Royal Albert Hall
Brünnhilde – Nina Stemme
Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Gunther – Gerd Grochowski
Alberich – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Hagen – Mikhail Petrenko
Gutrune, Third Norn – Anna
Samuil
Waltraute, Second Norn – Waltraud Meier
First Norn – Margarita Nekrasova
Woglinde – Aga Mikolaj
Wellgunde – Maria Gortsevskaja
Flosshilde – Anna Lapovskaja
Justin Way (director)
Royal Opera Chorus (chorus
master: Renato Balsadonna)
Staatskapelle
Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
 |
| Images: BBC/Chris Christodoulou |
By the end of the first act,
I was convinced that, barring a catastrophe of, well, Götterdämmerung-like proportions, this would now turn out to be the
greatest Ring since Bernard Haitink’s
1998 Royal Opera performances– also semi-staged, also at the Royal Albert Hall.
And so it came to pass. Not only did we continue to hear superlative conducting
from Daniel Barenboim and equally superlative playing from the Staatskapelle
Berlin. (To guard my back, unlike Siegfried, I shall mention in passing very occasional
signs of tiredness towards the end, if only so as not to have to return to such
Beckmesserish thoughts.) We also at last heard a Siegfried and Brünnhilde
worthy of the roles. Götterdämmerung,
by virtue of its placing as the third ‘day’ of the Ring, should always be a special occasion, though sadly that is
anything but a foregone conclusion; this performance, however went beyond ‘special’,
to ‘great’.
The weight of history was
apparent in those portentous opening chords to the Norns’ Scene, but so was
sonorous magic. Wagner’s goal-orientation is not Beethoven’s, though it is not
diametrically opposed either; Barenboim’s guiding of this crucial scene opened
up possibilities rather than closing them, whilst at the same time ensuring
that the drama’s tragic import won out. The bassoon line following the Second
Norn’s ‘...woran spannst du das Seil?’ sounded as if it were itself the guiding
thread of the Norns’ rope of Fate. More often than one might expect, conductors
misjudge Wagner’s climaxes; often, indeed, they try to introduce irrelevant
climaxes of their own. There was no such danger here, the outbreak of Dawn
judged to perfection, the Staatskapelle Berlin in truly glorious sound,
followed by a scene with an ebb and flow – Wagner’s melos – in which words and music truly melded together to form a
musico-dramatic whole. And the tenderness of the strings, for instance when
Brünnhilde here embraced Siegfried, far surpassed anything the BBC SO had been
able to conjure up the previous evening, for Tristan. The final climax to the scene sounded as fully achieved as
if Furtwängler himself had been at the podium; not that we should forget here
the extraordinary contributions of Andreas Schager as Siegfried and Nina Stemme
as Brünnhilde, on whom more below. As ever, Barenboim proved worthy of Wagner’s
‘most subtle art’ of transition, that wonderful Dawn followed by a masterly
Rhine Journey, placed aptly midway between Beethovenian playfulness and
Mahlerian contrapuntal involvement. (Special mention here should be afforded to
the glockenspiel, veritable icing on the orchestral cake.) Once we reached the
Rhineland proper, moving towards the Hall of the Gibichungs, we were afforded a
veritable pageant, noteworthy not just in itself, but, in its ‘secondary’
diatonicism (to borrow from Carl Dahlhaus on Die Meistersinger, the mediated diatonic harmony being predicated
upon the chromaticism it both negated and incorporated) already conveying the
mediated unease of ‘civilisation’. Beneath the surface lay not only the nixies
of the Rhine, but more worryingly, the snares of Hagen’s plotting. The aural
stench of decay – how truly, truthfully ugly some of Götterdämmerung’s music is! – led us to the Hall itself. There was
already something of the unhealthy air of Venice, of the Palazzo Vendramin.
And so to the first act
proper. The sturdiness Barenboim imparted to Gunther’s rhythms – Lohengrin, as it were, aufgehoben – immediately made clear the
hopelessness of that character’s plight. (If only Gerd Grochowski had managed a
little better the difficult balancing act of a strong portrayal of a weak character,
but anyway...) Throughout the act, orchestral exultancy would bid Siegfried to
new deeds, all the more movingly for our knowledge of Hagen’s snares, his Watch
again sick with chromatic decay, whilst the transition to Brünnhilde’s rock
drew us into a more intimate, tragically fragile world. The phantasmagoria with
which Brünnhilde’s anger was transformed into evening twilight again had to be
heard to be believed, likewise the cruellest of interruptions – more so even
the coitus interruptus of Tristan’s second act – upon Siegfried’s
appearance (as Gunther). The violence of rape horrified, as it must, at the
close.
How one relished the richness
of the bass line – reinforced by those eight double basses – at the opening of
the second act! The architecture of every act was perfectly in place: long
familiarity, for conductor and orchestra alike, clearly pays off; the vengeance
trio proved no mere set piece, but a true culmination. But moments told equally
truthfully, whether the trombone interjections of ‘Hagen’ as Brünnhilde
screamed of her deceit. Then the new sound-world of the third act came as a
breath of fresh air, though just as soon as one had thought that, necessary
doubts set in. The orchestra sounded languorous, almost Debussyan; one often hears
Liszt here, in this first scene, but Barenboim’s balances imparted intriguing
and apposite presentiments not so much of Pelléas
as of Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
and even the Images. Integration was,
as ever key, the Funeral March all the more impressive for acting as interlude
rather than interposed set piece. Barenboim’s greatness in Beethoven now fully
informs his Wagner, and did so until the closing bar, bathed in the after-glow
of orchestral flames that might well have burned us. And yet, at the end there
was a message of equivocal hope. Barenboim has no fear of comparisons with
anyone, not even Haitink (from whom, in any case, we are extremely unlikely to
hear another Ring).
From Siegfried’s very first
line, we heard what had been missing earlier on. Lance Ryan had proved serviceable in the previous instalment, yet Andreas Schager proved preferable in
every respect. The beauty of his voice alone here showed what earlier had been
lacking, let alone the dramatic commitment he would show when acting his
third-act narration or, indeed, stiffly as ‘Gunther’ with the Tarnhelm. It was
clear even in the Prologue that this was a fully mature Siegfried, a man, no
longer a boy, despite his fatal flaws; Schager’s interaction with the orchestra
as part of a musico-dramatic whole that extended far beyond any single
contributor was not the least of his virtues. Drinking the potion brought a
touching hymn to lost innocence, soon enough followed by an eroticism entirely
lacking in many portrayals (let alone Robert Dean Smith’s Tristan, the night
before). There was, moreover, real anger to his contesting Brünnhilde’s claims
in the second act, betokening a psychological understanding rarely present in
this role. One might have taken dictation, of words and music, from either him or Stemme, for pretty much the whole of
the performance. Anyone who did not respond both to the irrepressible vitality
of this Siegfried’s swagger with the Rhinemaidens and to the detailed, loving
narrative of his deeds recalled would be satisfied with no one, not even Lauritz
Melchior. This might actually have been the first time I was moved as I should
have been by the moment when he recalls Brünnhilde: a true monument to a truer
love than I have heard.
Stemme’s Prologue ‘O heilige
Götter!’ was a paean to a glorious age, an age which yet had passed; the realm
of the gods was not belittled, but there was no doubt that the future held
something different. The dramatic urgency she imparted to the Waltraute scene
was every bit the equal of Waltraud Meier’s. ‘Denn selig aus ihm leuchtet mir
Siegfrieds Liebe!’ revelled in tragic irony: Stemme sang in the present but the
orchestra – and we – knew that she sang of the past, the ecstasy of her love
notwithstanding. Her fear before Siegfried (as Gunther) was palpable, yet
without loss to the commanding nature of her performance. And her Immolation
Scene, delivered from the organ, somehow bringing together the strongest
virtues of Flagstad’s womanhood and Nilsson’s authority, should become the
stuff of legend. Meier’s turning to her sister as the latter asked ‘Weisst du,
wie das wird?’ was a dramatic moment worth all (or most of) the stagings in the
world. How she later made the words come alive as she told, for instance, of
Wotan taming Loge! Though Meier’s Waltraute may be dangerously close to
definitive, that is no excuse for overlooking the excellence of her
contribution, here with a true sense of epic narrative in telling her tale of
Wotan’s depression. Increasing desperation urged on the orchestra, as it in
turn urged her on. Her departure had one think of Cassandra herself.
Mikhail Petrenko’s protean Hagen
is now a known quantity. Sometimes, from force of habit perhaps more than from
dramatic necessity, one finds oneself expecting a darker voice, but Petrenko’s
vision is in many ways more dangerous than the traditional Ridderbusch-like
performance. Rather than pitch-black ‘mere’ evil, we hear someone devilishly intelligent, and
troublingly alluring. Not that Petrenko’s voice is without heft, but, for
instance, his ‘Heil! Siegfried, teurer Held!’ as the hero brought his boat
ashore was curdled with a menace that went beyond brute force. (After all, it
is through cunning that he will slay Siegfried, not though overpowering him.) ‘Dir
ha ich guten Rat,’ seemed almost throwaway: ‘I gave you good advice,’ but the
words were made to tell, to inform us that such advice to Siegfried was
anything but ‘good’, however that might be understood. Aggression and
restlessness suggested a power-lust that might have been enhanced by substances
the modern would tends to deem illicit. This Hagen was one dealer no one would
wish to encounter upon a dark night.
Johannes Martin Kränzle’s
Alberich once again showed a fine way with words. His injunction to Hagen, ‘Hasse
die Frohen!’ seethed with Nietzschean ressentiment,
whilst the ghostliness of the regfrain, ‘Schläfst du, Hagen, mein Sohn,’
chilled as it should. Our trio of
Rhinemaidens if anything surpassed its excellence in Das Rheingold. Anna Samuil,
alas, proved somewhat on the shrill side as the Third Norn and blowsy as
Gutrune, her vibrato, especially during the first act, uncomfortably unsteady. She
was more honeytrap than dupe, and less interesting for it. There was, though,
real vocal presence to be heard from Margarita Nekrasova’s First Norn. The Royal Opera Chorus excelled, its weight as impressive as
its clarity.
All were rightly commended by
Barenboim in a few closing words. Charming as ever, he praised the audience for
its silence as well as for its most fulsome applause, and forewent to mention
the selfish **** (fill in as appropriate) who had interrupted Hagen’s opening advice
to Gunther with a mobile telephone call. There were many stars to this Ring, but once again, this proved above
all others the achievement of Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin, no secret to
those of us enamoured with the German capital, but now firmly ensconced in
Londoners’ hearts too. Wolf-Dieter Batzdorf took a well-deserved bow, retiring
as concert-master – surely only Barenboim could get away with an implicit Führer gag here, explaining that Germans
do not favour the English term, ‘leader’ – but applause resounded for the whole
of Wagner’s Attic chorus. And, one hopes, for Wagner himself, a fitting
tribute, which is really saying something, to the composer’s bicentenary. Now,
please, someone, a CD release...!
