The plans are already in place for 2001. Stephen Wadsworth will direct and Armin Jordan will conduct Seattle Opera's first "Der Ring des Nibelungen" of the 21st century. But this month the company, associated with the four-opera Wagner cycle since 1975, offers a final look at its current "Ring," a farewell as moving in its way as the god Wotan's to his rebellious daughter, Bruennhilde.
Indeed, this staging was viewed as being a bit rebellious when it was first unveiled, by way of "Die Walkuere," the second opera in the cycle, in 1985.A departure from the traditional approach favored by the company in the preceding decade under then-general director Glynn Ross, this "Ring" embraced a newer tradition, specifically that of post-war - and post-Patrice Chereau - Bayreuth.
Here, basically, was the same 19th-century view of "The Ring" put forth by that director, with a frock-coated Alberich, Rhine-maidens in bloomers and a Wotan who is as much Wagner himself as the god of Teutonic mythology. Under general director Speight Jenkins, however, director Francois Rochaix and designer Robert Israel made these images even more theatrical, at the same time softening both the look and the sound of the cycle.
The result was an almost pastel-hued "Ring," which within its lyric contours took us backstage at Wagner's playhouse, as it were, where the god's attempts to stage-manage his world lead, ultimately, to its destruction.
When I first saw the cycle in 1987, in its second complete staging, it was hard not to focus on the borrowings. After all, the Chereau "Ring" had itself aired on public television only a few years before, and the Goetz Friedrich "Ring," a no less iconoclastic rendering, had begun to make a splash in Europe and Japan before coming to the Kennedy Center in 1989.
Even then, though, the imagination of the whole, and its basic integrity, registered strongly, as did the music, with Salt Lake's Linda Kelm a thrilling Bruennhilde, Roger Roloff an involving Wotan and Leonie Rysanek still perhaps the most radiant Sieglinde of this or any day.
Of that cast only the gripping Alberich of Julian Patrick and powerful Hunding and (especially) Hagen of Gabor Andrasy are back this year, along with conductor Herrmann Michael. And though the last would appear to have softened his approach even more in the intervening years, there are some compensations, not all of them vocal.
For one thing the concept itself is every bit as compelling theatrically as it was in 1987, with some improvements along the way.
I'm not sure of the value of bringing Loge (brilliantly essayed by Peter Kazaras) onstage to extinguish a pair of torches at the beginning of "Das Rheingold," before the music has even started. But the stuffed deer is gone from the Act 1 love duet of "Die Walkuere" (though he can still be glimpsed in the backstage prop room of Act 3) and at long last Seattle has come up with a first-rate dragon for Act 2 of "Siegfried," essentially a 19th-century steamshovel whose serpentine head belches real smoke and - in the spirit of their "Walkuere" and "Goetter-daem-merung" - real fire.
That goes along with the evolving ethos Jenkins & Co. have espoused for this "Ring" from the first. I'm sorry to see that, in the same opera, Siegfried still trades quips with the orchestra; surely he is the one character who should not be in on the joke. But, like many others, I have come to like the flying horses in "Walkuere" - like so much else in this production, deliberately artificial - Wotan's observing the action in both this opera and "Siegfried" (in which he enters Mime's cave through the "curtain of the world") and Siegfried penetrating the "magic fire" in one fell swoop, revealing it to be a stage illusion (though the "dumb show" representation of his life that follows still seems to me a miscalculation).
By the same token the first of this year's three cycles, which concluded Aug. 11, also seemed to evolve musically, moving from a weakish "Rheingold" to a somewhat stronger "Walkuere" and almost totally satisfying "Siegfried" and "Goetterdaemmerung."
Part of that can be laid to the serendipitous presence of Viennese tenor Wolfgang Fassler as Siegfried, an 11th-hour replacement for an indisposed John David De Haan. True, he throws away a few things here and there. Nor was his work in "Goetterdaemmerung," the opera in which he is scheduled to make his Covent Garden debut, enhanced by some audible prompts from the wings. (Apparently there is no prompt box at the Seattle Center Opera House.)
But the voice itself is of suitable Heldentenor brilliance and in the bigger moments (e.g., the forging scene and love duets) he delivered handsomely. Were that not enough, he also managed to convey the character's hearty good humor and thick-headed exuberance, paving the way for the moving restoration of his memory and final apostrophe to Bruennhilde in "Goetterdaemmerung."
There his Bruennhilde was American soprano Marilyn Zschau, also the Bruennhilde of this year's "Die Walkuere." It's a big voice, not always perfectly controlled but of remarkable warmth and amplitude, especially in something like her confrontation with her former lover in the oath scene (though I miss the incisiveness Kelm brought to the oath itself and her bold dash into the flames at the conclusion of the immolation).
Between the two operas she was spelled by the "Siegfried" Bruennhilde of Ohio-born Nadine Secunde. Which, Jenkins admitted with remarkable candor, was the price of getting the latter's Sieglinde (a role she has sung at Bayreuth).
Personally I found her more effective as the latter, especially in her lyrically impassioned duet with Siegmund - an ardent J. Patrick Rafferty. But the added focus and verbal attention of her Bruennhilde were not to be denied, even if the voice itself lacked the fulness of Zschau's.
Similarly the Wotan of Washington native Monte Pederson was not without a certain edginess, especially in the Aug. 6 "Rheingold." But both the singing and the characterization took on greater depth and nobility as the cycle progressed, reaching an almost Hotter-like poignancy as the Wanderer of "Siegfried." And whatever the scene, he consistently projected to the last seat in the house.
Among the rest, Thomas Harper's unkempt Mime was almost Brechtian in its depiction of the dwarf's sniveling avarice, and Nancy Maultsby's nightgowned Erda came across as much as nubile seductress as earth mother. (She also seemed to me quite the best of the three Norns, here Victorian dowagers.)
As mentioned, Andrassy again made a formidable Hagen, cutting a Sean Connery/Patrick Stewart-type figure amid the tragedy he sets in motion in the concluding opera of the cycle, with a particularly magnificent "Hagen's Watch." (This year he also did duty as the giant Fafner in "Rheingold" and "Siegfried," touching both our hearts and the hero's in his dying aria in the latter.)
How much of this will carry over into 2001 is anyone's guess. Jenkins has said he wants there to be "a continuity" between his two "Rings," something the tapping of Jordan as conductor would seem to confirm. (He was also the conductor for the 1985 "Walkuere," the opera with which the next cycle will likewise be launched, in 1999.)
For now, though, the final showing of the present edition will take place Aug. 22-27. All performances are reportedly sold out, though I spotted empty seats the week I was there - some of them vacated midway through the evening.
That shouldn't surprise anyone who remembers the boos and catcalls that greeted this "Ring" a decade ago. But neither should the affection with which it seems to be regarded now. I know I'll miss it. Because even in an age in which new "Rings" seem to pop up with fightening regularity (with Glynn Ross' next one set for 1996 in Arizona) few exude the humanity and theatrical spark of this. And that may be even harder to approximate in century 21.