The "L.A. Ring," as Achim Freyer's production of Wagner's four- opera cycle, "Ring of the Nibelung," has come to be known, began May 29 under a cloud. Two lead singers had dissed their director. Ticket sales proved a disappointment. Picketers protested a composer's anti-Semitism. Wagnerians unhappy with Freyerian fantasy used the Internet to spew dissent. The $31-million production had left Los Angeles Opera in debt and, for a short while, uncertain of its future.
FOR THE RECORD: Ring Cycle: An article in Monday's Calendar about L.A. Opera's staging of the Ring Cycle said that "Mahabharata" had been presented during the Olympic Arts Festival in 1984. It was staged as part of the Los Angeles Festival in 1987. The article also misspelled the last name of director Peter Brook as Brooks. —
FOR THE RECORD: Ring cycle: An article in Monday's Calendar section about the L.A. Opera production of the Ring cycle referred to the series of four operas as a teratology. The word should have been tetralogy. —
The anarchic ancillary Los Angeles Ring Festival looked to be, as one theater director put it to me, anything the cat dragged in. Not many critics came from afar — like tourists they were discouraged by the expense of a cycle drawn out to nine days instead the normal six or seven — and some who had previewed the company's earlier outings weren't eager for more. Europeans grumbled early on about how bad the orchestra sounded. Plácido Domingo, singing Siegmund in "Die Walküre" in the first cycle, struggled, causing speculation that maybe the 69-year-old tenor, appearing for the first time here since his adnominal surgery in the fall for cancer, may be at the end of his singing career.
But what a difference a month makes.
The third and final cycle ended Saturday night with an almost full moon and an outright triumph for L.A. Opera. Throughout the third cycle the entire mood had changed on stage and in the audience. A festival atmosphere began to pervade the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and its plaza. Audiences came vividly dressed and clearly excited. The orchestra and singers rose to unexpected new levels. Everything seemed to work. Domingo, in the third "Walküre," was terrific, sounding strong and scampering up the steep rake of the set for his curtain call like a kid. (He chalked up his earlier performance to something he had eaten.)
If you believe the naysayers, Freyer's curtain calls when the four operas were first staged individually over the past two seasons occasioned the loudest booing in the history of the Chandler (an exaggeration in my estimation). This much I can attest to: The director's curtain call Saturday was greeted by deafening cheers. He emerged a hero. And this show, by this final cycle, had become an instant L.A. legend, spoken of in the hushed awe of, say, Peter Brooks' epic "Mahabharata" staging during the Olympic Arts Festival in 1984.
Indeed, the mood at the Music Center became reminiscent of the Olympic Arts Festival in more ways than one. As with that festival, L.A. felt it had something to prove.
"Ring" cycles are commonplace. In the West alone, Seattle has had many. Long Beach, Costa Mesa, San Diego and Flagstaff, Ariz., have seen the teratology in some form. San Francisco's first "Ring" was in 1900, a mere 24 years after the cycle's premiere in Bayreuth.
Los Angeles had never staged one. But maybe the city of the future didn't need one. I think a good argument could have been made instead for, say, attempting Freyer's brilliant productions of Philip Glass' early "portrait" operas ("Satyagraha," "Akhnaten" and "Einstein on the Beach"), which were given over three stirring days in Stuttgart, Germany, 20 years ago.
Still, the "Ring" as an operatic Everest has become the measure of a company's prowess. Domingo, the company's general director, and James Conlon, its music director, were not going to rest until L.A. Opera had become "Ring"-worthy. They insisted that the two-year effort would bring the company together in ways nothing else could. They felt that a cultural center was not fully cultured until it had rung up a "Ring," and especially here, given Wagner's influence on Hollywood and popular culture as we know it.
It turns out that they were right, but not in ways that they or anyone may have known. This "Ring" was that nearly insurmountable challenge that practically caused the demise of the company, but what doesn't kill you is supposed to make you stronger. Enter Achim Freyer.
The German director and painter made a difficult situation all the more demanding by creating a weird stage picture full of crazy creatures and mystifying symbols. He mixed complex technology with funky cartoony cutouts. He annoyed his cast no end by forcing singers onto a steep rake and putting masks on many.
