Reviews

Virginia Opera's Das Rhinegold at Topgolf
Sunday, September 12, 2021
Review by John Campbell

Topgolf, with one side open to the green, looked hopeful as a safe space to interact with others. The online seating chart showed four rows of two side-by-side seats. Instead we found four seats on a sofa which meant being seated next to 2 strangers who happened to be occupying our seats. Still wearing my mask, I told the woman next to me (they were eating) that we were vaccinated, hoping to hear the same. Instead, a verbal rebuke from her male companion chastising me for even mentioning vaccination put me on guard. Talk about my sense of safety!

Fortunately the other four seats, at a tall table with stools several feet behind the sofa, and three steps above, were available.The bonus was we had better sight-lines for the monitor and a surface to write notes on. The monitor showed a closeup of the action on the field with subtitles. Looking to our right we had a view of the center field where the singers were clad in golf wear. We moved and were happy to see that the servers who brought our drinks were masked.

As the Rhinemaidens (Woglinde, Catherine Goode; Wellgunde, Lauren Cook; Flosshilde, Whitney Robinson) were setting out the story of the gold they guard, a loud motorcycle intruded above the noise of hundreds of vehicles streaming past on I264 on our left. The three pairs of supernumeraries waving the silver fabric representing the river's waves seemed lost, except on the monitor's closeup. All of this, I suspect John Cage would have found exciting; Richard Wagner, not so much.

In this production Wotan's staff was a golf club. He was a businessman without scruples who wants what he wants and will do what's necessary to get it. (Does this remind you of anyone?) Wotan's wife Fricka (Daryl Freedman) is concerned about her sister Freia (Sarah Tucker), the goddess of youth, being used as payment for the contractors, the giants Fasolt (Hidenori Inoue) and Fafner (Ricardo L. Lugo), for building Valhalla, the castle home for the gods. They arrive in orange trimmed golf carts and dressed in orange camouflage.

Loge (tenor Joshua Blue), the demi-god of fire, persuades Wotan (Kyle Albertson) to visit the Nibelung with him. The Nibelung Alberich (Aubrey Allicock) has forged a ring from the stolen Rhinegold. Early in the opera Alberich's romantic intentions toward a Rhinemaiden had been rebuffed and in anger he has renounced love in order to gain power of the ring.

Loge is done-up in a plaid kilt and a mismatched plaid shirt and has a trickster's view of life. He challenges Wotan: What is the morality of stealing gold from Alberich who stole it from the Reinmaiden's care? Wotan gets the point and tricks Alberich out of the gold and uses the gold ring and magic helmet to save Freia from the giants. The curse Alberich placed when he ceded the ring to Wotan quickly takes over. The giants fight as they divide the gold and Fafner kills his brother Fasolt. I comment to my companion that we should call 911 and at that moment we hear a loud siren over on I264.

As I looked at the actors and singers scattered on the huge field I had trouble focusing on the action because pink, red or gold spotlights shone in my eyes but the huge voices and lovely orchestral sounds were amplified to keep our attention focused on the gravity of human greed. Erda (Whitney Robinson), in a voluminous gown of gold and rich earth tones, strolled on the walkway behind our seats after appearing in the action on the green and we got to see the gown closeup.

Donner, God of Thunder, (Eric J. McConnell) swaggers about as a golfer in his plaid kilt-inspired suit and tie and helps Wotan slip into his green Masters golf jacket as a symbol of taking possession of Valhalla, accompanied by a grand musical bang-up ending. Remember Erda's final words: “All things that are – perish.” An evil day has dawned for the immortals in this, the first of four operas, that relate Wagner's grand epic.

It may seem strange after all this that I was elated by the experience. I even felt lucky that we had found safe seats and had been bathed in beautiful music and the glorious amplified singing. (It has been 19 months since Virginia Opera's Cinderella at Harrison Opera House.) Eighteen member of Virginia Symphony Orchestra, led by Adam Turner, played in a party room in the building, their sound fed into two sound towers on the field. With the opera over I could now focus on having seen my first live production of Das Reingold.

We were not given program booklets when we showed our tickets. Back home we found they could be downloaded from the Virginia Opera site. We learned the two-hour adaptation (Wagner's original was 30-40 minutes longer) of Das Rhinegold was by Jonathan Dove and Graham Vick, orchestration by Dove, and used by arrangement with Birmingham Opera Company in the U.K., where it was performed this summer. Governors School for the Arts graduate, Portsmouth native Chrystal E. Williams was Fricka in that production but unfortunately had another operatic engagement in Europe that precluded her coming home to sing the role here.

Photos of the production and a review can be found at: http://operagene.com/new-blog/2021/9/15/virginia-operas-das-rhinegold-at-topgolf-anything-but-par-for-the-course