On DVD, Wagner 'Ring' Cycles of Mythic Proportions

Stagings Range From Traditional to Postmodern, but the Singing Is Strictly Sublime

When the Washington Opera made its first foray into Wagner -- a 1975 production of "Die Walkure," the second of four operas in the composer's epic cycle, "Der Ring des Nibelungen" -- fledgling Wagnerians wishing to explore the complete "Ring" had to satisfy themselves with one or two LP recordings, and use their imaginations to supply the costumes and scenery. Now, as the Washington National Opera unveils its first complete "Ring" (which began in March with the initial opera in the cycle, "Das Rheingold"), Wagner-curious listeners have four DVD "Rings" to choose from -- all featuring beautiful transfers and 5.1 surround sound -- to bring the sword-wielding heroes and treasure-hoarding dragons into their living rooms. And more video "Rings" are in the pipeline.

Wagner directed the cycle's premiere at his purpose-built Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876. Yet for all his visionary talk about "artworks of the future," his sense of stagecraft remained bound to the fussily painted drops, fake trees and clunky machinery of the 19th-century theater. Fast-forward to the present-day Metropolitan Opera, and you'd think nothing had changed. The Met's two-decade-old "Ring" -- directed by Otto Schenk and designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen, available on Deutsche Grammophon -- scrupulously observes the letter (and, intermittently, the spirit) of Wagner's scenario.

Knockout special effects like the swimming Rhinemaidens and the collapse of Gibichung Hall retain a fair amount of their magic on the small screen -- though TV close-ups can be downright merciless when scrutinizing things such as makeup on the giants, the dwarf costumes or the Met-proportioned Siegmund and Sieglinde of Gary Lakes and Jessye Norman. But as those names suggest, the musical pleasures are considerable here, with the magisterial James Levine in the pit, and with James Morris's Wotan and Hildegard Behrens's Brunnhilde caught in their prime in this late-1980s taping. Viewers who can overlook papier-mache rocks and broad-stroke acting for four evenings of fine singing will eat up this production with a spoon.

Styles of staging Wagner have changed a lot over the past 130 years, not least in the streamlined abstraction seen at postwar Bayreuth. There the composer's grandson, Wieland Wagner, who directed "The Ring" with little more than a circular platform, an atmospherically lit cyclorama and (in his

later stagings) monolithic, Henry Moore-ish sculptural elements -- all to shift the focus from pictorial quaintness to character psychology and human drama.

Director Harry Kupfer follows Wieland Wagner's lead in his own Bayreuth production (taped, like the Met "Ring," in the late '80s, and issued on Warner Classics). Only this time, the expanses of stage are defined by designer Hans Schavernoch's updated vocabulary of lasers, fluorescent tubes, steel trusses and (for a few scenes late in the cycle) mangled and corroded metal tanks. At once futuristic and primordial in feeling, these landscapes lend a tone of desolation to Wotan's family squabbles in "Walkure," and to the gathering tragedy in "Gotterdammerung." The cast nearly equals the Met's, with particularly arresting work from John Tomlinson (Wotan), Anne Evans (Brunnhilde) and Siegfried Jerusalem (a more specific and engaging Siegfried here than at the Met), all under the commanding baton of Daniel Barenboim. Only the mixed-period costume design -- "Great Gatsby" meets "Grapes of Wrath" in a glam-rock version of outer space -- makes a recognizably 1980s postmodern statement.

(A recent Kupfer "Ring," from Barcelona's Gran Teatro del Liceu, on Opus Arte DVD, offers similar costuming and nearly identical blocking, only on more overtly space-age sets and with a vocally less impressive cast. Stick with his earlier, Bayreuth version if you want to check out Kupfer's unique vision of the piece.)

The postmodern vibe is ramped up considerably in a recent "Ring" from Stuttgart Opera, on the TDK/Euroarts label. Part of a recent trend of having a different director stage each opera in the cycle, the production presents a kind of hip, "Rashomon"-like telling of the story, where four very different conceptual viewpoints spark off each other and make a cumulative effect -- a quintessentially postmodern structure. There are countless examples of what is damningly referred to in this country as "Euro-trash" -- Wotan sprawled on an inflated pool raft, in a rumpled sweat suit, playing with doll-size statues, or Brunnhilde (in a tasteful sweater and skirt) serving tea to Waltraute (in full Valkyrie helmet and breastplate) in a flame-encircled kitchenette.

It may all sound like kitsch, but it plays like gangbusters, and offers a valid cultural critique of a work whose role through the past hundred years of German history has been complicated, to say the least. The cast, though vocally variable, gives its all under conductor Lothar Lagrosek's engrossing leadership.

But the DVD "Ring" that most deserves a place on Valhalla is the production mounted by French director Patrice Chereau and designer Richard Peduzzi for Bayreuth's centennial in 1976 (preserved on video several years later, and currently on Philips DVD). Somehow, Chereau was able to combine epic sweep with intimate dramatic detail, mix period elements from the late 18th century through the early 20th within a coherent and unified style, and create a production concept -- Shavian-Marxist chronicle of the fall of Europe's aristocracy and the rise of its proletariat -- that illuminates the cycle without fighting it or trivializing it.

Conducted swiftly but not insensitively by Pierre Boulez, the production showcases a fine cast of singing actors (who look their parts more convincingly than any other cast under consideration) and feels like the expression of a single, compelling thought from start to finish. For sheer intelligence, emotive power and that rare synthesis of mythic weight and contemporary sensibility, this "Ring" is golden.