Wagner's tale comes to life

Hardly anyone watching Houston Grand Opera's performance of "Das Rheingold" on Friday could ever have witnessed a theatrical stroke like this:

Richard Wagner's tale of gods, gnomes and giants battling for gold was nearing its climax. Clouds of gray mist shrouding the gods' fortress, Valhalla, glowered from a video screen that filled nearly the entire rear of the stage. Clearing the air was a job for Donner, god of thunder.

He began by floating out over the orchestra pit, borne by a crane that had carried him aloft for most of the performance. Hovering over the orchestra, he invoked his powers of storms and wind. Then he sailed up and back toward the video screen, raised his silver hammer, and swung - smashing the mists into into a shower of glassy shards.

No, real clouds don't shatter. But the cascade was a powerful symbol for the gods' breaking through the last barrier between them and their stronghold.

"Das Rheingold" began Houston Grand Opera's first staging of the ultimate operatic challenge, Wagner's four-drama "The Ring of the Nibelung." Though the voices were a bit less than heroic-scale, the cast sang with vividness and meaning; director Carlus Padrissa's staging told the story through an arresting mix of realism and fantasy; the orchestra's animation and color framed the events vividly.

"Das Rheingold," or "The Gold of the Rhine," introduces the themes of greed, love, nature's wealth and the lust for power that dominate Wagner's saga. Alberich, a gnome, steals a hoard of gold from the Rhine river and crafts it into a ring that gives him unlimited power; Wotan, leader of the gods, steals the ring, then has to use it to pay the giants who built Valhalla.

Padrissa and his Spanish theater company, La Fura dels Baus, creator of the production, cast the all-important gold as a living organism, spawned in the Rhine and portrayed by performers in golden body suits. The way this human gold is callously stacked and herded in "Rheingold" becomes a powerful symbol of the abuse of the earth's riches.

Sometimes too much

But the staging is playful, too. The Rhine maidens, water nymphs who guard the gold until Alberich grabs it, cavort in Plexiglas tanks of water. The demigod of fire, Loge, zips around on a scooter, a nifty vehicle for his mercurial nature.

The video images are a near-constant supply of scene-setting and symbolism, from the jets of water embellishing the Rhine to Alberich's gold-smelting factory to the rainbow flanking Valhalla. But the machinery and technology sometimes pile on too much material. Though the cranes enable Wotan, Donner and other deities to take to the air, by the time the gods are encased in billowing robes and hitched onto cranes, they're capable of little physical expression beyond waving their arms. Most of the time, they're singing heads.

Voices of drama

They sang dramatically Friday, though. Bass-baritone Iain Paterson captured not only the grandeur of Wotan's proudest moments, but his frustration and anger as he struggled to wiggle out of deals. As Loge, Wotan's cunning adviser, tenor Stefan Margita exuded wryness and mirth.

Though Alberich's frustrations often called for baritone Christopher Purves to half-sing and half-snarl, which he did adroitly, Purves opened up resonantly when Alberich gained power.

Basses Kristinn Sigmundsson and Andrea Silvestrelli sang forcefully as the giants Fasolt and Fafner.

Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton's full-throatedness enabled Fricka, Wotan's wife, to equal his stature. As the couple's children, baritone Ryan McKinny and tenor Chad Shelton brought youthful ring to the roles of Donner and Froh; soprano Melody Moore sang with vibrancy and agitation as Freia, who narrowly escapes being given to the giants.

Conductor Patrick Summers and the orchestra supplied a wealth of characterization, from the Rhine maiden's bubbliness to the giants' lumbering; from the glitter of the gold's first appearance to the ferocity of Alberich's curse; and from the mellifluousness of the prelude to the nobility of Wotan's greeting to Valhalla. That's where everything stops until part 2 arrives next spring.