner. I took a break and left dinner simmering on the stove so I can share my initial observations.

One, Renee Fleming, just lovely. She is a lovely person in real life, from where I sit ... or sat, which is the chair of the music critic at The Buffalo News. I interviewed her on the phone a couple of times and I really enjoyed the conversations. I love Richard Strauss and we had a wonderful talk once about the Four Last Songs, which she was singing with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. That was a dream come true for me! I have loved the Four Last Songs since I was a teenager. And to be discussing them with a world-class soprano ... unbelievable.

My life has been blessed, you know?

Anyway, Renee Fleming is one of the glories of the production ... so beautiful, and such beautiful singing. She is believable as the Countess. Did I say the Countess? I meant the Marschallin. I think of her as the Countess because Strauss was inspired by the Countess in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," another opera I love. I think of them as the same person because they are.

Elina Garanca who was our bad-ass Carmen a few weeks ago is Octavian. You figure she will take it over the edge and she does. What a good-looking gal and she makes a good-looking guy. This was their last performance in these roles. Both were retiring, at least from these particular parts.

They are very good together.

I have special praise for the singer who sings Baron Ochs. Gunther Groissboek.

Peter Gelb, introducing the opera, refers to his terrific panache, and that is true. Panache. It is cool to have an Ochs who is cute and has panache. It makes it more fun.

Here are my thoughts on the opera as performed by Renee Fleming, Susan Graham, and a great Scandinavian Baron Ochs, Kristinn Sigmundsson. That Ochs also had panache.

Reading back on that post just now, I am glad I wrote it! There are things I had forgotten. Such as how Ochs says of Octavian, "I see myself in him." And the possibility that Octavian is Ochs' son. Their names are similar, you know? Both start with the same syllable. That is something to think about.

I do not think I mentioned this before but watching that other production, I noticed something else. There is this one moment that struck me. I had missed it previously, or something. That is in the last act, when Ochs puts it together about the Marschallin and Octavian. It dawns on him. You see it in his face, if he is a good Ochs. He says something about, What am I to think about this?

And she says Nothing, if you are a gentleman.

And he says, Never let it be said that a Lerchanau was a spoilsport. That is his name, Ochs von Lerchenau. And you remember at that point that he is her cousin, they are related.

They are cut from the same cloth, after all! That scene is a game-changer, and to think that I missed it before. I am looking forward to seeing it.

Along with the rest of the opera. "Rosenkavalier"!

There is nothing like it!

The Met Opera's "Die Walkure" - Gods and seesaws

Saturday, I went to the Metropolitan Opera simulcast of "Die Walkure." I have gone out of my way not to read any reviews of it because I wanted to think my own thoughts.

Somehow "Walkure" has become one of my sacred cow operas, one of a handful that I am very particular about. I think it began when my sister and I went to Toronto and saw it at the Canadian Opera Company. We had lost our dad not that long before that and we were totally not ready for what Wotan's Farewell was going to do to us. All through that final scene we cried and cried, passing a single soggy Kleenex back and forth. We were still crying as we left the opera house.

Because we were so undone we went for a glass of wine, and we spied Wotan and Brunnhilde a few tables away, quarrel forgotten, eating Buffalo wings. How could you not cheer up, seeing that? Now I think I would go up and say hello, say something. But I was shy then.

I have another "Walkure" story that I know I have told here before. That one involved the Met and James Morris as Wotan, not that I was there, but I feel as if I was.

Anyway, I come to this opera with a lot of baggage. The good news is, I was drawn into what I saw yesterday. I got a kick out of Greer Grimsley's Wotan. He has a mighty fine voice, and with his looks and his manner, he puts his own spin on the part. An American spin, I want to say, though I know he is from New Orleans, a city I love, and the power of suggestion is strong. He looks like a handsome biker. There is this quick clip from "Rheingold" --

 

 -- that I found today and adore. You can really see his personality there. That rakish smile, irresistible. And a creative take on the part. Jamie Barton, as his wife, is a kick too but maybe too much, a little too funny. You have to watch it. Seeing this gives a new dimension to "Walkure," where these two singers are together again.

In "Walkure" things are less sunny with these two and he is more world weary, as Wotan should be. I loved him, how can you not? But he does not yet have the overwhelming .... can I use that cliche word gravitas? It makes me laugh but maybe I have to ... that Wotan should have, that the big Wotans of history had. The big Wotans of history. They cast a long shadow, terrible to any singer these days. I do not envy present-day Wotans, I will tell you that right now.

You have big powerful supermen like Hans Hotter. He picks Brunnhilde up in his arms as if she is nothing. Just doing what needs to be done.



As does Donald McIntyre, here with the beautiful Gwyneth Jones.



(You do not want to know how long I wasted on YouTube today.)

That last clip, from a Bayreuth production, really got to me. They just took it to the wall. The sweat and tears on Wotan's face, the intensity and drama. The flames and the smoke.

That brings me to a problem I had with the Met production. The staging was too complicated. They had this set of sort of seesaws -- I think they used that word -- that was supposed to stand in for the Valkyries' horses, or something. It did not work, at least from where I sat. Maybe if you were at Lincoln Center the seesaws worked better. To us in the movie theater they just looked like seesaws.

Not only that but at intermission we had to try understanding how they worked. They had stagehands explaining them. If there is one thing I hate it is someone trying to tell me how they stage something, how a movie was made, anything like that. Now when I watch the actual production I am thinking about how they did it. What a pain.

And for what? There was one cool scene that had you looking down on Brunnhilde as if from above. I think that is it at the top of this post, though it is hard to make out. But otherwise the last scene could have been staged a lot better. And as Brunnhilde settled into her resting place, it looked for a moment as if she were pitching backwards. You do not want that.

You want flames and smoke. It is not rocket science. Wagner will do the rest.

Well, at least this production was not horrible like this other one I wrote about this other time. Let us hash over the other singers. Brunnhilde (Christine Goerke) was too cartoon-ish for me at the start but I warmed up to her. There is this haunting scene when she appears to Siegmund as a portent of his death. The music grows trance-like as she tells him who she is and what her appearance means. There is a moment when he meets her eyes, sealing his fate. Goerke was lovely in that scene, just devastating.

Tomorrow I will research other singers singing that scene. There go another five hours, you know?

Siegmund and Sieglinde, I liked them both. Sieglinde was just beautiful, I mean she looked the part. Eva-Maria Westbroek, her name is. She was glorious.

And in the all-important role of Hunding, Sieglinde's Neanderthal husband -- a part I love, and that my father loved before me -- was   ...let me check ... Gunther Groissboek. I am a complete Gunther Groissboek fan from this moment on. He has this marvelous voice and he knows how to use it, which is often out of a corner of his mouth. A spectacular Hunding, spectacular.

"Badass," I whispered to my friend Nisha, sitting next to me, between me and our friend Meghan. I am privileged to have not one but two friends willing to spend five hours at "Die Walkure."

One touch I loved -- it might be in the script, who knows? -- is how Hunding hangs his Neanderthal furs on Nothung, the magical sword stuck in the tree.

At intermission Grossboek confided that he had been tapped to play Wotan at Bayreuth. Do it. Do it! But at the same time I would also like to see Greer Grimsley tackle the part at Bayreuth. In another year or so he should be ready. He is 62 now but as Wotans go that is young.

I have multiple careers I will be following thanks to this production.

And multiple hours in store for me on YouTube.

God help me!