Berlin Festtage (2) - Die Walküre, 5 April 2023

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Siegmund – Robert Watson
Sieglinde – Vida Miknevičiūté
Hunding – Mika Kares
Wotan – Michael Volle
Brünnhilde – Anja Kampe
Fricka – Claudia Mahnke
Gerhilde – Clara Nadeshdin
Helmwige – Christiane Kohl
Waltraute – Michael Doron
Schwetleite – Alexandra Ionis
Ortlinde – Anett Frisch
Siegrune – Natalia Skrycka
Grimgerde – Anna Lapkovskaja
Rossweisse – Kristina Stanek

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
Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe)

A prisoner has escaped in transit. Unpredictable and aggressive, as the video report informs us during the Act I Prelude, he is sought by police to return him to his institution. Someone knows what he is doing, though, and has maybe even had a hand in his escape: Wotan watching Hunding’s hut/apartment through a one-way window. If the glint and polish of the Research Institute’s wood panelling have previously suggested something with roots in the German Democratic Republic, yet a little too nouveau simply to be that, here we come a little closer to source (though it may still, of course, be a similarity rather than a straightforward portrayal). 

Take the U-Bahn further east from Unter den Linden, to Lichtenberg’s Magdalenenstrasse, and you will alight on a platform whose walls display twenty murals by Wolfgang Frankenstein and Hartmut Hornung, depicting the history of the German workers’ movement from 1848 to the founding of the GDR. Exit the station, and you will soon find your way to Normannenstraße 22, whose ‘Haus 1’ contains the offices of Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi. The wood panelling uncannily resembles the distinctive design of those offices, whose conference room contains the only artwork – as opposed to a documentary depiction – I can think of celebrating the construction of the Berlin Wall, another piece by Frankenstein, an emigrant from the West. This may or may not have been Tcherniakov’s intention in his own designs. I still suspect, partly on the basis of other productions, that the look of both sets and costumes may represent to him something more post-Soviet and avowedly psychiatric-therapeutic, not of course that the continuation of such activities post-1989 has been unknown, whether in Russia, whose NKVD was the avowed inspiration for the Stasi, or elsewhere. Yet it surely has resonances here in Berlin, in a production concerned with scientific or pseudo-scientific experimental psychology, observation, and discipline. 

The way the gods pass in and out of an apparently human dwelling, or site for observation, has obvious parallels, whilst remaining true to exploration of what form the gods might take in the world of heroes and humans. Hunding, a police officer, doubtless thinks himself well provided for—and in many ways is. It comes, however, at a price, as does everything, and Wotan-Mielke’s price will ultimately be death. (Mielke admitted that extra-judicial execution was an ultimate tool at his disposal.) Police Valkyries, learning their trade from their father, certainly entertain doubts, Brünnhilde’s of course the longest-lasting, yet all but her fall in ultimately. What else could they do? Siegmund faces a similar fate, more brutal, at the hand of other Wotan underlings; he puts up a fight, yet diagnosed psychologically disturbed, the end is always in sight. All the while on another floor of the research centre, though only occasionally visible to us, the Norns continue their work of classification, of filing, of recording.

Wotan (Michael Volle) and Brünnhilde

There are oddities, or at least details for which I cannot account. There remains a problem with objects that do not appear even in substitute form: not necessarily their lack of appearance, though that may present a problem in itself, but at least a lack of clarity as to why they are absent. I can speculate as to why Wotan brings a hooded Sieglinde back with him, so that she witnesses what becomes of Brünnhilde. There is no escape, after all, and this may be part of her treatment; she is clearly, unsurprisingly, traumatised by it all. I am nevertheless not sure, ultimately, what it added. More puzzling was Wotan’s clearly seeing Brünnhilde, and she him, on storming in to the panelled Valkyrie lecture theatre, only for him to ask ‘Wo ist Brünnhild?’ It did not seem to be ironic and, if it were, the end of that irony remained obscure. 

Scenically, much of that act was somewhat on the uneventful side, although to be fair, it often is. There is, though, a discernible transformation to be tracked in Brünnhilde, culminating intriguingly in what seems to be a reversion to childhood as she uses her crayons to create her own fire on the chairs. And I could forgive a great deal for the awe-inspiring denouement, in which Wotan’s world recedes into the background, a chasm opening up between them, stage machinery revealed and distance attained. What that will signify for the drama to come remains to be seen, but it is full of promise as well as having provided a moment of aesthetic wonder in itself.

Siegmund (Robert Watson), Hunding (Mika Kares), Sieglinde (Vida Miknevičiūté)

Thomas Guggeis’s work with the Staatskapelle Berlin (and singers) continues to be excellent. The orchestra was largely kept on a tight leash, making the most of highly emotional outpourings (not entirely unlike Boulez in this opera). Yet listen more closely and it bubbled away throughout, as much a witch’s cauldron as Wagner’s Greek chorus. I was struck more than once by the dark malignity of much of the sound, both drawing out the best from this particular orchestra and commenting on and contributing to Wagner and Tcherniakov alike. This may not be Daniel Barenboim’s Ring; it remains his orchestra.

 

Michael Volle’s command of his role as Wotan proved exceptional throughout. In marriage of close attention to text (which, one still finds oneself continually having to point out, includes words and music) to utterly convincing external manifestation of character, he must have few if any equals today. His is certainly a modern Wotan, not only in keenness of response to strong direction, but also in strong rooting in Lied performance. The saga-like epiphanies of a Hans Hotter or even a John Tomlinson may not be for our age, which is not to say that equivalent interpretative depth is lacking; it certainly is not. But we think of Wotan differently, as we shall think of him differently in another decade or two. For now, Volle reigns pretty much supreme, a privilege to see and hear.

 

The Valkyries

A further revelation was Vida Miknevičiūté’s Sieglinde, an outstanding singing actress, in which the accent on singing and acting was equally powerful, both enhancing the other. Her farewell in the third act was so earth-shattering that it threatened to overshadow, yet did not, what was to come, whilst her stupefied vulnerability at the end of the previous act engendered feelings both of sympathy and of critical, almost Brechtian, distance. Robert Watson’s Siegmund was largely well sung and similarly sympathetic; one rooted for his attempt to escape, even as one knew it bound to fail. Mika Kares, Fasolt in Das Rheingold, offered us a similarly considered portrayal of Sergeant Hunding. Claudia Mahnke was able to bring her Fricka more strongly into the foreground than had been permitted (perhaps by the production) in the previous instalment. She led us through the twists and turns of her dialectical argument, devastatingly victorious over Wotan—without suggesting the strange understanding voiced by some recently that somehow Fricka is in the right. Hers is the language of an old world—and here there is no doubt that that old world needs transforming, which does not of course guarantee that transformation taking place.

Anja Kampe’s Brünnhilde will surely be key to the success or otherwise of that attempt. On this basis, we can conclude that she will give it her best shot, however high the stakes, and that her performance will enable considerable feeling of affinity. Her Valkyrie sisters offered a fine ensemble of soloists too. What next? More will be revealed; yet tragedy seems to be colouring and forming the musical as well as the scenic air.

Dido and Aeneas and Bluebeard's Castle, Oper Frankfurt, 5 June 2022

Frankfurt Opera House

Dido – Cecelia Hall
Aeneas – Sebastian Geyer
Belinda – Kateryna Kasper
Second Woman – Karolina Bengtsson
Sorceress – Dmitry Egorov
First Witch – Elizabeth Reiter
Second Witch – Karolina Makuła
Spirit, Sailor – Carlos Andrés Cárdenas

Bluebeard – Nicholas Brownlee
Judith – Claudia Mahnke
Prologue (on tape) – Benedek Salgo

Barrie Kosky (director)
Alan Barnes (revival director)
Katrin Lea Tag (designs)
Joachim Klein (lighting)

Zsolt Horpácsy (dramaturgy)

Frankfurt Opera Chorus (chorus director: Tilman Michael)

Frankfurt Opern- und Museumsorchester

Benjamin Reiners (conductor)

First Witch (Elizabeth Reiter), Sorceress (Dmitry Egorov), Second Witch (Karolina Makula)
Images: Barbara Aumüller

The operatic double-bill presents problems and opportunities—like any staged event, one might say, though there are of course specific cases for each genre, even vis-à-vis spoken theatre. First, at least in most instances, comes the question of what to programme together, that is assuming one has rejected the obvious solution of leaving a shortish one-act opera on its own. Practices change: we now rarely programme Salome or Elektra with another work, although once this was far from uncommon. Bluebeard’s Castle is more often heard in concert, which permits a broader range of companion pieces; in the theatre, it has also attracted ballets and even concert works, Katie Mitchell’s recent Munich staging having been presented with Bartók’s own Concerto for Orchestra. Another companion, at Salzburg, Covent Garden and the Met, has been Erwartung: the timings work well, as do the complementary dramatic trajectories. In New York, Jessye Norman played both Judith and The Woman, quite a feat. Dido and Aeneas has likewise had various operatic partners, as well as none; ENO’s After Dido, again directed by Mitchell, presenting the opera within a larger theatre piece. Only last month, I saw an HGO performance paired with John Blow’s Venus and Adonis. In our enclosed musical world, ‘early music’ all too often siphoned off as a thing-in-itself, rarely to be performed with modernist works, or even on the same instruments, one interesting dramatic solution can rarely if ever have been attempted before: Bluebeard and Dido, both treatments of a proud woman’s fate. Step forward Oper Frankfurt and Barrie Kosky, in their 2010 production (taken to the 2013 Edinburgh Festival), now revived in Frankfurt for the fourth time. 

A further major question lies in how far to connect the stagings and performances. Calixto Bieito’s pairing of Bluebeard with Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi for Kosky’s home territory of the Komische Oper Berlin presented what we might think of as a strong yet subtle combination of the two, leading connection not only through scenery but action and ideas, without forcing it. Kosky seems more content to let us do the work: no bad thing necessarily, and it may (more or less) simply reflect the differences between the works. The closest I could come to a guiding thread was use of space, physical and metaphysical. When Dido opens, we see a crowded bench, somewhat cramped, with what may be a theatre audience, or at any rate a representation of the cast and (postmodern?) society featured. There is stereotypical Kosky action, whose silliness will irritate or not according to persuasion, albeit in more of an alienating, even Brechtian way than twelve years later one might expect from him. There is, of course, cross-dressing—but in a fun slant on such gender bending, it is unclear whether the female singers who play witches (as well as countertenor Dmitry Egorov as the Sorceress) are male or female; at least it was to me. I only discovered when they sang. And in that sense, there is some impression given that liberation from a claustrophobia that stands somewhat at odds, presumably on purpose, with our post-Virgilian idea of Carthage is through music, through dance, through human (and theatrical) activity. The loneliness felt in the case of Dido and Aeneas alone on the vast expanse of the bench comes as contrast, yet within an overall sense of constriction. It is perhaps a reinvention of the classical AMOR/ROMA dilemma, not without metatheatrical elements born of, yet far from enslaved by, the old English court masque. 

Bluebeard (Nicholas Brownlee) and Judith (Claudia Mahnke)

With Bluebeard, by contrast, where one would expect to see visual, if opulent constraint, within the castle, the stage is wide-open, though its tilting revolve, leading nowhere, provides necessary boundaries. The important thing here, I think, is that nothing is overladen with attempts, necessarily unsuccessful, to conjure visually the riches of what we hear. There is good reason this opera is often given in concert. Like Bieito, Kosky understands Bluebeard as a game of sado-masochism. It is played out with restraint, though certainly not without action, simply making every action, more symbolist than realist, count. And it is open, like the stage, permitting to make what one will. Doubles of different ages come and go, participate and do not; but it is clear where the drama truly lies. 

Benjamin Reiners registered the orchestral action most strongly in Bartók, seemingly afraid to trust Purcell at what we can still with good reason consider his word, notwithstanding the complexities of textual issues three centuries on. Leading the excellent Frankfurt Opern- und Museumsorchester, Reiners traced the ebb and flow of Bartók’s score with dramatic wisdom, absorbing the fascination of detail within longer-term hearing (and playing), not unlike what we saw played out above. If lacking the razor precision and strength of tonal association of the finest accounts, there was no reasonable room for complaint here, especially with Nicholas Brownless and Claudia Mahnke on stage. Their commanding, utterly involved performances seemingly took us to the limits, straining at something beyond, again just like Bartók’s (and Béla Balázs’s) drama. Within those limits, all manner of variegation made its point just as strongly. Bluebeard’s deep, damaged vulnerability came as powerfully to the fore as Judith’s complex death wish, caught within the dictates of fate. 

When it came to Purcell, Reiners (and, to a certain extent, the orchestra) seemed more uncertain, aping what we have come to know, rightly or wrongly, as ‘period style’ without making the case for it. The results often sounded arbitrary, more fashionable than grounded, resorting to peculiar distractions so as not to sound too archaeological and thereby emerging as neither fish nor fowl, not even an alchemical combination of both. I do not think I have ever, in any variety performance, heard the second section of the overture taken at anything like such a speed. One may quibble with the suggestion by the Victorian editor (and composer) George McFarren of ‘Allegro moderato’, though it seems sensible enough to me; a modern Presto merely sounded bizarre. Other sections came across as listless, lacking necessary underpinning of harmonic rhythm. Peculiar Luftpausen were frequently inserted into vocal lines, solo and choral; whether this were a feature of the production or simply the performance, I am not entirely sure, though I had a distinct impression, so well staged were they, that it may have been the former. At any rate, they served little musical—nor, for that matter, dramatic—purpose, though some will doubtless have felt differently. Likewise addition of recorder, oboe, and percussion. (The same people who scream blue murder at a great name from the past ‘taking liberties’ with early music seem strangely content with far more musically arbitrary practice such as this, so long as vibrato is minimised and/or ‘period instruments’ are employed.)

Dido (Cecilia Hall) and Aeneas (Sebastian Geyer)

A good deal, though, was redeemed by the singing. Cecilia Hall and Sebastian Geyer made for a captivating, ill-fated pair, who used Kosky’s staging (and Alan Barnes’s evidently attentive revival direction) as a fine springboard for their own thoughtful interpretations of mood, action, and overall trajectory. Kateryna Kasper’s Belinda, Karolina Bengtsson’s Second Woman, and Egorov’s aforementioned Sorceress, all impressed in detailed performances highly invested in music, words, and gesture. The chorus responded similarly well to demands both of score and production. Much, then, to enjoy—and on which to ponder.

Bayreuth Festival (5) - Götterdämmerung, 1 August 2014

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Siegfried – Lance Ryan

Gunther – Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester
Alberich – Oleg Bryjak
Hagen – Attila Jun
Brünnhilde – Catherine Foster
Gutrune – Allison Oakes
Waltraute, Second Norn – Claudia Mahnke
First Norn, Flosshilde – Okka van der Damerau
Third Norn – Christiane Kohl
Woglinde – Mirella Hagen
Wellgunde – Julia Rutigliano

Frank Castorf (director)

Aleksander Denić (set designs)
Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)
Rainer Casper (lighting)
Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull (video)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

 

 

We used to hear the final motif heard in the Ring described in Hans von Wolzogen-ese as ‘redemption through love’. Its ‘meaning’ has proved endlessly controversial; for my money, ‘redemption of love’, though still partial, perhaps comes closer. Carl Dahlhaus, having pointed is first hearing in Die Walküre, when Sieglinde hails the miracle of Siegfried’s birth as foretold by Brünnhilde, it now represents ‘an expression of the “rapturous love” celebrated’ in Wagner’s envisaged ‘1852 ending’ to his poem, subsequently omitted. (Dahlhaus is ever at pains to deny the importance of Schopenhauer for the Ring, whether in terms of anticipation or influence.) Thomas Mann makes a similar point, writing that Wagner’s ‘real prophecy is not goods nor gold not lordly pomp,’ a reference to Brünnhilde’s rejection of such in the ‘Feuerbach ending’. Nor does the composer prophesy ‘sad compacts of living bonds’. Wagner’s ‘real prophecy’, Mann claims, is ‘the heavenly melody which at the end of Götterdämmerung rises from the burning citadel of earthly power and restates in music the same theme as that of the closing lines of the other German poem of life and world: Das Ewig-weibliche zieht uns hinan.’ It certainly is not all about love, though. As John Deathridge has pointed out, ‘part of the final motif’s meaning lies in ‘one of Wagner’s perennial concerns …: the relation of the individual to the community’. In the first instance, an isolated appearance of the motif is sung by an individual; its frequent repetition in the presence of ‘a silent on-stage chorus’ in Götterdämmerung is ‘a striking symbol’ of the relationship. Its content thus involves both the widening of the circles of sympathy — and joy — and what Wagner would, in a late piece (‘Ausführungen zu “Religion und Kunst”: Heldentum und Christentum’), call the ultimate ‘oneness of the human species’. The motif does not, at any rate, as Dahlhaus claims, straightforwardly ‘express’ rapturous love, but offers redemption of a force both glorious and destructive. In the terms of the German Romantic æsthetics of music – here words of August Wilhem Schlegel, from his Kunstlehre –  to which both Wagner and Schopenhauer owed a great deal, it might be said of the motif’s catharsis that: ‘It purifies, so to speak, the passions of the material, of the dirt that clings to them, by representing the passions in our inner mind without reference to objects, but only in their form; and, after stripping them of their mundane shell, permits them to breathe the pure ether.’

 

Why start rather than end there, if indeed I were to mention it at all? Because none of these possible interpretations – or indeed many more: what of Bakunin-like pyromania? of the revenge of the natural world through the Rhine? of Wagner’s Schopenhauerian shift from eros to caritas, etc., etc. – is prepared or considered in Frank Castorf’s staging. That might not matter: perhaps he might have something new to offer. Not really, alas, though this Götterdämmerung is certainly an improvement upon the absolute nadir of his Siegfried, if not quite a return to the (relative) form of Das Rheingold. But if, as Castorf, at least at times appears to be hinting, there is something of a political meaning to be gleaned, might it not be worth considering what others have thought about the Ring in that or indeed in any other respect? Above all, how can a staging which apparently takes no interest whatsoever in the music – I am told that Castorf never so much as looked at a score, referring only to a yellow Reclam version of the poem: true or false, it has the ring of truth – possibly begin to consider such necessary questions as the contextual meaning, be that context of the work, the production, or better, both, of that culminating motif, to which Wagner once enigmatically gave the label, ‘glorification of Brünnhilde’? Why, even if we are concentrating one-sidedly upon the poem, discard any sense of the ‘watchers’ whose social being contributes so much? They need not necessarily be ‘moved to the very depths of their being’, as Wagner’s Schopenhauerian suggestion has it; they could be something more akin to the cloth-capped, almost Brechtian questioners of Patrice Chéreau. There might be good reason, in context, to dispense with them, but one would have thought that they might have appealed to Castorf’s ‘post-dramatic’ conception of theatre. Like so much, alas, it is difficult not to suspect that they, like the small matter of Wagner’s score, were never considered in the first place.

 

Instead, then, we see what seems, at least at times, to be an allusion to some of the revolutionary upheavals of the twentieth century. There is nothing wrong with that in principle: 1917, even 1989, alluded to European revolutionary tradition, not least that of the 1848-9 revolutions in which Wagner was an active participant, just as 1848-9 had alluded to 1830 and above all to the French Revolution. ‘Die Revolution’ was, as well as the title of a torrential revolutionary catechism by Kapellmeister Wagner, an abiding concept of Vormärz social and political discourse. Aleksander Denić’s once-again mightily-impressive sets – considered as sculptures – turn us between what seem to be West and East Germany, the sight of a GDR chemical works immediately evocative, I am told, for those who lived there, Chancellor Merkel (in the audience) included. It seems that at some point we come to die Wende itself, at which point, I presume, we fully glimpse the total victory of the now-unveiled New York Stock Exchange. The problem is that, for the most part, this remains little more than a backdrop, despite occasional promising treatment of the (revolutionary?) crowd. Quite why so many of them fly Union Flags I am not entirely sure. As for why we are treated to, or rather distracted by, film clips of our valiant director’s assistant – I was wrong in Das Rheingold; he does not survived quite until the end – chopping food at a kebab stall, and eventually splicing open his hand in especially gruesome fashion… (At least we were spared a return to Miss Fortune.)

 

 

 

Insofar as I can glean another theme, it is perhaps that of the power of visual, or rather filmed, media. It certainly comes, whether intentionally or not, quite to overpower Wagner’s drama, even if that were misleadingly understood simply to refer to his poem, let alone his music. Problematising that state of affairs seems to me again potentially a good idea, but if that happens, and I am genuinely not sure whether it does, it is occasional and sporadic. For the most part, Castorf – ironically, for a man of the theatre – seems to accept, or at least to present, quite uncritically the all-too-fashionable assumption prevalent at all levels of society of film’s superiority. And so, decontextualized references to film appear: a good example would be the second-act sudden appearance, pushed down the stairs by Castorf’s assistant, of a pram filled with potatoes. Yet, unless one knows that to be a reference to Eisenstein, it adds nothing at all; if the truth be told, it does not add a great deal even so. And why should one, particularly? It would doubtless be ‘elitist’ – or something – to presume knowledge of Shakespeare, Beethoven, or Aeschylus, let alone Schoenberg or Furtwängler; but film, for some reason, is considered necessary. If so, let us question that, as we should if it were any other medium. I am not at all sure that Castorf, whatever his intentions, does. Instead, he seems often to denigrate a form – opera, music drama, call it what we will – on which he is not necessarily in a strong position to comment. (Surely the undertow of much of Die Walküre and Siegfried is, chez Castorf: how on earth could you take this rubbish seriously? Well, to be able to say that, you probably ought to have tried to take it seriously in the first place.)   

 

 

What more might have been done, within the bounds of what I have read as a twentieth-century-revolutionary interpretation? Above all, this returns us to treating with the work in serious fashion, a sense of who the characters are within this setting? I realise that Castorf might disdain such ‘logical’ concerns, but in order to achieve something that is more than a mess, perhaps he should not. A group of thugs gathered around a kebab van, perhaps at best – or worst – some low-level members of an organised crime network: they are not real, revolutionary agents. Why are we not dealing with those in positions of real authority? The Gibichung court is bigger than that – and that is why its Nietzschean décadence matters. If Gunther, Gutrune, and Hagen are no one in particular, likewise Siegfried and Brünnhilde, then who cares (in this particular respect)? Wagner employed myth for reasons that largely remain sound; that certainly does not preclude specificity in terms of particular staging, but it seems perverse to be attempting something close to a political treatment, albeit an anarchic one in a decidedly non-Bakunin sense, and then not to look seriously at the political, economic, social, and religious nature of the society in which the myth is set. Just when one thinks that the director might, we have some irrelevant, puncturing silliness. Yes, doubtless that is partly ‘the point’, but again, I have to say that if that be so, the point is not a good one. It is a great pity, since here in Götterdämmerung, as in Das Rheingold, there are hints of interesting ideas; would that they were pursued. And above all, just to hammer the point home, would that the music were listened to – even just once or twice. A film of Hagen walking through a forest is not what, at any level, we need to see during Siegfried’s Funeral March. Better an entirely black stage than such irrelevant banality.

 

 

Musically, things were better – though, of course, if there is little sense of musical drama, then the music ‘itself’ will be sold short, reduced, as I commented in an earlier review, to the status of a troublesome soundtrack. Kirill Petrenko led the orchestra with considerable verve. I do not have a great deal to add to what I have said about his leadership before. There was not much in the way of metaphysical depth, although I doubt that there could be, given the production. But there was a strong sense of line, considerable ebb and flow, and perhaps above all, a sense of wonder, grandeur, and intimacy born of daring dynamic contrast, insofar as one were not distracted by increasingly ridiculous film footage. There were perhaps a few more orchestral fluffs, especially from the brass, than one might have hoped for, especially in Bayreuth, but these things happen. Choral singing was excellent, once again a great credit to all involved, and to Eberhard Friedrich.

 

Catherine Foster’s Achilles heel was her poor diction. Yes, those of us who know the text intimately could fill in the gaps, but that is hardly the point; with that logic, we might as well have a blank stage and empty pit. Otherwise, hers was in general a beautifully sung rendition of Brünnhilde. Foster certainly has the gift of making one sympathise, which counts for a great deal. Lance Ryan – well, though there were actually a few moments of decent, even alluring, tone production, most of this shouted performance might have been classified as ‘school of John Treleaven’ (remember him?) If Bayreuth has any sense, it will have enlisted the services of Andreas Schager as soon as possible. Ryan can certainly act, but much of what one heard was straightforwardly painful, perhaps particularly when in concert with others. Of the Gibichungs, Allison Oakes sang well as Gutrune, without making a huge impression; I liked, however, the idea of her initially rejecting Siegfried when she heard Brünnhilde’s accusations. Attila Jun certainly had the blackness of tone for a traditional Hagen, though his portrayal was somewhat generalised when compared with the (admittedly light-toned) likes of Mikhail Petrenko. Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester was for me the brightest star in the cast: a Gunther I should happily hear – and see – anywhere. For once, one had a sense, even given Castorf’s production, of the charisma that such a character must have to have survived at all. It is a very difficult balance to present someone who is at heart weak and yet also has the political gifts to survive, even to an extent to thrive, in this decayed world. Words, music, and Wagner’s ‘gesture’ were as one here; frankly, nine out of ten Brünnhildes would have been more likely to choose this Gunther than this Siegfried. Oleg Bryjak made an impressive re-appearance as Alberich, more careful with the words than his son. (Quite why Castorf then had him repeatedly giving an unidentified woman oral sex is another open question.) Claudia Mahnke made a better Waltraute than she had Fricka, but it would be difficult to say that hers was a Valkyrie for the ages. As Second Norn, however, she proved a characterful part of a splendid trio of Erda’s daughters. The Rhinemaidens, called on to do more than one would usually expect here – a car-based orgy with Siegfried and Gunther swiftly became tedious – also proved to be excellent singing-actresses.

 

And so, I left the Festspielhaus, following prolonged curtain-calls – and, in the case of the production team, prolonged booing, to which Castorf responded with considerable, highly creditable wit – feeling sadness that a staging which, at its best, was not without interesting ideas, had been let down so badly by a director’s apparent lack of interest both in much of the work and in all of the music. Perhaps Castorf needs an editor, though such ‘authority’ would doubtless be rejected. More likely, as I thought at the very beginning, a ‘version’ in which he was free, somewhere other than Bayreuth, to treat with the text, perhaps minus the music, as he wished might have brought something more worthwhile to the table. As it is, and not disregarding its good points, this remains a directorial failure – and, it seems, in many ways a wilful one. To return to Chéreau, he wished, as stated in a programme essay from 1977, ‘that the orchestra pit be, like Delphi’s smoking pit, a crevice uttering oracles — the Funeral March and the concluding redemption motif. The redemption motif is a message delivered to the entire world, but like all pythonesses, the orchestra is unclear, and there are several ways in which one might interpret its message.’ Should one, he asked, ‘not hear it with mistrust and anxiety?’ Indeed, but first one has to hear it at all.