Christmas

It has been nice with a short Christmas vacation away from Wagner. Tomorrow we will carry on and I’m looking forward to that. Unfortunately Ylva Kihlberg is still ill. However Peter Klaveness too is not going to be here between Christmas and New Year’s Day, so it’s not of that much importance the next couple of days. But then I really hope she’s getting well very soon because we seriously need to get ahead with her and Guido (who has been busy with Die Fledermaus). It must be hard for her being ill for so long!

Die Götterdämmerung is really quite long and we will already be on stage rehearsing from January 20th. I’m getting more and more stressed not knowing if we’ll have time enough to prepare it thoroughly. Fortunately everybody knows their material quite well, so we won’t waist time on rehearsing lines. That’s good.

I’ve really had my doubts about the exact realization of the sequence from Siegfried’s death till the end of the 3rd act. Should I choose the more “realistic” version, or should we make a less realistic version, that might be more emotional in proportion to Brünnhildes’ experience?

We have to make a connection between the beginning of the Ring, where she strikes a match and the point, where she searching through her fathers’ lumber room, to make the leitmotif appear clearly. This connection is very important to the whole concept of the book shelves, etc. It’s so difficult to make the final scene, because a lot of pieces must fit together and it has to come to an end. It is more difficult than anything else in the Ring and it certainly causes more doubt. That’s how it was when we made the design and that’s how it is for me realizing it now. But it’s necessary to make a choice and see how it works. I’ve made up my mind and have chosen the less concrete-realistic and more emotional interpretive solution. Tomorrow Irene and I will start rehearsing the final scene, so I’ll have to make a final decision now.

No rehearsals

The premiere for Die Walküre went incredibly well. Lovely. Especially the 3rd act was completely astonishing at the premiere. Got a fine review in the newspaper Politiken. It’s so lovely that they mention that the standards of perfection are ready for the complete Ring cycle now.

This week causes a bit frustration. Due to my own tight schedule and different leaves of absence among the singers we have only few rehearsals for “Götterdämmerung”. In addition the rehearsals have been cancelled the last two days because of illness. Anyway, we’ll make it in time, I think. I’m getting impatient. I just want to get started.

Should have attended a performance meeting this morning, but it had fallen out of my schedule, so ten people sat and waited for me at 8:30 a.m. and I didn’t show up. Embarrassing! I hope my apologies were accepted.

Anne is running “Siegfried” and I hear that everything goes very well. Now I just hope that we can get on with “Götterdämmerung” very soon!

Dress rehearsal

We got through the dress rehearsal. Die Walküre is not quite as tight as Das Rheingold. A greater part of the set design has emerged at the last moment and parts of the lighting aren’t quite in place yet. But all things considered it went well. The first act was a bit shaky: Partly because Eva Johansson hasn’t had a single rehearsal on “the field of poppies”, and partly because the spotlight, which illuminates “the field” with moonlight had a wrong “shutter” and therefore lit up and dimmed too fast.

But the second act went just fine. Randi and Christian were both in good shape, and the third act was really breathtaking. Irene, Eva and James were fantastic in the third act.

In the final scene the pigeon flew into the prompter's box - and our poor prompter Karen is terribly afraid of birds. She has often talked about the risk of the pigeon flying into her box, but we have always made a joke of it telling her: What’s the chance of this happening? But it happened. As a result she screamed out loudly at the most emotional part of the scene. Everybody – besides Karen - laughed a lot. She was pretty shocked. But it REALLY WAS a funny experience…

This is really a hard week. There is work to be done every single day and every night. Well, from 8 a.m. tomorrow there will be meetings, so off to bed I go. We got a good start today with the introduction and the first rehearsals for Götterdämmerung. Really promising. Lovely to get started with some new material.

Two rehearsals to go

Friday we had a pretty bad day. The stage technicians got tremendously delayed taking down the scenery for “The Tempest” from the stage. Because of this most of the first act was turned into an orchestra rehearsal in the orchestra pit. Therefore we have a number of light-cues and some smoke in the first act that we are still uncertain about. And since Poul Elming is singing at the rehearsals on Monday and Wednesday it was Stig Fogh Andersen’s last rehearsal – and he didn’t get the chance to rehearse the transition where the house is rotating and the trees are lowered from the ceiling and everything has to be timed very exact! But we’ll have an extra special rehearsal on that with Stig on Monday at 3.30 p.m.

On the other hand Stig has rehearsed more on the new field of poppies in the 2nd part of the first act. Poul has only had the chance to try it once, so just to be sure that he’ll remember we’ll do the scene again before the run-through with the orchestra tomorrow at 5 p.m. Gitta-Maria Sjöberg remembers everything quit well by now, but next Tuesday Eva Johansson will be back from Zürich after having performed in “Electra”. She will have a kind of rehearsal on the first act on stage on Tuesday and after that she’ll go straight to the dress rehearsal Wednesday evening! But she’s usually very quick…

Tomorrow the rehearsal is scheduled for 5 p.m., so we’ll have the chance to slow down a bit, and the stage technicians will have the whole day to put up the set and to get the last pieces in order: We still have problems with the fire in the last act. It has a tendency to light up and be put off at random. And we still miss the right, newly made trees to the first and second act. They must be made ready and put up and it’ll take some time too. So Die Walküre is really running on a tight schedule now. We will make it on time, I think, but only barely. The ensemble-house also has an extremely tight schedule, but they are playing better than ever. It sounds incredibly beautiful. We have to admit that we’re pushing it very hard on everybody these days, but that goes with making the whole Ring!

A week

I haven’t been writing lately and a lot of things have happened. This will be a short summary:

- Revival on Das Rheingold. It went incredibly well, became tight, living and exact. I was very pleased with it and tried to start a party afterwards, but I seemed to be the only one in the mood for a party. Was filmed by Zentropa the whole evening - tried to act natural, but that wasn’t easy being filmed all the time.

- Friday and Monday: Rehearsal with piano on Die Walküre. It went well, but the new field of poppies is very demanding because there’s so little time. Steffen Aarfing suggested rotating the tree so you can see the sword being pulled out. It is superb. Strange that we haven’t thought of this before. The lighting is demanding and we had some difficulties during the run-through Monday, but we will get it under control, I think. We worked on the lighting the whole Saturday at the Opera House and I was a bit short short-tempered to everybody. I’m surely tired – it is a bit overwhelming to perform Die Walküre shortly after having done Das Rheingold. But, after all, it’s also a great experience!

- Right now I’m aboard SK910 on my way home from New York. I went over yesterday to attend some meetings about a performance I will be directing at a place north of NY next summer. Quite intense to travel there and back in 48 hours (it was the same flight crew on my way home and they noticed that I was on the plane again. They are good to me – actually I think they pity me a bit). It’s so amazing that you can check your e-mail on the plane now.
Now I will watch a good movie and get some sleep. I have a long day ahead of me with meetings on Thursday, and on Friday we’ll have orchestra rehearsals on Die Walküre from midday to 4 o’clock and from 8 to 11 p.m., and furthermore some technical rehearsals and more meetings.