Wagner - Die Walkure / Levine, Behrens, Norman, Metropolitan O

Fine production for a growing opera enthusiast.
This was a very well-sung and orchestrated production of Die Walkure. Jesse Norman was a LOVELY Sieglinde, Ludwig was an anguished and believable Brunnhilde, and James Morris presented a much more "foreceful" and godlier Wotan than the previous installment of this particular ring cycle. See Das Rheingold Wagner - Das Rheingold / Levine, Morris, Jerusalem, Ludwig, Metropolitan Opera (Levine Ring Cycle Part 1). We finally understood why he is noted as one of the great Wotans. Levine conducts a flawless, if somewhat fast-paced, orchestra. (Keep in mind, this opera is still 4+ hours long). We enjoyed ourselves immensely. Also useful was the booklet that comes with this DVD. This provides a nice synopsis of the opera, and notes on this particular production. Detracting somewhat from the rest of the fine cast was the slightly lackluster performance of Siegmund. This production has a very simple staging, and looks a little dated to today's standards. While the soundtrack is great quality, the set was a bit dark, and the filming reflects this; we had to fiddle a bit to artificially "brighten" on the screen to show detail. Also, the "quality" of the dvd filming and English subtitles was somewhat blocky, and could not be improved by our system. While this is a great performance, it is around 20 years old; even with today's available upscaling, the filming looks its age.

Superb production
James Morris is a superb Wotan. And - an added bonus - he LOOKS like the big Norse god. The final farewell to Brunhilde is heart breaking.

Skip Act One
Gary Lakes is about as interesting as a half-eaten bowl of soggy cornflakes. Jessye Norman does not function as a "rescue-me" soprano. Kurt Moll is totally unable to play stupid characters. He always sounds like what he is--a natural musical genius. This is also a problem when he sings Osmin and Baron Ochs.

Jessye Norman's voice TOO BIG for Sieglinde!
Yes I know Jessye Norman has a magnificent voice and anybody who dares to say otherwise is beyond the pale, but her voice is TOO BIG for Sieglinde. You should be able to close your eyes as you listen and imagine Sieglinde as a slip of a girl, a teenager. The end of Act III is perfect. James Morris and Hildegard make a perfect team. I cannot watch them in this scene without tears. And everything else works well: the set, the changing light in the backdrop, the fire, even the flakes of ash that start falling shortly before the curtain. And it helps that Morris looks like a big tall norse god and Behrens looks like a valkyrie. I have a quibble. In "Wer meines Speeres Spitze fürchtet, durchschreite das Feuer nie!", Morris runs the word Feuer and nie together, as if they were one word. I think there should be distinct break between the two words, thus giving a terrible finality to "nie". Can someone tell me if he did this deliberately, as a sort of style?

Act 3 lost in translation
Sieglinde is gloriously sung by Jessye Norman, but perhaps we must accept the heft of her physical presence as a legacy of the old tradition for operatic sopranos, so different from the nubile divas who reign today. James Morris acts well but suffers frequent reproach for being vocally past his prime; however, in this performance i find that he uses the voice he has to excellent effect, with flawless musicianship. The scenery and stage direction are stodgy, but again, this is the old tradition for the Metropolitan Opera, not the theater-savvy regime of its present general director. Deutsche Grammophon's audio and video here are somewhat below the standards of their present-day products, but acceptable. What is unacceptable are the English subtitles for most of Act 3 (on Disk 2). They are hopelessly garbled and out of synch, with endings of sentences often appearing two or more frames ahead of their beginning (and believe me, this is not due to the idiosyncrasies of German sentence structure). The first two acts on Disk 1 are completely free of this disconcerting defect. What happened to Quality Control for Disk 2?