Premiere today

In a few hours from now the premiere of Die Götterdämmerung will take place. Right up till now I’ve hoped that Stig would recover miraculously, but it didn’t happen. We had rehearsals all day yesterday with Christian Franz. He is a great singer and he was very positive and in a good mood. He was almost a bit too relaxed and calm, compared to my own mood anyway…

It was not his fault at all and I’m positive that he’ll do fine at the premiere. I was just sad since I have been working on this project together with Stig for so many years and Stig has been an extremely important factor for the development of the Ring. Besides Stig has an extraordinary sensitive and original way of being present on stage. I hardly know anybody else who’s able to put up an act like his. And since we have been rehearsing for months, working with all the little details and nuances, etc., nobody will be able to take over and come up with the same results in just 24 hours.

Christian will do just fine and everybody will be pleased, but today’s premiere is not that kind of ending I’ve dreamed about after all the years of work with the Ring. Anyway we are very lucky that Christian would come and save the premiere.

I’m excited, happy, downhearted and nervous at the same time. I wish that I could just sit back and enjoy this day, but of course I’m also a little anxious to know how everything will work out. That’s the name of the game when working with opera. It’ll be just fine.

The baby

We got a mail from a woman who had been present at the dress rehearsal yesterday. She was very upset because we had used a baby in the performance. She wrote that the baby would surly be traumatised for life and she even compared it to incest. I was pretty shocked at her accusation. We have taken all precautions to insure that the baby will not be harmed in any way. We’ve been in contact with an expert from the Centre of Crises and Disaster Psychology at “Rigshospitalet” who asserted us that being on stage would not cause the baby any damage at all. The baby will be away from its mother for about one minute all in all and will be in the arms of a woman who’s also a mother. The mail shocked me. We have to trust the experts (- and also the parents) judgment and we all agree that no harm will be done. I’m a bit worried if a lot of people will react with this kind of intensity. Personal I look at the scene with the baby as a tribute to life.

Luckily I have also received a lot of positive and enthusiastic mails, which made me so happy. I don’t think people really know just how important it is for me to receive all this positive reactions. It makes me extremely happy!

Urrgh!

Urrgh! Stig is ill and can’t perform on Sunday. He is very sad and so am I. All this work with the little details… and then a guest performer is taking over in the last minute. Stig is such an excellent singer and his personal character and presence is so important for the performance. No matter how good the replacement might be, without him it will never be the same.

Christian Franz, a brilliant singer, is taking over and we will rehearse with him all day tomorrow. It’ll be okay at the premiere. But still it is an aggravating way of ending the Ring. It’s a strange kind of anti-climax and I feel so sad for Stig, who’s a great part of this Ring.

Well, we’ll have to look at this as an experience and see how much we can catch up with today and tomorrow.

Dress rehearsal

Today we had our dress rehearsal at 12 o’clock with me as Siegfried. Yes, me! Peter and Guido are both well again and Ylva’s health is slowly improving. Unfortunately Stig is now ill. I hope though that he will be ready for the premiere on Sunday. But we decided to spare him from singing today.

We didn’t have the time to find another Siegfried (now we have found a standby for the premiere on Sunday) but it seemed a little grotesque that my assistant, Mette should play his role - so I played the part myself. I promised not to sing though. Instead Michael Schønwandt sang from time to time. It was a strange feeling standing on stage and, of course, this had never worked out at a real performance. To me it was a quite extraordinary experience. It’s a crazy way to complete the Ring.

I can definitely find traces of a self-portrait in both the character Siegfried and in the production as a whole. To me it was funny playing Siegfried. I’m sure it must have looked quite awkward and confused, but I decided to just let go and play the part no matter what. It was a strong experience getting the chance to give expressions to all the emotions – especially performing the death scene felt quite extraordinary to me.

Being close to the actors and to feel and experience the sweat, the sound and the intensity is fantastic. What looks so calm among the audience feels really intense on stage; the concentration all around before entering the stage, how incredibly loud it sounds when Irene sings while you lie with your head on her stomach, playing dead feeling how everything is evolving around you, and to look up in the lights and to feel this special magic going on at stage. I really had an extraordinary experience today! It almost went to my head– I don’t really feel like taking the ring off my arm ever again :)

I’m truly moved – and sad. Now it is over. I don’t know what to do with myself. Still I’m looking forward to Sunday. Now I can only hope that Stig and Ylva both will be ready for Sunday. I almost feel like call them and begging them to get well. But they also want to get well off course…

A hard Monday

Monday we had our last run through, this time with an audience. They were very positive and everything went quite okay, except for one single technical mistake.
My assistant had to replace Ylva who was ill. Of course this took a lot of energy out of the performance. Peter was back but did not sing, and Guido had a cold. It felt like somebody had pressed the button “mute” in some parts of the first act. But we’ll catch up on that.

Nearly done

Now we’re almost done with the Ring. How strange! Our rehearsal today with the orchestra on stage went very well. The orchestra is doing very well and it’s getting better and better day by day. For the first time the rehearsal on the final scene went perfect; all details fitted wonderful together and the timing was perfect. It feels so strange. Soon it’ll all be over.


On Monday we’ll have a run-through with mask and costume (Tina Kiberg’s dress rehearsal) at 5 p.m., and on Thursday we’ll have the dress rehearsal at 12 a.m. We don’t have any “real” rehearsals left, so now I’ve completed the whole “Ring”. It feels so strange to me – it’s lovely, but also a bit sad. Tonight the whole “Götterdämmerung-team” is going out for a meal, celebrating the completion of our work.

A nice week

It has been a really nice week. Monday and Tuesday were very stressful because I wanted to put all the scenes together and to make all the effects, like fire, stage techniques and baby, etc. function perfectly. Happily, our efforts gave a payoff later this week. Thursday we rehearsed the final scene with Tina Kiberg. It turned out to be a bit chaotic and it made me rather worried as we would have to be ready for the run-through at 4 p.m. However the run-through went extremely well. We still have to make some technical adjustments, but suddenly we’re felling on top of it. We have the time we need to have it all finished on time.

The orchestra sounds so excellent and they’re working very hard with this material! Saturday’s rehearsal was Michael Schønwandt’s last chance to make corrections on the first act together with the orchestra.

All in all it felt so nice being able to finish the week with great reserves of energy left. We also ran both set changes on time today. If we can stay clear of any illness or technical difficulties (knock on wood) we will make it. Lovely!

Making progress

Now we’re making progress. Monday was a difficult day with a series of new technical problems: The first part of the rehearsal had to take place behind the curtain because the safety curtain could not be raised or lowered. After the break the curtain had been fixed. Die Fledermaus was to be performed in the evening, so we had to finish the rehearsal on time and I lacked precisely 15 minutes to get through what I had planned.

Monday and Tuesday there was a sitzprobe in the orchestra rehearsal room, where the singers were rehearsing together with the orchestra for the first time. Meanwhile we worked with the technique on stage. Tuesday we had four hours of rehearsals with Iréne, Ylva and Peter. We had the time to get through the whole final sequence of events technically – with fire, special effects, stage elevator, etc. We’ll do it all again on Thursday together with Tina, so she’ll be confident about the fire on stage and the set changes. On Thursday we will also have our first rehearsal with a real baby in the final scene… The hospital has confirmed that we can use a real baby without causing it any harm, and I think it’s going to be an intense scene. Well, this should have been a secret saved for the premiere, sorry!

Luckily, the fireman has approved everything – including nine gas fires and a man set on fire on stage - and the stunt man Martin Spang Olsen is guiding and helping us so that it won’t be dangerous for the singer who’s doing the stunt.

Among other things we still need to make the lights for the final scene and to see how it all works together with the music. We also have to find out how we can put the ring on the fire without melting it for real. Moreover, we haven’t had a complete run through yet and we haven’t seen all the fires light up automatically at the same time. And I still need to make the choir’s final entry, where they don’t sing.