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Wow, sounds wonderful!

Yes indeed, Helene! I'm also gonna be at the MET tomorrow for Das Rheingold! I'm freezing here-(there were like 200 degrees in Miami when I left on the 3th), but I'm having a lot of fun. happy.png. I was actually lucky enough to catch a glimpse of one of the four renderings of "The Scream" by Munch(one of my all time favorite painters)- this afternoon at the MOMA.

More to come..! flowers.gif

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Darn. I saw your post too late, cubanmiamiboy. I was at tonight's Carnegie concert too. It was a wonderful concert. Enjoy Rheingold. If you think NY is freezing today, it's a good thing you were not here earlier in the week, when it felt more like January than April. Today was the first day that it actually felt like Spring here. Have fun.

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What a wonderful concert abatt! If that wasn't enough, on my way out I was roaming thru' the exhibition room just in time to catch a ballerina dancing one beautiful "dying swan" on a distant TV screen. When I approached it to look at it closer, I then saw it was no other than Prima Kirkland...oh, how wonderful she was...! wub.png

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The Machine was H I D E O U S, Abatt! At one point the whole panneling got stuck while twisting and a stage hand had to come and start lowering the individual panels one by one. A lot of noise was also being produced backstage at the time, I guess due to it. I couldn't stand that device. The whole thing looked more Cirque du Soleil than MET. They need to get rid of it.

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It had some very nice effects in the HD broadcast, which isn't the same as in the house, but I think it was a disappointment: it took too much of LePage's focus -- in other of his productions, opera and theater that I've seen, he was far more focused on the interaction of he characters. The Met did get a newly reinforced stage out of it, but I suspect the stagehands wish the fire at the end of Gotterdammerung would really subsume the set.

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. The Met did get a newly reinforced stage out of it, but I suspect the stagehands wish the fire at the end of Gotterdammerung would really subsume the set.

The only reason they needed a reinforced stage was to accomodate the LePage monstrosity known as the Machine.

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Yes. Unlike many things that cost money, the improvements to the stage are there as long as the stage stands, and I think in one of the HD's one of the technical people say that something would not have been possible without the reinforcements.

Vancouver got infrastructure changes that were languishing only because of the Olympics. It's not the way I would have preferred they had gotten them, but I'm willing to recognize the improvement

I don't think The Machine was a monstrosity. I think it didn't work well and the technical issues overwhelmed other concerns, like direction.

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I don't think The Machine was a monstrosity. I think it didn't work well and the technical issues overwhelmed other concerns, like direction.

It is VERY distracting. If Academy Awards were given here, the MET would be competing with more force for the special effects category rather than artistic direction or leading/supporting roles. Even if you don't want to, you keep looking at that thing's twisting and shape changing, and wishing that nothing will go wrong...(which in fact wasn't the case during Rheingold). They need to "clean" the stage and try to go back to more elegant, less effectism oriented productions.

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If you want to see a beautiful, traditional Ring, come to Seattle this summer. There are a couple of lower-voiced veterans that I don't love, but the core cast, some veterans -- Grimsley as Wotan; Blythe as Fricka, 2nd Norn, and Waltraute in "Gotterdammerung"; Fink as Alberich, Skelton and Wray as Siegmund and Siegliende, Harmer as Freia, Zetlan as Forest Bird, and Collins as Froh -- some highly regarded and experienced "newbies" -- Dennis Peterson as Mime (Met Opera), Mellor as Brunnhilde (Paris Opera, Opera North), and Vinke as Siegfried (Koln and Berlin) and a lot of wonderful singers in smaller roles (Rheinmaidens, Valkyries) might be the best ensemble assembled in Seattle. It's going to be Speight Jenkins' last Ring -- he retires after the third Wagner Competition in August 2014 -- but, even so, there are a lot of opera houses competing for singers in this Wagner Bicentennial birth year.

The sets are stunning -- the forests of the Pacific Northwest were the inspirations -- and it's directed by Stephen Wadsworth, one of the most renowned of American theater directors. It's character-driven, and even if you sit all the way on the far sides of the top tier, you'll be able to see.

Did I mention you should come to Seattle this summer? (And bring your Mom with you!)

I don't know much about the Erda, Lucille Beer, or the Loge, Mark Schowalter, but I've been hearing nothing but raves about Stefan Margita, who sang the Loge at yesterday's Met performance, and whom I heard in San Francisco last year. Did you like any of the voices, despite the production?

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There was an article in today's NYTimes about the Machine malfunction on Sat.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/arts/music/rheingold-at-the-met-and-elina-garanca-at-carnegie-hall.html?ref=arts

Did you have a fun trip, cubanmiamiboy? By the way, there is also a review of the BSO concert we saw on Friday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/arts/music/daniele-gatti-conducts-boston-symphony-at-carnegie-hall.html?ref=arts

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The huge disappointment was this: "it was a reminder that the key to the “Ring” is not the loud, flashy parts, but the small eddies of emotion that find no home in Mr. Lepage’s frigid production." because in his other non-Cirque productions, it's the way the two play off of each other that's the strength of his direction. As he implied in the "Wagner's Dream" documentary, The Machine disappointed him, too. It's too bad they didn't give him a "Dutchman" or "Lohengrin" to start with, or a "Meistersinger." Sigh.

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I saw "Damnation" both in HD and at the Met, and he was no stranger to big spectacles with many moving parts, which was why I thought Lepage was an inspired choice for The Ring. The combination of inexperience with Wagner and thetechnological/engineering approach resulted in having bitten off far more than he could chew.

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Cristian,

It sounds like the machine messed up during one of the few good images it created in the Ring. I do think this new Ring production is a big flop. It was supposed to make exciting things possible but ended up just being a weird non-descript set (for the scenes with the Gods, for example), or simply a video screen. You should do as Helene says and go see the Seattle Ring. It might be the only traditional Ring left in the entire world! LOL

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