Just days after Junya Watanabe's jagged, lithe Sid Voguish and contemporary aesthetics are again piqued by the Tokyo-Paris axis. German composer Richard Wagner is considered by many — including a friend of mine — to be the pearl come from 19th Century Romantic nacre. How else to immortalize the narrative genius of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen than with world-class voices and unforgettably weird costumes?
The cautious eye finds the opera's principals Mihoko Fujimura (Japan, Fricka) and Jukka Rasilaine (Finland, Wotan) monochromatic, indigo, wearing shower curtains as dickies and atlas-shelf bookends for hats. That silky voice in the backroom atelier of our minds interjects and corrects: No, such muted abstraction is a great tribute, perfect in its contrast (visual minimalism against sonic floridity) and, like all things Apollonian, conceived for timelessness.
CLARIFIATION, JUST BARELY JAPANESE: Fujimura and Rasilaine were rehearsing for a production at Paris' Chatelet Theater.