If I remember correctly there are 2 or 3 "rows" of standing room and the "bars" are for leaning and for the placement of the translation so you can follow the action.

If you have an elderly person going, check to see what the rules might be for "disabled" seating.

Remember they will be standing in one spot for more than 3 hours.

They should definitely try for tickets on line and on phone. People stand/sit on line for 7 hours and more to get tickets for Shakespeare in the Park - and I would not be surprised if people did the same for this.

franco - any report from your friends? I'm hoping to get standing room tix for tomorrow night's Rheingold... was wondering how it went for your friends!

yk, just today, my friends got back, so I got only a very brief report so far. They followed your advice precisely, calling and going online simultaneously at 10 pm - the phone line was quicker, and they got excellent tickets in the centre of the family circle standing room. They said it was a truly great event (event like in marketing effort), but the performance was not even so-so, rather one of the worst Rheingolds they'd ever seen.
So there you have it - I don't even know what exactly was so bad about the performance. They were tired, and we talked just briefly over the phone.

Thanks so much for the info, franco. I'm sorry to hear that your friends were disappointed. I read a bunch of reviews and most were cautiously positive.

yk, I forced my still jetlagged friends to give their full review, at least by phone. (Their opinion matters as they are great experts and collectors of historical recordings; the male part of the couple was also an opera reviewer for a German magazine, many years ago.) Myself, I'm just quoting; I have no opinion, naturally, since I wasn't there, I can just confirm that Terfel is not just past his prime, he actually lost his voice entirely, and many years ago already. Ok, so here's a summary of what my friends said:
"On the positive side, the two dwarfs really sounded like brothers: Eric Owens as Alberich & Gerhard Siegel as Mime were both a teeny bit overstrained in the upper register - Siegel more so -, but really impressive vocal actors, giving interesting musical portrayals of their roles (with good stage acting, as well) - the only two singers on stage that never bored.
Very good, vocally, but less interesting as far as interpretation, were Stephanie Blythe as Fricka (she was the best singer on stage, vocally), Wendy Bryn Harmer as Freia, and Hans-Peter König as Fafner. Dwayne Croft was ok as Donner (footnote by franco: this is more than can be said of most Donners). And the orchestra members did their jobs very well.
On the negative side, James Levine has never been a conductor and is never going to be one. He made for a profoundly boring performance from start to end, interspersed with the random overloud orchestral clanging to arouse the audience from their sleep. Bryn Terfel was vocally inferior, his top in particular is mostly embarassing now, and the only top note that he did well all night long was - fortunately - the most prominent ("<b>So</b> grüß' ich die Burg"). He is so busy reaching the bare notes that there is no energy left for any kind of interpretation; also, his voice is way too small now for such a part: way smaller than Owens', that is, and it's always pathetic to have an Alberich who is outshining Wotan (this was also one of the main problems of Vienna's recent Ring production). The very worst achievement was Richard Croft's Loge. Loge has to be sung by a heldentenor (footnote by franco: YES!!!!!), or it doesn't work at all. Hardly any Loge of all times has been as far from a heldentenor as Mr. Croft: a failure, a disaster, a nightmare, depriving this production of Rheingold of its most interesting character: Rheingold without Loge is no Rheingold anymore. The singer of Froh, house debutant Adam Diegel, seems to have taken up the wrong profession. Franz-Josef Selig as Fasolt displayed the ruins of a never very pleasant voice. Patricia Bardon didn't do anything wrong as Erda, but doesn't simply have the proper (heavy, low & dark) voice to sing that part. Robert Lepage's stage production was not just incredibly old-fashioned and almost aggressively avoiding to put any thought into the drama: worse than that, it was almost inexistent. The fairy-tale-like narration of just the upmost layer of Wagner's many-layered libretto was mostly ceded to the stage set and costume designers (so many "prehistoric" beards here, unimaginable on just about every stage on this planet), the supposed director didn't add much."

Hey..... watch what you say about our Jimmy!

Also with a drama filled with interesting characters, I'm not certain Loge is the "most" interesting.

Furthermore, don't know if Family Circle standing room at the Met is the best place for acoustics. Someone else might enlighten me.

So, the Met still has to find a successor to Morris as Wotan?

I'm not sure whether you got the part that it's not me speaking here - I'm just the go-between. But I can add (I forgot that earlier, so I'm probably not a good go-between) that my friends were raving about the acoustics and said they had never experienced better acoustics in any theater (so thank you, yk, for the tip to go to the family circle!).
And as far as Loge, if I may throw in my personal opinion here, I'm not certain, either, whether he's necessarily the most interesting character in Rheingold, but I'd say it's a pity for the performance if he's not. If you've ever seen and heard Wolfgang Müller-Lorenz, the best Loge opera lovers still alive have had a chance to hear, you'll know what I mean. (His Loge also used to be available on DVD, but strange enough, I don't find it on the web right now.)
As far as Morris, my opinion again, I would never have dreamed of Terfel being able to be his successor. Terfel's voice has been a wreck for too many years now. (And here's somebody writing who loved him when he was in his - too short - prime.)

franco: I wouldn't presume to speak for Gwendolynn, but the way her sentence read, I understood her to mean the generic "you" and not you personally.

easytraveler, my reply was actually meant to you - a hint that I can't really speak for my friends' assessment of Loge, nor authoritatively answer your question about a successor to Morris since I'm not the one who attended the performance.

franco, why would you be addressing me?

Here's your first sentence: "<i>yk, I forced my still jetlagged friends to give their full review,"</i>

No mistaking that you were repeating what your friends told you.

My comment about Loge was just an expression of my opinion and wasn't intended to press you for an answer.

In fact, my entire post was not specifically directed at you.

I was asking the world in general if a substitute for Morris is still necessary.

Sorry if you took this personally, as nothing was intended to be personal.

Si, Si Easy Traveler -:)

(Don't know how to type in Spanish yet on my new Mac)

Gwendolynn: Your Spanish is very impressive! :)

franco, thanks for relating to us what your friends thought.

I did manage to get a FC standing room ticket for last night's performance. They were going fast as soon as the phone lines opened up at 9:59am.

The Lepage stage and special effects are better than I had expected, however, at the cost of $16M, I felt it was an expensive price tag which did little to add to the story except to dazzle audience. At least the rainbow bridge in the final moments did operate correctly last night, unlike the screw-up on opening night.

I am a novice when it comes to Wagner's Ring. In fact, I have never seen Das Rheingold until last night. But I certainly agree with franco's friends on some aspects:

Bryn Terfel was not as amazing as I had expected, esp after all the rave reviews he recently received in Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg just a few months ago. I was going to blame it on the short 3-day rest (and probably late night partying) after opening night.

Richard Croft is completely miscast as Loge. He has a fine tenor voice, but he is no heldentenor. What was he thinking??? He's going to ruin his voice.

Apart from these 2, I thought the rest of the cast ranged from pretty good to very good, esp Stephanie Blythe and Eric Owens.

Have you read the review by Martin Bernheimer on FT? I always find his reviews well written: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1bc2f61e-c...44feab49a.html

Anyway, Jimmy and Bryn are heading to Boston for our BSO opening night gala tomorrow: an all Wagner evening. I have my ticket and I'll see how Bryn sounds in our lovely Symphony Hall.

Finally, easytraveler, about the acoustics at the Met. If you're asking if the <u>standing room</u> tickets at the Met, then yes, the Family Circle standing room has much better acoustics than the Orchestra standing room.

For seated tickets, I'm sure most seats have decent acoustics, but I usually can only afford FC or Balcony. Both have excellent acoustics because there's no overhang above FC or Balcony.

<i>Das Rheingold</i> is the first opera in our subscription series. We're seeing the October 9 matinee (also to be televised live in HD). Since I absolutely hated Lepage's <i>Damnation of Faust</i> last season, I have been extremely skeptical about his new <i>Ring</i> productions. While I do not often agree with Anthony Tomassini in the <I>Times</i>, his review mentioned the rather traditional nature of the production despite all of the mechanical and electronic goings-on. At least it doesn't take place in a laundromat or something similar. I'm withholding judgment until I see for myself a week from Saturday.

easytraveler, no worries, I didn't take anything personally, I just wanted to make sure everybody noticed my - unusual - position on this thread. If I may add my personal opinion again, Morris was definitely an excellent Wotan (unfortunately, I heard him just in Walküre, not in Rheingold), but I think the one we really need a successor for is Michael Burt - for me, the greatest post-WWII Wotan beyond doubt, same generation as Morris (Burt born 1944, Morris 1947). His recordings are exceedingly rare, but here's one fine Wagner excerpt, though not as Wotan but as Gurnemanz: http://www.michaelburt.com/parsifal.ram (you need Real Player for it, and try to overlook the other sound files on that ill-maintained site - he's retired for many years already, and those other excerpts are obviously from his very last period of activity). For my above-quoted friends, OTOH, THE Wotan of the last decades was Robert Hale (who was certainly fine, too, but I preferred Morris and, of course, Burt).

Now that the Rheingold HD screening has taken place, what did people think? I didn't go to the HD screening, but I was surprised to read that Richard Croft (Loge) got booed. His voice was small but he sang fine. Well, perhaps he's been shouting at the top of his voice since opening night that he's lost his voice by Oct 9.

Here's an insightful view by Anne Midgette of the Washington Post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the...rheingold.html

We attended on Saturday. It was no surprise that Richard Croft was booed; as Anne Midgette (of <i>The Washington Post</i>, formerly of <i>The New York Times</i>) said, we could barely hear him in the first row of a Parterre box.

The cast was a mixed blessing: Stephanie Blythe (Fricka), Eric Owens (Alberich) and Adam Diegel (Froh) were excellent, especially Owens and Diegel (whom we saw as Cavaradossi in <i>Tosca</i> this summer at Glimmerglass). Most disappointing to me was Bryn Terfel, who simply did not have the authoritative voice nor stage presence essential to the portrayal of Wotan. His voice may be over the hill, amazingly enough, but the lack of any direction I place directly at the feet of director Robert Lepage, who left most of the singers just standing around most of the time. At least in the old production, there was something other than twenty-four moving panels to look at.

I came to this performance having seen the Met's <i>Ring</i> the last three times it was given, in the now-retired Otto Schenk production. I'll admit I was skeptical about the new Lepage production, and my skepticism was not fully allayed. Yes, there were some interesting effects, but, overall, "the machine," with all of Lepage's favorite gimmicky projections, failed to move me in the same way the old production did. There's a great deal of projected clouds and smoke, some of it motivated by the stage players' motions, an effect Lepage used ad nauseam in last season's disastrous <i>Le Damnation de Faust</i>. The only time these projections made any real sense in <i>Rheingold</i> was when Donner cleared the air with his hammer stroke before the appearance the rainbow bridge.

A saving grace was the playing of the extraordinary Met Orchestra under a frail, but, nonetheless, energetic James Levine. He needed help from the wings for his curtain call and looked a bit unsteady on his feet, but the performance he had just led was not the least bit compromised musically.

The finale of this production, with its soaring music, was, to me, less than fulfilling. Body doubles hanging from cables ascended the now nearly vertical see-saw planks: I call this "The Ascent of the Gods into 'Wallhalla.'"

My greatest fear about the Lepage production is that the novelty of "the machine" will wear off rather quickly, and that, over the twenty-or-so hours of a true Ring Cycle, it will become a terrible bore.

At last! My internet server is back again - but no one knows for how long!

Whenever we have good weather, we get connection problems! And we have plenty of good weather in California! :)


I agree! I agree! with everything that has been said - except that we saw only the HD version.

In the last year and a half I've seen at least one Ring opera in four different productions, three on stage and one by HD.

The best - last year's "final" Otto Shenk production by the NY Met.

Not bad - San Francisco's production this year which brings the operas into the gold rush era - but had some interesting adaptations, such as the Valkyries coming in as aviators and holding up gigantic pictures of actual servicemen killed in Iraq. There is a connection there - yes? Singing: very good to excellent. I love Nina Stimme as Brunnhilde, but the rest of the cast is quite good too.

Most bizarre - Los Angeles opera (I've already said too much on this production), but the singing was good.

Most boring - this NY Met Opera production. I agree with every negative comment - except, of course, we could hear Loge and Wotan in the HD production. The positive comments are right on also. Stephanie Blythe gave out some beautiful sounds - with all 300 pounds of her behind that music making, but she was remarkably light on her feet. Eric Owens made a very believable Alberich and did some great singing as well. The orchestra carried the day.

In the HD production we could hear Wotan quite well, but what's with that hair dangling over one eye? James Morris wearing an eye patch over one eye was very effective in conveying the message that Wotan had lost an eye in battle - OTOH, that hair over one eye just made it seem idiotic and Wotan seemed more like a rebellious teenager than a mighty god.

That Lepage contraption was just so unwieldy. The only time I liked it was when Alberich turned himself into a giant snake/dragon/worm with the head coming in at one end of the stage while the tail came in at the other end of the stage and the Lepage contraption twisted to look like the body of the giant snake.

BRING BACK THE OTTO SHENK SET!!!