<\/p>\n
Richard Wagner\u2019s \u201cThe Ring of the Nibelung\u201d has been probing the morality of power and possession for a century and a half. The composer designed a revolutionary theater for the four-night epic in the provincial German town of Bayreuth. And this summer Wagnerites will climb the Green Hill to the Festival House for a 150th anniversary production of what remains the greatest immersive experience on the planet \u2014 and the most daunting theatrically and musically to execute.<\/p>\n
\u201cDie Walk\u00fcre,\u201d the second opera in the tetralogy, is Gustavo Dudamel\u2019s last grand project of his tenure as Los Angeles Philharmonic music director, and last weekend Walt Disney Concert Hall became an L.A. Bayreuth. <\/p>\n
The Bayreuth experience encompasses not just the production and performance but also a sense of place and purpose. It becomes a pilgrimage. You enter a different world. The orchestral sound comes out of a hidden pit as though from the ether. You are expected to sit in worshipful, silent awe for hours. Yet that different world may turn out to represent the one you have left. <\/p>\n
The last Bayreuth \u201cRing\u201d looked like a Netflix series taking place in a modernist woodsy villa. This summer the festival promises (or threatens?) that the stage imagery for its new anniversary production will, for the first time, be generated by AI. <\/p>\n
Disney couldn\u2019t be less like that. Frank Gehry said he designed it to be Los Angeles\u2019 living room. Yet the set he designed for \u201cWalk\u00fcre\u201d shortly before he died in December nonetheless captured Wagner\u2019s immersive essence. Large, irregular, corpuscular clouds made of crumpled paper hung over the stage. They were strikingly lit, making them come alive. For the third act, which opens with the famous \u201cRide of the Valkyries,\u201d Gehry designed paper sculpture horses in different poses of motion that, though stationary, activated the stage.<\/p>\n
The effect was to transform an iconic space that has become a symbol of L.A.\u2019s embrace of sky and nature, of bringing the outside inside. <\/p>\n
Two years ago, for a new production of \u201cDas Rheingold,\u201d <\/a>the first \u201cRing\u201d opera, Gehry had designed a semi-pit for the orchestra in Disney and an elevated stage on the organ loft. This time he went further, turning the wooden organ pipes, or \u201cFrench fries,\u201d into a tree. The full effect was a Gehry wonderland.<\/p>\n Wagner has always been essential to L.A. His sense of story and sonics began influencing Hollywood as early as the silent era <\/a>and has never ceased. John Williams\u2019 gloriously Wagnerian soundtracks helped launch the never-ending \u201cStar Wars\u201d sagas. <\/p>\n Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Act 3 of Wagner\u2019s \u201cDie Walk\u00fcre\u201d<\/p>\n (Jennifer McCord \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Gehry and Williams also happen to be the two greatest L.A. artists with whom Dudamel became closest during his L.A. tenure. The way Dudamel designed his L.A. Phil \u201cRing\u201d project, which he has been obsessed with for the last decade and hopes to complete, is an only-in-L.A. monument. (His final Disney show of the season<\/a> is June 7, but even after he departs for New York, and Daniel Harding<\/a> takes over as music director, he expects to return for short stints.) <\/p>\n In the summer of 2022, Dudamel staged the third act of \u201cWalk\u00fcre\u201d<\/a> at the Hollywood Bowl with green-screen video technology, allowing characters to look like they were racing through space on motorcycles in a video game. Staged by Yuval Sharon, it became a modern-day take on the L.A. Phil\u2019s historic staging at the Hollywood Bowl a century earlier. That one had live horses, framing the venue as a place for the grandest of spectacles. Sharon also happened to have been the assistant of Achim Freyer, who staged Los Angeles Opera\u2019s uniquely imaginative \u201cRing\u201d in 2010. That led Sharon to then found the Industry and stage the echt-Wagnerian epic \u201cHopscotch,\u201d<\/a> turning L.A.\u2019s streets and parks into an epic stage.<\/p>\n At Disney, once more and more profusely than ever, the space became the place. The orchestra in its pit, with no risers, inhabited the hall. Dudamel conducted as if transfixed. Raw when he needed storm or battle; extra excited when Valkyries cavorted with horses; effusive when emotion took over senses; tender when morality mattered. Unlike surround-sound in movie theaters which pinpoints directionality, the result here was diffusion \u2014 not eavesdropping but pure immersion.<\/p>\n The production by the film director Alberto Arvelo was not elaborate drama. Gods were lofty gods, not you and me. They mostly stood on the elevated stage, but occasionally came down to the catwalk in front of the orchestra. Cindy Figueroa\u2019s costumes made them exotic figures.<\/p>\n Ryan Speedo Green\u2019s Wotan made the king of the gods an exceptional presence. His dignity is impenetrable. His lust for power has bizarre ramifications. That includes siring twins who fall in love \u2014 their child, a supposed hero. <\/p>\n Green\u2019s voice radiated power and defiance, fighting off the compassion he knows will spell his end. Christine Goerke, a glorious Br\u00fcnnhilde (as she also was at the Bowl), filled the hall and hearts. Jessica Faselt and Jamez McCorkle as the twins Sieglinde and Siegmund, along with Soloman Howard as the frightening Hunding, made the more lyrical first act glow. <\/p>\n But it was the big picture, the awareness in Disney of our own environment, that made this \u201cWalk\u00fcre\u201d singular. It\u2019s a new Wagner for our time and place and begs for continuation through the full cycle.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Richard Wagner\u2019s \u201cThe Ring of the Nibelung\u201d has been probing the morality of power and possession for a century and a half. The composer designed a revolutionary theater for the four-night epic in the provincial German town of Bayreuth. 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