Plain English: June 2013 Archives
The last "Ring" I saw was last autumn's revival of the Keith
Warner production at Covent Garden. As in 2005/6 I had intended to write a book
about seeing every Ring cycle produced in a single year, I not only saw the
Bayreuth Ring in summer, 2006, but the earlier Manaus and Adelaide Rings. I've
seen at least three different Bayreuth productions (each more than once) over
the years, and have seen every production in London and Edinburgh in the last
couple of decades, including the feeble Russian staging - my first ever being
the ROH production in 1970. I relished the 1994-95 Richard Jones, unpopular
though it was with my colleagues. Someone recently asked me how many Rings I've
seen, and I realised that I couldn't answer without going through my old
diaries and calendars. So the answer is: quite a few.
But I've never enjoyed one more than Martin and Lizzie Graham's Longborough Ring, whose first complete cycle has just ended.
In a former henhouse, at Longborough, deep in the Cotswold countryside, a very ambitious Ring cycle is shaping up. What, I asked myself, would its bombastic, luxury-loving author and composer make of it?
How would
Wagner, who ordered his undergarments from a maker of bespoke women's lingerie,
feel about designer Kjell Torriset's simple, effective, but hardly elegant
costumes - of rough cotton rather than the silk the Master liked to feel next
to his own skin?
How would
the man who also built an opera house for himself, with all the then- current
theatrical bells and whistles, feel about the basic, but comfortable
auditorium, and the stage with Ben Ormerod's excellent, but limited lighting
effects possibilities? And what would the man who called for circles of fire,
dragons and rainbow bridges think about Mr. Torriset's (increasingly ingenious
and impressive, superb but modest) special effects.
Above all,
how would Wagner react to the intimate atmosphere of Longborough, where you can
see the singers' faces from every seat in the house?
What would he make of presenting his Festival opera, his four-day affair, as a chamber
opera?
It's a far cry from the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney Hollywood movie where the two kids say "Let's put on a show," but the start of the 2013 Ring Cycle just outside the Cotswold village of Longborough has the same defiant D.I.Y. attitude.
Martin and Lizzie Graham have been thinking about Wagner's operas for 30 years, and in 1998 they mounted - in a converted hen-house on their farm - their first, but miniaturised, Rhinegold. Now the shed has become a rural opera house, with all the appropriate
theatrical paraphernalia, and (perfectly comfortable) red-plush seats rescued from the renovation of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
Blogroll
AJ Ads
AJ Blogs
AJBlogCentral | rssculture
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
rock culture approximately
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Richard Kessler on arts education
Douglas McLennan's blog
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Art from the American Outback
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
No genre is the new genre
David Jays on theatre and dance
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
John Rockwell on the arts
innovations and impediments in not-for-profit arts
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
dance
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
media
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Martha Bayles on Film...
classical music
Fresh ideas on building arts communities
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
Joe Horowitz on music
publishing
Jerome Weeks on Books
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
theatre
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
visual
Public Art, Public Space
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
John Perreault's art diary
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary