Heading our way

"It's an extraordinary story. Late last year the Theatre Royal, Norwich, announced that its contribution to the East of England's 'Arts 2000 Year of Opera and Musical Theatre' in 1997 would be a single cycle in June of Norwegian Opera's Ring production. It is already virtually sold-out, and since box-office has to account for half the cost, there will be sighs of relief all round. Ambition, flair and determination have paid off. It has been said that part of the appeal was the promise that Mike Ashman's is a 'traditional' staging, with no house-flies or heroin habits. Well, up to a point, but I must warn punters that there is a computer screen in Götterdämmerung, discreetly used.

It is rash to judge a Ring on the evidence of Siegfried (May 3) and Götterdämmerung (May 6) only, but here goes. The essential component is firmly in place, the well-practised and wise German conductor Heinz Fricke. The steady tread and even pace of his reading formed an ideal springboard for singers both experienced and less experienced; he was always there in support, carefully controlling balance, nursing the cast along. That shouldn't be taken to suggest that there was anything dull about his reading: both operas were most persuasively shaped and built steadily to grand climaxes. Fricke certainly has an overview of the cycle, or at least this half of it, and that is the most important element. The company orchestra played carefully, always allowing the audience to follow the words.

Ashman's production is clear and thoughtful, and needs to be given that the budget must have been exiguous even by UK standards. Kathrine Hysing's simple designs - adaptable rostra, atmospheric cloths, the odd tree, a cunningly used revolve - did not preclude spectacular effects: there was a wall of fire surrounding Brünnhilde, and Siegfried walked through it. I couldn't work out how, having revolved through it, the poor girl hadn't bee burnt to a cinder. The final cataclysm was beautifully contrived. Costumes in Siegfried were timeless, but by Götterdämmerung, we were in the present day (quite right: I reckon we have progressed - right word? - about as far as Act 2 of that opera). Hagen called up Brünnhilde on the Internet, similarly checked up on Siegfried's progress down the Rhine, and both greeted him and summoned the vassals by public address system but, I repeat, it was all quite discreet, with nothing button-holingly 'aren't I clever?' about it. Terje Stensvold (Gunther) and Kjersti Ekeberg (Gutrune, a Stern-reader) were thoroughly modern technocrats, with plenty of servants to bring on drinks and carry luggage. In contrast Ashman contrived a much more traditional, lightly humorous reading of Siegfried, with an especially perky Woodbird and a Fafner depicted by just one huge, warty claw. It will indeed be interesting to see how the visual elements and directorial concept progress, as it were, backwards.

Carol Yahr's soprano has really filled out since she sang Sieglinde in Scotland: weightier tone, a good edge, and a luscious vibrato stopping well this side of wobble. Her Brünnhilde was warm, womanly, hugely sympathetic. James O'Neal has the looks of a traditional Siegfried and an easy stage manner, but got through the role vocally by the skin of his teeth and with the aid of a good deal of willpower: you felt he really needed those intervals. The best singing simply as singing came from Rosemarie Lang as Waltraute - thanks to her and Fricke the first act of Götterdämmerung was given a tremendous lift by this potentially tricky scene. Tone Kruse's Erda was also excellently sung on full, round contralto tone.

Those who remember Knut Skram with pleasure as Peter Hall's Glyndebourne Figaro will be surprised to hear him as the Wanderer; again, his voice has grown over the years but he is still essentially a Kavalierbariton rather than a Wotan, and perhaps overcompensated for this by singing consistently loudly. Curiously costumed as Lord Baden Powell, he made a rather phlegmatic retired god. His antagonists were powerfully portrayed: Oskar Hillebrandt a fierce, mean, vocally formidable Alberich, and Gudjon Oskarsson (Glyndebourne's Commendatore) an equally secure Hagen no less menacing for looking like a kindly, bespectacled scoutmaster. (Chéreau had a not dissimilar view of Hagen - or maybe Ashman once saw something nasty in the scout shed.) Perhaps Arild Helleland's Mime was a little too kindly: there was little of calculating evil about him. Norns, especially, and Rhinemaidens were strongly cast."

Fresh Nordic insights

Norwegian Opera has its first full Ring cycle, and it's headed our way

"Before 1993, Wagner's Rheingold, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung had never been staged in Norway. Over the past three years, therefore, the Norwegian Opera has been building up its first Ring, under the baton of the former East German conductor Heinz Fricke and produced by the British director Mike Ashman, but with largely native singers making their debuts in the roles.

The project is now complete, with a Götterdämmerung that has just opened; two cycles will be given in Oslo and British audiences will be able to see the entire Ring cycle at Norwich's Theatre Royal in June 1997.

The strength and great joy of this production is that musical and theatrical elements work not only effectively in their own terms but also in combination with each other. The production teems with fresh insights.

It opens with a striking image: the three Norns, locked in embrace, against a bare, brooding Nordic landscape. At the end of the following scene, as Brünnhilde bids farewell to Siegfried, she raises a statuesque arm and the stage revolves - an exciting moment with the orchestra in full flood. For Siegfried's Rhine journey, a curtain descends with a conventionally painted Rhineland scene.

If at this point the traditionalists breathe a sigh of relief, they are in for a shock. The Gibichung Hall is a vaguely futuristic vision. Hagen monitors Siegfried's progress while seated at a control desk, and bellows his repeated "Hoiho!" as through a public address system. The austerity of the sci-fi decor is complemented by a pair of bright red armchairs, the "thrones" of Gunther and Gutrune.

Terje Stensvold's Gunther is a towering performance; he is wisely portrayed not as the usual ineffective pawn of Hagen, but as an unscrupulous character who knows what he wants. He comes dangerously close to eclipsing Gudjon Oskarsson's Hagen vocally, but this is a fine performance in a different mould. Unlike the lumbering Hagen of tradition, Oskarsson is a prowler. Hyperactive, obsessive; a chilling portrait of the misfit who turns out to be a killer.

Kjersti Ekeberg is a very acceptable Gutrune. The Siegfried of the American James O'Neal tends towards the lyrical rather than the heroic, but it is capable of good things.

Kathrine Hysing's sets and costumes for the second and third acts continue the ambivalence (and hence the universality) of the first. Minimalist in conception (a simple portal in Act II, a slab of rock in Act III), the sets are animated by John Bishop's virtuoso lighting plot, telling in its casting of facial shadow, spectacular in creating a portentously blood-red sky, or for that matter, a final conflagration.

Rosemarie Lang's Waltraute and Oskar Hillebrandt's Alberich are excellent, Carol Yahr's Brünnhilde a triumph. Originally a mezzo, Yahr just occasionally gives cause for concern at the top, but the passion with which she invests the vocal line makes it a tour de force.

Fricke's conducting is outstanding. He knows exactly how to keep things on the move. This is Wagner conducting on a par with anything that can be heard in the world today."