False Starts

The American staged premiere of Wagner's first opera was a farce. The debut of Die Feen at the historic Pasadena Playhouse on June 6, 2010, was delayed by more than half an hour due to “technical reasons”—enough time to notice that the audience waiting outside was not going to fill many rows. For good reasons, it turned out. When the performance finally began, one was struck by the unprofessionalism of the orchestra, the insecurity of the singers, and the tawdry set. Surtitles failed to materialize. During the first scene change two stagehands negotiated leisurely with each other in full view of the audience before one of them adjusted the position of a large log. No music accompanied this transition (although the opera is through-composed) and heckling quickly filled the void. There were no substantial scenery changes made to the “desert” setting for what is supposed to be a visually climactic first-act finale, when the supernatural princess magically appears against a backdrop of her castle and magic garden. In these and other ways, the production failed to convey much of what Wagner had set out to achieve in his first completed work for the stage.

Die Feen is admittedly an odd work. Its comic-heroic balance is hard to strike “just right” in performance. It calls for elaborate stage effects.