A brand-new Metropolitan Opera production of Richard Wagner’s 16-hour “Der Ring des Nibelungen” offers a lot of filmmaking angles. So it’s a bit startling that director Susan Fröemke would choose to make a documentary about the set.
Mind you, it’s a big set — a 90,000-pound monster nicknamed “the machine,” it’s made of 24 massive, moving planks. Still, wood doesn’t have much personality, even when Robert Lepage, the director who conceived the production, furrows his brow at it, which he does quite a lot. The stagehands wrestle with the set, and the orchestra works to time the score with its movements.
The singers are shown mostly in relation to the set, such as when one points out, with admirable calm, that he doesn’t want to lose a foot trying to walk on it, or when star Deborah Voigt falls during a performance. Backstage, Voigt suggests changing her blocking, and some off-camera wag says, “Be careful what you ask for — they’ll fly you in next.”
Whether Wagner needs these tech trappings is a question heard from only a few fuddy-duddy patrons, one of whom says the set “sometimes looks like a basketball court.” That it does, and also sometimes like a split-rail fence, although with the help of the lighting design (which isn’t discussed) at times it’s undeniably beautiful. All it takes is the majestic E-flat that opens “Das Rheingold” to make you realize that, despite what “Wagner’s Dream” insists on showing, “the machine” really isn’t the point.