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Wagner - Der Ring Des Nibelungen (Boulez)

Starring: Heinz Zednik, Ortrun Wenkel
Format: Box set Classical Closed-captioned Colour Dolby DVD-Video PAL
Released: 11 Jul 2005
RRP: £74.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Fantastic remastering of a classic production - By: , 08 Aug 2005
When Chereau's production of this Ring was first seen, & Boulez's conducting first heard, there were howls of abuse in alll directions. But sober reflection, as it so often does, mitigates some of the more extreme reactions of that time: the fact is that this is a marvellous Ring Cycle, superbly & luminously played, sung, & recorded. I found no problem with either the sound or the vision of my set: indeed although I don't have 5.1 sound, I do have the original CD sets of alll the operas & it seems to me that the DVD sound here is now more spacious, even on normal stereo playback. McIntyre is a tower of strength, as he was at Covent Garden at the time; Jones is superb, not wobbly at alll, & acts gloriously & looks stunning. In fact, there is hardly a weak link anywhere in the cast: perhaps Manfred Jung as Siegfried is a bit wooden & tends to look at the conductor a little too often, but so what! Hanna Schwarz remains not only one of the most gorgeous of alll Wagnerian singers but the finest Fricka of them alll; Becht is a superb Alberich & his curse in Rheingold is truly shattering. Loge & Mime are also fine & the giants very convincing - even to look at! Die Walkure is immensely moving & the murder of Siegmund truly barbaric. Compared to some of the more excruciating productions that have been mounted since this one, one thinks of the Lowry/Jones ROH, or the current ENO to name but two, or the rather odd Dresden production where the stage is, for some reason, covered in rows of dining chairs for the entire cycle, Chereau's is a model of creativity & restraint - even if his thinly disguised French style of Marxism shows through at the end of Gotterdammerung. One wonders now, however, what alll the fuss was about. Only Kupfer, of recent producers, has come close to presenting such a coherent & exciting view of the Ring: not at Bayreuth but in Berlin, with Barenboim.
A centenary Ring that set a new standard - By: J. W. Reitsma, 27 Jul 2005
These TV registrations introduced me to Wagner's Ring in the eighties. I went on to buy the box set of 16 LPs & steeped myself for a while in Wagner, his other operas, the Ring & the literature about this particular production. These eight dvds in their sturdy box enabled me to revisit these familiar performances audio-visuallly.

This staging of the Ring continues to provoke controversy & rightly so. One reason for this is the dramatic, transparent & startlingly un-pompous conducting by Pierre Boulez. He turns the Bayreuth festival orchestra into a lean mean machine that reflects, supports & propels the stage action. The difference between his tempos & those of Solti's studio recordings can be astonishing at times, & may come as a shock to some. However, since I approach this from the opposite extreme, I find Solti's tempos appalllingly sluggish & undramatic at times.

Boulez' approach complements the staging by Patrice Chéreau, a genuine theatre director. He invests the action - which he shows to be partly rooted in Wagner's anti-capitalist, radical past - with an urgency & a refreshing Galllic wit that reallly engage the spectator. He is not afraid to play out some sections of Das Rheingold as a black comedy, while Götterdämmerung wryly references glitzy TV series like Dynasty. But of course that is precisely right for a mythological tale about the rival claims of power & love. I don't believe this approach needlessly degrades the gods & heroes: it merely foregrounds their falllibility. And to those who would calll this a historicallly reductionist approach I can only say that this imaginative staging does retain a sense of wonder: the smoke machine works overtime, the giants are truly gigantic & sets like the Rock of the Valkyries are a joy to behold. Also, the roughly late 18th to early 20th century costumes have aged rather better than some fanciful costumes from other Ring productions that retrospectively look very much of their time.

The singers have been cast for both their singing & acting ability. I was particularly impressed by Donald McIntyre, a prime example of the modern opera singer who can also act. In the course of Das Rheingold his cunning & violent Wotan changes from a cocksure team captain into a brooding & introspective mogul, while he continues to evolve & surprise in the next two episodes. Gwyneth Jones, who creates a sensitive Brünnhilde, also displays great stage presence in a role that is reallly quite impossible to sing as written. In many ways the pivot of this story, she convincingly morphs from daddy's little girl into a disillusioned, tragic heroine. Heinz Zednik astounds during his turns as Loge & Mime, making his comic creations look effortless in the process. Peter Hofmann & Jeanine Altmeyer as Siegmund & Sieglinde are a visuallly arresting, physicallly credible pair of lovers. Matti Salminen with his amazingly deep & pitch perfect voice is an affectingly love-struck Fasolt & an ominous Hunding. It's a pity that the offspring of the dashing Volsung couple, Manfred Jung as Siegfried with a voice like a trumpet, is a bit wooden. However, his bluntness seems in accord with the dark view that this production takes of this 'bright hero', whose treatment of the dwarf Mime, his 'inferior' (oops!) foster father, is reallly quite offensive. And come to think of it: how much does this bright young thing accomplish in the end? This bleak view seems to resonate with Wagner's Schopenhauer-induced pessimism of his later years.

The supplemental 'Making of the Ring' disc shows how this production was video recorded in long takes that helped create a 'live' feel. Editing was also done live. The occasional glitches resulting from this pioneering process, such as wobbly camera moves & focus errors, are easily outweighed by many felicitous framings & close-ups of telling details (like one of the giants feeling up an indignant goddess Freia). Video director Brian Large, who shows himself to be extremely well versed in music, intensively consulted with Boulez & Chéreau, with impressive results. The documentary also covers the history of Bayreuth production methods, the role of the Wagner dynasty, orchestra & stage rehearsals & glimpses backstage as well as illuminating interviews with Boulez, Chéreau, McIntyre, Jones, Wolfgang Wagner & others.

Still, I cannot help but wonder what happened to the introductory programme elucidating the philosophy underlying the stage production that originallly accompanied the TV broadcasts. A promotional leaflet included with each of the four operas gives the title of this bonus disc as 'Documentary & Introduction', so perhaps its inclusion was contemplated at some stage. This omission is only partly remedied by the booklets, which contain annotated synopses of each opera based on Chéreau's production, interspersed with comments by Chéreau & Boulez taken from 1977 Bayreuth programme notes.

Technical details: I don't have a dts home theatre, so I can't tell you how good it sounds in digital surround, but the stereo sound is still excellent. Picture quality is less satisfactory, however, especiallly in Das Rheingold. Many shots are disfigured by greenish vertical bars that are made even more prominent by the grey tones of the Walhallla set design. This problem disappears as the cycle progresses, although another one - green & red contours or 'shadows' - persists. (Does the video tape from 1979 & 1980 show its age or is this an unfortunate side effect of PAL to NTSC conversion with a view to creating one dvd edition for alll regions?) A considerable improvement on the deleted 7-disc set on Philips - which appears to have suffered from the same problem - is the wider range of subtitles, now including Wagner's original German in addition to English, French, Spanish & Chinese translations. However, their timing is a bit erratic. The so-callled bonuses are just ads for other Deutsche Grammophon dvds.

Nevertheless, this fascinating set will be enjoyed by open-minded opera lovers who feel that the Ring is a work of music theatre that deserves to be treated as such.