"The Sorrows and Grandeur of Richard Wagner!" Thomas Mann said it all in the 1930s in the title of his lecture devoted to the music of the great polymath who, he argued,
incorporated all the 19th century's grandiosity and romantic longings in his mold-breaking and, to this day, still unequaled operas.
Earlier this month Taiwan's National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) announced it would be staging a single cycle of the great man's most massive achievement, his four Ring operas, this September.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF NSO
The event will coincide with the orchestra's 20th anniversary, and, in a major coup, the services of two stars in the international Wagner cosmos have been engaged to sing the most important male and female roles in the 16-hour cycle. James Morris, the Metropolitan opera's Wotan throughout the 1990s and beyond, will sing the ruler of the gods, and Linda Watson, who has recently emerged as perhaps the greatest living Brunnhilde, Wotan's errant daughter, will sing that role in Taipei.
The cycle will take place over two weekends, with a celebrity Wagner Opera Highlights concert added to make a fifth evening. (For details see the Fact Box.)
"I wouldn't say it's the first ever self-produced Ring cycle in Asia," the orchestra's director Chien Wen-pin (
In reality the proportion is much greater. There will be six guest singers, Morris and Watson included, but there will be some 20 other soloists involved, all well-known to patrons of Chien's pioneering series of operas staged in Taipei's National Concert Hall since 2001.
The other invited foreigners are: Alan Woodrow, who will sing Siegfried; Endrick Wottrich (Siegmund); Franz-Josef Kapellmann (Alberich); Hans-Peter Konig (Hagen).
All have strong credentials in the international Wagner world. Even so, there should be no underestimating Chien's enormous achievement in attracting Morris and Watson to Taiwan. It would be impossible to name more celebrated practitioners in their roles, the cycle's two most important ones. That top ticket prices, only NT$2,000 per show (the lowest are NT$400), with such a cast, would make opera-goers in New York or Bayreuth green with envy.
Among the Taiwan-based singers to be heard are Yu-Hsi Wu-Bei (
Booking for this mammoth undertaking begins on June 1 if you take out a Subscription Package for all four operas plus the Wagner Highlights concert (in which Morris and Watson will parti-cipate). The advantages of this include up to 30 percent off ticket prices, entry to a partial dress-rehearsal (Sept. 10), access to nine intensive lectures planned by the Wagner Library Association, Taiwan, a limited edition Introduction to Der Ring des Nibelungen CD with musical excerpts from Deutsche Grammophon, and free membership of the NSO's Dear Friends fan-club. (Patrons who are already members can book a subscription package one week earlier, from May 25). Single-ticket booking begins on Aug. 1.
Hour-long intervals are scheduled at several points in the marathon, but succor is at hand -- holders of NT$2,000 tickets get free entry to VIP cocktail parties sponsored by The One and Veuve Clicquot during the intermissions on Sept. 16, 22, 24 and 28. There is no intermission on the opening evening, Sept. 14, which lasts an uninterrupted two hours and 35 minutes.
But what will it look like? In charge of the staging will be Li Huan-Hsiung (Minguel), the Taipei theater-director who was responsible for the production of Bellini's Norma last year in Chien Wen-pin's ongoing series of operas new to Taiwan. That production was somewhat minimalist, but generally effective despite some perplexing features.
"I think you'll see a totally different style from Minguel," said Chien. "Even though the space he's got for these four nights is just a little more than nothing." As for the instrumentalists, orchestral rehearsals began back in February, and they're set to continue until the day the guest singers arrive, Chien added.
Altogether this is going to be a stupendous as well as a history-making event to open the orchestra's anniversary 2006-2007 season. Beijing staged a single Ring cycle last summer in its Music Festival but that was imported in its entirety from Nuremberg, Germany. With this homegrown Ring, then, Taiwan can truly claim a first, and indeed to be making history.
-- BRADLEY WINTERTON
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