Yesterday five performers assembled in a well-appointed rehearsal space in Western Massachusetts and began to imagine, bring into being, develop, and populate, the plashy parish, the uliginous underworld, of scene I of Das Rheingold.
Perhaps it's better described as a liminal longitude where the submerged clefts and formations at the top surface of a dark, mineral netherworld meet sunlight.
There are residents - family members, it would appear - with formed personalities and habits, with some agreements, some non-corrosive differences...and a visitor, an interloper. Do we judge this new character on his first, apparently base statements? Of course we do!...and now we can ask what preconceptions of our own, apparently about him, are we now importing? what have we started to assume? Could he be inquisitive, innocent even? or are we compelled to view him as lustful, malevolent, predatory? Is he convinced he is destined for rejection – an incel -? or is this a traumatic moment, in which he meets sexual revulsion for the first time, doled out with a very glad hand by strangers in an unfamiliar environment?
Have these Maidens of the Rhine ever met anyone outside their family?
Evan Leontis, playing Woglinde, pinpoints the clarity and innocence of the Rhinemaidens. She is the initiating voice of the vast cycle, beginning to articulate 'being' out of a state of nature, pulling nonsense syllables from the void, leading to articulation and expression. The very birth of language, from which shared experience arises.
Wellgunde, played by Nellie Rustick, occupies the 'middle sister' position, and I imagine will seek to bust apart that stereotype, as will Flosshilde (Mary Brown Bonacci), perhaps the senior, the most conscious of 'Vater' and his strictures.
We encounter these Rhinemaidens on a journey of individuation, veering between ecstatic close-harmony agreement and meltingly gorgeous glimpses into their varied personalities. Over our few hours together I was deeply affected by the freshness and depth of inspiration these performers express with each line.
Brian Robinson plays Alberich the Nibelung. Even on a first pair of sing-and-wander-throughs he gives us an arrestingly deep dimensionality. Brian and Wagner conspire to invite us to consider the 'inner beauty' of a character apparently designed to arouse disgust and rejection. It is so richly textured, beautiful, and painful.
We know we haven't forged any rings yet, but already there is a world, a condition, in which good and evil have some issues to play out.
Brünnhilde (Jenna Rae) – who has not yet shown her face or voice in the Ring Cycle – operated the camera, edited the video, and supported these wonderful artists.
We have set into motion Der Ring des Nibelungen. We cannot picture the consequences.