Performance

Gary Tischler • June 8, 2016

It looked as if the Helen Hayes Awards, presented by Theatre Washington, managed to return to their roots this year at the annual celebration and trophy giveaways, held at the Lincoln Theatre May 23.

The roots, to my mind, are what separate the awards from their New York counterparts the Tonys, which are nationally televised but locally vague, more an extended ad for Broadway than anything else.

The Helen Hayes Awards, in contrast, have from the beginning, quite a number of years ago, been a celebration of the Washington theater community (which extends to our neighboring states) in all of its aspects — big and little, serious and entertaining, rich or struggling, companies with theaters and those without them.

They have always centered around people: the artists, actors, directors and gifted pros who make magic happen backstage and out front, and also the audience. There’s always been a celebratory, even party-like atmosphere to these things, named after America’s First Lady of Theater and often presided over by her son, the late James MacArthur. There was time for solemnity and eloquence, broad humor, songs and thank-you-mom-and-dad, not to mention the presence of legends like Angela Lansbury and Jason Robards and locals who made good like Robert Prosky.

Mostly, there was a lot of yelling, whistling, cheering, and screams from the contingents that had their work nominated. Winning wasn’t always everything, but when it occurred for the smaller troupes, it was really something. Being there always renewed my interest in and enjoyment of the Washington theater community (if such renewal were needed), of which I am part as critic and chronicler.

Things stick in your mind. I remember when actor Ed Gero, who was nominated this year for his portrayal of Antonin Scalia, won his first Helen Hayes Award for portraying John of Gaunt in “Richard II.” He acknowledged the passing of his father that year: “This is for Sal of New Jersey,” he said.

Last year, they kind of muffed it when, in the wake of deciding to double the number of awards and dividing them into Helens and Hayeses — basically a matter of size and membership in Actors’ Equity — they had a less-than-two-hour show that resembled a track meet and resulted in confusion.

This year, things went back to more or less normal; that is, the members of the cast and team of Constellation Theatre’s “Avenue Q,” an adult puppet musical, happily screamed their heads off throughout the night after all but sweeping the Helen musical awards.

“Yerma,” the GALA Hispanic production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s play, took many of the drama awards, including best play, in the Helen group, in what seemed like a lifetime achievement award for the long-lived group, headed and founded by Hugo Medrano and his wife Rebecca Read Medrano. The Medranos and GALA have over many years given us the opportunity to see plays by Lorca, by contemporary Hispanic playwrights and from the classic age of Spanish theater (giving the lie to the ugly Trump-eted clichés about Hispanic, Latino and Spanish culture).

It was also a good night for the successful and risky Women’s Voices Theater Festival of last fall, in which pretty much the entire Washington theater community staged world premieres of plays by female playwrights, one of which was a big winner in the Hayes arena. That would be the Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Yaël Farber’s take on “Salome,” which won several awards.

If you looked through the Helen musical results, you could see the work of two rising young directors: Matthew Gardiner at Signature (“West Side Story”) and Alan Paul at the Shakespeare Theatre (“Kiss Me Kate” and “Man of La Mancha”).

The wonderful E. Faye Butler and actor Lawrence Redmond — with a fit-for-the-theater stentorious voice — hosted the evening, which moved both briskly but patiently over two hours or so. Theatre Washington head Amy Austin talked eloquently about the mystical relationship between actors on stage and the audience.

And on they went to the 9:30 Club for the year’s biggest cast party.

Gary Tischler • May 26, 2016

It’s fair to say that we live in uncivil, intemperate times — in terms of our political discourse, in terms of the comments sections on our little screens, in terms of the way we conduct ourselves in public, on our highways and in the halls of government.

Being polite, having good manners (or just manners) doesn’t soothe the savage beast.

But music still can. There are still places and times — in a concert hall, in the drawing rooms of embassies — where people gather together and listen to the music and converse, before, in between and after, often without devices lighting up the night.

Music can be a balm and a joy, depending on the occasion. At the embassy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, it was a joy when the Embassy Series and its founder Jerome Barry helped orchestrate a fond farewell May 20 for Ambassador Jean-Louis Wolzfeld, who will be leaving as well as retiring later this summer, after a successful four-year tenure here.

Wolzfeld represented his tiny country in a big way, with curiosity, open arms, a warmth that was never pushy and an intelligence that was never showy. At special events, be they an evening of cabaret music or a yuletide celebration, he was the genial host.

Naturally, they feted the ambassador of a duchy where Belgians, Germans, the French and the Flemings gather convivially with an evening of Irish music and musicians — principally the pianist Barry Douglas, founder of the chamber orchestra Camerata Ireland, noted for its membership of musicians from the north and south of Ireland, and conductor Dónal Doherty and his chamber choir Codetta, young singers based in Derry.

A song by Schubert led things off, but the offerings were notably Irish, including music by James MacMillan, as well as the infectious “Little Man in a Hurry” and renderings of traditional works like “The Coolin,” “Carrickfergas” and, of course, always, “Danny Boy.”

The singers — later joined by the school-aged group Harmony North — filled the available room in the embassy to the hilt, so that soloists could probably be heard on Massachusetts Avenue, but the teeming, high-energy, impeccably meshed young voices were all of a piece to be savored.

The final salute came as both guests and artists gathered together in one room. It was decided that perhaps an American spiritual might punctuate the evening in high style, and it did indeed, with impeccable singing from the voices scattered throughout the room.

Codetta, Harmony North and Douglas all appeared at the Kennedy Center the following day as part of the “Ireland 100” festival.

Schubert, who led off the evening at Luxembourg, provided the same service May 21 at the Kalorama residence of the Ambassador of Iceland Geir H. Haarde and his wife, Inga Jona Thordardottir. It was another Embassy Series concert of far different kind, tempo and feeling. Violinist Laufey Sigurdardottir, who was born and raised on Reykjavik, and pianist Beth Levin deftly and with a balanced fierceness played Schubert’s “Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor.” Their intense performance called for equally intense listening. One needed to catch one’s breath and pay close attention to grasp phrases and ideas. In the stylish, brightly lit residence, surrounded by expressionist art, one felt a few steps removed from the oft-noted alarums of the world.

A violin sonata by Grieg preceded the fireworks of Beethoven’s “Violin Sonata No. 7 in C Minor,” a work considered by many to be one of grandest in the violin repertory. It was certainly grand and tempestuous, solemn in parts, gorgeous in others and always emotional.

On a weekend of intermittent but constant rain, this was a Saturday night that seemed both civil and civilized.

The Sunday concert at the Music Center at Strathmore provided a different sort of quality, not the least of which was the star power of Simone Dinnerstein. As far as the program and its structure went, it was audacious — offering two composers separated by time, maybe space and certainly style, strung together like jewels from different shops, but jewels nevertheless, smoothly evolving from and toward each other.

The composers were Philip Glass and (hello again) Schubert. There were some raised eyebrows at this negotiation.

Dinnerstein by now carries two things with her: gravitas, which most concert pianists have, and something else — persona, charisma, charm — which not all do, at least not to the degree that she does. You can hear those qualities in her playing, but also see them, if you’re close enough, in the ease of he playing, her physical relationship with the piano.

None of this recapitulation is meant as critique; it is more about the meditative, healing power of musical moments. At Strathmore, this occurred with the added appeal of the hall itself, which (as I remember from when I heard Itzhak Perlman here at the hall’s opening) still feels like an acoustical church or cathedral. It is a hall where the acoustics illuminate the music. Folk singer Kris Kristofferson once said after a rehearsal here: “I love this place. I can hear every single mistake I made.”

You could, on another rainy Sunday, also hear the glory of Glass and Schubert, and Dinnerstein.

Gary Tischler • May 25, 2016

It’s not often that all the secret and not-so-secret Irishers of Washington, D.C., and the surrounding region get to see and be everything Irish for three solid weeks. Now’s your chance: the Kennedy Center is presenting “Ireland 100: Celebrating a Century of Irish Arts and Culture,” a festival that opens May 17 and runs through June 5.

Ireland may have a history of strife, what with famines, civil wars, religious persecution and the so-called Troubles, the late-20th-century conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. But Ireland is ancient as well as modern, very much in its peculiar way, and those tugs of war — over religion, culture and the dearly-and-with-difficultly-held old ways and language — have produced an outpouring of music, dance, literature, theater, novels and poetry. It has enriched both the old sod and much of the new, especially in America.

The Great Famine of the 1840s spurred a huge influx of Irish immigrants to America that really never stopped, and those same immigrants — like so many others — were not always welcomed with open arms (opposition to Irish immigrants was among the noted characteristics of the Know Nothing Party just before the Civil War). The Irish, as they are wont to do, persevered. In the cities, they became maids, butlers, policemen, firemen and, last but not least, community leaders and politicians, until one of them became the first Catholic and first descendant of Irish immigrants elected president of the United States.

That would be John F. Kennedy, whose ghost and presence is very much a part of the Kennedy Center, and of this festival. On several stages and in the Grand Foyers and Halls, we get to see what the Irish past sounded like, how the people danced, what words and in what language the poets wrote, the plays they made and still do. We get to see and hear what the present and the future sounds like, with a host of contemporary Irish performers, writers, dancers, choreographers and creators of visual art.

The legendary Irish actress Fiona Shaw — who performs and gives a master class during the course of the festival — is directing tomorrow’s festival opening, in which a host of performers, like Tara Erraught, Colin Dunne, Louis Lovett, members of the Abbey Theatre and uilleann pipers, will be on stage with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Irish conductor David Brophy.

It’s a sprawling festival, a revelation in green of everything the Irish have to offer.

When JFK visited Ireland in 1963, it marked a kind of homecoming for him, since his parents were the offspring of the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Irish immigrants on both sides. The visit, greeted by the locals with a joyous outburst of love and enthusiasm, was recorded by all sorts of cameras. Three films will be shown in the Kennedy Center’s Family Theater on May 28. One of them is a short black-and-white Amharc Eireann newsreel in the Irish language. There’s also “The Columbian Fathers Present President Kennedy in Ireland” and “John F. Kennedy in the Island of Dreams,” a 40-minute film marketing the 30th anniversary of the trip.

The following day, Kennedy’s 99th birthday will be celebrated with “Celebrating the Past to Awaken the Future,” in which notables and young artists unveil a special installation created for the Kennedy Center’s Centennial Celebration of President Kennedy.

Highlights abound of the literary, the dramatic, the musical and the footsteps kind, as well as installations.

Shaw, an artist in residence here, will be a highly active participant, showcasing acclaimed Irish texts of literature and poetry in “Blowing the Heart Open” on May 31 and, on June 3, hosting a dialogue on the importance and impact of the works of William Shakespeare.

Drama gets a grand go in the Eisenhower Theater on May 18 and 19, with the Abbey Theatre production of Sean O’Casey’s “The Plough and the Stars,” a tense and tenacious play about the Troubles. Samuel Beckett, the famed Irish poet of reduction, will be conjured with the Pan Pan Theatre’s production of his first radio play, “All That Fall,” and storyteller Louis Lovett’s presentation of the one-man show “The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly.” Of special interest will be Olwen Fouéré, the theater-maker who performs “riverrun,” her acclaimed adaptation of the voice of the river from James Joyce’s indestructible “Finnegan’s Wake.”

Music will be present with Camerata Ireland, appearing with Harmony North Choir; Camille O’Sullivan will give a solo concert of cabaret, Irish-style; and the 20-member ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s opera “The Hunger.” There’s also the Gloaming, a contemporary Irish musical supergroup with vocalist Iarla O Lionaird, who will give a concert in English and Gaelic.

In literature, there’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon’s gathering of words and music “Muldoon’s Picnic,” with his house band Rogue Oliphant in the Terrace Room. Muldoon and Maureen Kennelly of Poetry Ireland have also devised a weeklong literature series.

There will be food and presentations of the culinary arts, including, of course, a bit of whiskey tasting.

And as in any Kennedy Center Festival, there are installations for the eye, mind and heart. There’s the large-scale installation created by Grafton Architects, inspired by the Irish Ogham alphabet, which dates back to the fourth century. The installation interprets the ancient language into a series of large concrete fins (ten out of the original 23), inviting visitors to engage with its tactile surfaces.

Of special interest is “A Girl’s Bedroom,” the work of Enda Walsh, one of Ireland’s most noted contemporary playwrights. It’s an immersive theatrical installation that will be presented three times an hour for an audience of five people at a time. In another installation, “Gaeilge Tamagotchi,” visitors are invited to wind their way through a labyrinth of Irish linen to receive an endangered Irish word, which they will be tasked with nurturing and preserving.

The harp, a symbol of Ireland, will appear in several guises, notably a harp from 1820 created by famed maker John Egan, and the Earth Harp, a creation of the mind of William Close, originator of more than 100 types of musical instruments.

Gary Tischler • May 20, 2016

When you encounter Richard Wagner and each entry into his monumental Ring Cycle, it becomes not just going to the opera, but being part of an event. There’s a frisson and a challenge involved in just being there, and sometimes, as it happens, it becomes even more so.

That was the case with the Washington National Opera’s production of “The Valkyrie” (which followed the prelude “Rhinegold”) Monday, which began with a certain nervous anticipation at the news that British soprano Catherine Foster would not be able to perform the critical role of Brunnhilde due to an injury sustained during rehearsals. Plus, there was a powerful thunder storm that seemed to accompany the run of the five-hour night.

But with the American soprano Christine Goerke, who is something of the queen of Wagner in the United States, taking on the role and singing and performing the role as if she’d been rehearsing from the beginning, any concerns about uncertainty or a drop in quality were quickly dashed when she made her appearance.  

Of all the operas in the cycle — “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods” were yet to come — “The Valkyrie” (“Die Walkure”) contains some of the cherished and familiar music as well as the tropes and clichés that lie in the popular imagination about all things Wagner. We have memories of Brunnhildes and Siegfrieds, heroes and heroines, of swords and helmets and opera stars from the past. The musical themes are familiar as a kind of thunderous muzak that reels around in our heads, and in the Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now,” in which U.S. Army helicopters rode over beach waters during an attack, blasting out the Valkyrie theme.

To suggest an opera or any sort of musical work is Wagnerian is to think in terms of overwhelming excess, especially musically, but also as a work of theater. This production was not so much overwhelming as it was complete and clear and emotionally fulfilling. The music as presented and played, led by conductor Philippe Aguin, had a lot to do with that. Because this production seemed to highlight its narrative aspects, the music, while providing the necessary moments of being swept away, of surging and cresting, buttressed the storytelling and mined it for its emotional and intimate contents.

You have to accept a lot about art making unbelievable things as real as a postcard from a loved one or a bill from a tax collector. This is a world of gods, of dwarves, of giants, of fantastical creatures, of fire and storms, of earth and a heaven drawn up by an immortal architect where slain heroes are taken from the battlefields by a flying sisterhood of immortals, where a cursed ring made from Rhine gold has the power to rule, save and destroy the world, gods and mortals alike.

While director Francesca Zambello has chosen a setting that suggests both a primitive America (think of Albert Bierstadt’s epic paintings) and a rusting industrial landscape threatening nature, the production also remains rooted in myth on a grand scale. The many projections, of swirling, rising river waters, and dark and primeval forests set off against factory smoke and skylines, are suggestive and ominous, and also threatening. In fact, when audience members walked outside for the first intermission, they were confronted by the very same threatening clouds — and thunder and lightning — so that when those same images returned on stage, they seemed like live news feeds.

In “The Valkyrie,” events set in motion in the prelude begun to gurgle up when Sieglunde, leading a fraught domestic life in the forest with her husband Hunding, confronts an exhausted stranger seeking shelter. He is an outsider, and as it turns out, a man nurtured to be a hero by Wotan, the leader of the gods. His name is Siegmund, and he is Sieglunde’s twin brother, and they fall instantly, heroically, madly and all the ways you can fall in love.

From this comes a rightful conundrum for Wotan, who must confront his outraged wife Fricka, the goddess of marriage, who insists that the lovers must be punished, and the heroic Siegmund must die. For this to happen, Wotan demands that Brunnhilde, his much beloved daughter and leader of the Valkyrie, assists in the death of Siegmund at the hands of Hunding. But Brunnhilde, observing how Siegmund refuses a hero’s death and remains immovably attached in his love for his sister, disobeys Wotan’s will. The results of that are, to say the least, epically catastrophic for both.

They are all the potent, fiery ingredients of  a long night that seems to envelop the audience at the speed of anxious hearbeats.

Once again, Wagner has sectioned off the work: the meeting and fulfillment of Siegmund and Sieglunde takes up nearly an hour, and, with the music ever more sweepingly romantic and classically Wagnerian, it is the discovery of each other by the siblings. It is one long, soaring duet, masterfully sung by the appealing  and richly voiced American soprano Meagan Miller and the almost frantic but able British tenor Christopher Ventris. It reminded me of the equally long section of the WNO production of Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde,” during which the impassioned lovers realize then fulfill their love for each other. “That man does love duets,” one observer noted.

The trickiest — and it seemed to me most difficult — section takes places in Valhalla, which looks more like the board room in Trump Tower, where Wotan confronts his furious wife and then tasks his beloved daughter. Fricka, perhaps naturally, objects not only to the adultery but also to the incest. Wotan suggests to her that she’s afraid of anything new, which convinces neither Fricka nor, truth be told, the audience.  

Once Goerke is on stage, she takes full command of it with every note, every strong step, every bit of feeling. She and Held — but also the young lovers — are the character standouts in this production.

Brunnhilde arrives, expressing her joy at being with her father in the most full-voiced and natural of ways. But Wotan then launches into what is basically the narrative of everything that’s happened so far and Held gives this exposition the kind of clarity it needs, and in this his singing — there isn’t much variety to be had in exposition — is aided and abetted by the music, which brings focus and musical embellishment to the tale being told and sung. There is real anguish and frustration in Held’s Wotan and, later, disastrous anger.

In the climax, the Valkyrie make their appearance by gliding and flying down in parachutes, much to the aural delight of the audience, which treat this somewhat like children at fireworks. The sisters — all of them Wotan’s daughters (but not by his wife) — tidy up and police their gear like well-trained soldiers, bringing with them the portraits of the fallen dead.

In the end, Wotan, furious at Brunnhilde for defying his orders, strips her of her immortality and condemns her to a sleep from which she can only be awakened by a worthy mortal.

This is the worst kind of punishment and a breach of trust and love, and the moments and the singing leading up to the end are heart-breaking — in a way that can only happen in Wagner. It’s the definition of loss and confusion, of terrible life itself, it’s spectacle — a ring of fire — but it’s also deeply intimate.

In the end, The Ring, as it is wont to do, has spoken, and not for the last time.
 

Gary Tischler •

When the Helen Hayes Awards — complete with both Helen and Hayes Awards for the second straight year — commence at the Lincoln Theatre May 23 (after-party to follow at the 9:30 Club), it will be the first awards event under Theatre Washington’s new president and CEO Amy Austin.

Bringing a varied and intriguing background to her job, Austin spoke at the second 2016 Georgetown Media Group Cultural Leadership Breakfast of the year at the Rosewood Hotel May 5 to showcase the depth and breadth of the Washington theater scene and its importance to the city and the region.

Austin came to the job after a major stint as a newspaper publisher, as well as work with the Theatre Lab and, back in the day, working with Horizons: Theatre from a Woman’s Perspective under artistic director Leslie Jacobson.

“I actually had a role in ‘The Children’s Hour,’ ” she said. “I majored in theater at George Washington University [where she took classes from Jacobson] with a minor in political science — which seems like a perfect combination for this town.”

Horizons, incidentally, was a successful group which performed at Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown, with memorable productions including “Top Girls,” “Eleemosynary,” and the, yes, Helen Hayes Award-winning best musical play, “My Name Is Alice.”

Austin went on to become publisher of the Washington City Paper, the city’s often controversial weekly, including during the period when Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, sued the paper over its coverage of him and the team. “If you want to talk about stress, that was a pretty stressful time,” she said.

Theatre Washington evolved into a broader promotional and educational organization about theater from its Helen Hayes Awards origins in 1983 — with the very active participation of its namesake, who is considered the First Lady of American Theater and who also won an Oscar.

The awards were and continue to be different from other such occasions — including the Tonys — because to this day they are a boisterous evening of celebrating Washington’s theater community, which has grown into more than 50 theaters of various sizes and different sorts of audiences and content, spreading throughout the city and the region in Virginia and Maryland.

Austin noted that there was a time when in Washington there was really no such thing as regional theater — “it was a touring town” — mostly at the National Theatre, where producers either tried out Broadway-bound shows (famously, Washington Post theatre critic Richard Coe helped “fix” “Hello Dolly,” and the rest is history) or hosted national tours. Today, the National stills does that, along with the Kennedy Center, which also hosts many touring musicals, especially in the summer.

The history of what is now theater in Washington really began with the founding of Arena Stage in 1950 by Zelda and Tom Fichandler and Tom Mangum. After starting at the Hippodrome on New York Avenue at 9th Street NW, Arena moved to its present location near the Southwest waterfront.

“Theater,” Austin said, “is first of all about a shared experience among audience members and the artists in a company, about magic and special moments that you can’t have anywhere else. At its best moments, the audience and the actors are breathing the same air. Theater is full of transformative moments.”

“Theater,” she said, “is about community and communities.” Theater, she said, can also transform communities.

“The one thing I’ve noticed about Georgetown,” she said, “is that you don’t have a theater here. I know the Kennedy Center is close, but it’s not the same.”

Austin noted the power of theater — its presence within our midst — to change the urban landscape, beginning with Arena Stage, which now stands as an example of transformation, with big changes coming to the waterfront and up and down the river.

“Look at the downtown area and what happened, how it’s changed,” she said. “The Shakespeare Theatre, the Harman stage, the Woolly Mammoth, they were the pioneers there. That was also the case for the Studio Theatre on 14th Street, which was there long before the transformation that occurred there.”

“Theater can change things dramatically,” she said. “It adds to the economy. We’ve seen it. Theater is good business. It brings in audiences from all over the region and sometimes the country. Washington is going to have a heavy influx of new people over the next few years, and they’ll make up the new audiences. They’re coming here because the cultural opportunities, including theater, are so plentiful here.

“Theater is culturally influential,” she said. “Look at what’s happened with the preponderance of ‘Hamilton.’ Everybody has the CD, and people listen to it all the time.”

“New theater happens here all the time, new plays, new playwrights. We had 59 world premieres.”

Much of that total came from the Women’s Voices Theater Festival last year, in which practically all of the theaters in the Washington region opened their seasons with brand new plays by women, a risky prospect that showed off the community’s willingness to band together.

“We hope to be able to continue this kind of thing, this cooperative effort,” Austin said. “That’s what Theatre Washington is about: to spread the word, to work with other institutions. We have a vibrant community, a vibrant theater world here.”     
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Gary Tischler •

Even though “The Rhinegold,” the opening salvo in Washington National Opera’s and Artistic Director Francesca Zambello’s much anticipated production of Richard Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle, is — at around two and a half hours — the extravaganza’s smallest and shortest component, it by no means lacks size or importance.

As the prologue to what follows, the increasingly tragic saga told in “The Valkyrie,” “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods,” “The Rhinegold” is critical as a kind of prelude and chronicle of a disaster foretold. It’s the vehicle that sets things in motion on an increasingly precarious and spectacular path.

But it’s also a work that has its own identity, its own rich rewards, in which Zambello makes visible and audible some of her reverential and referenced concerns, giving this production (and presumably the whole WNO “Ring of the Nibelungs” cycle) resonance with the chaotic times we live in.

Not altogether clearly, this production is set in a quasi-modern, global-warming-era America, albeit a somewhat mythological one. Matching their raw, clean tone to the musical one, the sets echo both pristine wilderness vistas and high-tech industrial vibes that are a retreat from the natural world.

Wagner’s music — especially in the beginning — serves as a majestic, irresistible engine that advances the story and the emotions it contains. It’s a tone-setter, a kind of promise of things to come, presented by a huge WNO orchestra, under the intelligent and forceful baton of Philippe Auguin, as a kind of proud gift. This is especially true in the opening sequence, illustrated by one of those projections of the natural world created by Jan Hartley and S. Katy Tucker, a parade of gurgling, swirling imagery.

In this world, we encounter the Rhinemaidens — Woglinde, Wellgunde and Flosshilde (love those Wagnerian names), ably and seductively played by Jacqueline Echols, Catherine Martin and Renée Tatum — gaily splashing in the river, playing on the rocks as they tease and generally enrage the dwarf Alberich, sucker-punching him with an all-consuming desire, which leads to his discovery of the gold which can only can be taken by someone who is willing to renounce love. And who would do a thing like that?

Elsewhere, Wotan, the ruler of the gods, is nettled by his wife Fricka for having allowed the giants Fafner and Fasolt to take her sister Freia away in exchange for the giants building his new abode for the gods’ Valhalla. Also on hand: Froh, Donner and Loge, a trio of gods as millennial types. Wotan learns of the theft of the gold, and he and Loge descend into the underground mines and caverns of Niebelheim, where they encounter Alberich and his brother Mime and a horde of dwarves. Alberich has not only used the gold to make a magical chain that makes him invisible, but has forged a ring that can make him all powerful. Wotan and Loge steal the ring and everything else. Alberich casts a curse of destruction on the ring.

Wotan is forced to give all the gold and the ring up in order to save his sister-in-law from the giants, but he and the gods have Valhalla. And so it begins, as they step on a gangplank that could be the road to heaven, or an invitation to the Titanic.

This is resounding, magic stuff, magic of stagecraft, magical music, a creation of a deeply lived-in world. Zambello has staged the complete cycle before, but a complete cycle is a first for Washington. It’s well worth the wait.

Even as a precursor, “The Rhinegold” is part Greek tragedy, part warning, with nature — both the natural world and the best and the beast in human (and divine) nature — on display. It comes at you in sections: the playful but disastrous encounter between the Rhinemaidens and Alberich, the wide-open spaces where Wotan contends with his family, the other gods and the giants and the blazing, burning underground.

In the Ring Cycle, Wagner envisioned something on the order of total theater, where design, music, theatrics, and drama became welded together into something passionately new. In the era of the great romantic operas, the cycle must have seemed exactly that: totally new, and not a little overwhelming in its ambition, perhaps even something of an affront to the senses. Not that Wagner’s music doesn’t have its own form of romanticism, the kind that sweeps everything before it.

“The Rhinegold” is carried by the music, but it’s the weaving together of a plot with its later consequences, and a group of characters played by performers who sing extremely well and, I’d say, act even better and convincingly, that carry you away. I was especially impressed by Gordon Hawkins as Alberich; his singing isn’t the most precise, but the sheer energy, relentlessness and bullying in his voice evokes a hunger for sex (if not love), ownership, power and control that is frightening, especially in these our times. It’s desire run rampant that’s on display here. The Ring itself embodies a kind of primitive force that says the wearer can literally have it all.

Wotan — sung and played with quiet, steady force by Alan Held — is also drawn to it, but uses it instead to save his family from the giants. Particularly evocative among them are two young gods, including a sharp, edgy and slick Ryan McKinny as the hammer-wielding Donner and William Burden as Loge, singing with a strong, clear voice, evoking a very contemporary coolness.

Gary Tischler • May 16, 2016

Just before the start of the third and last act of “Twilight of the Gods” — which is also the last act of the complete Ring Cycle being staged by Washington National Opera — some of the people who had attended all four productions in the course of a week looked around and nodded at one other in the seconds just before the lights would dim again one last time.

“My god,” one woman said. “It’s over. I can’t believe it. It’s kind of sad.”

There was quite a bit of that “We few, we happy few” feeling about this unprecedented mounting of the entire “The Ring of the Nibelung” at the Kennedy Center by WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello. The experience was exhausting; the last production alone was six hours long including two intermissions. The entire cycle racked up approximately twenty hours.

But the experience was also exhilarating. Even as the cycle presented challenges of stamina and — in the age of the short attention span and Twitter — forced abandonment of our devices for prolonged periods of time (Act 1 of “Twilight of the Gods” was two hours), the four productions built a momentum of excellence rarely seen — or heard, for that matter. This Ring came as close as you can possibly get to Richard Wagner’s notion of “Gesamtkunstwerk,” a synthesis of remarkable music, poetic and free-form writing and a compelling narrative.

The production got off to a clean, affecting start with the prelude of “The Rhinegold” and never looked back, running like a powerful, speed-building train through “The Valkyrie,” “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods” in a way that focused the heart, the imagination and the mind, carried along by Wagner’s magnificent music, presented in a way that made it a true partner and facilitator of the narrative, as well as providing enormous pleasures in the playing and listening.

Wagner tossed around and inserted leitmotifs — musical identifiers of themes and characters — like some medieval farmer throwing seeds for a hundred different vegetables. Some, such as Siegfried’s trumpet sounding and the Valkyrie theme, are practically Muzak in our pop cultural memories, but all of them serve as reminders, like musical magic breadcrumbs.

In the Ring, this becomes important throughout, because characters at various times recap how they got to a particular point in the narrative, often repeating the same story from a different point of view, pushed along by the music. Everyone has their story to tell, each in their own expository and musical way. The result is that by the end of it all, you can’t get the characters — those who survived and those who did not — out of your head for a long time.

In “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods” (in German, it’s “Gotterdammerung,” more akin to “Armageddon” than to twilight), it’s the hero awakened to his many tasks of heroics: slay the dragon, capture the gold and the ring, defeat the god Wotan, pierce a ring of fire, awaken the warrior princess Brunnhilde and, most difficult of all, fall in love. In “Twilight,” it’s betrayal, tragedy and murder, as well as the gigantic self-sacrifice of Brunnhilde, which results not only in her immolation but in the destruction of Valhalla.

“Siegfried” is a true heroic epic, an adventure and a fulfillment of a great love finally achieved and experienced. It’s the Siegfried and Brunnhilde show, with great moments by two old foes, an unmatched schemer in a narrative that has quite a few and, of course, the dragon.

The dragon, which is a transformed version of Fafner the Giant (who murdered his brother to gain the gold, the ring and everything), looms like a solid steel monster, impenetrable but not undefeatable, as it turns out. He’s a dark, huge, menacing creation of the modern age, of modern man, a clanging, battery-driven menace that Siegfried overpowers and kills. He also does away with Mime, the whiny, plotting, overweeningly-greedy-with-a-large-and-sweaty-sense-of-entitlement brother of Albrecht, the mining dwarf who originally stole the Rhinegold and fashioned a ring from it, a ring that bears his deadly curse.

American tenor Daniel Brenna is an energetic, full-throated Siegfried, chomping at the bit, ignorant as only an innocent can be, a superhero for his age, but posturing like a modern one. He has a single-mindedness and a directness that are both appealing and annoying. He has no sense of mortality or of the seriousness of killing either the dragon or Mime.

In Siegfried, we begin to see more clearly Zambello’s subtext of environmental rust and decay; Siegfried himself seems to have been raised by Mime in a trailer park that was used badly by a twister sometime in the past. The projections designed by Jan Hartley and remounted by S. Katy Tucker are increasingly dominated by industrialism run rampant, with polluted water, factory smokestacks, rusted trains and blighted urban landscapes. The theme — the conceit, if you will — is never forced. Rather, its use is accumulative. It becomes an overlay, an atmosphere in the design.

Wotan — so ably sung and played by Alan Held, makes a final appearance here, first in a scene with Alberich (the remarkable Gordon Hawkins), in which they walk like the tramps in “Waiting for Godot,” with amiable, almost nostalgic banter, and then as the last obstacle to Siegfried’s rescue of Brunnhilde.

“Siegfried” climaxes in an astounding courtship and fulfillment of Siegfried’s and Brunnhilde’s love. It’s a long, almost proud duet of mutual attraction, misunderstanding and coming together as fate wanted and would have it. Brenna and British soprano Catherine Foster (who missed doing the role in “The Valkyrie” due to injury) rise to the occasion in sweeping vocals — especially Foster, who has to navigate through the realization that she is no longer mortal, that she isn’t who she is and also that she has been rescued by the love of her life. This results in the initiation for Siegfried of the idea that love is not just an overpowering passion but a tug of war. Brunnhilde’s “I-love-you-don’t touch-me” exclamations confuse him more than trying to figure out how to kill the dragon.

In “Twilight,” things go south for the lovers, but end in triumph for the literal ring and for the Ring that is Wagner’s (and perhaps opera’s) crowning achievement. Certainly it was such for Zambello, but equally for Philippe Auguin, the WNO orchestra conductor who restored the music to its brilliant qualities, overriding the opera’s sometimes exaggerated reputation as a personification of Teutonic mythology.

What’s so affecting and surprising about the enterprise is how intimate an epic it is. There are so many full and focused scenes in which only a few characters occupy the stage and our attention, to be replaced by a gathering horde in the mines, a small group of gods, a warrior force or sheer spectacle: the death of the dragon, the arrival of the Valkyries, the fiery imprisonment of Brunnhilde and, of course, the destruction of Valhalla itself.

In the end — and from the beginning — the Ring Cycle was a rewarding experience, in ways one suspects that few audience members ever anticipated. We few, we happy few, indeed.

Gary Tischler •

Four operas and some 20 hours later, one feels a powerful residual effect from the first round of Washington National Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung,” the Ring Cycle for short. The audience at the Kennedy Center Opera House (especially those folks who, like me, took in the whole cycle) felt a little like ocean-liner passengers encountering turbulent but exhilarating seas.

It’s hard to get the saga out of your head. From “The Rhinegold” to “The Valkyrie” to “Siegfried” to “Twilight of the Gods,” the music reverberates, the characters linger: Wotan and Brunnhilde, the Rhinemaidens, Alberich and his relatives, the Valkyries themselves, the dragon, the giants and the gods, the tragic lovers. The whole supernatural bunch is ever not so gentle on my mind.

It’s difficult to encapsulate the entire cycle, or to do it justice with single reviews. So here are a few observations and thoughts on the Ring (the second cycle winds down this week and the third will begin Saturday).

A 21st-Century American Experience. There is an encyclopedic array of clichés associated with Wagner and the Ring, not the least of which is that the operas are a compendium of Nordic and Germanic mythology, of gods and monsters and heroes that sprang from the dark forests and rivers of pre-modern Germany.

If that’s the case, then director Francesca Zambello has stripped the work of its more obvious Teutonic references related to helmets and posturing (although Nordic-type helmets were being sold as souvenirs), turning it into a contemporary classic and intimate epic about humanity’s relationship to nature and failed stewardship of the natural world. This is obvious in the evocative projections by S. Katy Tucker and Jan Hartley, with their illustrations of polluted rivers, factory smokestacks and cityscapes.

But it’s also in the design and the look of things and people. Valhalla looks often like a Manhattan board room; Siegfried, raised by mordant, obsessively greedy Mime, seems to be living in a trailer park that has fallen on hard times; and the Rhinemaidens, in “Twilight,” are searching the refuse of a polluted Rhine like homeless waifs. It’s relatable throughout, without pounding the audience over the head.

Bad Boy Wagner. Wagner himself, historically, has a reputation for being a terrible human being, arrogant, profligate, almost misogynistic. Without making an argument in his defense — personal character shouldn’t be a central issue where art is concerned — one wonders how (if Wagner was a human monster) to account for the creation of Brunnhilde, Wotan’s daughter, the true heroic figure of the cycle, whose sense of accountability and heroic sacrifice make her the critical character in three of the operas.

The Two Brunnhildes. When British soprano Catherine Foster suffered an injury in rehearsal that prevented her from portraying Brunnhilde in “The Valkyrie,” she was replaced by Christine Goerke, who was performing “Siegfried” at Houston Grand Opera. The segue, back and forth, was seamless, with both sopranos delivering outstanding performances.

The Conductor Also Triumphs. This was, in terms of both critical and audience response, a huge triumph for WNO conductor Philippe Auguin, who supported the singers and led the orchestra in interpreting Wagner’s music with a nuanced mastery — and without being overly Wagnerian (except when necessary).

Stand-Out Performances. One of the most memorable performers was American baritone Gordon Hawkins as Alberich, the evil dwarf who steals the gold, makes the ring and curses the ring. Hawkins sang the part powerfully and, even more impressive, acted it in ways that brought out all the complicated characteristics of the part. The scene in “Twilight” when he’s almost seductively urging his son Hagen to kill Siegfried and steal back the ring is a prime example of the dual nature of the cycle as an intimate epic.

I was touched by the plight of the young lovers, brother and sister, Siegmund and Sieglinde, portrayed with high-dudgeon passion by Christopher Ventris and Meagan Miller in “The Valkyrie.” And for sheer consistency, Alan Held brought the right size to the role of chief god Wotan. This god behaved like a god, and was tortured by his very human decisions. Kudos also to the Rhinemaidens, headed by Jacqueline Echols and including Catherine Martin and Renée Tatum.

Being a part of the experience of the Ring was exhausting, not necessarily in the physical sense (although sitting for so many hours in a chair had its effects), but in an emotional and mental way. It required focus, it came at you like a long, unending parade and it washed over you with sublime music.

Many critics and audience members had seen other Rings and compared. But even without that, you sensed every night that this Ring, which began on a high note, got better and better as it went along.

Gary Tischler • May 4, 2016

If you’ve felt some turbulence in the air amid all the springy weather we’ve been having here of late, it was probably a bit of foreshadowing.

Storm Large is back in town at the Kennedy Center, and she’s keeping good company.

Large — full name, Susan Storm Large — the full-deal singer, author, songwriter, actress, recording artist and former (2006) finalist on “Rock Star: Supernova,” is back. This time, she’s here for three concerts, in which she performers Kurt Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins,” today through Saturday, April 30. It’s something of a departure for a singer who’s gone from tour and club rock star to being part of Pink Martini to singing with the NSO Pops here in a Frank Sinatra concert last year.  

“Yeah, that’s quite a bit different,” Large said in a telephone interview while she was taking time out in her Portland home. “It’s a challenge, I gotta  say. There’s a lot of that Teutonic, serious stuff  going on here. Very, very dark, and not so much melodic and romantic music, and I’m a romantic. But you find your way in. You find the true things and the way to make it your own — the things that speak to you.”

Weill, who famously partnered with Bertolt Brecht on scathing anti-establishment musicals like “Happy End” and “The Three Penny Opera,” also teamed up — for the last time — on “The Seven Deadly Sins,” a relatively short work, with Brecht. “It’s the story of two sisters, named Anna l and II, who may personify facets of one woman and who leaves her childhood home in Louisiana and travels to seven different cities in seven years, during which she experiences the aspects of the seven deadly sins and their opposites. 

“She finds all of the seven sins, like envy, wrath, sloth, greed and so on, but also their opposites,” Large said. “It’s not easy, but I actually love the music and the challenge it presents me for me. You have to keep embracing new challenges. I just keep on moving as I get older. You kind of grow up, you know.”

Large had performed “The Seven Deadly Sins” with the Oregon Symphony. She’s a legend in Portland, where she was part of a punk band called “The Balls” for years and where she had a reputation for musical and emotional honesty and a dramatic, flamboyant and high-energy stage presence. The Oregon Symphony was scheduled to take the piece to Carnegie Hall, but because of financial and travel constraints it couldn’t do it. “They asked me if I could be a part of this with the Detroit Symphony as part of the Spring for Music Festival.” Her answer was an emphatic yes.

It’s not her first prom with Brecht and Weill. Large starred as Sally Bowles in an Oregon theater production of “Cabaret” in 2007, but then she did a searing, nakedly honest, auto-biographical musical memoir called “Crazy Enough,” which ran for 21 weeks and was a hit in such diverse settings as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Adelaide Festival in Australia and the legendary Joe’s Pub in New York. The book version — which is noted for its revelations about a dark childhood, abuse and youthful heroin addiction as well as her life as a rock star — was named Oprah’s Book of the Week and won the 2013 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.

Even on the phone Large is a forceful, vivid presence. She can segue from profanity-peppered chatty talk to a keen, intelligent awareness of her musical challenges and approaches. She takes compliments like a sweet, demure lass.

She performed with Pink Martini in 2011 at the Kennedy Center and last year released a remarkable album called “Le Bonheur,” a remarkable run through an entirely eclectic, torchy, rock and blues-imbued and just about heart-breaking group of songs that you tend to return to. They include her unique version, hot-to-the-heart-and-ear, of Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” as well as his “It’s All Right With Me,” the unforgettable rockish ballad, “Unchained Melody,” “The Lady is a Tramp,”  the American boulevardier Tom Waits’s great “Saving All My Love For You,” the spritely “Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed and two of her own compositions, the ravaging “A Woman’s Heart” and the anthem “Stand Up For Me”.

To get the full stormy effect of Large, check her out on her YouTube list: tall — six feet — and blonde. A full-ahead woman, whether she’s in front of orchestra or a punk band or by herself in the spotlight. She’s physical, funny, smart and death-defying.

Large performs with the National Symphony Orchestra at 7 p.m. Thursday, as part of the NSO Declassified Series at 9 p.m. Friday and at 8 p.m Saturday. James Gaffigan conducts and the vocal quartet Hudson Shad will also be on hand for the performances, which also include Rodgers’s “Carousel Waltz,” Ravel’s “La valse” and Dvorak’s “American Suite.”