 |
Images: (C) Tristram Kenton
Siegmund (Nicky Spence) and Sieglinde (Emma Bell) |
I wanted so much to like this
more than I did. It is not quite ENO’s return to the Coliseum after
you-know-what, but in many ways it felt like it. (A Philip Glass revival and a new
production of Gilbert and Sullivan will have had their devotees, but they are
not my potion of forgetfulness.) Anneliese Miskimmon, ENO’s Artistic Director,
could not have been more welcoming in her brief address from the stage before
the performance. And what could be a greater declaration of intent for a new
era than a new Ring? Perhaps a
Schoenberg or, still more so, a Stockhausen series? But even then, the Ring retains for many the status of non plus ultra. Its all-encompassing
nature continues to surpass all competitors; no artwork has more to tell us, so
it seems, at any juncture in our dubious human development.
No Ring is therefore going to be perfect; even the most exalted
performance, let alone staging, will have imperfections. It would be too easy
to judge perfection a lesser thing; it is not, necessarily, but it is a
different thing—one which Mozart (often) has covered. Yet if a Ring in performance will always fall
short, it should not fall so short as Richard Jones’s half-hearted attempt at a
production, which detracted all too much from a mixed musical performance laying
claim to not inconsiderable virtues. Perhaps more would have been gleaned had
we seen Das Rheingold first. Starting
with the second instalment is not without precedent, but I remain unconvinced
that it is a good idea. Berlin’s Deutsche Oper has had to present Stefan
Herheim’s new Ring as and when it can,
but that is a different case, planned performances having to be cancelled,
given without an audience, and so on. (How I long to see what Herheim has done!)
Yet it is difficult to imagine that much light being shed on a Walküre (sorry, Valkyrie, as ENO obstinately continues to refer it) seemingly without
a concept or indeed much of an idea at all. Presumably, money was tight, for
what we see is not so much minimalism as people wandering a little lost around
a stage that sometimes has scenery and sometimes does not. As in Jones’s
recent, wretched La
clemenza di Tito for the Royal Opera,
there was a vague look: in this case, noir-ish ‘Scandinavia’, though it would
be difficult to say anything more precise than that. ENO’s publicity suggests
the idea that this is a family saga: well, sort of, I suppose, but only if that
is taken to be the crucible for something greater. Use of video to show
Alberich (‘Nibelung’ tattooed on his forehead), Grimhilde, and Hagen when
referred to in Wotan’s narration—nothing more, just show them—seemed both patronising
and pointless, though perhaps in a greater context it contributes to the banal theme
of family feud. The appearance of Hunding’s clan on stage might have
contributed further, but ultimately undirected (like so much else), they proved
little more than a distraction, the lack of much to distract from
notwithstanding.
 |
| Alberich (Jamie Campbell), Brünnhilde (Rachel Nicholls), Wotan (Matthew Rose) |
Maybe the strange claim (Christopher
Wintle) that opened one of the programme notes offered a clue to the lack of
any exterior, let alone political element: ‘Most of us can agree that The Valkyrie is “about” incest.’ I do
not know precisely to whom ‘us’ refers; certainly not to me, anyway. Wagner’s
drama is no more ‘“about” incest’ than The
Flying Dutchman is ‘about’ sailing. The point of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s
love is that it breaks the violent, cruel bonds of marriage, family, and custom
(which Wagner specifically identified with Fricka); that it leads Siegmund to
reject immortality, and thus to put Brünnhilde on her way to doing likewise, to
attaining the superior status of ‘purely human’; and precisely that it does not
matter whether the Volsung twins are brother and sister, not that it does. Here,
occasional straining towards a familial idea, for instance Hunding’s physical
brutality to Sieglinde, seemed little more than striving after effect, given a
lack of embedding in anything more than an IKEA catalogue. The production team sported
more interesting clothes than those given to the cast; maybe they should have
swapped.
 |
Grimgerde (Katie Stevenson), Rossweisse (Claire Barnett-Jones),
and Siegrune (Idunnu Münch) |
Or maybe they should have given
them to the curious animals that pranced around the stage, Wotan’s ravens (I
think) included: more Sesame Street than creatures of the forest. Whether the
concept were malevolent or ironic, neither possibility was achieved. For some
reason, a lone tap dancer did her stuff during the Ride of the Valkyries,
whilst actors in horse costumes struggled around on tip toe. Why on earth Grane,
understandably fidgeting, was made to balance in this way through the entirety
of the final scene—and not only then—I have no idea; but then I have little
idea about anything else either. Inability to set the stage ablaze at the close
was attributed to a late intervention from Westminster City Council. Alas,
Wotan’s protracted fumbling to attach to Brünnhilde a harness that would
awkwardly suspend her above the stage, without the slightest sign of flames
that had intermittently flickered earlier, seemed all too apt a metaphor. Quite
what the Met, where Jones’s third (!) attempt at the Ring is heading, will make of it is anyone’s guess. It is certainly
devoid enough of intellectual content to satisfy Friends of Otto Schenk. But
the ‘look’, for that is all it is, and lack of discernible stage action will
surely trouble many.
Martyn Brabbins’s conducting
was sane, measured, and doubtless sensitive—perhaps too sensitive—to the needs
of his singers. Brabbins clearly appreciates the need to think in the broadest
terms about Wagner’s structures, yet often seemed to confuse that with
maintaining a slow speed throughout, occasionally changing gear when that could
not conceivably be maintained any longer. A few understandable fluffs—every performance
has them—notwithstanding, the ENO Orchestra played beautifully, if often in
strangely subdued fashion, especially in the first act (!) I do not know how
long it lasted in actual minutes, but it felt like the longest I had ever
heard. By contrast, the third act often seemed rushed, if hardly short. This
was clearly a work in progress, but there may be considerably more hope for
improvement here than in the staging.
 |
| Brünnhilde |
Had it not been for an initial
announcement, no one would have known Nicky Spence was suffering from a cold.
Siegmund is clearly a role for which he is ready—and for which he has well
prepared. There are strength, vulnerability, and many other of the qualities we
need, even in so unpromising a setting as this. It was difficult to discern
much in the way of chemistry with Emma Bell’s Sieglinde; nor did this seem to
be ironic or deconstructive detachment. However, considered on its own terms, her
performance also impressed, indicative of a woman bruised yet determined to
command her own destiny. Dart-playing Rachel Nicholls, lumbered with a strange skater-girl
look, trod a fine, shifting line between Brünnhilde's youthful impetuosity and the glimmers of
something more moving, more human—which is to say she understood what was at
stake, even if Jones did not. Matthew Rose, lumbered with, well, being a
lumberjack-turned-television-detective, offered a typically detailed and
thoughtful performance as Wotan, though the third act did not show him at his
strongest. These things vary from night to night. Brindley Sherratt's focus as Hunding varied too, though at its best it offered something darkly psychopathic. One of the strongest, most committed
and sustained performances came from the team of Susan Bickley (finely
observed, on stage) and Claire Barnett-Jones (also finely observed and with
gleaming tone, from a box above) as Fricka. This, again, was a performance that
truly used words, music, and gesture to suggest drama beyond Jones’s
imagination.
So too did John Deathridge’s
new singing translation. It was in many respects remarkably faithful not only
to what Wagner said but, crucially, to what he did not, employing suggestion and
ambiguity in the right places. It had an intriguing line too in something akin
to Stabreim. Word order and stress
played their part, as did various other considerations one might find—with profit—in
reading Wagner’s own Opera and Drama.
This did not, like many of ENO’s translations, attempt to draw attention to
itself, still less to elicit inappropriate laughter; rather it participated in
the dramatic effort in a way the singers and orchestra, if hardly the director,
did. The sort of people who drone on about ‘the Coli’ and alleged halcyon days
of Reginald Goodall will doubtless bemoan the lack of Andrew Porter, but their
parochial concerns need not be ours.
 |
| Fricka (Susan Bickley) and Wotan |
‘Mark well my poem,’ wrote
Wagner to Liszt in 1853, enclosing a copy of the Ring in verse; ‘it contains the beginning of the world and its end.’
One might argue that beginning(s) and end happen elsewhere in the Ring; but were this the generic television
‘show’ from which Jones & Co. appeared to have taken non-inspiration, it
seems doubtful, even in the unlikely event of a decision to renew for another ‘season’,
that many viewers would have been remaining. To achieve not only an Annunciation
of Death, but an entire Walküre, in
which nothing whatsoever seemed to be at stake, was a peculiar, perverse and strangely
pointless achievement. Either Jones
needs to rethink—the prefix ‘re-’ may be too kind—or ENO should act decisively with
courage and substitute another production or concert performances. With Wagner,
in Wagner, much is or should be at stake.
