Opera lovers have long wondered about the fuss over Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Almost a century earlier, Richard Wagner wrote four epic operas in which he told the story of a golden ring that grants great power, but corrupts all who wear it.
Now audiences in San Francisco can see if Francesca Zambello’s American-themed Ring of the Nibelung is worth all the fuss.
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Opera premiered Zambello’s first installment, Das Rheingold, part one of the four-part cycle. The singing was mostly wonderful, but it’s not clear yet, whether Zambello can meld American themes to Wagner’s version of Norse and Germanic myth.
Some ideas connect brilliantly. The dwarf Alberich, the Nibelung, comes on stage dressed like a California 49er, toting a pan and pickaxe. The three Rhinemaidens wear girdles and bloomers, like dance hall girls, as they guard their golden hoard in a landscape that seems equal parts Ansel Adams and Albert Bierstadt. Later Alberich guards his treasure at the bottom of a mine, cracking his whip to drive a crew of child miners.
Wotan, chief of the gods, dresses like an industrial magnate, in an office that seems vaguely Art Deco, though the spear seems an odd touch for the boardroom. He’s willing to sacrifice his sister-in-law, Freia, and his honor, if he can trick the giants into building his fortress Valhalla (or are they laying the foundations for an American empire?). The giants (and they really are giants — great costumes by Catherine Zuber) are ironworkers. They make their entrance seated on a steel I-beam, descending from a sky filled with cranes and girders. But Freia’s brothers, Donner and Froh, come off as idle playboys, bearing croquet mallets. They’re more Oscar Wilde than Sinclair Lewis.
