Rheingold

We made our first venture to the opera in Paris last week. Rheingold was on, the first part of Wagner's Ring cycle. I love the Ring, for its music but also partly because it's super weird, combining Norse gods and ordinary people, magic and destiny and normal human choices. Of course, the weirdness makes it difficult to stage. And Wagner's ideas about German nationalism, and the later use of his music for Nazi propaganda, make it even harder, especially in Europe--so I was excited to see my first live European performance.

The Opera de Paris sells a number of standing-room places on the day of each performance for only €5, but they are in high demand, and sold to the first in line when the doors of the house open. So about four hours before the performance we set off for the opera house. Our walk took us through the Marais, one of the oldest neighborhoods of Paris, which shows its age with winding cobblestone streets and medieval buildings. Unfortunately the narrow streets meant I couldn't figure out how to photograph any of the former palaces and fortresses we passed! We came out of this maze on to the Place de la Bastille:

This is a monument to the July Revolution of 1830 (incidentally, the revolution that Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People is about; it's not about the 'main' French Revolution of 1789). The Bastille itself was torn down in the 1789 revolution and now has some cafes on top of it. Here's the opera house:

This guide to getting standing-room tickets is still quite accurate, in case you ever find yourself wanting to stand through an opera in Paris. An apparently devoted opera-going youth (he looked super young!) was organizing those who wanted to buy standing room tickets, and gave us a number. Many of our fellow-standers were both young and enthusiastic about the opera (including one student, wearing a fashionable cloak, who said he had stood through the entire Ring when they last put it on.) which is not necessarily the case at the Met. Maybe having tickets a third the price also helps to encourage this audience!

About an hour and a half before the show, we lined up by our numbers, not without a certain amount of jostling. Amid the jostling I began to realize that one of our companions, a self-proclaimed philosopher, was telling any strangers who would listen to him that Nietzsche was right: God was dead (!). He illustrated his points with a number of historical anecdotes that were mostly completely false (I can only speak for the medieval ones) but was gloriously undeterred by everyone else pointing this out. It was a bizarre experience--made slightly less so by the other French opera-goers assuring us, once they realized that we were from out of town, that "not all French people were crazy."

The best standing-room places went first, so by the time we got to buy our tickets we ended up with spaces at the very top of the house. But, fortunately for us, there were a lot of unused places. And, again unlike the Met, the ushers seemed very happy to allow the standers to sit down in unused seats, and even helped many of us to find seats as the lights dimmed. So civilized! And, to our pleased surprise, we found that English translations were provided as well as French.

The gorgeous, slow prelude seemed a bit muddy to me, but after that the orchestra warmed up (?) and, since I am totally unqualified to talk about the music, I shall only say I mostly really liked it musically, and that among the awesome singers Sophie Koch as Frika was extra awesome.

It was very much not the sort of production that people like at the Met. Here are the gods, on top of the world (their new castle Valhalla is being built in the background but you can't see it):

Opera nationale de Paris - not my photo and not the cast we saw.

For those of you who don't know the plot, here's a quick(ish) summary: The dwarf Alberich steals a lump of magical gold from the river Rhine which can be forged into a ring that would give its owner world dominion--but to forge the ring, he must curse love, and Alberich does. Wotan, king of the gods, has just had two giants build him a castle. He promised them the goddess Freya as their payment, but if the gods give her up they will die, because she alone can grow the golden apples that keep them young and strong. As god of just kingship, Wotan's power rests on his support of oaths and contracts, so breaking one of his own would basically doom him too. Loge, trickster god of fire, tells Wotan that Alberich has grown wealthy and powerful in his underground kingdom with his newly-forged ring. Wotan and Loge steal the ring, but Alberich curses it: everyone will want it, but it will always cause its owner's death. Wotan wants to keep it but is ominously warned by the earth-goddess Erda not to. The giants accept the ring and treasure in place of Freya, but immediately fight over it and one giant brother kills the other. As the other gods triumphantly enter Valhalla, Loge notes that with the cursed ring still in the world, the downfall of the gods may already be in motion.

For an alternate and much funnier synopsis, just watch this video.

A thing I liked about the production: the characters were really well-directed and coherently developed. For example, Frika, queen of the gods and Wotan's wife (who often gets stuck being a stereotypical shrew), in this production is nearly as power-hungry as Wotan--but she seems to know what's going on with Wotan's schemes, and to have plans of her own. Loge is portrayed as completely cynical: he knows that the gods are sort of rotten people, and doesn't take their grandiose posturing seriously because he sees their limits. And unlike in some presentations, these coherent characterizations meshed into a bigger picture, and so I imagine they were the director's work.

A thing I did not like: the gods really are completely awful power-hungry people in this production. They are often portrayed as having some good qualities--Wotan is wise; Frika loves her family; etc.--which slowly become twisted as Wotan starts violating his principles in order to hang on to power. Now it doesn't seem like a distorted interpretation of the libretto and music to highlight just how wrongly the supposedly good gods act: it's pretty bad. Some probably think that it makes a statement against tyranny to show the gods, who represent an old world order, in the worst possible light. My problem, though, is that it's boring. In this production, Wotan starts out interested only in power for its own sake, and at the end of the night, he's still only interested in power. Isn't an ambiguous and evolving character more interesting? Isn't a drama that centers on characters' changes and choices more compelling?

Opera national de Paris - not my photo.

Plus, the concept seemed to be to compare the gods to early-twentieth-century Germany--not a very original idea--which was accomplished partly through having giant banners, and later block letters, that say "Germania"--not too subtle. So I don't feel like this dramatic potential was lost in order to say anything very interesting.

That said, I would absolutely love to see direction of the actors like this all the time, and will obviously be going back for the next installment!