Review: Das Rheingold

Das Rheingold
Melbourne Opera
3 February 2021
Regent Theatre
5, 7 February
21 February
melbourneopera.com

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

If you're going to be the first opera back and the first production in the re-furbished The Regent after a year that left us wondering who was in charge at Valhalla, you may as well go Ring. 

And you may as well excel!

Melbourne Opera continue to dazzle with productions that are mostly funded independently and supported by sponsors and benefactors. Covid postponed Das Rheingold – twice – but the gods are back on side. And if you are unable to get to The Regent tonight or Sunday, Melbourne Digital Concert Hall are live streaming Sunday's performance.  And there's a performance in Bendigo at the gorgeous Ulumbarra Theatre on 21 February.

Das Rheingold  is the first part of Wagner's four-opera Ring Cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen. In its full 15  hours, it's been live binged since it was performed as a cycle at the first Bayreuth Festival in Germany in 1876. There are "Ring nuts" –  people who travel the world to see ALL the cycles; passion for this story is obsessive – who are planning to be in Melbourne in 2023 for the full cycle, which will be the first Australian independent production of the cycle since 1913.

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

Based on a Norse saga (the same one that inspired Tolkien and his Ring stories), there are dwarfs, giants, gods, golden apples, and a magic ring. It begins when a creepy man wonders why content and happy women don't fancy him, and decides that his having wealth and power will change that. He steals their gold and makes a ring that will give its owner power over the world. The gods get involved and they aren't much better at dealing with power and greed. Trickery, anger, bargaining, a goddess speaking the truth, death, despair, and a rainbow bridge follow. And Part 1 is just the prologue!

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

The cast of Das Rheingold is relatively small but 140 Victorian performers and creators and technicians are involved (and Wagnerian conductor Anthony Negus from the UK). Covid restrictions meant casting locally and one of the exciting elements of this production is having singers from the company's Richard Divall Emerging Artists Program in principal roles. 

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

 

 Director Suzanne Chaundy's consistent vision is neither past nor future but clearly reflects on the mythology and now. This opera was first performed in 1869, but its themes of power and greed are sadly still contemporary. Chaundy consistently supports creative teams that surpass any expectations of having limited resources. This production has the fraction of the resources available to other opera companies but is emotionally engaging, musically commanding and visually stunning.

The design team especially excel in creating an integrated world, despite some distractions like stage sound being heard and polystyrene looking a bit too much like polystyrene. Andrew Bailey's sets fly from heavens to the darkest pits using lifts, swing poles and ring motifs; Tobias Edwards's video is used sparingly to create magic; Harriet Oxley's costumes define  character; and Rob Sowinski's lighting connects all the elements and works with the music to support and the mood and momentum of the story. The holding back of some colours until the final act is especially wow.

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

Ring nuts need no convincing to see this production, but it's a remarkable opportunity for newbies to discover what the fuss is about. Or merely use the opportunity to hear opera singers and an 80-piece orchestra in an historic theatre that was built for opera.

Review: Into the Woods

Into the Woods
Victorian Opera
19 July 2014
The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 26 July
victorianopera.com.au

Photo by Jeff Busby

After the success of their Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine created Into the Woods (1986), which beat Phantom of the Opera at the Tonys and firmly sits on the top of many favourite-musical lists. Following the success of their 2013 production of Sunday in the Park with George, Victorian Opera have followed with an Into the Woods that's as close to sold out as it can be and even closer to perfection.

With a boldness, a sense of cheekiness and an understated sophistication, Vic Opera tell the tale with Australian twists and a loving understanding of the power of once-upon-a-time story telling. If you have a ticket, don't let it out of your sight because the show's simply unforgettable and reminds us that music theatre should never be a fading and dull copy of another production.

Lapine's book (he also directed the Broadway version) takes characters and well-known stories from the Brothers Grimm's collection of European fairy tales (mid-1800s) and sends them into the woods to find themselves together as part of a bigger story. Act one brings everyone through trials to their happy-ever-after; Act two asks what happens next and is as dark, confronting and blood-filled as traditional fairy tales really are.

Part of the inspiration for Woods was the 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by academic and therapist Bruno Bettleheim. Since his death (1990), Bettleheim has been criticised academically and personally, but his book continues to influence and inspire countless writers. Internationally successful Australian children's/young adult writer John Marsden (Tomorrow When the War Began series) is among those who recommend it. It's partly a Freudian psychoanalytic analysis of Fairy Tales (mostly the Grimm's collection) and the rest is a discussion about the psychological impact of fairy tales on children – or the importance of telling and re-telling stories. At the most simple level, we tell stories to understand the world.

But there's nothing simple about Into the Woods. From its surface of fairy tales and gorgeous syncopated rhymes (that Sondheim and his lyrics!), layers are torn away and complexities revealed until grown ups find themselves crying because they see it as a story about themselves. We re-tell stories to understand the world and our place in it.

And the music's by Sondheim, so it shares the every emotion without a word being spoken.

Photo by Jeff Busby

While one of the genius notes of Into the Woods is the complexity of its re-telling of known tales, much of the magnificence of Victorian Opera's production is how director Stuart Maunder lets the story be told without over complication or sentimentality, while supporting the comedy and freeing it from the so-well-known Broadway production that so many of us have seen because it was filmed for TV.

Adam Gardnir's design of bare trees creates an ever-changing wood that's comforting and familiar and terrifying and bone-like (with perhaps a nod to Freud), and the woods are given depth, darkness and magic flashes by Philip Lethlean's lighting. Which are all an ideal world for Harriet Oxley's costumes that take the shape of pantomime-fairy-tale costumes, but are filled with bold colour and geometric shapes that help tell a story that's for now and forever.

Conductor Benjamin Northey and sound designer Jim Atkins create a recordable pit–stage balance that uses the amplification to emphasise the unique sound of each singer, and helps to enforce the idea that stories are best told by human voices.

Vocally and emotionally the cast nail it. While Christina O'Neil (Baker's wife), Rowan Witt (Jack), Queenie van de Zandt (Witch), Josie Lane (Red Riding Hood) and Lucy Maunder (Cinderella) lead the way, everyone brings a real bit of themselves to their roles and every character has their moment of pure enchantment.

The only disappointment about Into the Woods is that it has so few shows and the tickets left can be counted on one hand (hint: try for singles). With producers letting sub-standard shows run for months in big theatres, surely there are ways to bring this production to a bigger audience. #IWish.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.