From around the world: Dresden.(International--Wagner's Ring cycle)(Opera Review)

The destruction of Dresden's Semperoper by Allied bombing, just months before the end of World War II, ended a Wagner tradition that began in 1842, when the composer conducted the world premiere of Rienzi here. After the war, the company performed in the Schauspielhaus, too small for the large-scale demands of Wagner's epics. By 1985, the Semperoper was rebuilt, and all of Wagner's operas gradually returned to the repertory--except for the Ring cycle, for which Dresden had to wait for almost another twenty years. With the opening of the new Gotterdammerung on August 31, the company completed its first Ring since 1943--which is certainly good news. The bad news is that Dresden is stuck with a shallow, pretentious production.

Director Willy Decker and designer Wolfgang Gussmann set all four Ring operas as theater-within-a-theater. The stage was dominated by rows of red-velvet seats, like waves of a vast sea facing the audience. Some characters "directed" while others performed on a makeshift platform far upstage, but the lines became blurred: who was manipulating whom? Wotan soon found himself losing control of this drama of love and power. In Das Rheingold (seen at its premiere in the fall of 2001), one got the impression that Decker and Gussmann's concept was at a dead end already, and the only unpredictable element was which row of the "auditorium" a singer would choose to enter or exit. The concept could be used for any opera; one wondered just what the producers were trying to tell us about the Ring. Throughout the cycle, they revealed nothing about the work's larger philosophical, political, historic or social issues, nor did they shed new light on the characters.

Decker and Gussmann aimed at timelessness, though some costumes suggested the late-nineteenth century and a few props and set pieces vaguely evoked the Third Reich. Decker's blocking was lifeless. He created stage pictures and arranged singers as if ...