Siegfried in Toronto

[Helene]

I'm attending the third cycle of The Ring of the Nibelungen in Toronto, which has opened the new Four Seasons Centre, and I just saw a remarkable staging of Siegfried, which culminated in a pure use of bodies.

All four Ring operas were designed by Michael Levine, but each opera has a different director. The last three operas were performed one per year over the last three years at the Hummingbird. Das Rheingold, directed by Levine, was performed for the first time three Tuesdays ago as the first opera performed in the new house.

Das Rheingold opened in a white silk box, with silk fabric on the stage and on three walls, and stark, blue-green lighting. It was a very Canadian north opening, resembling the photographs of Antarctica a friend showed me from his trip last year. The Canadian Opera Company Ring begins with global warming, as the snow/ice thaws to create the Rhine. But in the second scene, the silk is pulled from the stage, with civilization in place of nature, represented in part by rows and rows of lights in the wings, and eventually, with an architectural model of Valhalla.

The set design has been incremental since that second scene of Das Rheingold, with the cranes, lights, and pieces of Valhalla appearing in more and more disarray, as the story unfolds and the universe degenerates in the underworld, on Earth, and in the heavens. Siegfried opened with Siegfried sitting on the stump of an enormous tree, and all of the "debris," now including the bodies of his mother and father (played by actor/mimes, flown in), overhead, as if they were in the upper foliage and branches of that tree. (The theory is that this is all in Siegfried's dream world.) The rest of the stage was an 8 foot padded rake -- described by the COC's Technical Director during yesterday's mini-tour -- covered by a black cloth, with a small, sunk in area downstage left for Mime's forge space. The flames were represented by a group of arms that moved slowly, bathed in orange-red light.

In the second act, there was a cave with a number of supers in the Siegfried uniform -- white hospital pajamas -- with the mismash set back on the stage. The magic of this act was that five or six of the supers were flown in to make a pyramid representing the dragon. Since they were flown, they only had to be connected loosely, like sky-divers holding hands, and their somewhat floaty motions embodied a slow-moving dragon. The pyramid collapsed slowly, with the death of the dragon at Siegfried's hands.

The last act opened with a circle of interlocked bodies in fetal-like position, all in white, simply on the black-covered raked stage. When Siegfried was called by the Woodbird, he rose from the mass. Wotan entered, in the standard costume, but with a white eye patch, and called on Erda to rise. Erda was covered in a black cloth or robe, and she rose from the black floor. Wotan and Siegfried then had their confrontation scene. During this scene, the supers rolled slowly outward to create a circle that represented the cloud-covered mountain, then rose to their knees from the prone position, and gradually stood. As Wotan and Siegfried discussed the fire surrounding Brunnhilde, the supers raised their arms slowly, and were bathed in amber-red light. It was the simplest theatrical conceit -- Okay, children, let's pretend we're fire! -- and it worked like a charm.

In standard productions of Siegfried, there's a rock, Brunnhilde is on it, and Siegfried tries to kill a lot of music pretending that there are obstacles between him and Brunnhilde, who's clearly in plain sight. In this production, directed by Francois Girard, with choreography by Donna Feore, as Siegfried broke through the flames, two of the supers at the front created a portal in the circle for him, and then all 20-24 of them gradually walked backwards, creating a multiple-layered semicircle, with some standing, some kneeling, and all in slightly different directions, and Siegfried walked through them slowly in search of Brunnhilde. A very slow motion version of Siegfried searching for Odette among the swans.

Brunnhilde, still dressed in the black, Victorian-era-like dress in which she was put to sleep, covered by Wotan's dark gray overcoat, was also covered by a black cloth, upstage right in front of the semicircle of supers. To expose her, Siegfried lifted the cloth from the top, and carried it on a diagonal to downstage left. It was lined in white, and looked like an upside-down white teardrop on the black stage, with Brunnhilde as the black dot in wide part of the tear. (Almost yin-yang.) With Siegfried standing upstage center, among the figures in the semi-circle, Brunnhilde's awakening was ecstatic, but private; since Siegfried was out of her sightline, instead of hovering next to her, her gradual recognition that someone must have awakened her, and that she was no longer an immortal, was that much more potent.

As their long conversation unfolded, the supers created a solid line across upstage, and as the conversation headed toward the love duet, they slowly peeled out of the line, fragmenting it, and walked offstage, leaving Siegfried and Brunnhilde alone.

It wasn't dancing, but the use of human bodies to create a landscape, physical and psychological, was, in my opinion, an instance of directorial inspiration.

[bart]

In this production, directed by Francois Girard, with choreography by Donna Feore, as Siegfried broke through the flames, two of the supers at the front created a portal in the circle for him, and then all 20-24 of them gradually walked backwards, creating a multiple-layered semicircle, with some standing, some kneeling, and all in slightly different directions, and Siegfried walked through them slowly in search of Brunnhilde. A very slow motion version of Siegfried searching for Odette among the swans.

It wasn't dancing, but the use of human bodies to create a landscape, physical and psychological, was, in my opinion, an instance of directorial inspiration.

Sounds like a great idea, and I'm glad it worked theatrically. It would be interesting to see something like this done with the test by fire and water in Magic Flute, another scene which is usually underwhelming when compared with the significance of what is supposed to be occurring..

[Paul Parish]

Helene, Thanks SO MUCH for taking the time to describe that -- it sounds really wonderful.

I have no idea if they were influenced by anything like what I'm about to describe, but in Chinese dance theater there are ways of having a large chorus create landscapes -- I saw a fairy tale about a horse, wonderful thing, that included a key scene in a field of tall grass, amber waves of grain, like, which was created by dancers lying on their backs with their arms in hte air - it's evidently an ancient and famous theatrical effect, highly stylized, really effective.

And Bart yes, yes yes.

[sandik]

Wow -- that sounds stunning. I think Wagner would have been quite pleased.