Munich Opera Festival (1) - Die Liebe der Danae, 19 July 2025

 

Nationaltheater

Image: © Geoffroy Schied

Jupiter – Christopher Maltman
Merkur – Ya-Chung Huang
Pollux – Vincent Wolfsteiner
Danae – Malin Byström
Xanthe – Erika Baikoff
Midas – Andreas Schager
Four Kings – Martin Snell, Bálint Szabó, Paul Kaufmann, Kevin Conners
Semele – Sarah Dufresne
Europa – Evgeniya Sotnikova
Alkmene – Emily Sierra
Leda – Avery Amereau
Four Watchers – Bruno Khouri, Yosif Slavov, Daniel Noyola, Vitor Bispo
A Voice – Elene Gvitishvili

Director, choreography – Claus Guth
Set designs – Michael Levine
Costumes – Ursula Kudrna
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti
Video – rocafilm
Dramaturgy – Yvonne Gebauer, Ariane Bliss

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Christoph Heil)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Sebastian Weigle (conductor)

© Monika Rittershaus

For what continues to be considered an ill-fated rarity, Die Liebe der Danae has had several outings over the past couple of decades or so. I have seen three productions before this, two admittedly at its Salzburg Festival ‘home’ and none in Britain, though Garsington staged it a little before my time in 1999. (A recording, under the late Elgar Howarth, remains available.) Claus Guth’s Munich production, first seen earlier this season in February, is the Bavarian State Opera’s fourth. Rudolf Hartmann directed it twice; his first, 1953 version travelling on a company visit to the Royal Opera House, which has neglected to present it since. Hartmann’s 1967 production was designed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, no less, whilst 1988 saw a new version from Giancarlo del Monaco. With Rudolf Kempe, Joseph Keilberth, and Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting respectively, some of those occasions will surely have been fondly recalled by some in the Munich audience this time around. Nearly forty years on, though, it was time for something new. Perhaps ironically for an opera concerned in part with the baleful influence of gold, little expense would seem to have been spared. I wish, then, I could have felt greater enthusiasm, especially prior to the third act, for what I saw—and to some extent heard. 

Guth’s production opeened before the work with Danae posing for a photo shoot. Following a number of poses and loud clicks, the music could begin. The action played out exclusively in a penthouse with views of skyscrapers and the odd helicopter (as when Midas arrives). Pollux was dressed as a caricatured Donald Trump, silly hair, red tie, and overweight. His first appearance was enough to elicit laughter, which is fair enough: it was, for once, an amusing joke, but that was it really. Nothing was done with the identity beyond a love (common to all characters, it would seem) for the crass vulgarity of dictator-chic gold. That may have been a cause for relief given the impending shower of gold and indeed the question of Pollux’s relationship with his daughter Danae, but it ultimately seemed a bit cheap. (Perhaps that was the point.) And so, it continues, golden appearance clearly a sham, although the particularly trashy get-up of Jupiter as Midas is not without unfortunate connotations of Jimmy Savile, at least to a British viewer. 

© Geoffroy Schied

For the third act, everything changed—as, in a way, it should. The bubble had burst, though the physical devastation suggested war rather than a ‘mere’ credit crunch. (One might well argue that the two cannot be so readily separated. Indeed. But that probably needs to be shown rather than merely assumed or elided.) The drama that apparently truly interested Guth – up to a point, one cannot blame him – could commence in these new circumstances and one could actually begin to relate to the characters. In that, Guth’s conception was seemingly matched by a more committed performance from conductor Sebastian Weigle. They were doubtless following prevailing opinion; faced with the proverbial revolver to the head, who would not preserve the final act over the preceding two? But we are not—and perceived or actual imbalance is surely all the more reason to ask how we might elevate the latter. I am sure no one intended to reinforce (relative) critical opprobrium, but the first act in particular came across as often merely expository and, worse, expository of things that did not appear to have much in the way of consequence later on. If there was in Guth’s case unquestionably a guiding intelligence to the whole, contrast of ‘before’ and ‘after’ very much the thing, a little more sense of why we might care about these people and the situation they were in would have done no harm. 

Did we need, though, Juno to wander around above the stage without doing anything of obvious import? Having that higher level was not a bad way of emphasising difference between gods and humans—and of showing in which guise Jupiter should be understood at which time. Yet beyond that, I ended up regretting Strauss had not written a part for the goddess, perhaps in wry homage to Handel’s Semele, which, given his profound knowledge of all manner of musical history, he must have known. Merkur’s dancing above – that of everyone else too – is best forgotten, suffice to say that, having tried his hand at choreography, Guth would be well advised to stick to the day job. 

© Monika Rittershaus

If it was interesting and in itself moving to see at the close film of old Munich and of Strauss walking in his garden, presumably at Garmisch, they nonetheless suggested a certain abdication of responsibility. Danae was written for Salzburg, not Munich, and never received its full premiere in Strauss’s lifetime precisely because he wished it to take place across the reinstated border. Whilst we can look for traces of the composer in the work, it is also not obviously ‘about’ him, even a fictionalised him. It is not Intermezzo and it is not obviously laced with one of Strauss’s greatest musicodramatic gifts: irony. In the end, though, the story had been clearly enough told, as it has been on all occasions I have seen the work—and this was in every way preferable to the unconcealed racism of Alvis Hermanis for Salzburg in 2016. 

To my surprise, Weigle proved less flexible than he had in an excellent reading at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper in 2016. If orchestral playing was more or less beyond criticism in itself – and the conductor doubtless merits some credit for that, but it was difficult to avoid the Bayerische Staatsorchester would have played with exemplary clarity, balance, and heft no matter what. The problem, rather, lay with Weigle’s reluctance or inability to let the score flow. Especially earlier on, too much emerged as unrelentingly loud. There is extraordinary variegation in the score, much of which had been more successfully presented in Berlin—and it needs a helping hand or two to draw it out. The difference may have been in part a matter of acoustics, but it is surely part of the conductor’s job to deal with that. I cannot recall feeling quite so bludgeoned in the Nationaltheater before. The third act, like Guth’s, was considerably more successful. Earlier on, lack of Straussian sweep tended to draw attention to the infelicities of Joseph Gregor’s libretto: something a fine performance can readily have one forget. 

© Monika Rittershaus

Volume issues extended to some singing too; again, this was surely at least in part Weigle’s task to moderate. As Midas, Andreas Schager was particularly in need of some restraint. Schager is, of course, an extraordinary Heldentenor. It seems churlish to cavil, given long years we endured when no one could sing Siegfried and few if any could master other Wagner roles. Here, he proved indefatigable as ever and also showed himself perfectly capable of softer, more sensitive singing in the third act. A little more shading elsewhere would nonetheless have been welcome. Another near-impossible role, arguably more so, is that of Jupiter, in which Christopher Maltman’s recent forays into heavier roles, Wotan included, fully justified themselves. Maltman despatched the lower, darker reaches of the role, movingly indeed and with echoes of the latter god’s farewell to Brünnhilde, whilst attaining rich and ringing clarity at the top, to suggest an almost Kaufmann-like tenor. In the title role, Malin Byström proved agile, fearless, and – important, this – rather likeable. Hers may not be the largest of voices, but she knew what to do with it and did it well. Smaller roles were all well taken, as were the choruses. Special mention should go to the quartet of ‘elder’ ladies, amusingly portrayed in sex-and-shopping mode and beautifully sung by Sarah Dufresne, Evgeniya Sotnikova, Emily Sierra, and Avery Amereau. 

As for my reservations, perhaps it is time to accept that this is a very difficult work to bring off. Not every attempt will be entirely successful, any more than it is with, say, Der Rosenkavalier or Salome. Passing slowly yet surely into the repertoire would not be the worst of things, far from it.

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Tristan und Isolde, 3 August 2024

Festspielhaus

Tristan – Andreas Schager
King Marke – Günther Groissböck
Isolde – Camilla Nylund
Kurwenal – Olafur Sigurdarson
Melot – Birger Radde
Brangäne – Christa Mayer
Shepherd – Daniel Jenz
Steersman – Lawson Anderson
Young Sailor – Matthew Newlin

Director – Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson
Set design – Vytautas Narbutas
Costumes – Sibylle Wallum
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Lighting – Sascha Zauner

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

Images: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Almost uniquely amongst operas (dramas, if we prefer), Tristan und Isolde resists conceptualisation, even much in the way of framing. Perhaps not uniquely, but to a greater extent than any other. Any attempt to make Tristan ‘about’ anything other than what it is intrinsically about seems doomed to fail. I continue to live in dread of the director who decides it is somehow ‘about’ immigration, Covid, or anything pertaining to the phenomenal world. So many, distrusting or simply uninterested in music, seem incapable of sensing what it is concerned with. 

Put frankly, if you are uninterested in music, you should leave Tristan well alone. Its action is interior; the exterior is largely back story. For Wagner at his most Schopenhauerian, in aesthetics as much as ontology, the striving of the Will is the action, to which music – not opposed to, but as drama – as its representation comes closer than any other art form or means of expression. It is the music drama in which least would be lost if words and staging were discarded. In reality, of whatever kind, that how we listen to it, even when convinced otherwise. At a certain point in the Act II love-duet, it becomes difficult, even impossible, to have the words, fascinating, complex, and telling though they may be, register in one’s consciousness. Whether we call this the world of the noumenon, of night, of Dionysus, or of Tristan, we as well as the lovers are – or should be – there and not in its phenomenal, diurnal, Apollonian, operatic equivalent. 

All very well, you may say, but we do have words, we do have singers, we do have staging. Indeed we do, and they – singers and staging, in a sense words too – must work within these realities, these artistic truths. That need not be a problem; art thrives upon constraint of one sort or another. (Ask Wagner’s antipode, Stravinsky.) Too often, though, directors do not, perhaps cannot, since they seem to have little sense of what this work is actually concerned with, still less that it seemingly cannot be wrenched to be concerned with anything else. A signal feature of Bayreuth’s new Tristan, which I saw in its second performance, is that Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson seems to grasp this, in theory and in practice, and moreover to grasp that this does not negate but rather invites his work as director. There are cases, I think, in which he might go further in this direction in paring down the extraneous – is there a better model than Wieland Wagner here? – but this makes for a very good start and, following so many misfires, whether in Bayreuth or elsewhere, comes as a great relief. 

Nietzsche wrote a good deal of arrant nonsense about Wagner, often deliberately so, yet in calling Tristan the opus metaphysicum, he was on the mark. Only a couple of stagings I have seen, by Dmitri Tcherniakov and Peter Konwitschny, have offered serious challenge to that and Konwitschny in considerably more circumscribed fashion; they are destined, I suspect, to remain exceptions. Anarsson’s production treads on safer ground, neither without reason nor without advantage Moreover, there is to Anarsson’s work and to that of his collaborators, not least the outstanding Semyon Bychkov as conductor, a sense not only of the noumenal but of the aesthetic. 

Ship enthusiasts will find themselves well catered for. Not only the first act but the entire drama has a ship as its setting. Vytautas Narbutas’s set designs evoke this powerfully, suggestively, and without clutter—save, in the second act, where the clutter is the point. Ropes mostly do the trick in the first act, whose abiding visual motif is Isolde’s billowing wedding dress, also suggestive of sails. The words displayed – and just as much, concealed – on it from Wagner’s poem tell their own story, especially as she attempts, with varying success and perhaps intent, to free herself from it. Anarsson sees no reason actually to visualise the love potion, knowing that it is simply a symbol, not a cause. I have no especially strong feelings either way on that in principle; it is merely an external manifestation. It felt slightly odd, though – I realise this may seem somewhat at odds with what I say above – as did the onset of what seemed like a realistic fight between Tristan and Melot at the end of the second act, Melot wielding a sword, only for its outcome to happen seemingly spontaneously. Those objects and acts of the day perhaps benefit, if less strongly than their counterparts in the Ring, from some sort of visualisation.

The second act moves to the inside of the ship, seemingly its core: the core, one might say, of what action there may be. Its décor is fascinating, suggesting a lumber room strewn with objects that may in some sense have led us – which is to say Wagner, the work, those performing and otherwise experiencing it – there. Caspar David Friedrich’s presence is doubtless inevitable, and will at least evoke recognition, though part of me feels it is time to give his more celebrated images, like those of Monet and Klimt a while ago, a period of rest. The broader, unaggressive deconstruction of ‘civilisation’, western and perhaps eastern too, forms a captivating backdrop for the stage and ultimately the ‘real’ action. Cleared of that baggage, moved to a different part of (presumably) the same ship, the third act unfolds in a ‘later’, barer environment. It already feels too late, which in the most obvious if not necessarily the deepest sense, it is. Lighting, or rather its lack, throughout seems intended both to accentuate but also to develop the contrast between night and day. It reminds us that these are not operatic characters; the point is not necessarily to observe them minutely. There are greater forces – ultimately, one great, overwhelming force – at work.

Following the crude lack of direction, balance, and tuning brought to us two nights earlier by Oksana Lyniv in the covered pit, Bychkov’s work sounded like aural manna from heaven. He knew how to work with the theatre and its particular characteristics; beyond that, he knew the workings and expressive possibilities of Wagner’s score and communicated them in a reading that often took its time, especially in the second act, yet never dragged. The opening of the first-act Prelude – and its echo, towards the end of the act – sounded more beautifully hushed than I can recall, yet in no sense narcissistically; this was expectant, apparently imbued with knowledge, albeit knowledge that could not yet be imparted, of where the music would head, of what dramatically, in the fullest sense of the world, was at stake in melody, dissonance, and their consequences, always, if sometimes only just, within a tonal framework. That was the story, in which intensification of string vibrato could play as important a role as overwhelming orchestral climax. Bychkov did not hold back; his is not Wagner that defers to the voice, nor to anything other than its own musicodramatic requirements. He nonetheless helped liberate the voice’s expressive potential, even when vocal realities fell short of the ideal.

I did not feel that so strongly as a couple of people I have spoken to since, and wonder how much of that might be ascribed to seating in the theatre (as well, perhaps, as to aesthetic priorities). Seated at the back of the stalls, I may have benefited from the healing balm of the Bayreuth acoustic. That said, Andreas Schager’s Tristan, for stretches of the performance possessed of many of this Heldentenor’s familiar qualities, also experienced difficulties. Balance in the second-act duet was sometimes awry with Camilla Nylund’s Isolde, who at times also seemed stretched, if more in control of her part. A degree of abandon is, of course, no bad thing; Schager’s performance, however, came into and went out of focus a little too often and became strangely disjunct in the third act, as if the effort to sing more softly, to offer a more variegated reading, made it more difficult to maintain his line at all. 

Christa Mayer’s Brangäne was, by contrast, everything it should have been: warm, sustained, intelligent, and as well as integrated as any orchestral line. Günther Groissböck’s snarling Marke seemed to be making a play to come across as more cruel, even vindictive, than one might expect; this emerged as something of a work-in-progress. If a little bluff, even gruff at times, Olafur Sigurdarson had what it took for Kurwenal. The smaller roles were all well taken, Birger Radde’s ambivalent Melot, Daniel Lenz’s sweetly sung Shepherd, and Matthew Newlin’s clear-toned Sailor all standing out, whilst taking their place in the greater ensemble. The latter was ultimately what mattered and which, shortcomings aside, made this a satisfying and often moving whole.

Der Ring des Nibelungen, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 18, 19, 21, and 24 March 2024

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe)

Wotan/Wanderer – Tomas Konieczny
Donner, Gunther – Roman Trekel
Froh – Siyabonga Maqungo
Loge – Rolando Villazón
Fricka – Claudia Mahnke
Freia – Anett Fritsch
Erda, Rossweisse – Anna Kissjudit
Alberich – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Mime – Stephan Rügamer
Fasolt – Matthew Rose
Fafner – Peter Rose
Woglinde – Evelin Novak
Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Flosshilde, Siegrune – Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein
Siegmund – Robert Watson
Sieglinde – Vida Miknevičutė
Hunding – René Pape
Brünnhilde – Anja Kampe
Gerhilde – Clara Nadeshdin
Helmwige – Christiane Kohl
Waltraute – Michal Doron, Violeta Urmana
Schwertleite – Alexandra Ionis
Ortlinde, Third Norn – Anna Samuil
Grimgerde – Aytaj Shikhalizada
Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Woodbird – Victoria Randem
Hagen – Stephen Milling
Gutrune – Mandy Friedrich
First Norn – Marina Prudenskaya
Second Norn – Kristina Stanek

Director – Dmitri Tcherniakov
Revival directors – Lilli Fischer, Thorsten Cölle
Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
Lighting – Gleb Filshtinsky
Video – Alexey Poluboyarinov

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Philippe Jordan (conductor)

Returning to Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Berlin Ring a year after I first saw it, it seems very much the same production: thought-provoking, amenable to almost endless further questioning, and yet, as we reach the denouement, seemingly turning aside: not, I think, or at least not straightforwardly, as George Bernard Shaw accused Wagner of having done in Götterdammerung, on account of succumbing to the ‘love panacea’, but rather from having failed to see its Konzept through. I decided this time to write a single review rather than four instalments, partly so I could make connections between the four parts more readily, not necessarily explicitly, but at least writing with the whole in min. Comparison with what went before last year, with a largely yet not entirely different cast, and a different conductor (then Thomas Guggeis, now Philippe Jordan) is both interesting and, on some level, inevitable, but I shall try to limit 2023 references, so this can be read on its own terms. (I shall re-read my reviews, here, here, here, and here, once this has been written and posted.) Whatever its flaws, this remains an important piece of theatre, and performances were of a high, often outstanding, standard throughout. If we continue to miss Daniel Barenboim, life goes on—and very well too.

Alberich (Johannes Martin Kränzle)

Set in the ESCHE research centre, with an ash appropriately enough at its centre, Das Rheingold does very well in setting up expectations for the Ring as a whole. In some though not all respects, we may safely delete ‘expectations for’. It is difficult not to think of Blake’s ‘Art is the Tree of Life … Science is the Tree of Death,’ nor indeed of the Biblical Tree of Life, as well of course as Wagner’s kindred World-Ash. For this is unquestionably the realm of science, and in the most overtly political of all Wagner’s dramas, one is led – at least I was – to consider the relationship between politics and the natural sciences: in many respects, at least since the Enlightenment onwards, a key question of political and indeed other philosophy. Hegel, notably, is the trickiest figure here, at least for those who, like Charles Taylor, find his ontology impossible to accept; but he is arguably all the more important for that. Whatever else one might say, for instance, of Marx and Engels – to name perhaps the two most important political philosophers of Wagner’s generations – they were anything but vulgar materialists. Dialectical materialism: the clue is in the name. In the following generation, Nietzsche is an equally tricky case, arguably more ambiguous (take his interest, often overlooked, in eighteenth-century materialism) than self-styled Nieztscheans. Such thinkers, and others, inform our response to this world of observation, surveillance, and experimental psychology, in which the first scene physically abuses – and watches – Alberich more thoroughly than any other I can recall. Arguably this is above all Loge’s world, the world of the instrumental reason he seems to represent: that which Adorno and Horkheimer identified as the key to modernity’s deadly dialectic of enlightenment. When Loge gestures to Wotan in the third scene of Das Rheingold that he knows all too well what is going on, but they need to continue to play the game for Alberich’s benefit, the game is truly afoot. And Wotan, quite properly after Erda’s intervention, realises something is rotten in the state of Valhalla. Following the ineffectual yet crowd-pleasing magic tricks of Froh and Donner, he remains alone, in despair, grabbing the once ‘natural’ ash tree, though it is probably too late already. No one else, though, seems to know or care. 

For perhaps the key question as the drama develops is who is in charge, who is running these experiments. It might first seem to be Wotan and the gods, yet ultimately, like serious (non-naïve, non-liberal) political philosophy in general, there seems to be something and/or someone beyond those we thought was ruling the roost. Rousseau’s problem of the Legislator returns—but so ultimately does his inability to answer the questions he set himself in The Social Contract. Questions of agency come to the fore, just as they do with respect to Wotan and his ‘great idea’, announced at the end of Das Rheingold and torn to shreds by Fricka. What are we to make, when we reach Götterdämmerung, of the institute carrying on more or less before, but with still less of an evident chain of command. Frankenstein’s monster, in politics, even metaphysics, as in philosophy? Perhaps. 

Siegmund is an escaped inmate, with a touch both of Ukrainian Zelensky and Russian Tcherniakov to him via Elena Zaytseva’s costumes, Tcherniakov’s direction, and Robert Watson’s determined yet damaged portrayal. (The Ukrainian President is, after all, nothing if he is not an actor.) This we learn via Gleb Filshtinsky’s striking video police report, which accompanies Die Walküre’s opening orchestral storm. And yet, reopening or extending questions concerning scope, authority, agency, and so forth, he is nonetheless under observation by Wotan and Fricka, a one-way mirror from Hunding’s dwelling revealing the god’s Erich Mielke-like office, from which his own brand of state security (failings pointed out unsparingly both by Fricka and, more sympathetically, by Wagner) may be dispensed. Perhaps surprisingly, given the lack of an object for the ring, there is a sword, which in this particular context imparts a sense, if not quite of playacting, then of enforced roleplay (an echo, perhaps, of Tcherniakov’s Aix Carmen).

Siegmund (Robert Watson) and Sieglinde (Vida Miknevičutė)

Forcible return of the Volsung hero to the facility proper, or to more intense observation within, is at least as shocking as, in the previous instalment, Alberich’s not dissimilar bundling off, courtesy of research centre heavies, and approaches Fafner’s horrifying gun-murder of Fasolt. Violence is omnipresent both in the Ring and Tcherniakov’s reading of it, whatever Wotan (‘Nichts durch Gewalt!’) might claim. We might also mention in that breath Wotan’s dragging a hooded – essentially imprisoned and undoubtedly traumatised – Sieglinde back to the lecture theatre, which makes the tentative steps toward childhood play and then full display of father-daughter love between him and Brünnhilde all the more moving, as did magnificent performances from both Tomasz Koniezcny and Anja Kampe.

In Siegfried, there is also much to glean and admire. The thug-orphan-hero’s smashing of childhood toys in the first act has obvious symbolism. So too has his sheer might. Intriguingly, he sees Wotan at the end of that act, through what had once seemed to be a one-way-mirror. Maybe it never was; we may just have wanted to believe that. Or perhaps it is testament to the old order and/or older generation giving way. There is room for different interpretation here. Certainly, Konieczny’s Wotan, previously the loudest – at least at his loudest – I have heard, though that is not to deny his verbal subtlety either, seemed transformed, and not only visually (though tremendous work is done there through costume, make-up, and prosthetics). This Wanderer was old, and we heard it too. So too, far from incidentally, was Johannes Martin Kränzle’s Alberich; their confrontation at the beginning of the second act was one of the deepest I can recall, as focused on Wagner’s poem as any ‘straight’ theatre performance, but with the additional intensity only music, vocal and orchestral, can bring. 

The enclosed violence of something approaching a cage-fight – a lab fight – between Fafner and Siegfried is terrible to behold, though it was a pity for Peter Rose’s Fafner, so powerful and intelligent elsewhere (a fine pair earlier with his namesake Matthew Rose, as Fasolt), to let out his final ‘Siegfried’ seemingly without any recognition of what that name might mean. The experiment on our ‘rebel without a consciousness’, as Peter Wapnewski once called Siegfried, has him gain some of that, though oddly not really fear. (Nor does he have the slightest idea who the Norns are when he passes them: perhaps a missed opportunity to depict change.) It is in the final scene that things really begin to fall apart. Much seems merely silly, the forced laughter of Brünnhilde and Siegfried grating, as if Tcherniakov can no longer bear the seriousness of Wagner’s dramas and just wishes to mock it. It prefigures similar laughter in Götterdämmerung, for instance between Gunther and Gutrune; more seriously, it prefigures the failure of that drama chez Tcherniakov.

Siegfried (Andreas Schager) and Mime (Stephan Rügamer)

 

Before, though, we turn to the denouement, let us consider the musical achievements, at least those not discussed above. Above all, there is the astonishing achievement of the Staatskapelle Berlin. I am not sure I have ever heard quite so faultless a performance, even under Barenboim. That there were a few instances of tiredness in Götterdämmerung is only to be expected; that there were so few is eminently worthy of note. Jordan’s conducting was extremely fluent, navigating the score almost as if he were Karajan. The sheer elegance of his approach will not be to all tastes, but it deserves serious consideration. Ultimately, I felt there was often, though not always, a degree or two of range lacking, and that Götterdämmerung had a tendency to drag just a little, as if tempi were slightly out of sync with the overall conception. But Jordan’s command of his forces and the sheer excellence of those forces – there was not a single vocal performance that really fell short – was testament to more than Barenboim’s extraordinary legacy, however important that may be. It was certainly the best Wagner yet I have heard from the conductor; it was also just as heartening to hear this great orchestra continue to consign any other Wagner band, Bayreuth’s included, to the shade.  

Some individual performances I have mentioned already. I cannot run through them all, but shall select some highlights. Rolando Villazón’s Loge is always likely to remain controversial, though it seemed to me to have progressed significantly from last year: less bel canto, more Rheingold dialectic. There could be no doubting his wholehearted commitment, nor his thriving on stage. That is surely more important than individual preferences for what a role ‘should’ be. Siyabnoga Maqungo made for a pleasingly lyric Froh. If I felt Claudia Mahnke’s Fricka came more into her own in Die Walküre, that is doubtless as much a matter of work and production than performance as such. She certainly lived and breathed her character’s argument and ruthlessness in its presentation, with none of the misguided recent trend to make Fricka unduly sympathetic (cheered on by commentators who clearly have little understanding of either the drama itself or Wagner’s position). Anna Kissjudit’s Erda remained essential; as with so many exponents of the role, she seems to be a singer who can do no wrong (her recent Ježibaba a case in point). That does not mean we should take for granted the deep beauty and penetrating verbal commitment of her portrayal; we should not.

Alberich

 

Kränzle’s Alberich may have been less black of tone than many, but that offered a caution against essentialism, the intelligence of his portrayal showing it is perfectly possible for an artist both to play the forger of the ring in three out of four evenings, yet also to be capable of satisfying the very different requirements of a Beckmesser. Stephan Rügamer’s Mime was every bit as distinguished, thoughtful, and similarly verbally founded a portrayal as one would expect from this fine artist: again never something we should take for granted. Vida Miknevičutė’s Sieglinde was everything one could wish for: vulnerable, yes, yet with great inner strength, blossoming and crushed according to the dramatic requirements of work and production—and René Pape’s brutal, yet beautifully sung Hunding. This is surely more his role than Wotan. 

Andreas Schager’s Siegfried continues to be a significant achievement. If Schager’s voice no longer has the freshness it once did – how could it? – his was a tireless performance, committed throughout in its attempt to show us what both Wagner and Tcherniakov asked of him. Kampe went from strength to strength as Brünnhilde, truly enlisting our sympathy, without ever playing a ‘mere’ victim’. A more distinguished set of ‘other’ Valkyries, some of whom appeared in additional roles, one would struggle to find anywhere at any time. Not only the ‘Ride’ but the crucial scene thereafter, cast from such vocal and acting strength, came to urgent, necessary life such as may only rarely be experienced. (To have such a Wotan, Brünnhilde, and Sieglinde did no harm, of course.) Stephen Milling’s Hagen was another commanding performance, and I greatly enjoyed Victoria Randem’s performance, likewise completely inhabiting the world of the Woodbird. Rhinemaidens and Norns were similarly of the highest standard.

Back, then, to Tcherniakov. It pains me to say, as a great admirer of his work in general, that the perverse achievement of his Götterdämmerung is to have made it so boring. Having seemingly run out of ideas (and/or time?) by the last scene of Siegfried, he goes through the motions here. I presume the lack of observation from elsewhere in the centre signifies something—and one can certainly speculate about what that might be. Given that it occurs before the Norns’ rope snaps, it must have happened either at the end of Siegfried or in between. I have no objection to trying to fill in the gaps; there is no reason the audience should not have to do some work too. The problem is that it becomes difficult to care. Whatever explanations one comes up with, the production seems either to repeat itself, for want of anything better to do, or introduces something arbitrarily new. No basketball so far? Why not introduce it for the hunting scene. Of course, one can argue that such sport is a reasonable masculine equivalent, but it is unprepared at best. The return of various characters, Erda (still played by Kissjudit, rather than an actor) and an elderly Wanderer included, to observe Siegfried’s funeral rites could be touching. It is certainly not an intrinsically bad idea. But amidst a host of apparently ‘new’ characters, presumably from younger generations (although the decor has not changed at all), it is all a bit confusing, even random.

Brünnhilde

I do not think I have seen a less eventful Immolation Scene, and hope never to do so. Brünnhilde really is parked, if not to bark, then to sing very well. After that, she jumps on top of Siegfried on a hospital trolley, and that is that until a final scene change to follow Hagen’s ‘Zurück vom Ring’ (from offstage). She has packed her bag – it is not quite a suitcase, I suppose, but come on… – and is heading off somewhere to be intercepted by Erda, who offers her a bird. Perhaps there was a fire after all, since the research centre seems to have vanished. For want of anything more meaningful, the words of Wagner’s so-called ‘Schopenhauer ending’ are projected for us to read. If Schopenhauer is being invoked as therapy, this must rank as the weakest, least motivated instalment of Tcherniakov’s often intriguing therapeutic turn. This, alas, seems more, not less, tired on a second viewing. One looks to do more than shrug and say ‘so what?’ at the end of a Ring, all the more so when it had started and, for the most part, continued so well. It is above all a great pity, and not in a Parsifalian-Mitleid sort of way.

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Parsifal, 15 August 2023

Festspielhaus

Amfortas - Derek Welton

Titurel - Tobias Kehrer

Gurnemanz - Georg Zeppenfeld

Parsifal - Andreas Schager

Klingsor - Jordan Shanahan

Kundry - Ekaterina Gubanova

Knights of the Grail - Siyabonga Maqungo, Jens-Erik Aasbø

Squires - Betsy Horne, Margaret Plummer, Jorge Rodriguez-Norton, Garrie Davislim

Flowermaidens - Evelin Novak, Camille Schnoor, Margaret Plummer, Julia Grüter, Betsy Horne, Marie Henriette Reinhold

Alto solo - Marie Henriette Reinhold

Jay Scheib (director)

Mimi Lien (designs)

Meentje Nielsen (costumes)

Rainer Casper (lighting)

Joshua Higgason (AR and video)

Marlene Schleicher (dramaturgy)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Pablo Heras-Casado (conductor)

To move from Dmitri Tcherniakov’s gripping Flying Dutchman to Jay Scheib’s new and much-trumpeted, Artificial Reality-enhanced Parsifal veered towards regression from the sublime to the ridiculous. I should state that I was not one of those with the spectacles necessary to see the ‘enhanced’ version, my short-sightedness being (just) too severe. But since most in the Festspielhaus audience did not have the glasses, it does not seem unreasonable to write about what I could see, whilst noticing access issues that surely require resolution.

I wish I could tell you what Scheib’s production is about. It certainly does not seem to be founded in knowledge of, or even interest in, Wagner and Parsifal. ‘When I think of the word “Bühnenweihfestspiel,’ Scheib tells us in the programme, ‘I think first of all about a celebration. We are opening a festival! Let’s get the party started!’ Leaving aside what is presumably an unintentional hommage to the former Labour MP Keith Vaz, it is difficult to know where to start. Perhaps with advice to look up the ‘weih’ part of the word in a dictionary, and thereafter to consider what ‘consecretion’ might entail. Or even just to acquaint oneself with the plot, let alone with Wagner’s writings. Good things can, of course, proceed from misunderstandings or misappropriations; the problem is that very little at all proceeds from this or from anything else.

What do we have, then? It looks somewhat like a computer game, I think, though I am hardlly the best person to know. That, I suspect, is the ‘aesthetic’, but I may be wrong. What action there is unfolds against some of the most hideous designs I have had the misfortune to see, accompanied by apparently equally meaningless activity and lack of activity. Strange outfits sported by some of the knights in the first act suggest a directorial attempt to tell us he too has done some drugs in his time. I was unsure for a while whether the peculiar shapes on them were intended to evoke bacteria - wounds of their own? - but Gurnemanz’s sudden acquisition of them on a garish, presumably sacerdotal cloak and equally sudden dispensing of them suggested not. The poor souls looked like refugees from a discontinued children’s television programme. Earlier, indeed in the first-act Prelude, Gurnemanz has sex with a woman, tastelessly magnified on live camera. Who she is I have no idea, but she returns to stand and then walk around in the third act, before embracing him at the close. 

Amfortas’s blood, not unreasonably, appears for a while to be a preoccupation, the wound rather monstrously magnified on camera during Gurnemanz’s first-act narration. Parsifal smashes the grail at the end, though with what import again I have no idea. Certain people walk around or wear slightly different clothes. There are two Kundrys, I think, one of whom silent, sometimes mirrors the action of the other and sometimes walks around in a circle. Others, above all Parsifal and Kundry in their great confrontation in the second act, seem entirely abandoned and have to fend for themselves. And the Barbie-meets-Benny Hill aesthetic of that act, sadly lacking the intellectual heft of either, is not an experience I should wish even on Mr Vaz. That Klingsor wears heels seems a peculiar, carelessly offensive translation of self-castration. To be brutally honest, though, it is difficult to care. So boring, I am sad to say, was this hapless production that it almost had me long for the prior nadir of Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s staging (2016-19), though at least it had none of Laufenberg’s Islamophobia. Illumination such as that offered by Stefan Herheim (2008-12) will always remain a rare experience, but surely a director should be able to do, or at least try to do, better than this.

Sadly, this made it difficult, at least for me, to care much about or even to attend to the musical performances. Pablo Heras-Casado’s conducting was generally fluent enough on the micro-level, but imparted little sense of a greater whole. String tone was sometimes strangely thin, though to his credit, Heras-Casado seemed largely to have the measure of the particular challenges presented by conducting in Bayreuth’s covered pit. The audience, though, was wildly enthusiastic. So too was it for most of the singers (with none of the incomprehensible booing heard the previous night). For me, insofar as I could tell beyond the production, they were more impressive than moving. Andreas Schager was his usual indefatigable self in the title role. We are lucky to have him and his seemingly boundless enthusiasm, although his voice is no longer so fresh as it was. Ekaterina Gubanova similarly gave much as Kundry; her attention to the equally exacting demands of words and music was noteworthy throughout. So too was Georg Zeppenfeld’s as Gurnemanz, though Heras-Casado’s lack of greater structural command did not assist the narrations. Derek Welton’s Amfortas was finely sung throughout, as were the choral contributions. A concert performance would, frankly, have enabled greater appreciation both of these performances and of Wagner’s drama.

Berlin Festtage (5) - Götterdämmerung, 10 April 2023

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Hagen – Mika Kares
Brünnhilde – Anja Kampe
Gunther – Lauri Vasar
Gutrune – Mandy Fredrich
Waltraute – Violeta Urmana
Three Norns – Noa Beinart, Kristina Stanek, Anna Samuil
Woglinde – Evelin Novak
Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Flosshilde – Anna Lapkovskaja
Erda (silent) – Anna Kissjudit

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Alexey Polubpoyarinov (video)
Tatiana Werestchagina, Christoph Lang (dramaturgy)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe)

‘Alles was ist, endet.’ Erda’s words from Das Rheingold apply both to the rule of the gods and to Wagner’s depiction of that rule, its decline, and its fall. The Ring does strange things to one’s sense of time, time in any case a strange thing to experience. By the time one reaches Götterdämmerung, let alone its end, one both feels one has been through a good deal, to put it mildly, and yet also that it has only just begun. Partly, of course, that is or can be the work’s message too. Wagner counselled Liszt to mark well his poem, containing the beginning and end of a world, not, as sometimes has been said, the world. Those ‘watchers’, men and women (on which Wagner is very clear) ‘moved to the very depth of their being’, who, at least according to his stage directions, should observe Brünnhilde’s final acts and who implicitly remain with us to create a new world, would otherwise have no role. Nor, on one level, would performing and staging the work. Here we were again, though: the end of another Ring, one which had challenged and taught us much, moving us too, even if not always living up dramaturgically to the moments of its highest promise. 

For, if much of Siegfried, especially its first two acts, had left me enthused and eager to find out what might happen next, Götterdämmerung sometimes suggested Dmitri Tcherniakov had lost his way, failing to follow up – or at least electing not to do so – on themes and threads which instead were left hanging. Wagner’s more uncomprehending critics might claim he did so too; we have no need to discuss them further here. The research centre in which the work – all of it, probably – takes place opened up questions of agency and control in which Tcherniakov seemed, at least in part, to have lost interest. If the Norns, whom we had seen throughout, filing away information, seemingly keeping matters in order, are now locked out of proceedings, what does that mean? I could speculate, perhaps fruitfully, yet the production largely seems to abdicate any responsibility it might have to tell, to explain, to suggest.

Hagen (Mika Kares), Staatsopernchor Berlin

The Tarnhelm’s failure again to work, Siegfried looking and dressing like Siegfried, not Gunther, on Brünnhilde’s mountain, could have many potential explanations and implications, yet where were they here? If the world has been disenchanted – fair enough, returning to Adorno and Horkheimer, or indeed many others – where, and I am sorry to bang on about this, does that leave the objects of Wagner’s work (musical as well as verbal and scenic)? It is not always clear to me that that problem has been adequately considered, though I think it could be in a revised production building on what has gone before. Where steps had been taken in Siegfried to suggest Wagner lay beyond any of the characters in setting up the experimental basis for the production, here if anything we went backwards—and it did not, Dallas- or Die tote Stadt-style, seem all to have been a dream.

Hagen, Gunther (Lauri Vasar), Gutrune (Mandy Fredrich), chorus

There are lovely and other telling touches. The return of Erda and ultimately the Wanderer (his cloth cap still somewhere between Chéreau’s Brechtian ‘watchers’ and Wagner’s own carefully curated portraiture) to pay tribute to the dead Siegfried is genuinely moving. Has this particular experiment concluded? In that respect we can, I think justly, draw our own conclusions, however inadequate. Siegfried’s earlier Don Draper-like sprawling on the sofa and a plethora of cigarettes tell their own story of toxic – literally so – masculinity. So too does the basketball court on which Siegfried meets his death. That Gutrune may be drugged too is interesting: perhaps an addict rather than a formal object of experimentation, but is that not in any case part of a broader societal experiment of death and disaster? (Her other treatment is decidedly unsympathetic to the point of misogyny: a pity.) 

And what to make of the ending? I am tempted to say very little. To the text of Wagner’s rejected ‘Schopenhauer ending’ – he rejected it for sure dramatic reason – Brünnhilde approaches Erda, ultimately rejecting a paper bird such as Siegfried had rejected from the Woodbird. She pulls down the curtain, after it has become stuck. Making her own way with a clichéd bag in hand? Doubtless, yet could we, should we not expect more? It did not strike me as a deliberate drama of the underwhelming, a world failing to end, as in Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth Ring, rather a need to do something, almost anything. But perhaps, even probably, I am failing to understand. Tcherniakov’s Parsifal and, more controversially, his Tristan were tauter, more thought through. Is the lack the message? We begin to pursue ourselves, or our thoughts, in circles.

 

More understandably, Thomas Guggeis’s musical interpretation seemed to have tired somewhat. It was still an excellent show, a fine achievement for one at this stage of his career, which would put many others to shame; yet, a few orchestral fluffs (near-inevitable) aside, there were a few more cases where, not unlike the staging, the conductor did not always seem sure where next to turn. There was tremendous playing from the Staatskapelle Berlin led, at its best, by a keen sense of where the score was heading, but there were hesitations too. That, I have little doubt, will change with greater experience. 

Andreas Schager’s Siegfried created the drama before him: tireless, cocksure, yet with a crucial degree of stunted development (Tcherniakov’s toy horse Grane another nice touch). He and Anja Kampe as Brünnhilde once again held the stage at least as well as anyone this century. Mika Kares added Hagen to Fasolt and Hunding, excelling once again in words, music, and gesture. Lauri Vasar (Gunther) and Mandy Fredrich (Gutrune) were not given the most promising hands in Tcherniakov’s conception, teetering on the edge of the merely silly, yet worked to gain our sympathy—and ultimately succeeded, a true sign of excellent artistry. The Norns and Rhinemaidens made fine contributions, though Violeta Urmana’s Waltraute did not make so consistently strong an impression as one might have expected.

Hagen, Alberich (Jochen Schmeckenbecher)

It was, moreover, a joy to welcome back, however briefly, Jochen Schmeckenbecher’s thoughtful, detailed portrayal of Alberich. As so often, one’s thoughts returned to him, dead, alive, or somewhere in between. ‘Schläfst du, Hagen, mein Sohn?’ That near-liturgical question, so alluring to Boulez at work with Chéreau on the Centenary Ring, retains its irrational enticement. In lieu of a more conventional conclusion, that might do.

Berlin Festtage (4) - Siegfried, 8 April 2023

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Mime – Stephan Rügamer
The Wanderer – Michael Volle
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Fafner – Peter Rose
Erda – Anna Kissjudit
Brünnhilde – Anja Kampe
Woodbird – Victoria Randem

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Alexey Polubpoyarinov (video)

Tatiana Werestchagina, Christoph Lang (dramaturgy)  

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Mime (Stephan Rügamer), Siegfried (Andreas Schager)

Experiments resume, continue—and, in several respects, come into sharper focus. Film footage of a miserable, traumatised child whose play has gone wrong accompanies the first Prelude to Siegfried. Siegfried, his emotional growth stunted at least in part deliberately by Mime, presents himself. He is still a child, really, as the toys in the corner of Mime’s house suggest. He does not know his parents, fear, and quite a few other things; the research centre, which is at least in part to say Wagner, will later put him through a series of experiments in order to teach him fear: a dubious project, one might say, as celebrated scientists – Darwin, Humboldt, Mendel, et al. – look down or gaze impassively. Nothing or everything to do with them? The choice may be yours. 

A Woodbird in lab coat, paper-bird experimental aid to hand, forms part of Siegfried’s education and further exploitation. Wotan sporadically watches; such, after all, is the Wanderer’s way, though he has been doing this, courtesy of one-way mirrors, since the first scene of Die Walküre. Brünnhilde and Siegfried disconcertingly laugh at their task, yet when we consider how emotionally – and physically – abused both of them have been, is their infantilism remotely surprising? Whatever future awaits them in Götterdämmerung, it is unlikely to be bright. Norns, typically unflustered, continue to do their business, whatever it may be. Maybe we shall find out next time.

Siegfried, Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe)

At least until the third act, Dmitri Tcherniakov and/or his cast’s commitment to detailed characterisation continues to impress. The third act, not entirely unlike the final scene of Die Walküre, flickers more intermittently with scenic inspiration; exploration-cum-confrontations such as those of Brünnhilde with Wotan and Siegfried respectively, seem not entirely to be Tcherniakov’s thing. By the same token, the reunion of Wotan and Alberich, like cantankerous foes in an old people’s home, is richly observed and increasingly sharply differentiated. There is more than a hint of Beckett, though that may come – it hardly matters – directly from Michael Volle and Jochen Schmeckenbecher, the former expanding on his unforgettable Bayreuth interactions with Johannes Martin Kränzle as Hans Sachs and Beckmesser. Both artists here stand at the very top of their game, words, music, and gesture combining to offer a masterclass in what Wagner demands theoretically in Opera and Drama and practically as both a man of the theatre and a supreme musical dramatist. 

Alberich (Jochen Schmeckenbecher), The Wanderer (Michael Volle)

Andreas Schager’s Siegfried, by now quite a well-known quantity, remains an astonishing, tireless tour de force. It is easy to forget how, not so many years ago, we despaired of ever hearing someone capable of singing roles such as Siegfried and Tristan. A series of catastrophes at Covent Garden, for instance, all but derailed performances; Bayreuth seemed little better. Not only can Schager sing the role, he can act too—and did, entering with enthusiasm into Tcherniakov’s world, just as he had as Parsifal in the director’s production for this same house. Boundless energy is, of course, just the thing for the young Siegfried in particular; that and more are what he received. Anja Kampe’s Brünnhilde picked up where she left off last time and duly impressed. Coming cold to that final scene is a difficult thing to ask, yet one would never have known. I hope Tcherniakov will give them both more to attend to dramatically next time. 

Siegfried, The Woodbird (Victoria Randem)

The rest of the cast was excellent too. Stephan Rügamer’s Mime led us skilfully through the misery of what it is to be Mime, yet also the malice and misery that cannot only be attributed to external misfortune. Peter Rose made a stronger impression as Fafner than he perhaps had in Das Rheingold. Anna Kissjudit’s Erda, though not given much to do in terms of theatre – perhaps I am still hankering after Frank Castorf’s unforgettable portrayal of her (Al)exanderplatz farewell – was beautifully sung once more. Victoria Randem gave a lively, ideally projected performance of the Woodbird, highly convincing in the unusual requests made of her by this particular production. 

Perhaps the greatest star of all remains the astonishing Staatskapelle Berlin. The orchestra never put a foot wrong, responding with just as much skill and enthusiasm for Thomas Guggeis as they would have done for Daniel Barenboim. (I know I should stop mentioning him, but…) It leads and comments on the action as few can, and frankly cannot be bettered by any orchestra in this repertoire today. Guggeis’s work is similarly astonishing, when one considers it. For one so young, with so little rehearsal time, to take over a Ring and get through it in one piece would be no mean achievement. Yet he has done far more than that, bringing much that is different from either Barenboim or Christian Thielemann (earlier this season) without ever imposing himself upon the score or the action. The musical action flows as if it were the most natural thing in the world; maybe it is, but it does not just ‘happen’. And there are intriguing signs of how Guggeis’s interpretation may develop: a steely, wind-led harshness that at times recalls the Wagner (and Beethoven) of Karajan, especially apt in this ‘scherzo’ of the Ring, will balance heady, Romantic, yet always firmly directed outpourings of great emotional intelligence. Wagner, one might say, continues to provoke and experiment upon us all.