Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden
First Norn – Maria Radner
Second Norn – Karen Cargill
Third Norn – Elisabeth
Meister
Brünnnhilde – Susan Bullock
Siegfried – Stefan Vinke
Gunther – Peter
Coleman-Wright
Gutrune – Rachel
Willis-Sørensen
Hagen – Sir John Tomlinson
Waltraute – Mihoko Fujimura
Alberich – Wolfgang Koch
Wellgunde – Kai Rüütel
Woglinde – Nadine Livingston
Flosshilde – Harriet Williams
Keith Warner (director)
Walter Sutcliffe (associate
director)
Amy Lane (first assistant
director)
Stefanos Lazaridis, Matthew
Deely (set designs)
Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Mic Pool, Dick Straker (video
designs)
Claire Gaskin, Michael Barry
(movement)
Royal Opera Chorus (chorus
master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera
House
Sir Antonio Pappano
(conductor)
I am not at all sure what is
meant by the claim on the Royal Opera House’s website that ‘Keith Warner
presents a bravura production of the fourth opera in the Ring cycle’. Anyway,
‘bravura’ or otherwise, here came Götterdämmerung,
or should it have been Wagner-Dämmerung?
If this is the level of Wagner performance to which we can look forward in
2013, his bicentenary, then it would be better to shut up shop now. Siegfried
had had a good few virtues, as well as failings; I had blithely assumed that Götterdämmerung would have been vaguely
comparable. Pride, as Wotan discovers, comes before a fall.
Little had changed in terms
of Keith Warner’s production, problematical
in a number of ways in 2007, though the production was far from the weakest
link in the performance as a whole. Warner’s staging lays claim to a number of
positive features. The role allotted to the gods, whose twilight we are
supposed to be enacting, is a particular strength. They appear, as they ought
yet seldom do, during the second act, as statues, vain objects of sacrifice.
This was recognisable as the decaying
Gibichung society Patrice Chéreau so rightly characterised as ageing, pointing
to the increasing desperation of its rituals — rituals which would seek some
sort of moral code in a post-religious society that knows no morality, indeed
finds it impossible, as Chéreau put it, to ‘know’. (See Pierre, Boulez and P. Chéreau, ‘Commentaires
sur “Mythologie et Idéologie”,’ in Programmhefte
der Bayreuther Festspiele, 1977, VI, p. 81.) Wotan, I think, reappears from afar
to view Siegfried’s death ; Loge summons and is consumed by fire at the
end ; the statues are burned. There is also a nice – well, provocative – suggestion
of incest between Gunther and Gutrune.
Alas, a great deal of incoherence remains. Why Grane is represented by a mere skull I cannot imagine.
The ultimate indignity is suffered when Brünnhilde’s trusty steed is passed
around as if the characters are worried that, when the music stops – one is
tempted to add: ‘if only...’ – one of them will suffer a forfeit. It would be
perfectly possible to have an off-stage horse, but a dead one seems pointless. Why does
Waltraute appear in ‘civilian’ guise, dressed as Brünnhilde is now ? Is
not the whole point of the scene the contrast between inhuman Valkyrie and
Brünnhilde as human being ?
Perhaps the most glaring sequence of confusion is seen in the final scene to
the first act. What I wrote in 2007 still holds word for word, so I shall save
time by repeating myself: ‘Hagen’s continued presence on stage, following
the move from the Hall of the Gibichungs to Brünnhilde’s rock, did not augur
well. We all know that in a sense he is “still there”: his dramatic shadow
hangs over the rest of the act, and the music could hardly make this clearer.
Actually to have him on stage added little, except confusion as to where the
action was taking place. But this was as nothing to the final scene (in which,
needless to say, he remained on stage). Anyone who did not know what was
supposed to be going on would have been utterly confused, since we had
Siegfried as himself, wearing the Tarnhelm, and Siegfried transformed by the
Tarnhelm into Gunther, on stage at the same time. All of the singing came from
– audibly and visually – from the former Siegfried. This was logically
incoherent, and the whole mess could easily have been avoided by following Wagner’s
directions.’ The end is marred not only by having Hagen, Brünnhilde, and the
vassals run around like children in the playground. Quite why the Rhinemaidens
strip part way through, as opposed to being nude throughout, is anyone’s guess.
Conflagration, such as it is, cannot come soon enough. What we are to make of
the girl standing in a ring – a belated advertisement for the Olympic Games? –
I do not know. The ‘watchers’ are an athletic bunch, though they are not called
upon to put that athleticism to use; a rather more mixed sample of humanity
might have been more to Wagner’s point. (Chéreau’s conclusion remains an object
lesson here.)
There were some good solo
performances. Mihoko Fujimura, arguably the world’s reigning Waltraute,
injected as much passion as Antonio Pappano’s lethargic conducting would permit
into her scene. Rachel Willis-Sørensen surprised me as an uncommonly womanly
Gutrune, an eminently creditable object of Siegfried’s diverted affections.
John Tomlinson’s Hagen had strength where it counted, even if he sounded a
little genial to begin with. The scene with Wolfgang Koch’s once-again excellent
Alberich was a rare highlight. And Stefan
Vinke’s Siegfried, if hardly perfect, and a little flat of tone to begin with,
was far better than one generally hears. The young Siegfried seems more suited
to his voice, for whatever reason, or perhaps he was simply on better form a
couple of nights before. Nevertheless, there was much to admire in a
performance of stamina and considerable strength. The Norns and Rhinemaidens
impressed, as did Renato Balsadonna’s splendid chorus.
Susan Bullock’s Brünnhilde
was by and large a disappointment. Indeed, I am sure that this is the first
time I have heard a Brünnhilde who was not considerably superior to her
Siegfried. Bullock’s voice, as in Siegfried,
sounds strained by the role. The contrast between her struggling and Fujimura’s
proud performance was unfortunate, to say the least. Peter Coleman-Wright’s
Gunther was worse, however, quite the worst Gunther I have heard. Persistently
out of tone, vocally insecure, he sounded at least 103 – and not in a good way.
Pappano’s conducting was the
gravest problem, reflected in a frequent tiredness sounding from the orchestra.
The opening of the Prologue actually began rather well, at least in retrospect.
If Wagner’s metaphysical depths remained unplumbed, then at least there was
fluency, which one cannot always say with respect to Pappano’s Wagner. From the
departure of the Norns, it was, alas, to be mostly downhill. Listlessness, born
of an apparent lack of understanding of harmonic motion, made much of the
performance seem interminable. Whether the Waltraute scene was the longest I
have ever heard I have no idea, but it certainly sounded like it. The Vassals
Scene was conducted with rigidity, as if it were a march from Aida. By the end of the second act, so
little seemed to be at stake, so little was the score’s richness penetrated, that
we might have been listening to an episode of Crossroads, an impression heightened by the shaky platform – was this
deliberate? – on which the characters were walking. Lethargy was accompanied by
a sound-world somewhat akin to the opaque meaningless people who do not like
Debussy ascribe to Debussy. And so it went on and on and on. By the time the
final theme – the glorification of Brünnhilde, redemption through/of love, whatever
one wishes to call it – sounded, initial near-occlusion of the strings by a bizarrely
prominent kettledrum roll seemed neither here nor there.
There are several Wagner
conductors with connections to the Royal Opera who could have made not just a
better job of this, but most likely produced great or at least very good performances.
It may well now be impossible, but heaven and earth should have been moved to
persuade Bernard Haitink to return to conduct, if not the Ring, then at least some Wagner following his
2007 Parsifal. Whatever happened
to Christian Thielemann? Whatever it was ought to have been put right. Daniele
Gatti and Semyon Bychkov might have been called upon. Simon Rattle and Mark
Elder have both impressed in Wagner, if at a slightly less exalted level. At
the Berlin State Opera, it is quite understandable that Daniel Barenboim tends
to conduct many of the Wagner performances from Das Rheingold onwards; there are few, after all, to match him in
this repertoire. It is less understandable that a conductor whose strengths lie
elsewhere should monopolise performances of the music dramas in London. Parsifal awaits in 2013.
