Stage director β Anna Kelo. Suomen kansallisooppera ja -baletti β Finlands nationalopera och -balett, Helsinki, Finland. Friday, March 24th, The delay was perhaps most evident in extremely detailed personenregie, combined with realistic and believable assumptions of each role. My impressions of the Rheingold , seen in , were much more equivocal β I found it visually interesting, but prosaically directed.
Tonight, I was eager to see how this Ring would proceed. She takes the libretto at face value, illustrating the story through some striking visuals. In the closing scene of Act 2, we saw flames appear on the videos, nicely portending what was to follow in Act 3.
Kelo gives us a succession of varied images that are seriously impressive to look at, the staging has been fluently rehearsed and looks great. Yes, it tells the story logically and transparently. It gives much to look at.
However, I longed for something deeper, something to interrogate the work, to engage with the themes of the loss of power, of what being a hero involves, to deepen my understanding of this universe. Personenregie was also prosaic, characters addressed the front far more than they addressed each other. Incidentally, the sightlines for the battle between Fafner and Siegfried were problematic from my seat on the centre-right of the orchestra section β the view obscured by a rock.
Hannu Lintu led an orchestra on thrilling form. The quality of the orchestral playing was undeniable and, as a result, Lintu was able to elicit a seemingly unlimited tonal palette from his musicians. There was a very small number of split notes and ragged entries in the brass towards the end, but these were forgivable given the length of the evening and their achievements elsewhere.
