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| Alberich (Jo Pohlheim) Images: Clive Barda |
Royal Festival Hall
Siegfried – Lars Cleveman
Mime – Richard RobertsThe Wanderer – Béla Perencz
Alberich – Jo Pohlheim
Fafner – Mats Almgren
Erda – Ceri Williams
Brünnhilde – Kelly Cae Hogan
The Woodbird – Jeni Bern
Peter Mumford (concert staging,
design concept, lighting, projection)
Joe Austin (associate director)
Orchestra of Opera North
Richard Farnes (conductor) |
| Woodbird (Jeni Bern) |
This, alas, was where I had to
sign off. A weekend conference on Parsifal
(including, on the Saturday, a showing of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Parsifal film) mean that I missed Götterdämmerung, skipping straight to
the sequel. Perhaps I shall find out some day how it all turned out. Very well,
I should expect, at least performatively. For, if I did not find that this Siegfried quite attained the heights of
the Walküre two nights previously,
Opera North’s remained an achievement that put a good number of larger companies
to shame.
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| Siegfried (Lars Cleveman) |
It helped, of course (to put it
mildly!) to have Richard Farnes continue his excellent work, not in the pit,
but at the podium. As with the Walküre,
I found some of the first act a little on the subdued side, the music only
really igniting during the final scene, and only truly blazing with the extraordinary
Second Act Prelude, in which the Orchestra of Opera North once again showed
that it had nothing to fear from the most exalted of comparisons. Perhaps that
is Farnes’s way, wanting to leave something in reserve. However, in this
particular drama, especially when seen and heard without a full staging,
something more immediately arresting would not have been a bad thing. I also felt that the intensity of the third
act might have been more consistently maintained. It was certainly not a case
of failing to understand, or indeed to communicate, its contours. However,
between the Prelude to the Third Act – the Prelude to the Ring’s very peripeteia – and a shiver-inducing final duet, there
was, at least for my taste, perhaps a little too much placidity. That said,
Farnes’s conducting and the orchestral playing will, I am sure, long be spoken
of warmly, both in London and in the earlier venues of the Opera North tour.
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| Wanderer (Béla Perencz) and Alberich |
Béla Perencz’s Wanderer sounded
suitably resigned, without that implying any lack of attention to the
particularities of words and music. If I have heard more imposing portrayals,
there was a humanity here that most would have warmed to – and I did. Jo
Pohlheim’s Alberich was a definite strength of the Rheingold three nights earlier, and so again it was here. Less
pitch-black than some, this was a dwarf who very much retained character of his
own. So too did Richard Roberts’s Mime, especially noteworthy for fine acting
within the constraints (or should that be liberation?) of a ‘concert staging’. Mats
Almgren proved a properly stentorian Fafner. Lars Cleveman offered laudable
staying power in the title role, at least until the earlier stages of the final
scene. (It is quite understandable that he should have been tiring then!) However,
his voice was decidedly less than ingratiating; such, alas, is the way with
almost all Siegfrieds. It was nevertheless a committed performance, and that is
worth a good deal. Ceri Williams’s Erda was again somewhat insecure. However,
the other two ‘female’ roles were superbly taken, Jeni Bern a veritable breath
of fresh air as a lively Woodbird, and Kelly Cae Hogan fully living up to the
promise of her Walküre Brünnhilde in
a blazing performance at the close. Again, if only I knew how it all turned out…
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| Mime (Richard Roberts) |
If only the nuances of verbal meaning had not too often been ironed out in translation. (Sometimes, it was spot on; at other times, overly generalised. Surely Wagner’s poems deserve near-literal translation in such circumstances, for this was not a singing translation. Fafner’s Proudhonian ‘Ich lieg’ und besitz’’ loses far too much, indeed almost everything, as ‘What’s mine is mine’. Possession, one might say, is if not nine tenths, then at least half, of the rentier meaning. But such niggles, and ongoing concern-cum-irritation over increasingly screensaverish projections, remained just that, niggles, in the face of Opera North’s magnificent achievement. More Wagner soon, please!
