3/5 Groundbreaking production, but is it a classic?
  by Pekinman (Illinois)
I remember watching this Boulez/Chéreau Ring when it was broadcast (!) on American tv (!!) around 1981 or 82. I was glued to the tv for 4 nights as this visually arresting and musically compelling cycle unfolded. This was before the era of video taping so I did not see this production again until it was released on commercial videos several years later. I was less smitten by this event than before, noticing a few flops in the production and being more critical of some of the singing, though I liked Boulez's conducting more than I had before. I have a set of recordings from the premiere season (1976) with a very different cast of singers and a very disgruntled orchestra which played pretty crudely for Boulez who they did not like at all.
The eruption of hissing and booing at the start of Act 3 of Götterdämmerung was really shocking to me. The audience was expressing HATRED for the hydroelectric dam appearing again, something they had expected to be finished with after the opening scene of Rheingold. It's reappearance was too much for them and they erupted.

Now it is all very mild. By the end of the run in this production was greeted with cheers of approval. How fickle public opinion is. It is refreshing to see new viewpoints expressed in telling Wagner's mythological epic but,sadly, things have gone off the rails with the ascendence of the 'Konzept' producers who are more interested in themselves than Wagner, or us.

Chéreau and Harry Kupfer were the granddaddies of Konzept productions. Whereas Kupfer slid into a rut of predictable imagery Chéreau has continued to grow in a more a imaginative fashion, note his 'From the House of the Dead' currently showing at the Met. It's modern and bleak but so is the story. Some of the other current wunderkinds of Konzept productions could easily have set Janacek's opera in a grocery store or shopping mall or something like that. Chéreau has more self-control, and sense.

His early Ring at Bayreuth is a sensible production within the framework of non-traditional settings for Wagner's masterpieces. And he does not offend, but the original illusion of sure-footedness has started to crack and the production now looks slightly gimcrack.

The sets are beautiful and the direction of the singers is tightly controlled but not so tight as to thwart freedom of movement, especially with some of the better singer-actors like Gwyneth Jones' Brünnhilde and Hermann Becht's Alberich.

Overall the singing is very good, if not in the same league as the casts from Bayreuth's Golden Age of the 1950s and early 1960s when Wieland Wagner was hiring the best possible singers from around the world. By the 1980s things had deteriorated in that department and Wagnerians found themselves settling for make-do singers and conductors, with the occasional brilliant production, notably 'Der fliegende Holländer' in the late '70s.

I mention Gwyneth Jones right off the bat because she is the star of this production. Many complain about her vocal inconsistencies but I hear a soprano who has the measure of this huge part, and the voice to sing it and, even more of an asset, a great theatrical sense and ability to express it in her fine acting. She is the main reason to see this production on film. There are other important performances in this show, notably the Siegmund and Sieglinde of Peter Hofmann (his world debut for all intents and purposes) and Jeannine Altmeyer. Act 1 of Walküre is white hot, though the staging is pretty disappointing, beyond their impassioned embraces which are very convincing, almost blush-making.

Matti Salminen makes his international debut as the giant Fasolt. Sadly the giants' costumes are one of the glaring failures of this production, but Salminen and Fritz Hübner sing through these impediments with great power. Salminen's Hunding is one of the great vocal assumptions of this role on record (film) and his performances are another compelling, if comparatively minor reason to view these films. Hermann Becht is an outstanding Alberich, vocally and histrionically. And Heinz Zednik's Loge carries the first opera almost solely upon his shoulders, which are draped in a long white sheet.
The other great singing comes from Ortrun Wenkel's Erda.

Donald McIntyre is a good Wotan, within the limitations of his less-than-Wagnerian baritone. It's an attractive voice, he's an attractive man and he fits perfectly into Chéreau's Konzept as the 19th century landed gentleman/god who is stricken by a guilty conscience for his treachery against the working classes (Chéreau took G.B. Shaw's book 'The Perfect Wagnerite' to heart and has based this production on that Marxist point of view and hatred for the aristocracy).

There is one galvanizing moment, in particular, that has stuck in my mind since the first time I saw it; the moment in the last act of Walküre when Wotan scoops the sleeping Brünnhilde up into his arms where she dangles limply like a dead child. It is a deeply moving moment. The singing up to this point in this cycle has been of a consistently high level.

It is with the last two operas that problems begin to intrude with the cast. Manfred Jung sings well but he was a disappointment compared to the original Siegfrieds in this production (who quit after the first season), René Kollo and Jess Thomas. Jung had a nice, strongish lyric tenor and he pushes enough to be credible in the louder moments, like the Forging Scene, but he is pushed to the limits and it shows. He's an unusual looking man, not unattractive, just unusual, the one-browed type (not an inapposite thing for a Siegfried) but he also exudes the air of a certified accountant that is out of tune with his primitive character. He's a make-do singer who does not detract but neither does he satisfy. He's also a mediocre actor. Heinz Zednik's vivid Mime saves the first act of Siegfried with his lively and subtly nuanced performance.

The casting of Götterdämmerung is good if not outstanding. Franz Mazura stands out as Gunther and Jeannine Altmeyer is luxury casting as Gutrune. Fritz Hübner is not in the same league as the original Hagen (Karl Ridderbusch, who also quit after the first season) but he does what he can, hobbled a bit by the Konzept of the Gibichungs being a parvenu family of rich businessmen, Plutocractic peers if you will.

There are some gorgeous sets by Peduzzi; notably the 2nd scene of Rheingold with its sunken columns and giant clock, the 3rd act of Walküre with the Pironesi-like broken wall upon which Brünnhilde is lain to rest, and the forest in Siegfried with the toy-like dragon hauled by stagehands (something you wouldn't think would work but it does). I also happened to like the hydroelectric dam that the Rhine Daughters frolic upon in their glad rags. It's a powerful, potent image that evokes great masses of water and was, at the time, a relief from the usual dark green rocky riverbed with 3 middle-aged singers attempting to allure by waving their arms and jumping around all over the place. These 3 prostitute daughters are more dignified than that, and therefore sing more in-tune than the usual lot.

Boulez is a swift Wagnerian, occasionally a bit glib, but he doesn't gloss over the profound bits, he simply eschews lingering in the often somnolent manner of James Levine.

Having seen this film again 30 years after the tv broadcast I have to say that I wouldn't spend the money on the dvds. What I did instead was to go to Ebay and snag an original un-opened set of the lps that came in that red and black cardboard carrying case just before the era of the cd blew vinyl out of the stores. I think listening is the best way to experience this good performance as the production becomes more of an incumbrance, unlike the theater of my mind.

3/5 A byegone age?
  by Rik Hardy
The rot set in when opera house managers realized that there was a profitable link between embracing "new" artistic concepts of staging and saving money.
In the 70s, Chereau's production was widely seen as a new low - we were not supposed to see through the crass "updating" of Wagner's stunning adventure into the cost-cutting exercise which it really was. We were supposed to admire Chereau's bold vision and then shut our eyes to the reality.
But the worst of it is that the next generation, the disciples of such worldly gurus, use their "revolutionary" teachers as role models in order to misunderstand Wagner's basic premises even further, building careers solely upon the basis of saving money. Opera house managers just love them, of course, quite unaware of what they have lost.
I repeat: Wagner's work is an ADVENTURE into the depths of nature and of humanity, to be experienced on its author's terms.
When he said to his offspring: "Kinder, schafft Neues!" ("Children, create anew!") he was expressing the hope that his work would not become fossilized to the point where it would only exist as a museum piece.
He was NOT trying to encourage them to pluck a fish out of water and watch to see how long it would take to die.
Others before Chereau began the process of plucking Wagner's adventure out of its natural environment, but this year's Bayreuth Festival must represent some sort of consummation of this process. There is no adventure, nature or humanity left - only a cynical addiction to the idea of "updating", so that everything great, everything beautiful and everything honest about Wagner's endeavours in the face of ceaseless opposition and financial difficulty has been removed - along with everything expensive, of course.
We are now left with an up-to-date corpse. The very last thing the poor composer would have wanted.
Thank Heaven for audio CDs which still allow those of us with imagination to see into his world!
That said, I love listening to the Chereau DVD discs - the sound is lovely, if too obviously compressed at times, and Boulez is transparent and perceptive, however slick he may seem to some ears.

5/5 Read ALL of the ORIGINAL Amazon Reviews for this Chereau/Boulez Ring
  by Aanel Victoria (USA)
Remember to read ALL of the original Amazon customer reviews for this DVD set. This new DG release is merely a re-release of the first 2001 DVD release by UMVD Labels. Please enjoy the 50 excellent and thoughtful reviews of this Chereau/Boulez Ring before you make your purchase decisions: Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen / Patrice Chéreau - Pierre Boulez, Bayreuth Festival (Complete Ring Cycle).


All in all, I'd say this Chereau/Boulez Ring is an excellent starter Ring -- the one which takes characters which look, sound, and act as they should, and tells a very relatable and human story that is easy to follow and super-easy to get wrapped-up in and mesmerized by.

5/5 Great production
  by Brooklyn GV (Brooklyn NY)
I'm sure I have reviewed this issue before but every time I watch any part of it I want to write again.
It is a towering example of what the classic operas can be when there is a considerable amount of thought and an outstanding concept which manages to live up to and serve the music not over run it. All the singers sing beautifully and Jones rises above all with her expressive singing and acting.
Cheers to Boulez and Chereau.

2/5 Drinking from the Puddle (Is There a Ring in There?)
  by Joseph L. Ponessa (Glendive MT USA)
Sieglinde meets her long-lost brother, cups in her hands stagnant water from a puddle, wipes it all over his face, and drags him over to the puddle, where he proceeds to lap water out of it like a dog. This is neither primeval nor proletarian. Even incestuous siblings presumably drink water out of a cup? We had a hydroelectric dam in the Rheingold, but not a cup to drink from in the Walkure? Is this progress? When was it ever a mark of hospitality, in any age from golden to silver to dark, that a guest would have to drink stagnant water in the yard? When not contrary to any sense, the production is boring, the singers left to stand about in mismatched costumes while listening to glorious music from the orchestra pit. By the fourth opera, the viewer really would like Boulez to speed things up and liberate the singers from their misery. There have been some pretty repugnant Ring cycles since then, but Chereau lowered the bar to prepare the way for them. They drink from his stagnant pool. The music is five stars, the staging one. Take away one star from Boulez for consenting to be in the same building with the nonsense.