The Passion of Opera

After having waiting 20 hours and witnessing 18 hours of opera over two weeks, I have finally finished the Wiener Staatsoper's production of Wagner's  Der Ring des Nibelungen . I will finish up my own cycle of four reviews by dedicating this post to  Götterdämmerung . It is well worth making general observations about the production of the Cycle as a whole (though some of these have slipped in already), particularly on account of the orchestra, but I will do this in a separate post. First:  Götterdämmerung . General information & synopsis:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Götterdämmerung Cast: Christian Thielemann | Dirigent Sven-Eric Bechtolf | Regie Rolf Glittenberg | Bühne Marianne Glittenberg | Kostüme Thomas Lang | Chorleitung Stephen Gould | Siegfried Markus Eiche | Gunther Eric Halfvarson/Attila Jun | Hagen Tomasz Konieczny | Alberich Linda Watson | Brünnhilde Caroline Wenborne | Gutrune Janina Baechle | Waltraute ...

  Yes. Wagner. Here we go. This  Das Rheingold  was my first experience with Wagner of any kind at the Staatsoper and my first time seeing the Ring live. This performance was interesting to me because, looking at it beforehand, I recognized many of the performers as those that I had seen in R. Strauss operas and in Beethoven's  Fidelio , other operas that require voices comparable in size and stamina to those demanded Wagnerian operas. Oddly, many of these singers were not thrilling to me in other roles, flaws in their voices at times rather evident in this repertoire. The singing here, was, however, more or less excellent. The costuming and sets were, in general, mediocre with a few interesting things here and there. Still, the somewhat incomprehensible improvement of the singers even compared to repertoire with similar demands. General information & synopsis:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Rheingold DAS RHEINGOLD |  Richard Wagner C...