Whipped Cream Difficulties

I’ve been following the L.A. Opera’s staging of the Ring Cycle, and the associated “Ring Festival L.A.”, avidly. I’m excited by the idea of someone other than the usual suspects doing complete stagings of the operas, and I love the various events that have been arranged to go along with the staging.

But I wasn’t expecting Siegfried and Brunnhilde to openly revolt.

In separate interviews, British tenor John Treleaven, who plays the hero Siegfried, and American soprano Linda Watson, who plays Brunnhilde, said German director Achim Freyer’s avant-garde staging — which features a steeply tilted stage, bulky costumes and oversized masks — interferes with their acting and singing and poses excruciating physical burdens.

…

Watson called the set “the most dangerous stage I’ve been on in my entire career.…Your whole neck is tipped wrong. It’s very painful to do it for hours.”

As the LAT notes, this kind of public criticism during a production is rare. I’ve never heard of any performer claiming that a staging is actually physically dangerous, as Watson and Treleaven are. This makes me wish I had money and time to fly out to L.A.

Watson currently is the reigning Brunnhilde at the Bayreuth Festival

That must be a fun fact to drop at parties. “What do you do for a living, dear?” “Oh, I’m the reigning Brunnhilde at Bayreuth.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Clippings, Music, Wagner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.