Götterdämmerung: Fliegt heim, ihr Raben

It's all over. Although Lepage's production has been modified, I still feel that it lets the Ring down badly in its cataclysmic conclusion. The plaster statues of the gods now crumble into the Rhine instead of exploding above the hall of the Gibichungs, which I find dramatically and theatrically more felicitous. But while the music is driven on by the momentum of all that has gone before, the production drifts. The orchestral performance was remarkable. The sound could occasionally seem unfocused, but the Beloved Flatmate were almost directly over the pit in a Family Circle box, which may have affected my perception. The dense tapestry of leitmotivs was given vibrant color; the score's movement towards an inevitable conclusion was thrilling with tension at every turn. The close connection to the singers which has characterized the rest of the cycle under Luisi was still apparent, especially effective in evoking the clash between Siegfried and Hagen. The Trauermarsch was of a shattering intensity, silence and sound alike pushed to the limits of the bearable. The long threnody of the immolation was handled with emotional nuance, and the Erlösungsmotiv over the Rhine was radiant. If only the production had made a bolder claim about the whys of this music.

Götterdämmerung: So gut und schlimm es geh'

In a world where the gods don't matter, why should we care about their downfall? In the last installment of his Ring, Robert Lepage has banished the gods to plaster-of-Paris altars, which are exploded (almost comically, I regret to say) in the conflagration of the Gibichungs' hall. An exploration of how the (misplaced?) religious devotion of the mortals is used to justify their own decisions was, however, lacking as far as I could see. The Gibichungs' society, indeed, was surprisingly functional, as were the sibling relationships of Gunther, Hagen, and Gutrune. Theatrically, I felt that this was the best yet of the Lepage productions, but its apparent lack of conviction is a crippling defect. (For instance: the Norns' weaving creates a series of impressive images, but its unraveling is not attuned to the moment when the music registers the horror of "Es riss!") Without either an argument for wider significance to the events of Götterdämmerung, or an ironic commentary on the lack of such significance, the production is reduced to a series of tableaux, which no amount of grandeur can save from triviality.

The musical performances were of a high standard, and offered much to ponder, even if dramatically shackled by the vagueness of the production. Rather than a Götterdämmerung of grandeur, guts, and glory, Luisi gave a reading of the score which was transparently detailed, intimate, even introspective. I really appreciated this--the Rhine journey was at its most gorgeous--although it was perhaps not without its drawbacks. The timpani before Siegfried's death, dying into silence, could have been the last rattle of breath, the last flutter of a pulse; the crash of sound that initiates the Trauermarsch can hardly fail to stun, but I wanted it to overwhelm. The portrayals of the singers were also characterized by impressive emotional nuance, which Lepage must have taken care over (but this is Götterdämmerung, where it is never just about the individual.)