THE NEW ZEALAND OPERA SOCIETY

In May the most extraordinary Ring Cycle anywhere was staged at Manaus in the middle of the Amazon basin. It was not extraordinary as a staging perhaps, but what a setting!

There could hardly be a river less like the Rhine than the Amazon.

The thing about Manaus that does fit is the city’s own history that represents all too vividly some of the things the Ring attacks: unprincipled leaders, abuse of power, destruction of the natural environment… though disguised by the 19th century’s worship of romance and adventure that masked exploitation.

You will remember Werner Herzog’s 1982 film, Fitzcarraldo (Klaus Kinski and Claudia Cardinale), in which the Irish/German adventurer undertakes a surreal journey up the Amazon, hauling a paddle-steamer over a jungle-covered hill to gain access to a parallel tributary, to finance the building of an opera house (not at Manaus) at which Caruso would sing (Caruso, contrary to legend, did not sing there). The film, whose incredible images and obsessive tone is still vivid in my mind, could well have been in the minds of those who conceived the Manaus Ring.

The theatre itself was built at the height of the rubber boom, a time of fates-defying hubris, and at once became one of the most famous in the world, and a port of call for some of the world’s great opera singers.

Construction began in 1882, when world rubber prices made a handful of families so rich that they had to display their incredible wealth in the way the age best understood – through the most extravagant of all art forms.

They imported the finest materials from Europe, like the 36,000 ceramic tiles that were used as inlay on the yellow-and-green cupola that crowns the building. The chandeliers were from France, the marble from Italy, and wrought iron staircases and balconies were from Britain. The fine tropical hardwoods were of local origin but were sent to Europe to be carved, polished and in some cases gilded.

If Caruso did not sing, Adelina Patti and many other great names did. The rubber market collapsed in 1910 and plunged Manaus into decades of stagnation that ended only with the establishment of a free trade zone in the 1960s.

Today Manaus is a vibrant city of a million and a half people. It was decided to restore the 800-seat Teatro Amazonas (so Wanganui or Invercargill could easily stage a Ring cycle) to its original glory for its centennial in 1996, and a year later, the Amazonas Opera Festival was inaugurated, part of the local government’s effort to encourage tourism during the rainy season, and to establish Manaus as a cultural magnet that did not need to import productions from the south.

Compared with the cost of Adelaide’s Ring last November, the Manaus Ring’s budget is unbelievable: it was reported that the entire budget for the Festival was $US1.6 million. It was “both low-budget and low-tech”, said the report, adding that the sum also covered the cost of staging The Barber of Seville and a couple of contemporary Brazilian works.

The predominantly Brazilian cast and crew showed a creativity and ability to improvise that dazzled visiting foreign artists. Brazilians have a tradition of working with humble materials to make the simple look splendid.

“I’m especially proud of the helmets, which taught me that if you have the labour and the ingenuity, you can always make the materials work for you,” said Ashley Martin-Davis, the set and costume designer. “The helmets are made of papier-mâché, but they look like aluminum, and of course the singers love them because they have almost no weight.”

When the Festival began, in 1996, the Manaus orchestra needed to be upgraded and musicians were recruited from Russia, Bulgaria and Belarus. Their duties include teaching at the local conservatorium, and many of the visiting foreign performers give master classes for young singers, musicians, stagehands and dancers.

If you thought that an opera festival in the tropical rainy season might be a bad idea, you overlook one thing.

“The climate here is very hot and very humid, but I think that because of that you can sing well,” said Alan Woodrow, Canadian tenor who sings Siegfried. “After all, singers inhale steam to help get their voices into good shape, but with the 90 percent humidity here, you don’t have to do that.”

Luiz Fernando Malheiro, the Festival’s artistic director and orchestra conductor, decided to undertake the Wagner epic five years ago, just after finishing a production of Manon Lescaut, directed by British director Aidan Lang. The two were looking for a new challenge and another opportunity to work together, and Lang suggested – jokingly, he now claims – that they tackle the Ring cycle.

Since then, each year the two have staged one of the operas in the cycle. They started not at the beginning, but rather with Siegfried, the third chapter, and worked their way back to Das Rheingold, sandwiching the other chapters, Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung, in between.