WAGNER’S INCESTUOUS NARCISSISM
by David P. Goldman
The curtain rises in silence to reveal a stage composed of parallel white planks. With the first bars of the prelude”an insistent, agitated gesture in the lower strings”the planks dissolve into a single image of storm clouds. The floor of the set rotates vertically into a backdrop, from which a snowstorm emerges in three dimensions. The planks are now the towering trees of the nocturnal German forest.
A fugitive threads his away among them, his faltering steps mimicking Wagner’s ambiguous downbeat, pursued by armed men with lanterns. With another rotation, the trees have become the slanting roof beams of a rude house. The fugitive enters, and sings, “Whosoever hearth this be, here must I rest”; the orchestra falls silent as his unaccompanied voice completes a long-awaited cadence in D minor.
So begins the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Die Walküre, of which the opening alone is worth the price of admission. Those first moments of Robert LePage’s production, sadly, are as good as it got. That is not LePage’s fault, though, but Wagner’s. Wagner produces a few transformative moments, bracketed by long periods of musical stasis. This alternation of ecstasy and ennui is not a question of incapacity”the young Wagner could turn out good style imitations of Mendelssohn”but a matter of compositional choice.
