At the end of the first installment of Francesca Zambello‘s American Ring Cycle, last year’s Das Rheingold premiered at Washington National Opera, the gods went into Valhalla on what looked like the gang plank of a cruise liner, clinking their champagne flutes. Richard Wagner adapted the libretti of his four-opera cycle from German mythology, and Zambello’s idea was to exchange the German myths in the operas for American ones. The gold-hungry Alberich became a Gold Rush 49er, the Nibelungs he enthralls became African-American slaves, and the gods became the wealthy elite. Half of the fun at Saturday’s opening night of Die Walküre, the cycle’s second part, was guessing how Zambello would Americanize the next part of the story. Most of the other half involved being blown away by how good Plácido Domingo, the director of Washington National Opera, who is also starring in the demanding tenor role of Siegmund, sounds at 66 years old.
As predicted in an excellent preview at the WETA blog, Wagner traditionalists are likely to be offended by this directorial meddling. In fact, the lady at the Kennedy Center coat check, who overhears all the choice gossip, reported Saturday night at second intermission that several people had left early, in a huff because “this was not Wagner.” If you were expecting metal breastplates and horned helmets, you might be disappointed to see that Sieglinde was costumed like the female half of American Gothic, living with Hunding (who would fit right in in Deliverance) in an A-frame prairie cabin. In the second act, Wotan plots his next moves in his skyscraper boardroom (in pinstripes but with the traditional eye patch), overlooking the cloudy Manhattan skyline below, and Siegmund is killed underneath an unfinished highway overpass. For the famous Ride of the Valkyries in Act III, the battle-maidens are paratroopers, parachuting down to what looks like a mountain fortress. (One cannot help but think of Robert Duvall’s crazy helicopter pilot in Apocalypse Now, who blares Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries during the attack.)
Anja Kampe (Sieglinde) and Plácido Domingo (Siegmund) in Die Walküre, Washington National Opera, photo by Karin Cooper
