Schiller Theater, Berlin
Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Gunther – Gerd Grochowski
Alberich – Johannes Martin
Kränzle
Hagen – Mikhail Petrenko
Brünnhilde – Iréne Theorin
Gutrune – Anna Samuil
Waltraute – Waltraud Meier
First Norn – Margarita Nekrasova
Second Norn – Waltraud Meier
Third Norn – Anna Samuil
Woglinde – Aga Mikolaj
Wellgunde – Maria Gortsevskaya
Flosshilde – Anna Lapkovskaja
Guy Cassiers (director, set
design)
Enrico Bagnoli (set design,
lighting)
Tim van Steenbergen
(costumes)
Arjen Klerkx, Kurt
D’Haeseleer (video)
Michael P Steinberg, Detlef
Giese, Erwin Jans (dramaturgy)
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
(choreography)
Luc de Wit (choral
choreography)
Staatsopernchor Berlin
(chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Staatkapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
 |
(Image: Monika Rittershaus)
Iréne Theorin (Brünnhilde) |
This, I know, has become
wearily repetitive, but the rewards of the Berlin Ring were once again shown to be entirely musical. Götterdämmerung had for some reason
acquired a third dramaturge, prior instalments having relied upon a mere brace.
What they might have done, or rather what director Guy Cassiers might have
listened to, is utterly beyond me. For all its faults, and it seems to me
undeniable that Götterdämmerung was a
bit of a mess dramaturgically, Keith Warner’s Covent Garden Ring had ambition, had ideas, and some
of the time managed to communicate them. This sorry co-production with La Scala,
brought to us courtesy of the Toneelhuis Antwerpen, appears, quite literally,
to have nothing whatsoever to say to us. That would be odd in the case of any
musical drama worthy of the name – many are not, but that is another story –
but, in the case of Der Ring des
Nibelungen, it is simply beyond comprehension. Yet again, we are simply
faced with a few ‘tasteful’ costumes and effects, and in this case, far too
much video. The Tarnhelm dancers return, rather to my surprise offering the
saving grace of the staging. Their menacing writhing around Brünnhilde during
her shameful and shaming possession by Siegfried struck a note of rare, indeed
unique, dramatic power. The appearance of sub-Damien Hirst creatures in formaldehyde
offers slight variety, but no discernible point, and more than anything irritates
in its acquiescence to the wearisome stylisation of the designs. As I said with
respect to Siegfried,
we might as well have been at the Met. Of Wagner’s desired ‘emotionalisation of
the intellect’, Cassiers offers neither emotion nor intellect, let alone a
dialectic between the two. Baffling!
If not on quite such
superlative form as in Siegfried,
Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin nevertheless did Wagner’s score
proud, a more than promising augury for the forthcoming Proms
performances of the Ring as a whole.
(I shall be speaking at an introduction to Siegfried.) Line and dramatic
momentum were impressive, though tension sagged slightly – and surprisingly –
at a somewhat anti-climactic conclusion to the second act. Maybe that was a
matter of tiredness more than anything else. Barenboim’s almost ‘French’ ear
for colour – he knows that Wagner leads to Debussy as well as to Schoenberg,
and indeed employs that ear in the music of the latter composer too – offered more
than its fair share of textural revelation, the Staatskapelle’s woodwind as
euphonious here as in Mozart. Eberhard Friedrich’s chorus acquitted itself very
well throughout.
There was a great deal to
praise in terms of singing too. Waltraud Meier as Second Norn must be the very
definition of luxury casting. Stage animal that she is, she made something out
of the non-production even here, let alone in her well-nigh definitive
Waltraute (also one of the very few redeeming features of the recent, dismal
New York Götterdämmerung). Meier can
have few peers, if any, and certainly no superiors, in her melding of text and
music, in her instinctive yet searching theatrical communication. She offered a
standing rebuke to the vacuity of the contribution from Cassiers. Iréne Theorin
continued to present a creditably variegated account of Brünnhilde’s part.
There was more of the lyrical, less of the heroic, than one often hears, though
there remained plenty of the latter nonetheless. I wondered occasionally
whether her choices with respect to scaling down, to containment, always made
the best sense, but there was a great deal to admire here. Mikhail Petrenko’s
Hagen remains controversial. I first heard it in Aix-en-Provence,
under Simon Rattle. During the first act, I was less convinced, the
relative lightness – this is definitely not the black-toned Hagen we have come
to expect – veered on occasion towards the non-committal, though of course
Cassiers did not help. However, menace asserted itself, psychotically so,
ensuring that the darkness of Hagen’s character duly struck a terror quite
lacking in the staging. Gerd Grochowski offered more in the way of clear verbal
projection than psychological depth, but again the fault for that may really
have lain elsewhere. Anna Samuil’s Gutrune, alas, seemed a victim of
miscasting; there was little sense of character and her blowsy delivery, though
reined in during the third act, was by any standards stylistically quite
inappropriate. The trio of Rhinemaidens (Aga Mikolaj, Maria Gortsevskaya, and
Anna Lapkovskaja) was truly excellent, both in solo and ensemble terms.
Andreas Schager’s Siegfried I
have left until last. Schager was a replacement for the advertised Ian Storey,
Lance Ryan having taken the part in Siegfried,
but not Götterdammerung. (Schlager had
also had to step in for Ryan in the previous cycle, when the Canadian tenor
arrived late to the theatre, missing the first act.) I am not sure that I have
heard so excellent an account of the role in the theatre; I have certainly
heard none better. We can hark back to Melchior all we like, even to
Windgassen, but we all know that such expectations are, for whatever reasons,
entirely unrealistic. Schager’s Siegfried was of the here and now, dramatically
committed – certainly not something of which one could always accuse Melchior –
and finely sung, without a hint of the dreadful barking, let alone shouting,
that disfigures so many performances. There was no discernible tiring; indeed, a
portrayal of youthful, naïve enthusiasm did much of the work the staging ought
to have been doing by itself, contrasting tellingly with the corruption of the
Gibichung court. This is a production, then, that should be discarded as
quickly as humanly possible; it remains just possible, however, that a star may
have been born amongst this all-too-tastefully-designed ‘heap of broken images’.
