Free opera of the Week: Graham Vick’s last RhineGold
OperaSlippedisc, courtesy of OperaVision streams Birmingham Opera Company’s production of Wagner’s RhineGold in a new English translation by Jeremy Sams. This RhineGold can be seen as a step closer to Wagner’s vision of a total work of art acting as a lever of change in society. Birmingham Opera Company is known for staging opera in empty warehouses and disused factories, but here performs RhineGold in the relatively conventional surroundings of Birmingham Symphony Hall. The production is from August 2021 with the pandemic still dictating so much of our lives. This did not stop the company gathering an orchestra of 87 players from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and a stellar international cast performing alongside local volunteers. Conspicuous in his absence is the company’s founding director, Graham Vick, who passed away just as rehearsals were beginning. True to Vick’s spirit, his long-term collaborator Richard Willacy brings an operatic masterpiece close to the community that the company serves, with no fear of social commentary. This is an urban RhineGold; Rhinemaidens are selfie-taking party girls, Alberich is cycle courier, and Wotan is first seen giving a press conference for FNN: Fake News Network.
The Plot: Hidden in plain sight, three guardians collude to protect the gold for those in power. An outsider, Alberich stumbles upon them and an opportunity to make his life matter, but at a cost. Meanwhile, Leader Wotan desperate to hang on to the Gods’ fading glory, struggles to balance power, his own laws and the standards of public life. But his Chief Advisor, Loge, always has a plan. Mother Nature warns that greed for power will bring its own destruction. No-one listens. Whose lives matter? Who pays the price?
AVAILABLE FROM 9 September 2022 at 1900 CET / 1800 London / 1300 New York
Director Richard Willacy on the making of RhineGold
In the isolating year leading up to RhineGold, Graham Vick and I spoke many times about ‘castles in the sky’ – the illusions composed by leaders in whom we are expected to place our trust. Yet, he chose Wagner’s RhineGold for many reasons, not just as a Zeitgeisty political story. As always, for Graham, it was personal; it provided an opportunity for the artists who he has mentored to shine, a clear gesture of the company’s growth over 30 years and a significant work for Alpesh Chauhan’s first production as Music Director. But as often happens, life and death trump intention. In the end the journey for all towards RhineGold was intensely personal. Sadly, Graham fell ill just before we started rehearsals in mid-June, attending only a couple of sessions on Zoom in the first days as we sang through some sections in a rehearsal room. This was to be our last contact.
In Birmingham, we choose an opera, find a venue, assemble the company from scratch and work together to create a production. Taking it day by day, we begin the process of exploring the material, working on the content, testing it, talking it through with volunteers from all walks of life and artists from all over the world. Everything is developed in real time. No sets or costumes built in advance. We work in and of the now. Our usual type of space is a disused factory, abandoned nightclub, ice rink, aircraft hangar. In June 2021 we still had options for a Big Top version but, with COVID still very much present and without Graham, by mid-July, I had decided to bring the work to Birmingham’s amazing Symphony Hall which itself is set in the same building as the International Conference Centre; somehow a suitable home to Leader Wotan to launch his ‘Your Lives Matter’ campaign.
And then the worst happened. Graham passed away on 17 July 2021. The company’s response was overwhelming. We sat down together, talked about our feelings and decided together to go for it. Over a few devastating, fractured weeks, the company – many of whom have their own personal relationship with Graham – discovered what really binds us: we shared our experience, humanity and purpose.
And here you have the result. It is not a Graham Vick production. I’m pretty sure he would have gone a different way on many characters and, as is usual in Birmingham, the design was conjured on the hoof. But it is testament to Graham’s conviction to trust the material, to create a space in which universal truths can manifest in images from the now, to base all choices on repertoire, singers, images and language to represent and speak to a diverse 21st century audience. If we allow these great works to breathe in the air of the present, they will speak of who we really are, now; they live in us, the flawed humankind they portray. And what a portrayal; Wagner’s genius RhineGold 150 years on from its first manifestation, delivers such hardwired rollercoasting dramatic, stirring, emotional depth, joyful irony and humour.
With a great story, great performers, an open door to explore the work with the public as part of the process, a barnstorming orchestra, 3 bins, 28 washing up bowls, a table, two chairs, a lectern and a pop-up in a BOC’d space, the DNA of the company shines through. Even in a concert hall, it is still perhaps – as our tag line states – ‘Not what you expect from Opera’.
Is it Graham Vick’s Das Rhinegold now, not Wagner’s? If so no, thanks. It must be Vick’s because the singers don’t get even a mention – could it be this a silent show? It must be so. (I beg your pardon if the singers were mentioned in this long apology, I didn’t pay much attention to it. There’s one rule of thumb that had served me well all these years: The length of the apology/justification is in direct proportion with the director’s ego and with what he has done to the libretto. This might explain why certain operas have survived centuries and entered the repertoire, while modern stage directors’ productions last only as long as the director’s buddies last in the office.)
JJ, if (as a teacher of the English language) I were looking for a good illustration of the meaning of the word ‘prejudice’, I would use your comment.
It appears that you have neither read the introduction (“I didn’t pay much attention to it”) nor watched the video (“If so, no thanks”). Yet you consider it acceptable to use this production as evidence for a blanket dismissal of all “modern stage directors’ productions”.
Next time, please read and watch before posting.
‘if (as a teacher of the English language) I were looking for a good illustration of the meaning of the word ‘prejudice’, I would use your comment.’
Be my guest. Should I upload a picture of myself as well for the edification of your students? If they are anything like the majority of their generation, they _might_ have trouble reading and expressing themselves using words, and even more trouble using complete sentences, their preference being for simple emojis and pictures. If you are a teacher of languages, or indeed anything, you have my condolences.
To the rest of your comment… May I ask you if you live in a large city with a regular opera season? If you do, what’s your criteria for selecting the opera performances you wish to attend? A regular opera season in a large city offers roughly between 80 and 200 performances per season. Don’t tell me you attend all of them because, with all due respect, I won’t believe you. So what’s your criteria? (Rhetoric question, I’m not really interested in your personal criteria; I’m sure it fits your personal preferences and circumstances.) My point is you decide what you are going to attend in advance, based on criteria unrelated to the _performances_ themselves. You use proxy criteria. It can’t be done otherwise.
Methinks you sound exactly like the sort of person who can’t entertain the idea that any opinion other than their own might be more appealing to others. It’s not prejudice per se you protest, it’s the fact that my ‘prejudice’ isn’t yours. I prefer ‘criteria’ to ‘prejudice’ but each its own. You know, I take back those condolences I mentioned in the first paragraph. I think you shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the young with this mindset of yours.
Yes, I didn’t read that long apology _very_ carefully (as a teacher of English you should know the difference between paying _much_ attention to something and paying _no attention at all_), but I read it carefully enough to be reasonably confident to write what I wrote. You, no doubt, have read it with great attention. Tell us, does it mention the singers by name? If it doesn’t, more power to me for arriving at the same conclusion by wasting less time than you. I recall it makes a generic mention of singers Vick has ‘mentored’. What, is he a voice teacher now? A conductor? Yes, my criteria for attending opera is the music, the words, and the quality of singing, how cheeky of me. Strange but _most_ classical opera composers and librettists didn’t feel the urge to justify themselves in print all the time, they let their _original_ creations speak for them.
Let’s imagine an experiment. Let’s have a stage director trying to sell his ‘opera’ production to the masses, without the opera, that is without the music and the text; try to sell as a silent shown. Then let’s try to sell an opera without visuals. Oh wait, this is what the audio recording industry did very successfully for a century (and still does so occasionally), selling both bits of opera (arias and short scenes), and complete opera recordings. Let’s try to sell an opera in live concert performance format. What do you think, what’s going to sell better, or at all? The silent show or the opera in live concert performance format? Well? Who is riding whose coattails? The stage director riding the composer’s coattails, or vice versa?
re that ‘prejudice’, it looks like I have to share the hot spot in the limelight with you and indeed everybody who routinely makes decisions based on proxy information, in other words, with the entire adult population of the planet. What bothers you is that my choice of proxy information isn’t yours. Bad luck for you. Grow up.
If you are indeed a teacher you should be able to concentrate long enough to read this very long comment, and hopefully also understand it. If you are a member of the emoji-and-pictures-crowd, you’ve already quit after the first sentence.
JJ, I have no problem with people having a different opinion to mine. I did not express an opinion on this production because I haven’t seen it. I simply objected to anybody dismissing it, and asserting that it will be short-lived, without having seen it.
As for the director’s piece “on the making of RhineGold”, that is an accurate description of what he wrote. With the possible exception of the third and fourth sentences of his fourth paragraph, it is NOT an “apology/justification”. This is clearly an unconventional production, and it is understandable that the director felt that viewers of the video might be interested to know something of the process by which it was brought to the stage. He also took the opportunity to include an affectionate tribute to a fine director who died during the preparation of the production.
To object to NL’s shorthand usage “Vick’s Last Rhinegold”, in the TITLE of his post is silly. Most people who read this blog world be no more confused by that than they would be by – for example – “Chereau’s Ring”. Moreover, any readers who didn’t understand the title would be immediately enlightened by the first sentence of the post, which refers to “Wagner’s Rhinegold”.
As for my criteria when deciding which operas to book, I read anything relevant, watch video trailers if there are any, talk to people who may have insights that I lack, or who have seen the production, and use any previous experience that may be relevant. On this occasion, the name “Graham Vick” meant that I certainly would not have dismissed the production as summarily as you evidently did.
Noted.
You told me a lot of things I did not ask for, but didn’t tell me that one bit of information I _did_ ask for: Are the singers mentioned by name in the text? To judge from how studiously you have avoided to answer my only question, I am pretty sure they aren’t mentioned.
You do have a problem with people having a different opinion. If you hadn’t you wouldn’t have replied to my comment at all, or you would have written a standalone comment. You were irritated someone dared to dismiss (in my opinion, in a rather humorous way) a production they haven’t seen, but which _you_ thought worth checking out also _without having seen it_ . Quote from your comment: ‘the name “Graham Vick” meant that I certainly would not have dismissed the production as summarily as you evidently did.’ This is what had prompted your reaction, you thought here was someone who wasn’t holding the name Graham Vick in the same esteem you do, so let’s call them prejudiced. Would you have reacted likewise to someone’s opinion on a production by a director you don’t care for? I don’t think so. You wouldn’t have checked out an uninteresting (to you) post at all, so you wouldn’t have known if people had commented on it or not. But you hold the name Graham Vick in some esteem, so you checked out this post, smelt a dissenter, and rushed to call him prejudiced.
For sure Norman’s title is silly, or rather all his titles are saturated in hyperbole; we all know this. I am not in the least ‘confused’. I touched on it in my first comment with something I thought people will understand as irony. Apparently it didn’t register with yourself as such.
And now, after we have made our respective positions clear to each other, I propose to call it a day. There is no common ground for a conversation – it’s a wonder we have made it even this far. I am for opera (music, text, singers), you are for whatever modern stuff is being imposed on a work in public domain and sold under the name of the original by people who can’t create original work themselves and find it convenient to grab something for which they don’t need to fear a lawsuit. The original can be sold without the other, but the other can’t be sold on the strength of its own content. There, I explained in one sentence for your students. Don’t forget to downvote my reply, and add another upvote to the two you have already bestowed on yourself. I recall the first time I saw your other reply it also had two upvotes 😉