Royal Festival Hall
Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg:
Prelude to Act One
Tristan
und Isolde: Prelude to
Act One and ‘Liebestod’
Die
Walküre: Act Three
Isolde, Brünnhilde – Susan Bullock
Sieglinde – Giselle Allen
Wotan – James Rutherford
Helmwige – Katherine Broderick
Gerhilde – Mariya Krywaniuk
Siegrune – Magdalen Ashman
Grimgerde – Antonia Sotgiu
Ortlinde – Elaine McKrill
Waltraute – Jennifer Johnston
Rossweisse – Maria Jones
Schwertleite – Miriam Sharrad
David Edwards (director)
David Holmes (lighting)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis (director)
London’s two principal opera
companies have offered a baffling near-silence as their response to Wagner’s
two-hundredth anniversary. With ENO, once home to Reginald Goodall, one may
delete the ‘near’; the Royal Opera has opted for a single production, in
November, of Parsifal, whose casting
does not exactly lift the spirits. There is certainly nothing anywhere near the
composer’s birthday itself. The BBC Proms have valiantly stepped into the gap,
offering concert performances of the Ring
(Barenboim), Tristan und Isolde
(Bychkov), Parsifal (Elder) and Tannhäuser (Runnicles). Those concerts,
however, will not take place until July and August. For 22 May, London’s
offering was a Philharmonia concert conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Doubtless
there was stiff competition for Wagner conductors on the day, and Chirstian
Thielemann was otherwise occupied in Bayreuth, but it was difficult not to feel
that someone with greater Wagerian credentials might at least have been a
possibility. Bernard Haitink, for instance? Most of us would readily have
swapped the aforementioned Parsifal to
hear the Royal Opera’s erstwhile music director once again in Wagner.
Was I being unfair? The proof
of the aural pudding would, as always, be in the hearing. Sadly, the Prelude to
the first act of Die Meistersinger – not its ‘Overture’, as the programme
insert had it – received an account, which, if undoubtedly preferable to the
straightforward incomprehension Antonio
Pappano had shown conducting the entire opera at Covent Garden, proved no
more than Kapellmeister-ish. Timings
as such tell one nothing, but it felt rushed, often more martial than
celebratory. There was certainly no sense of midsummer blaze or indeed embers. The
Philharmonia strings, though many in number, sometimes tended towards wiriness.
Detail was either skated or fussed over. Though there was more fire towards the
close, it was really too late by then. It doubtless had not helped that, earlier
in the day, I had listened to Furtwängler conducting the same music in 1931,
but even taking that into account, it was an undistinguished performance.
Rather to my surprise, the Tristan excerpts worked better. I remain
sceptical, to put it mildly, about the wisdom of pairing the first act Prelude
and the so-called ‘Liebestod’ (Liszt’s
wretched description of Isolde’s Transfiguration). Though I am well aware of
the distinguished precedents – even Furtwängler and Boulez have followed the
practice – to my ears it jars. That said, both conductor and orchestra were on
better form. Not only was their a fuller string sound but Davis now seemed to
understand, certainly to communicate, that something was at stake. He struck a
good balance between forward impulse and a more analytical approach to the
score. Though certainly not plumbing any Furtwänglerian metaphysical depths, it
was a satisfying enough musical experience. Susan Bullock, joining for the ‘Liebestod’,
held her line well enough. At some times, she shaded sensitively; at others,
she proved rather squally. The Philharmonia, however, offered beautifully
shimmering and pulsating support. Whoever interposed immediately with a boorish
‘Bravo!’ should be condemned to listen to Verdi for the rest of Wagner’s
anniversary year.
The second half was devoted
to the third act of Die Walküre. It
is not the Wagner act I should have chosen in such circumstances; surely the
first act of the same drama works better on its own. But we had what we had,
and presumably part of the idea was to offer the popular, if generally
misunderstood, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. Davis for the most part proved a
competent guide, though there were some arbitrary-sounding slowings, though he
offered few if any revelations. Whilst the Philharmonia played well enough, it
sounded during the ‘Magic Fire Music’ as if someone had suddenly turned on a
light-switch, such was the vividness of colour hitherto lacking. (That is not
simply a matter of Wagner’s wondrous scoring at the end.) There is not much to
say about David Edwards’s ‘semi-staging’, save that very good use was made of a
very limited space, the direction being largely a matter of having singers come
on, go off, and engage with each other. That they all did well, with the
exception of James Rutherford’s Wotan. An excellent touch at the end was to
have Brünnhilde go up behind the stage, to the organ, to be put to sleep.
Handing her a very old-fashioned helmet at that point seemed odd: neither an
obvious post-modern touch nor in keeping with the neutral dress otherwise on offer.
Bullock had her moments, less audibly strained than she had been recently at
Covent Garden. She made a good deal of Wagner’s text, though there were moments
of relative vocal weakness. One cannot really judge a Sieglinde on the basis of
the third act, but Giselle Allen offered an account more hochdramtisch than lyrical; ‘O hehrstes Wunder!’ sounded rushed,
but that may have been Davis’s account. At any rate, what should be ecstatic was
more matter-of-fact. The Valkyries were a good bunch, a couple of them somewhat
weak, but others excellent indeed; Jennifer Johnston’s Waltraute particularly stood
out. Rutherford’s Wotan, however, was a disappointment. Apparently glued to the
score, and none too certain with it, there was no sign whatsoever of him having
internalised the role; his performance was more akin to a first rehearsal for a
minor oratorio. Tone production was often rather woolly too.
Had one been coming anew to
Wagner, doubtless much would have impressed, and there may well have been some
in the audience who were. (There were, as one might have expected, some
decidedly peculiar people in the audience. A man seated next to me insisted on
filming the first half and hour or so of the Walküre act, my glares having no effect, the ushers either not
noticing or not caring. When finally he put his camera away, he replaced it
with a skull-capped walking-stick.) London’s anniversary contribution remained,
however, surprisingly low-key. The rest of the
Wagner 200 celebrations promise much more, as do the Proms.
