Yesterday I took a trip to New York to see Das Rheingold at the Metropolitan Opera. Since I had seen it before, I decided not to spend top dollar for orchestra seats this time (the recession also had something to do with my choice). I went for the other extreme in the ticket pricing ladder and bought (cue your best Steve Martin impression) the cheap seats. How cheap were they? I was three rows from the back of the house and could touch the ceiling. If I wanted to get a workout and jog up stadium steps indoors, jogging at the Met would ensure a nosebleed. My knees embraced the seat back in front of me. You get the picture.
I can now reveal the full experience of sitting in the cheap seats from the perspective of somebody who has watched the back of conductor James Levine’s hair waft in the breeze from the comfort of the orchestra.
For the uninitiated, Das Rheingold is one of four pieces of a work best described as the operatic version of a televised mini-series called Der Ring das Nibelungen (The Nibelung’s Ring), called The Ring for short. The four operas composing the full performance cycle have undergone various staging interpretations since the 1870s when they were first performed, and the Met’s interpretation has been hailed as a brilliant traditional rendering which is in its last performances in 2009 after thrilling audiences for 20 years. Fans of the Ring, sad to see it go, are enjoying the last few live events before a new interpretation comes in 2010, which is also why I was not going to miss it at any cost.
One of the great special effects of Richard Wagner’s lengthy (about 15 hours total) but enthralling masterwork is the appearance of Valhalla, the newly built home of the gods which appears as a brilliantly rendered redoubt placed high in the backstage scenery. From the cheap seats we couldn’t see it because it was obscured by the proscenium. We also saw only a portion of the rainbow bridge which appeared for the gods to reach the new fortress.
The performers’ voices are strong enough to reach us brave souls in the upper reaches of the peanut gallery, but sometimes the full effect of the orchestration as encouraged by Maestro Levine’s skilled baton managed to drown them out. They also looked like diorama figures from so far away.
Once seated, movement of any kind can be difficult. A late arrival just before curtain time caused me to scrunch into my seat with my coat shoved between my hip and the seat and my purse in my lap. It wasn’t one of my most comfortable experiences. The subsequent performances will find me in the same seat, so I guess I’ll have to dress for survival mode and take along a good pair of binoculars. Anything I can’t see from on high I’ll just have to conjure up from my memories of Rings gone by.
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