Bayreuth Festival (4) - Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, 28 and 30 July, 1 August 2026

Festspielhaus

Siegmund, Siegfried – Klaus Florian Vogt
Sieglinde – Elza van den Heever
Hunding, Hagen – Mika Kares
Wotan – Michael Volle
Fricka, First Norn – Anna Kissjudit
Brünnhilde – Camilla Nylund
Siegrune, Second Norn, Gutrune – Alexandra Ionis
Rossweiße, Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Grimgerde, Floßhilde – Marie Henriette Reinhold
Helmwige, Third Norn – Magdalena Hinterdobler
Gerhilde – Martina Weischenbach
Ortlinde – Brit-Tone Müllertz
Waltraute – Karis Tucker (Walküre), Anna Kissjudit (Götterdämmerung)
Schwertleite – Freya Apffelstaedt
Mime – Gerhard Siegel
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Fafner – Peter Rose
Woodbird – Victoria Randem
Erda – Christa Mayer
Gunther – Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Woglinde – Katherina Konradi

Curator – Marcus Lobbes
Artistic and technical conception – Marcus Lobbes, Nils Corte
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Digital- and AI-storytelling – Roman Senkl
Creative code, visual art – Nils Corte, Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger
Set design – Wolf Gutjahr
Costumes – Pia Maria Mackert

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra 

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

‘Auf geb’ich mein Werk: nur Eines will ich noch: das Ende – das Ende!‘ When, in bitter disillusionment, in his great monologue from the second act of Die Walküre, Wotan offers Alberich – absent from the stage, yet present in words, orchestra, and our thoughts – the world he had once striven so hard to retain, now desiring one thing alone, the end, he spoke for all of us. Michael Volle delivered the line with characteristic intelligence and artistry. The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra ‘spoke’ with equivalent excellence as Wagner’s Attic chorus. Goodness knows what happened or did not onstage. I cannot recall and I doubt anyone else can; the likelihood of anyone having cared is still lower. Maybe it happened at one of the times I experimented by closing my eyes or wearing a newly acquired sleeping mask from a Bayreuth branch of Rossmann. (Tentative conclusion: may help relieve symptoms for a short period, but consult a musicodramatic physician should symptoms persist, as alas they did.) The truth, alas, is that most of us had willed that end far sooner, from about a minute or two into the first Rheingold screen-saver foisted on us by ‘curator’ Marcus Lobbes. His recorded utterances suggest barely the slightest acquaintance with the Ring, let alone what it might mean, but such knowledge is doubtless to be disdained in a braver new world than Aldous Huxley might ever have imagined. 

In a sense, there is little else to write, yet somehow, like the pilgrims who returned night after night, more in expectation than in hope, I should make the attempt. What did we learn? That the ‘machine’, the ‘intelligence’, the ‘prompter’ – whatever we wish to call it/him/whatever – was never happier than when covering singers with red, which contrasted with brown, to merge in a sickly terracotta, only to be eclipsed by yellow? That the bizarre ‘historical’ pictures could indeed get worse? The Prologue and first Act of Götterdämmerung took us not very far, from Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan to Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton, the latter understandably covering his face. That whoever/whatever was signally incapable of aligning past production images, all still in terrible resolution, with what was going on, so that Frank Castorf’s legendary alternative Mount Rushmore appeared only when it should not in Siegfried, and that, staggeringly, Patrice Chéreau’s still more legendary Immolation Scene, Dame Gwyneth and all, appeared first in the wrong scene with Brünnhilde? What on earth the advent of the euro was doing there, I refuse even to speculate. We cannot or, better, should not be expected to do the work for these machines. We are not Alberich’s enslaved Nibelungs; or rather, we are, but must free ourselves. Not that we saw them anyway—and the chorus, when it appeared, was denied costumes and indeed visibility. An unfortunate moment of mislighting, were that a word, nonetheless revealed the arrival of its female contingent. The ‘cage’ of screens, front and back, could not function on its own terms, let alone ours.

Occasionally what we saw just about aspired to the level of a mid-price greeting card image; near-aspiration consistently failed to elevate itself into achievement. The obscenity of randomly posting a picture of what appeared to be starving Africans, presumably as a result of a colonial atrocity, as something to gaze at for a few seconds, then having it ‘transform’ into some meaningless shapes, whilst Siegmund and Sieglinde voice their increasing love – and lust – for one another should in itself have been enough to take this idiocy off the stage. That Walküre ‘moment’ fell, if I remember correctly, somewhere between sightings of Thomas Mann (at the right time for Wälsungenblut, though apparently not intended as such) and a pair of keyholes; Lenin and Hitler remained some way off. Who knows? Who cares? Actually, many might care about suddenly being presented with an unmotivated, uncalled-for giant image of Hitler impressed upon them in the Festspielhaus. Where is the obligation to them? A concert performance would have been infinitely preferable; so too would even the worst of stagings.

Someone should have pulled the plug, literally, before this debacle had begun, leaving us with what would doubtless have been a fine concert performance. It might well have been a disappointment, but it would not have been a catastrophe. It would have spared some of the ‘AI’ environmental footprint too, as our own World-Ashes not only wither but blaze across the world. Home to Wagner’s endearing encounter with Jessie Laussot, Bordeaux has endured more temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius this unfinished year alone than it has over the preceding century-and-a-bit during which records were kept. Soon not only revolutionary composers will be expelled; not only the vines whose fruits Jessie’s husband traded on will wither; the city itself may fall.  The end approaches and it does not look pretty; nor does it seem likely to cleanse us and the world Musk, Trump, Lobbes, and others have despoiled. Mention of sustainable theatre, sustainable anything else, or indeed any sort of theatre, let alone drama, now raises little more than a shrug. We are all apparently just to destroy our eyes, ears, minds, and souls sitting in front of screens waiting like the gods in Waltraute’s heartrending plea to Brünnhilde—or what would have been, had it not similarly been obliterated by further image-bombardment. Say what you like about the US occupation forces when they turned the Festspielhaus into a venue for musicals and other entertainments; they never conceived of such an indignity on Wagner’s house, work, performers, and audience, let alone put it into practice.

Again, I shall need to be brief about the performances, since I found it well-nigh impossible to concentrate upon them. Bar a very few inevitable slips, the orchestra continued to play brilliantly for Thielemann, despite its relegation to soundtrack for whatever it was we were compelled to view. Silken strings that darkened on demand; sensuous yet spirited woodwind; brass that rang with the hallowed tones, yet none of the complacency, of altdeutsch tradition: from this palette our necromancer-in-chief painted a series of epics to my ears closer to Strauss (and even at times Debussy) than the Bayreuth Wagner of old, yet certainly with tales to tell. These were aesthetic decisions rather than omissions; this was made clear at points of the highest dramatic tension in Act I of Die Walküre, when suddenly Thielemann shifted to an almost Klemperer- or Barenboim-like focus on growling, foundational harmony, the parallel gear-shift in tempo audible yet convincing. There was often a chamber-music line less in the line of Karajan than beyond him; at least, I discerned it from time to time when the images would permit me to listen.

 

The singers were, of course, still more poorly served—some might say unforgivably so. This may seem an absurdly first-level question for a production, but did our ‘curators’ for one minute consider the implications for the outstanding, hard-working vocal artists placed at their disposal? Either they did and utterly failed in another basic task, or they did not and were thereby negligent. Volle’s class shone through nevertheless, if only sporadically, as did that of everyone else. Perhaps I might have been more critical in other circumstances, but Klaus Florian Vogt’s follow-ups to his excellent Loge, taking in both Siegmund and Siegfried – surely a record? – offered insight throughout and only occasional tiring. He acted too, bringing far more to the stage than a thousand screen-savers might ever: not only in his own dramatic presence, but in engagement with others. If Mika Kares did not quite manage such a feat, our Daland and Fasolt excelled also as Hunding and Hagen. Here is a first-rate artist, readily adaptable, without threat to lyricism, verbal meaning, or their musicodramatic union. Anna Kissjudit stood out to me similarly as Fricka and the First Norn. Her sister Norns, their sister Rhinemaindens, and indeed their sister Valkyries were all excellent as individual voice and ensemble. Camilla Nylund emerged as first among equals, in fiercely committed performances as Brünnhilde in all three of these operas. Far too often, though, these were fleeting rather than sustained impressions, and all on account of the ‘curation’. 

This ‘production’, ‘curation’, or whatever one wants to call it is not about ‘AI’; it is not ‘about’ the Culture Industry or capitalism. It denotes and indeed forms part of their logical, lowest-common-denominator, catastrophic conclusion. Of course the Ring, like anything else, cannot preserve itself from the structures of our current existence; nor should it, even if that were possible. By the same token, it should not – must not – merely surrender to them. The Bayreuth Festival was, for sound reasons, founded as a joint stock company. That was not an endorsement of later-nineteenth-century capitalism; it was a decision necessitated by economic furchtbare Not. To complain about that is to plummet to the inanity level of ‘you have an iPhone, so how can you criticise capitalism?’ There was neither call nor need for this aesthetic disaster, surely the worst in the history of the Festival. If any of us hears again of Lobbes in the opera house, it will be too soon, but this is not the fault of a single person, however culpable he and his ‘team’ may be. We are not all guilty, as the cliché has it; guilty indeed, though, are obsession with technology – as ‘bros’ call it, ‘tech’ – and an economic system so ruinous Alberich might have led the revolution against it. 

The optimistic view would be that, once this is all done, there will be a chance to start again, echoing Harry Kupfer’s vision of a Ring post-nuclear-apocalypse. That now seems merely utopian, however welcome it was to find occasional relief in Siegfried from poor-quality reproductions of Kupfer’s lasers. Wagner situates hope, at the close of Götterdämmerung, in the survivors, the men and women ‘moved to the very depths of their being’ by what they have witnessed. If we have witnessed nothing and merely been numbed to the ever-narrowing shallows of what remains of our being, will not the fires continue to rage until we are all incinerated? Make a Ring about that and just maybe we can still talk, create, and crucially listen. Otherwise, as a composer-conductor in Wagner’s line, soon to work on the twentieth century’s defining production of the Ring here at Bayreuth, once put it: ‘The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses into the air. But do you not think that that might also be the most elegant solution?’

Or, as Wagner, already at work on the Ring project, noted in his diary from revolutionary Dresden almost 120 years earlier: ‘8 May (Monday) Morning once again by roundabout route via barricades to Town Hall. At S. Anne Barricade guard shouts “Well, Mr Conductor, joy’s beautiful divine spark’s made a blaze.” (3rd perf. 9th Symphony at previous Palm Sunday concert; Opera House now burnt down. Strange feeling of comfort.)’ If we do not stop ‘AI’ and the forces behind it, such will soon be all our lot, minus Wagner’s strange feeling and certainly minus redemption, ‘through love’ or anything else. Booing with a fury and unanimity I have never previously encountered ensued: which already returns us, once again, to Wagner and the Dresden uprising. Let us consider this, then, a warning on multiple levels, in the unlikely event it is not too late already.

Wozzeck, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 14 December 2025 (centenary performance)

Production images: Stephan Rabold

Wozzeck – Simon Keenlyside
Marie – Anja Kampe
Drum-major – Andreas Schager
Andres – Florian Hoffmann
Captain – Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke
Doctor – Stephen Milling
Marie’s child – Jacob Tougas Gigling
First apprentice – Friedrich Hamel
Second apprentice – Dionysios Avgerinos
Idiot – Stephan Rügamer
Soldier – Soongoo Lee

Children’s Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

One hundred years ago to the day, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, the greatest opera of the twentieth century, received its first performance at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden, conducted by Erich Kleiber. The composer’s proud teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, sent him a telegram the day before wishing ‘every success for the premiere’ and expressing sadness he and his wife Gertrud could not be present. Inevitable far-Right protests notwithstanding, that premiere proved a great success and the work of course went on to transform the history of twentieth-century music in general and opera in particular. That the twentieth century would overflow with great operas owed more to its example than to that of any other single work, Schoenberg’s included. Earlier that same year, one of its greatest interpreters, whose centenary we have been celebrating all year, was born: Pierre Boulez. It therefore seems doubly fitting that the Staatsoper should offer an excellent revival of Andrea Breth’s production (reviewed first here, in 2011) for the climax and culmination of 2025. 

I hope that I might, on this special occasion, be forgiven a personal excursus. (Please skip the following paragraph if not!) Many years later, this opera changed my life. It was the first I saw in the theatre, as a schoolboy who had not yet heard a note of Berg or Webern, and very little (only tonal) of Schoenberg. Travelling to Sheffield for Opera North’s visit in 1993, the experience opened up more vistas even than a Mahler symphony. Opera had not formed part of my childhood. I had only just begun to explore it, entirely from recordings, as a consequence of having fallen head over heels in love with Mozart (as yet, operatically, only Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute); and had still more recently begun my Wagner voyage (Tristan and possibly Meistersinger, the Ring definitely still to come). I had heard and indeed seen nothing like it, in Deborah Warner’s first production, conducted by Paul Daniel. To say that it made a great impression would be an understatement. It grabbed me by the throat and never let me go: one of the very few works one can unhesitatingly place alongside those twin lodestars of my operatic life that have never left me and indeed only shone brightrer (Mozart and Wagner). Perhaps if I had not attended that performance, invited by my music teacher, I might never have worked on opera at all; I might also never have grown to love the Second Viennese School as I do, and worked on Schoenberg (or Henze, Dallapiccola, Nono, Kurtág, and others, Boulez included). So to celebrate Wozzeck’s centenary could hardly have been an occasion fuller of meaning for me: whether music-historical or biographical. 

Captain (Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke) and Wozzeck (Simon Keenlyside)

Expectations are set up to be dashed; here they were not. I shall not dwell on memories, notoriously persistent yet notoriously unreliable, of Breth’s staging, which I have written about twice before in any case. (I shall not cheat and look, at least not until after posting.) It was in any case revived here by Caroline Staunton and deserves consideration in 2025 incarnation on its own merits. What I can say Staunton and her team of skilled singing actors brought to it – at the very least I took from it, though I think it was more than that – was a stronger sense than ever of these being real people, with real, human connections between one another. It was an internal as well as an external world that sprang forth before our eyes and ears—and that connection between the two seemed, if different under a new heir to Kleiber, as strong as ever too. 

Marie (Anja Kampe), Drum-major (Andreas Schager)

Breth’s aesthetic is realist up to a point, yet not only that—not unlike Berg and, I should argue Georg Büchner too. A sense of poverty – ‘Wir arme Leut’…’ – and wretchedness was present in enclosed sets, the room in which Wozzeck, Marie, and their child must exist as heartbreakingly abject as one could hope for: a sort of Berlin Alexanderplatz-plus (both Döblin and Fassbinder), if not in period then in something still deeper and recurring. Martin Zehetgruber’s set designs then in turn mirroring and even give the impression of helping to create Berg’s closed musical forms, which yet of course extend—both into other scenes and into the desolation of the ‘open’ lake scene (visually and perhaps also, in its D minor expansiveness, musically). These people, the poor ones anyway, are treated worse than animals and that has consequences, as we see in the joyless fornication of the tavern. And yet there is an interior life: not so banal as being mere projections of the protagonists’ torments, yet in different senses a refuge from and a creation of them. That the child in the final scene is on his own, the children’s choir singing (perhaps in his mind) from the pit does not lessen the realism but expands it with a chill still harsher than that felt by the Captain and Doctor by the lake. 

Marie, her child )Jacob Tougas Gigling), Wozzeck

Thielemann’s way with Berg’s score is strikingly different – again, with that caveat on memory – from that of Daniel Barenboim, who conducted the ever-excellent Staatskapelle Berlin on previous occasions. ‘Romantic’ is a word so stretched and overused as to verge on the meaningless, but if anything, confounding lazy expectations, it was Barenboim who proved the more so: certainly, I think, the more overtly Wagnerian. Thielemann’s approach did not neglect the longer line, but seemed more concerned with the inner characterisation and ‘life’ of those closed forms. The febrile growth and transformation of individual lines, perhaps founded ultimately more on counterpoint than harmony, could be traced in neo-Bachian fashion that was more of the time of Neue Sachlichkeit than of Berg’s youth. It is a matter of degree, of course, and neither neglected the ‘other’ side, but I recognised a tendency heard in certain lines of Thielemann’s summer Schweigsame Frau extended: intriguingly and, again a little surprisingly, closer to Boulez than Barenboim. 

Chorus, Drum-major, Wozzeck

The orchestra itself played superlatively from beginning to end, never sounding Straussian yet at the same time excelling in response to the sort of unpredictable yet ultimately coherent Strauss performances Thielemann has been giving for some time. Their stretching of time, virtuosic yet not for mere virtuosity’s sake, was unquestionably apparent here. What I believe was a swift reading overall ‘on the clock’ never felt rushed and indeed included moments of hallucinatory, post-Mahlerian near-stasis – those vistas again, both physical and metaphysical – in which shimmering colour and harmony alike brought magic to the musicodramatic moment and peered deep into the musical future. I hope we shall hear more Berg from Thielemann.

 

Margret (Anna Kissjudit), Wozzeck

In the title role, Simon Keenlyside brought not only a wealth of experience in this role, but something unique to this production. He sounded and even looked the Wozzeck for this moment, more broken than previously, though doubtless building on earlier performances. He seemed stunned, even stunted, by the horrors he endured, yet the flame of humanity never left him, in no small part due to his Lieder-singer’s way with the libretto—which here sounded just as intense as the score. Anja Kampe’s force-of-nature Marie perhaps lacked the last ounce of tenderness in the Bible scene, but there were unquestionable compensations elsewhere. Hers likewise was a human being brutalised yet, until the end, never defeated. Anna Kissjudit’s Margret made for a rich-toned, dramatically layered counterpart, whilst Florian Hoffmann’s Andres complemented and contrasted Wozzeck in somewhat different, yet no less important, ways. Staunton’s keen Personenregie was surely part and parcel of that, as it was in Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke’s Captain, brilliantly quirky yet probably more deeply integrated into the greater company than I have previously heard. So too for Stephen Milling’s disconcerting Doctor, poised between malevolent mystery and mere quack, and Andreas Schager’s vain, frighteningly brutal Drum-major. Stephan Rügamer offered a haunting Fool. The chorus brought the rest of the world indelibly to life.

Here, then, was an opera entering its second century as harrowing, as disturbing, and as ineffably, lyrically magical, even Mozartian, as it began its first. We continue to take our leave from it, not because we have thought of nothing new since, but precisely because we have.

BPO/Gilbert - Honegger, Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, 8 June 2024

Philharmonie

Jeanne d’Arc (spoken) – Marion Cotillard
Brother Dominique (spoken) – Eric Génovèse
Narrator (spoken) – Christian Ganon

La Vierge – Elsa Benoit
St Marguerite – Adèle Charvet
St Catherine – Anna Kissjudit
Porcus, Voice, First Herald, Priest – Valentyn Dytiuk
Voice, Second Herald, Peasant – Alex Rosen

Stage direction – Côme de Bellescize
Production – Ony Sarfati
Costumes, stage equipment – Colombe Lauriot Prévost

Lighting – Thomas Costerg  

Vokalhelden Children’s Choir (directors: Johannes David Wolff, Judith Kamphues)

MDR Radio Chorus (director: Philipp Ahmann)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 

Alan Gilbert (conductor).

Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher is an unusual work, seldom encountered in performance, though its duration at about seventy-five minutes makes it good for both concert and CD. It is generally classed as an oratorio, but the designation mystère lyrique arguably makes better sense, bringing it closer to a mystery play and reminding us that the work, with spoken dialogue and three central spoken roles, is at least as much Paul Claudel’s as Honegger’s. It has been fully staged, even filmed; here, it was given in what we might call a ‘concert staging’ from a team led by Côme de Bellescize, with vivid use of costumes and lighting, as well as excellent, integrated acting in spoken and, where appropriate, sung roles alike.

The work presents Joan of Arc’s final moments before burning at the stake, punctuated by flashbacks to her childhood visions and to her show-trial, reaching an ecstatic apotheosis in departing this world that musically, as well as dramatically, seems to partake more of Claudel’s French Catholicism than Honegger’s Swiss Protestantism. In the title role, first taken (and danced) by Ida Rubinstein, Marion Cotillard gave a memorable, charismatic performance in startling red, touched by a strange fanaticism that resisted temptation to sentimentalise, whilst alert to situational and personal injustice. (Perhaps that is residual Englishness on my part, and I should feel differently if I were French, though I suspect a strong distaste for many manifestations of popular piety also affects my response to this peculiar figure.) Eric Génovèse gave us a sympathetic and enabling, yet ultimately ambiguous Brother Dominique. Christian Ganon was very much the showman, even conjurer, as Narrator, in a neat conception bringing to life the tale from a book he read to the splendid, colourfully arrayed children’s choir, Vokalhelden, called upon to act as well as sing. 

Their adult counterparts, the MDR Chorus, brought heft and agility to their part, underpinning, elucidating, and battling in so much of the action, Honegger’s debt to Bach as apparent as his undoubted originality. Vocal soloists, often assuming multiple roles, all impressed, Elsa Benoit, Adèle Charvet, and Anna Kissjudit positioned in appropriately heavenly positions by the organ as the Virgin and Saints Marguerite and Catherine, vocal delivery enhancing that visionary quality. Valentyn Dytiuk’s roster of tenor roles, not least the pig, Porcus (Claudel’s play on words between cochon and Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais), was delivered with a fine sense of theatre, as well sung as they were characterful; so too were those of rich-toned bass Alex Rosen. 

Alan Gilbert’s leadership of these forces and spirited, idiomatic playing from the Berlin Philharmonic proved adept in imparting a proper sense of unity to what might on paper – and doubtless in a lesser performance – pose a danger of the unduly eclectic. Here, the powerful prologue, added de profundis by Claudel and Honegger in 1944, cast its dark shadow over the proceedings to come, as did the later rigour of Honegger’s counterpoint, without detracting from the Prokofiev-like sardonicism of the scene with Porcus and its seemingly fond return to the relatively carefree 1920s. One certainly felt the work’s Janus-faced quality, placed somewhere in between, as well as its resonances of an historic French nationalism, folksong and all. Ominous orchestral tolling and reimaginations of ‘early music’ led us through hallucinatory recreations of the girl’s visions, to the terrible fiery flame that would be her wedding dress, and beyond to the closing ensemble hymn and haunting reprise of an earlier, wandering flute solo. It was full of incident, for instance in the ondes Martenot’s suggestion of howling dogs, but also of quasi-cinematographic direction and reflection.

Rusalka, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 4 February 2024

Rusalka – Christiane Karg
Prince – Pavel Černoch
Foreign Princess – Anna Samuil
Vodník – Mika Kares
Ježibaba – Anna Kissjudit
Gamekeeper – Adam Kutny
Kitchen Boy – Clara Nadeshdin
Nymphs – Regina Koncz, Rebecka Wallroth, Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein
Huntsman – Taehan Kim

Director – Kornél Mundruczó
Designs – Monika Pormale
Lighting – Felice Ross
Video – Rūdolfs Baltiņš
Choreography - Candaş Baş
Dramaturgy – Kata Wéber, Christoph Lang

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Robin Ticciati (conductor)

Images:  Gianmarco Bresadola
Rusalka (Christiane Karg)

Director Kornél Mundruczó comes like a breath of fresh air to unsettle our conceptions of Dvořák’s penultimate and, by some way, greatest opera and thus to do precisely what the material demands; or rather, it comes as something bitterly stale, menacing, even poisonous to accomplish what fresh air on its own might not be able. It is certainly refreshing, though it should not be, to have a production that takes class seriously as a form of social distinction, a social barrier, though ultimately it will go beyond that, re-engaging with the opera in all its strange tragedy and tragic strangeness. By grounding itself in the here and now, but also a here and now our society largely wishes to ignore, it challenges, but it challenges further and with brilliant theatricality by the course subsequently taken. 

Rusalka – not strictly her ‘name’, but it is all we have, and ‘the rusalka’ or even ‘the sprite’ would seem unduly pedantic – lives in a shared, ground-floor Berlin apartment, a WG or Wohngemeinschaft, her flatmates the other three nymphs and Vodník (if you prefer, the Watergoblin). She does not fit in with, or has grown distant from, her female flatmates at least; they are so much more laid back, fun-loving, quite happy in their less-than-ideal home of disrepair. Theirs is a working class, it seems, the bourgeoisie simply cannot stomach, however much it might claim to act in its name. But nor, any more, can Rusalka, at least since she has seen signs of the life – above all, the Prince – upstairs. In his modern penthouse with balcony and views across the city including, yet far from restricted to the Fernsehturm and the Rotes Rathaus, he and his appallingly grotesque group of friends, the Foreign Princess (his ex-) included, have ‘made it’. They know each other inside and out, as it were; they probably even vote Green. 

Rusalka, Prince (Pavel Černoch), Gamekeeper (Adam Kutny),
Kitchen Boy (Clara Nadeshdin), and Ensemble

One can see why she would like to escape to that other world, embodied in an attractive, trendily dressed mysterious (to her, though not to us) stranger. For one thing, other than the drugs that may or may not be Ježibaba’s stock-in-trade (what is that fascinatingly beyond-good-and-evil or just-plain-evil neighbour doing?) she is hardly spoilt for choice in alternative paths. Needless to say, an actually existing working-class young woman is the most shocking sight of all to the Prince’s friends and they work immediately to exclude her, the Foreign Princess going all out to rekindle those embers until the culpably weak yet more sympathetic Prince succumbs. No wonder the two sides cannot communicate, at least not until it is too late. For it is important to recognise that Rusalka fits in on neither side of this social divide. She only discovers – and this is entirely faithful to the work – where she might have done far too late. There is, again as in the work, a sort of tragic communion in that the Prince realises too late; he can only do what is right (for him, as much as ethically) by surrendering his life, which, movingly he does. 

In a programme interview, Mundruczó says he kept thinking of Kafka when working on the opera: doubtless a surprising reference for some of us, the Prague connection, albeit intergenerational, notwithstanding. But that may be to fall for outdated ‘national’ histories of music. Why not, after all? It certainly comes into his own in the third act here, where the action transfers less to a house than a cellar of horrors. Having returned to Ježibaba, been scorned and perhaps even poisoned, Rusalka leaves behind the world of social realism in which we imagined we should remain until the end and morphs into an impossible creature, part human, part goodness knows what, although it is perhaps not coincidental that its black suggests the colour of refuse and its disposal. One can and perhaps should read that in social and environmental ways; after all, what could be more of a social issue, what could hit the working class harder, than the destruction of the planet? But the aesthetic is actually quite different; one can read it for ‘meaning’ in that way, but the vision seems to lie beyond that: something spellbinding, from which one wishes to avert one’s eyes in horror at the agony Rusalka is experiencing, yet cannot. It is more filmic than theatrically Gothic, I think, but that choice seems a deliberate decision, again, judging from the interview, to attempt to reach younger audiences with different frames of reference. Whatever one might think of that – I am not sure I am the target audience here – for me it works. It truly unsettles and actually leads us to reconsider clashes between ‘natural’ and ‘human’, or ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ worlds very much as the work does—yet which can become lost if the setting is too folk-like. A sort of deformed, already-dead tree-in-plastic has grown, suffocating and perhaps literally trashing all that approach it.

Rusalka, Prince, Third Nymph (Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein)

Fairy tales, told properly, are dark, even sick, not through a sort of tired, bourgeois exhibitionism – that might be better left upstairs in the deceased Prince’s apartment – but because they tell of dreams, fantasies, delights, and horrors. They are not of the sanitised, commercial world of Disney, but come from a place of sex, violence, and more. The mirror they hold up is truthful because it is distorted, not despite that distortion. This production recognises such twisted truths and turns them into a drama at least implicit in Dvořák’s –and Jaroslav Kvapil’s – work and world. It may predate Freud and Kafka, but it is not without connections and even presentiments. I have nothing at all against a production presenting a single-minded view of a work, incorporating more current concerns, and so on. The work, whatever it may be, will survive. But a particular point of interest here is that the director does not impose a framework, even a related conceptual framework, on the work, but rather presents such a related framework as a way in to experience or re-experience the very strangeness of the work ‘itself’. 

For Dvořák progresses in this score too; even in so late a work as this, written after (!) Pelléas et Mélisande, he does not rest on his laurels. If those laurels are too folk-like for some early on – their loss, but there is no accounting for taste – then they surely will not be by the third act. For me, conductor Robin Ticciati and the superlative Staatskapelle Berlin came truly into their own in this act, opening up a range of post-Wagnerian language and emotion, not just or even principally emotion, extending beyond what I have heard from Ticciati previously (save, perhaps, at Glyndebourne for the dramaturgically unfortunate Ethel Smyth opera, The Wreckers). Not that there was anything wrong with what he did earlier. I initially found it a bit hard-driven, but came to realise that this was probably as much a reading developed in tandem with the production as a conception ‘in itself’ of the score. Lack of what might be thought of as sentimentality – not necessarily so, but that is arguably another matter – was the point. It was not cold, but nor was it a kitsch (or readable as such) tale of forest life. 

Rusalka, Ježibaba (Anna Kissjudit)

The same might be said of performances from an excellent cast, only more so, for there was some singing of ravishing warmth—but not only of that. Making her role debut, Christiane Karg not only traced the journey(s) proposed by composer, librettist, conductor, director, and more; she was instrumental in creating them. Occasionally during the first act, I wondered whether she might be a little under-powered, and perhaps there were a few first-night nerves there, but this was more, I think, a matter of wise marshalling of resources and dramatic trajectory. In many ways, I liked the way the Song to the Moon did not become a stand-alone aria and indeed related strongly to the music surrounding it, but I can well imagine some not having done so. Whatever one’s position on that – mostly a matter of personal preference – this Rusalka grew in stature through shocking experience, a tragic heroine to remember for the denouement. 

There was tremendous acting on her part too. Pavel Černoch’s Prince was similarly, if differently, involving. Despite it all, and partly on account of twin vocal intelligence and beauty, one could not help but like him, and again shared his ultimate tragedy at the close. Mika Kares’s Vodník also grew as his character – and the truth that character told – increasingly gained our sympathy. Anna Samuil offered glamour and refulgence – just the thing – for the Foreign Princess. Anna Kissjudit’s already horrible Ježibaba became all the more splendidly, horrifyingly so on her return, just as the production demanded, without sacrifice to more ‘traditional’ vocal values. Smaller roles and choral parts were all well taken, all contributing to a greater musicodramatic whole. 

As for the audience member who not only booed the end of the first act, but through his failure to stop – I am trying to be polite – seemed determine to prevent the second from beginning, what part of that whole troubled him so much? And why?

Daphne, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 20 January 2024

Peneios – René Pape
Gaea – Anna Kissjudit
Daphne – Vera-Lotte Boecker
Leukippos – Johan Krogius
Apollo – David Butt Philip
Four Shepherds – Arttu Kataja, Florian Hoffmann, Adam Kutuy, Friedrich Hamel
Two Maids – Evelin Novak, Natalia Skrycka

Director, set design, costumes, lighting – Romeo Castellucci
Revival director – José Dario Innella
Choreography – Evelin Facchini
Assistant director – Maxi Menja Lehmann
Set design assistance – Lisa Behensky, Alessio Valmori
Costume assistance – Clara Rosina Straßer, Theresa Wilson
Lighting assistance – Marco Giusti

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Daphne (Vera-Lotte Boecker)

Seen first last year, Romeo Castellucci’s production of Daphne receives its first revival. In one sense, it could hardly be more timely, snow falling outside in wintry landscapes across Berlin and beyond, as it does onstage. Yet that immediately presents a greater untimeliness to the mise-en-scène, for a modern snowscape seems perversely distant from the Thessalian pastoral of Joseph Gregor’s libretto (and Strauss’s imagination). It is beautiful, of course, and with Castellucci, matters aesthetic have a tendency to take on a life, approaching the painterly, of their own. I have heard it said several times that Castellucci has no concept of the dramatic; I think that goes too far in this case, for this is no ‘mere’ installation and a story certainly is told. But the alterity to his aesthetic imagination, to which audiences, perhaps particularly opera audiences, respond very differently, is undeniably present—to my mind, more fruitfully than in, say, his Munich Tannhäuser or even his Salzburg Salome. It may or may not be the story some want to be told – ultimately, I think it remains the same story, albeit from an angle unexpected until one becomes accustomed to its shift – but we certainly have narrative and development as well as setting. 

That setting is one of widespread estrangement from Nature: not, I think, in an especially environmentalist sense, though that need not be excluded, but more existential. In light of that, the conception of the nymph Daphne, according to a programme interview, as ‘a being who withdraws from all social relationships in search of intensive, I should say, (skin-)contact with Nature … a contemporary creature who breaks with her surroundings’, seems central; so is her spiritual, as opposed to political, need to do so. And so, even in the deep snow, it is there she wishes to be. Whilst others, not unreasonably layer their clothing, she sheds much of hers. It is for us a radical break with all we value, social, erotic, and so on—and therein captures the dramatic essence of the work more clearly than one might suspect. The unexpected slant makes clear what that essence and her character are not. 

When Apollo does eventually bring sun to this world it registers powerfully, within its frame. He, after all, is far from entirely at home with himself, having uncomfortably, even shamefully, adopted the methods of Dionysus to ensnare the nymph. But acting in accordance with Nature brings the three key figures, Daphne, Apollo, and Leukippos briefly together, to an extent that would otherwise have been impossible; initial estrangement arguably assists that. I honestly cannot say I understood why the cover of the first edition of The Waste Land descended. It came across a bit too much as ‘referencing’ rather than drama, though I suppose quotation is inherent to the poem, and the act had an aesthetic as well as intellectual presence of its own. I am assuming, I think correctly, that there is greater significance to the invocation of Eliot than simply the scene of a winter waste land. But to return to the snow, one thing one can do with and in it is a favourite act of Castellucci’s: burial. (Another is the blood-like pouring and smearing of red paint over the dying Leukippos, tar-black reserved for Daphne.) Daphne’s transformation takes place both below – soon, we can no longer see her – and above, as the tree present throughout has a sort of apotheosis. There is something magical here, in the simplicity and wonder: ever tied or at least related to Strauss’s inspired orchestral and, eventually, vocalised concluding transformation (very much the composer’s own idea, rejecting Gregor’s idea of a choral finale).

 

Whilst we naturally – rightly – accord Daphne’s vocalise a key role here, it is actually quite short; for the most part this transformation is orchestral, and Strauss called it an ‘extended orchestral piece’. Here and elsewhere, Thomas Guggeis led the Staatskapelle Berlin with true distinction. From the opening Harmoniemusik throughout the score, the conductor traced an ever-transforming path, perhaps warmer than what we saw on stage, yet rarely heated and never remotely over-heated. This was a reading of subtle mastery, upset at most a couple of times by something intrusive from without—though that is arguably Strauss’s own responsibility. The Goethian metamorphosis that surely underpins Strauss’s method here as strongly and as generatively as in Metamorphosen was painted, indeed lived, as if this were a work far more frequently performed than it is; that is, conductor and orchestra showed deep knowledge and understanding, without loss to a proper sense of discovery and magic. For the orchestral players were at least equal participants in this achievement; I cannot imagine any orchestra, be it in Vienna, Dresden, or elsewhere, sounding more at home and proving a more rewarding guide. 

The cast likewise made an outstanding contribution. In the title role, Vera-Lotte Boecker’s silver glistened, gleamed and blended with her orchestral colleagues, though it could certainly grow into something fuller-voiced, thrillingly so, when called upon. Boecker entered enthusiastically, moreover, into the staging, grasping Castellucci’s at-times-somewhat abstract enigmas and personifying them, enabling one to believe. Like her fellow performers, she played the Straussian role of Music as well as singing or playing its lower-case cousin. To have had not one but two excellent Straussian tenor performances is quite something. Johan Krogius and David Butt Phillip both shone as Leukippos and Apollo respectively: the former offering a properly rounded portrayal, beautifully sung, Daphne’s likeable companion revealing tragic dignity in death; the latter’s rather different journey traced sympathetically and with due mystery. The deep voices of René Pape as Peneios and Anna Kissjudit as Gaea contributed much to the ensemble. Kissjudit may be described as a mezzo, but her chalumeau-like tones revealed, as in her Erda, the ability to sing a true contralto line too. Pape’s tone was similarly luxurious and similarly attentive to words. Shepherds, maids, and chorus were all excellent too. If Castellucci sometimes held the drama at arm’s length, though mirroring and responding it to throughout, that distance and conception of distance arguably enabled the riches of the evening’s orchestral and vocal performances to penetrate audience consciousness the more readily.

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.

Berlin Festtage (1) - Das Rheingold, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 4 April 2023

Wotan – Michael Volle
Donner – Lauri Vasar
Froh – Siyabonga Maqungo
Loge – Rolando Villazón
Fricka – Claudia Mahnke
Freia – Anett Fritsch
Erda – Anna Kissjudit
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Mime – Stephan Rügamer
Fasolt – Mika Kares
Fafner – Peter Rose
Woglinde – Evelin Novak
Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Flosshilde – Anna Lapkovskaja

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)
Gleb Fitshinsky (lighting)
Alexey Poluboyarinov (video)
Tatina Werestchagina, Christoph Lang (dramaturgy)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

‘Follow the science.’ So we have been exhorted throughout the pandemic (unfinished). Everyone has claimed to be ‘following the science’: singular, yet multiple. We have ‘followed the science’ before and shall doubtless do so again. Ask Hiroshima and Nagasaki—except one cannot. Development of new technologies is, apparently, both the doing of science and not. Few dare question our age’s ruling scientism or, to consider it more broadly, Adorno and Horkheimer’s rule of instrumental reason or dialectic of enlightenment. Nietzsche did; Wagner did. Hegel’s ontology likewise presented the necessity, usually ignored, to consider the natural as well as the human sciences dialectically. Certain Russian thinkers have followed him. With the arts and humanities under assault as perhaps never before, seeking futile accommodations through ‘big data’, the rule of the ‘digital’, and so on, scientism continues its crazed parade to victory, foretold, like so much else, in the Ring. The time is ripe, then, for a Ring from this standpoint. Will Dmitri Tcherniakov, a Russian director with a considerable record in Wagner, be the one to do so? This Rheingold suggests that it might; we shall see. 

Das Rheingold takes place in a world of scientific experimentation (shades, perhaps, of Hans Neuenfels’s Bayreuth Lohengrin) with, crucially, a governing corporate element. The safety curtain presents a plan of the ‘Forschungszentrum E.S.C.H.E.’, whose realm we shall soon survey for ourselves—guided, of course, by what we are permitted to see. Wotan’s original crime, from which we shall hear in the Götterdämmerung Norns’ narration, to hew his spear, inscribing on it runes of domination, from the World-ash Tree thus frames what we shall see and hear. Perhaps ‘Esche’ (ash) also nods to Escher; it is certainly a labyrinth from which no one appears able to escape. Such, at any rate, is the world of cruel experimental psychology in which lab-coated Rhinemaidens and observer-participants – scientific observers are rarely, if ever, only that, whatever their ideological claims – play with, prey upon, abuse Alberich, to see how he will react. Is that not precisely what the amoral children of Nature do to the unfortunate dwarf who seeks them in Wagner’s Rhine? Here, of course, it is clearer still, though Wagner shows those who care to listen, that there never was a golden age. Like other forms of power, indeed arguably underpinning them all, instrumental reason is rotten from the start. The ash tree may stand in the room revealed for the final scene, but we know it is dying already, however healthy it may still look. Trees are for forests, not research institutes. Or as William Blake put it, ‘Art is the Tree of Life … Science is the Tree of Death.’

 

When, pushed beyond measure – ‘enlightenment’ insists that all be measured – Alberich renounces whatever it is here that he renounces, smashing the machines to both the surprise and the experimental delight of those who have pushed him, he strikes a blow yet also joins ‘their’ ranks. Nibelheim offers an underground avenue for further ‘research’ of Alberich’s own. Though is there something illusory to it? That is where I struggled somewhat with Tcherniakov’s vision. A Ring without objects struggles to be a Ring at all. Or is this a deliberate, negative presentation of the gold: as nothing? It is unclear, as yet, but for me a cause for concern, amidst much of promise. One might well argue, of course, that the changes of shape and form effected by the Tarnhelm are illusions. If so, they are mightily powerful illusions or delusions, which on the face of it should affect others too. Again, we shall see. 

The gods, meanwhile, appear to rule over the institute, though it is not out of the question that someone or something may lie beyond them too. (That is often an issue with gods, with power more generally.) We follow them through scientific-business lectures, boardroom negotiations and decisions, brutal despatch of Alberich and his ‘case’ via his handlers, and the final conjuring tricks that delight all (or most) save, notably, a Wotan changed by Erda’s intervention. The ‘look’ is reminiscent of Tcherniakov’s Tristan: its wood both a nod to the old Eastern bloc and an expensive, post-Soviet step beyond it. Both ‘sides’, after all, had their scientism and their more general apparatuses of power. More united than divided them in retrospect, at least from Stalin onwards—which returns us to the need for a Leninist, Plekhanovite, or some other (Wagner, Nieztsche, Hegel…) reconsideration.

 

If all was not well (in a good sense) on stage, the Staatskapelle Berlin was in good hands with Thomas Guggeis. Das Rheingold is perhaps the most difficult of the four Ring dramas for a conductor truly to shine in, yet, bar one surprisingly awkward corner, Guggeis offered a fluent, dramatic reading, often brisk, yet occasionally flowering into something ‘beyond’ with metaphysical interpretative possibilities for those so inclined. There is no doubting his, nor the orchestra’s, command of the score. Keenness of ear revealed new balances, even new details, as any fine new performance will. It was perhaps above all a linear reading, with less emphasis on the harmonic than might have been the case with Daniel Barenboim, but that will always be a matter of balance; Guggeis, like Tcherniakov, had a story to tell, and told it well.

So too did Michael Volle as Wotan, whose performance here, both dominant and collegial, was second to none. Volle has clearly considered his role deeply, responding not only to its text but its possibilities. His shift towards a changed, even tortured god during the final scene was noteworthy—and will doubtless be picked up in the next instalment. If I missed some of the blackness of a more conventional Alberich, Jochen Schmeckenbecher presented a lively, sympathetic yet not too sympathetic portrayal, similarly alert to the needs of words and music. Every inch a kinsman yet, equally, every inch a distinct character, Stephan Rügamer proved a fine Mime. Mika Kares’s mournful, lovelorn Fasolt reminded us who the only truly sympathetic character here can be. Anna Kissjudit’s Erda made her intervention count, her deep mezzo, embodiment of primaeval wisdom, as close to a contralto as made no matter. Rolando Villazón’s Loge will doubtless have proved more controversial. Approaching vocal lines as if from a bel canto melodic tradition, without being bound by it, he sometimes sounded strained, yet gave Wagner’s words their due and proved a fine singing actor into the bargain. The ensemble, including a number of non-singing roles, interacted well throughout. Where will following this art and science lead? We shall see—and hear.