April 9, 2004, Friday

MOVIES, PERFORMING ARTS/WEEKEND DESK

OPERA REVIEW; One Company With a Test for Two Houses
By BERNARD HOLLAND

TORONTO, April 5 — An opera company argues its legitimacy in at least
two ways. One is a new theater, or at least a drastic betterment of
the one it already has. The other is its own production of Wagner’s
”Ring des Nibelungen”

The Canadian Opera is doing both, offering ”Die Walküre,”
”Siegfried” and ”Götterdämmerung” one by one at the Hummingbird
Center over the coming seasons and joining them to ”Das Rheingold”
in the soon-to-be Four Seasons Center for three full ”Ring” cycles
in 2006-7.

For performers, producers and audiences alike, Wagner submits opera
houses to major tests of endurance, resources and a sheer structural
tolerance for great weights both physical and mental. Voices with
gargantuan durability, directors and set designers with new light on
Wagner’s sordid epic, time and money to put them together — all must
be found.

Drawing audiences is less of a problem. Like Deadheads toward the
Grateful Dead, opera fans will certainly swarm to Toronto. Dazed by
the beauties of the ”Ring,” tolerant of its longueurs and awkward
dramatic pauses and bristling with new cosmic interpretations of their
own, ”Ring” Trekkies will embark on a week of opera hovering
somewhere between survival trip and religious retreat. The Toronto
”Ring,” which opened with ”Die Walküre” on Sunday, splits its
personalities, with Michael Levine creating the overall production but
different directors doing each opera, here Atom Egoyan, known
principally for film work.

In Mr. Levine’s vision of 21st-century disorder, Siegmund, Sieglinde
and Hunding live rough on a construction site; overhead are spider
webs of girders and catwalks. Current-event updates of Wagner’s
primeval forests and their inhabitants defy consistent
metaphor. Weaponry is a stumbling block: Glocks and Uzis for spears
and swords do not fit the texts. Suspension of disbelief must work
that much harder.

Clothes are consistent only for their dirtiness, both men and women
with ankle-length coats and dresses of not-too-distant date. No amount
of recostuming or choreography will ever persuade the modern eye to
accept Wagner’s Valkyries with a completely straight face, but here
their dress is elegant, long, low-cut and black and comes as close to
Amazonian sex appeal as we are likely to get.

Thank the conductor Richard Bradshaw for the earnestness and energy of
the Toronto cast. As Siegmund, Clifton Forbis sings with strength and
presence. So does Adrianne Pieczonka, although Mr. Egoyan would have
done well to tone down her overwrought staggers, crawls, eye-rolling
and arm-waving. (The immobility of Wagner’s narrative style cannot be
offset, only embraced. The action is in the music.)

Frances Ginzer’s Brünnhilde was a picture of dignity, so too Judit
Nemeth’s Fricka. Despite the sometimes painful wear in his singing
voice, Peteris Eglitis’s Wotan was not unconvincing. Pavlo Hunka was
Hunding.

One heard no important voices but a lot of important singing. ”Die
Walküre” needs a special kind of advocacy: one that asks us to
indulge its excesses and yet feel grateful for its great surges of
power.

The orchestra sounded excellent. From prime seats in the orchestra
section, the Hummingbird Center sounds like a hall that does not need
to be replaced. Woodwinds and lower strings leap out of the pit;
voices are clear and present.

The sound in other parts of the hall is less democratic, I am told. A
few blocks away, groundbreaking for the new opera house begins next
week.

Published: 04 – 09 – 2004 , Late Edition – Final , Section E , Column
1 , Page 3