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Mar. 27--Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung - about 15 hours of music and drama, divided into four chapters - remains not just a pinnacle of Western art, but a continual source of fresh inspiration.
Hardly frozen in a world of ancient myth, the Ring cycle has the curious ability to speak in different ways to different people at different times in different places. It's a living thing, which makes it all the more magnetic.
For opera companies, the cycle represents a rite of passage. Just getting it onstage says a lot about an organization; presenting it in a distinctive, memorable manner says a lot more.
It's too early to tell how Washington National Opera's first complete Ring will measure up - it will be introduced one work at a time over the next several seasons. But judging by Saturday night's unveiling of the initial installment, Das Rheingold, at the Kennedy Center, the long-range venture into this daunting territory will do the company proud.
Conceived by Francesca Zambello, one of the most consistently engaging stage directors in today's opera world, this take on Wagner's epic is being called "the American Ring." Instead of stereotypical Germanic trappings, the production substitutes a melange of iconic imagery from our own history, an apt choice for a company located in a city where the cycle's issues of power and corruption, oaths and alliances, world affairs and family values might have a very familiar ring.
In Rheingold, the river that holds the fateful gold, which can transform its owner into the ruler of the world, suggests a spot in the Old West. Alberich, who will grab that gold when he renounces love, is first seen as a '49er in the act of panning. The underwear-clad Rheinmaidens who mock him look like hirelings from the local saloon.
When the scene shifts to the mountaintop lair of the gods, you expect someone to sing "Tennis anyone?" They're on a veranda, all in turn-of-the-century summer whites, as if they had just had the Vanderbilts over for tea.
The giants who are building Valhalla for Wotan and the rest of this pampered lot descend on a girder, wearing overalls and sporting huge metallic hands - larger-than-life portraits of the laboring class that built modern America.
The ugly history of slavery emerges in the scene of Alberich's underground mine, where he expands on his ill-gotten loot.
When Erda, the earth goddess, appears to warn Wotan not to hold onto the ring he has stolen from Alberich, she's in a version of Native American dress, arms folded across her chest. And Wotan's spear looks as if it once belonged to Sitting Bull.
None of the visual business, played out on Michael Yeargan's unfussy sets and complemented by Anita Yavich's costumes and Mark McCullough's lighting, is heavy-handed. Most of Jan Hartley's many video projections effectively evoke the various realms, physical and emotional, in the plot. The cosmic journey at the beginning has everything but a scrolling text about "a galaxy far, far away".
The essence of Rheingold is always in evidence, thanks to Zambello's overall sensitivity to detail and flair for maintaining theatrical flow, and thanks to a true ensemble cast that digs into the opera's meaty matters with considerable acting skills.
Saturday night's performance may have been short on overwhelmingly Wagnerian voices, the kind with endless heft and steel, but the level of intensity and color behind the singing proved consistently high.
The standout was Gordon Hawkins as Alberich, with a warm, beefy tone and boldly etched phrasing.
What Robert Hale's Wotan lacked in authoritative vocal force, he compensated for in vivid styling. Elizabeth Bishop used her rich, mellow mezzo commandingly as Fricka. John Marcus Bindel (Fasolt) and Jeffrey Wells (Fafner) were strongly matched in sound and fury.
Decked out like a slick lawyer from a K Street-type corridor outside Valhalla, Robin Leggate personified the fire-god Loge brilliantly. His singing could have used more weight, but this was a compelling effort nonetheless.
Elena Zaremba delivered Erda's lines in darkly beautiful tones. The Rheinmaidens - JiYoung Lee, Frederique Vezina, Jennifer Hines - sang brightly and surely. Jane Ohmes was a vocally uneven, but physically dynamic, Freia. Vibrant supporting work came from Corey Evan Rotz (Froh), Detlef Roth (Donner) and Gary Rideout (Mime).
WNO music director Heinz Fricke revealed no defining interpretive touches but demonstrated a sure grasp on the pulse and structure of the 2 1/2 uninterrupted hours of the score and drew generally polished, stylish playing from the orchestra.
Above all, this imaginative Das Rheingold staging whetted an appetite for the rest of the Ring and its American twists.
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