None of this visual splendour, unfortunately, can be conveyed by the Melba Recordings CD of Die Walküre. This was the missed opportunity of the $15 million Adelaide Ring. There is no video record for DVD release, so unless the means can be found for a repeat performance, the Adelaide Ring will remain a vivid memory for a comparative few.
That is not to downplay the CD recordings of the Ring that, at the very least, will be an important aural document of a historic theatrical venture. (Negotiations for a radio broadcast on ABC Classic FM fell through.) The musical forces were impressive: a largely Australian cast led by Lisa Gasteen as Brünnhilde, and an augmented Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conducted by Israel's Asher Fisch. There were three complete staged "cycles" of the Ring, plus a dress rehearsal. All four performances were recorded and these have been edited together for the CD.
For the duration of the Adelaide season, Melba Recordings set up a makeshift studio in a dressing room at the Festival Centre. The producer was Maria Vandamme, also the chief executive of Melba Recordings, and the sound engineer was Phil Rowlands.
On the afternoon of the performance of Siegfried, Vandamme, a formidable woman, was wearing a black and gold outfit and heavy gold jewellery, and looked like she was ready to play Aida or Elektra. A large mixing console dominated the room and a wide-screen television provided a video image of the stage.
Out in the auditorium were 64 microphones and, back in the control room, banks of hard drives providing some 10 terabytes (1000 gigabytes) of digital storage. The recording was to be released on Super Audio CD, which is said to give greater fidelity than conventional compact discs and can be played on a six-channel surround sound system.
There are a number of Ring cycles available on commercial CD and DVD. For many music lovers, the benchmark is the pioneering set made in the late 1950s and '60s by Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic, the first to be released on the then-new stereo LP records. The producer of those recordings, John Culshaw, has written about how the Decca team aimed to create a theatrical sonic experience. "Our basic concern was the sound, which, whatever its texture at any given moment, was required always to be beautiful, balanced and yet endowed with an indefinable something which I will call, for want of a better word, impact," he said.
Vandamme speaks in similar terms. Although Melba's Walküre is live - recorded in a theatre, rather than recreated in a studio - the sound-picture emerging from the loudspeakers has been shaped by mixing consoles, and the imagination of producer and engineer. "I love the [acoustic] space of a beautiful venue, but I also want a lot of energy in the sound," Vandamme says.
The sound (heard on a preview stereo mix of the recording) is undoubtedly that of a theatrical performance. The applause and shrieks of delight that greeted the Wunderbar set at the beginning of Act III have been edited out, but the singers can be heard moving about on stage.
Gasteen and Stuart Skelton as Siegmund are outstanding - Skelton's cry of "Walse! Walse!" in Act I is appropriately bloodcurdling - but John Bröcheler's Wotan loses focus in the Farewell scene. The musical tension is not always sustained, but otherwise the ASO under Fisch rises to the occasion, with some beautifully warm string sounds and a spectacular conclusion to Act II.
SACD was chosen, Vandamme says, because it will distinguish the Australian Ring from other recordings: "One has to accept the fact that the rest of the world does not regard Australia as a centre for Wagner." It's not a surround-sound mix that puts the singers in one speaker and horns in another. Rather, the additional channels have been used to provide acoustic warmth and atmosphere, as if the listener at home were sitting in the Adelaide theatre.
SACD has its naysayers. One record industry executive says the big companies are already phasing it out: either ordinary consumers could not tell the difference between SACD and standard CD, or they did not want the expense of special SACD players. Some independents are still producing recordings in that format, however. Melba's discs can be played on a standard stereo CD player; the surround-sound mix can be heard on a home theatre system with a compatible SACD player.
The $5 million grant that Melba Recordings received in the 2004 federal budget, bypassing the arts bureaucracy, still angers the recording industry. The biggest local producer of classical music CDs, ABC Classics, releases more than 50 CDs a year, including reissues, but also many new recordings. Tall Poppies, which records Australian compositions, has received $165,000 over three years from the Australia Council, and has released 14 CDs with those funds.
Melba's output so far, critics say, doesn't accord with the 35 discs over five years that the grant was intended to fund. "If ABC Classics were to receive $1million a year, our annual output would double," says Lyle Chan, an executive producer for ABC Classics.
Vandamme points out that the Ring alone accounts for 14 CDs. There will be a staggered released of the remaining operas in the cycle - Das Rheingold, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung - but the post-production studio work has already been completed. Other Melba projects include a recital by soprano Elizabeth Whitehouse of rare French and Italian arias, and Richard Bonynge's recording of an obscure ballet score, La somnambule, by an early 19th-century French composer, Ferdinand Hérold.
"The world does not need more records, it needs great records," Vandamme declares, in answer to critics of her productivity to date.
Melba's recording of Die Walküre is launched in Melbourne on June 7.
Matthew Westwood