An Afternoon of Operatic and Sonic Spectacular at Dallas Symphony’s ‘Götterdämmerung’
/By Truman C. Wang
10/24/2024
Photo credit: DSO
Wagner’s Ring is a herculean undertaking for any opera company. It has never been done by an American symphony orchestra, that is, until the Dallas Symphony Orchestra performed the complete cycle in concert this month, over a span of eight days (October 13, 15, 17, 20) Fabio Luisi, the DSO’s Music Director since 2020, is an experienced ring leader, as it were, having conducted the final two Ring operas at the Met during the Levine era. In a recent New York Times interview, he championed concert opera as an alternative to regietheater opera that’s prevalent in today’s new productions, and I fully agree. I appreciate hearing the music and singing without a director’s ‘visual aids’ in the form of miming or play-acting. Operas are often staged nowadays as if to help audiences in every way from having to do anything so exacting as to use their ears and listen in detail to what is being sung, said, and played.
To be fair, the DSO Ring did have a stage director, Alberto Triola, whose job was not so much creating visual effects but coaching the singers in their acting and ensemble blocking, as well as designing dramatic lighting for strategic moments. Other than the ring itself, there were no physical props such as Siegfried’s drinking cup, a magic helmet or Hagen’s spear. Even so, one had no problem visualizing them given the excellent acting and Wagner’s highly descriptive music. One particular inspired piece of ‘staging’ was Siegfried’s Death and Funeral Music, where the spotlight went out on the lone figure of Siegfried, with his back turned toward the audience, and a funeral cortege of dark figures marching slowly across the stage to collect him for the underworld. Another memorable stage picture was seeing archenemies Gutrune and Brünnhilde reconciling and embracing after realizing they were both victims of Hagen’s duplicity.
I only had time to attend the final Ring opera, Götterdämmerung, on Sunday October 20. Musically, I was most impressed with the Siegfried of Daniel Johansson, whose powerful tenor voice rang out repeated high A’s with easy, unforced power – the timber burnished and eloquent, the focus secure, the text trenchantly pronounced – and was equally telling in the quiet narrative of Siegfried’s life review, after Hagen’s potion begins to wear off. He seemed to me the Siegfried we have long waited for.
Lise Lindstrom, the Brünnhilde, sounded uncannily like Gwyneth Jones – warm, assured, generous, but vocally a bit unruly. But there is no denying she is a superb actress, unflinching in the vengeance trio and poignant in the Immolation. Bass Stephen Milling had the necessary black sonority for Hagen’s villainy. Tómas Tómasson, a formidable Alberich, returned in Hagen’s dream to attempt another ring grab. Mezzo-soprano Deniz Uzun had the right vocal weight and timber for the grandeur of Waltraute’s Narrative. Often, Gunther is portrayed as a weakling caricature, but baritone Roman Trekel sang the role admirably and nobly (Gunther, as Fischer-Dieskau pointed out, is a king.) Similarly, soprano Kathryn Henry portrayed Guturne not as a lustrous vamp, but a warm-hearted, aristocratic lady. There was no double-casting; each singer sang only one role. There was a beautifully-tuned and delightfully-acted trio of Rhinemaidens and an impressive, dramatic trio of Norns. The 96-strong Dallas Symphony Chorus sang the Gibichungs in act 2 wedding scene, commenting on the proceedings with raucous energy that melted into frozen horror.
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra played like the gods, tirelessly, lyrically, and magnificently throughout the six-hour concert (including two intermissions of 60 and 20 minutes.) The expanded orchestra comprised 10 horns (some doubling in Wagner tubas) and 6 harps. Fabio Luisi conducted with true feeling for the music’s dramatic impulse and its long spans. There were many orchestral highlights, including a Siegfried’s brilliant Rhine Journey that magically transitioned into the Gibichungs’ great hall with muted horns, a shattering Siegfried’s Death and Funeral Music, and an apocalyptic Immolation Scene that brought the house down and the stunned audience to their feet.
Another star of the concert was the perfect acoustics of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, a shoebox-shaped hall (like the Vienna’s Musikverein) built in 1989 and designed by architect I.M. Pei (who also designed the Dallas City Hall.) From where I was sitting, in row S center orchestra, the sound was warm, clear, beautiful and richly detailed for both orchestra and voices. I could just imagine what it might sound like upstairs (It is an axiom among concertgoers that in any hall, the higher you sit, the better the sound.). It was a long but rewarding afternoon of operatic and sonic spectacular at the symphony.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.