Wagner: Das Rheingold Los Angeles Opera Musical Criticism

01.06.10

Run, directed by Bertolt Brecht protégé Achim Freyer , hangs on the edge of a slash—and the fiscal, cultural, and political, stakes for the West Coast are exceedingly high.

The stage says it all. Chiefly composed of a rotatable disc banked at a abrupt rake, it required a special dispensation from Actors' Equity, the labor union representing American camp professionals. It has been the object of intense debate in the press ever since LA Opera began rolling out Freyer's stagings back in April 2009, and has even been complained about publicly by at least two of the leading role singers. And the steep stage is by no means the only physical obstacle faced by the cast. In Saturday's first installment of the circle, the immortals remained confined within imposing exoskeletal "textile sculptures," emerging only at moments of high-class drama. The dwarfs, the giants, and the ensemble cast of dancers moved about the stage more freely, but despite stepping charily, the occasional stumble kept the audience in a perpetual state of anxiety. This, in other words, was white-knuckle theater, eliciting the somatic effects of circusgoing even as it evoked the visual trappings of the big top.

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