Die Walküre, Jul.-Aug. 1985

I consider these performances to be the most important ones in my tenure at Seattle Opera, because they set the tone for what was to come. Had they failed, had I lost heart, or had the Board not stood behind me, the history of Seattle Opera would be vastly different. Up to this time, all Rings in the United States had either been variations on the early 20th-century German Rings, or in the case of a few recent Rings, copies of what Wieland Wagner had created at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth in 1951. Suddenly on July 28, 1985, an American audience—composed mostly of Seattleites but with many of those who traditionally came from out of town to Ring performances here—saw a new look. Robert Israel’s sets and costumes and François Rochaix’s staging shook the audience out of the opera comfort zone and right into the modern theater. From the little plastic fawn in the garden in Act I, through the great theater machine of Act II, the flying Valkyries, and the mysterious look of Wotan’s attic in Act III, this was something completely new. Costumes all in the mode of the 19th century, abstract and suggestive rather than naturalistic sets and staging influenced by Bertolt Brecht made this Walküre very different.

That night, for what I believe was the first time in the history of this very polite city, booing vied on an equal basis with cheering at the final curtain. Fortunately, the conducting by Armin Jordan was extraordinary, as was the singing by a great cast, headed by Linda Kelm as Brünnhilde and Roger Roloff, this year a strong Wotan. Letters poured into my office, but the fascinating result was an almost 50-50 count. The negative letters, written by those I have always afterwards called Shiite Wagnerians, denounced me in language that was so extreme as to be comical. We were after all only producing opera, but I was called by some of the writers the Antichrist. The positive letters, many thoughtfully critical and some outright enthusiastic, were wonderful.

Of course, we made mistakes in the production. The plastic fawn evoked to Americans the image of Bambi, a mistake that Rochaix could not have been expected to anticipate. Israel and I should have caught it. In the second act, the use of the tower was not very convincing or clear in this first effort, and the flying of Ms. Kelm from the tower to the stage had not been sufficiently rehearsed. The flying horses were a huge success that first night and ever afterwards in this Ring, but the final scene the first year—beautiful and poetic as it was—simply confused most of the audience. Where did Brünnhilde and Wotan go when they left the Valkyries’ Rock that didn’t appear to be a Valkyries’ Rock under any condition? Why was she there? There was real fire, but why didn’t it really surround her? And on and on.

After all the uproar, which continued through the three performances we did, Rochaix and Israel went to Los Angeles to discuss the future. Both of them said that they knew that they were wasting their time, that after all the boos and the negative press comments, I would cancel the production. They waited for the call, which of course never came. It never occurred to me to change our plans. I knew that we had something exciting, and to stop now never entered my mind. Because I was so new to the job, I had no idea what a wonderful Board of Directors I have and had. Not one member of the Board ever said a negative word to me about these performances or even suggested that we retrench. I am not sure any other American board would have been so adventurous.

One final story: Three Valkyries in this production were “ground girls,” while five were flying. The lengthy rehearsals had been largely involved with the difficulty of maneuvering the flying horses. One stagehand controlled the rotating movement and another the up-and-down movement. It took pinpoint coordination, and it was accomplished with bright lights shining directly into the crew members’ eyes. At one point Rochaix had decided that it wasn’t going to work. The Valkyries and crew talked him out of giving up. At a rehearsal involving the ground girls, Rochaix asked one of them, a young woman who is not now working in opera, to run across the stage in the fog that created the clouds over which the horses flew. She didn’t do it. He asked her again. When she again walked, he stopped her and asked her again to run. She said, “In my family we don’t run.” Rochaix has always regarded this as one of his funniest moments in the theater.

These performances were so important in the modern history of our company because they made opera something worth discussing. People really reacted to this Walküre, and heated discussions of the production enlivened that August in Seattle. Fist fights broke out at least two cocktail parties over it; people were energized, and going to the opera became an exciting experience, and even better, unpredictable. Seattle Opera suddenly had become what every opera company should be: a theater where you don’t know exactly what is going to happen before you arrive. Those who had missed the Walküre couldn’t join in the conversation—though many did—and they made sure that the next time they would be able to comment. That reaction for an opera company is like discovering a gold mine.