Die Walküre, Royal Opera, 17 May 2025

Royal Opera House

Siegmund – Stanislas de Barbeyrac
Sieglinde – Natalya Romaniw
Hunding – Soloman Howard
Wotan – Christopher Maltman
Brünnhilde – Elisabeth Strid
Fricka – Marina Prudenskaya
Gerhilde – Lee Bisset
Helmwige – Mauda Hundeling
Waltraute – Claire Barnett-Jones
Schwetleite – Rhonda Browne
Ortlinde – Katie Lowe
Siegrune – Catherine Carby
Grimgerde – Monika-Evelin Liiv
Rossweisse – Alison Kettlewell
Erda – Clare Almond
Actors – Illona Linthwaite, Lucy Brenchley, Clea Godsill, Maria Leon, Virginia Poli, Nadia Sadiq, Jay Yule

Director – Barrie Kosky
Set designs – Rufus Didwiszus
Costumes – Victoria Behr
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Antonio Pappano (conductor)

The Royal Opera’s new Walküre proved very good in every respect, often excellent, offering some degree of solace for having come close to taking out a bank loan to buy a ticket. Our ultra-neoliberal, genocidal government will no more fund the arts than its kindred, ever-so-slightly-less genocidal, ever-so-slightly-more-separatist predecessor. As the last remnants of humanity crash down livestreamed before us, an historic half a million-plus citizens protesting but a stone’s throw away to stop the genocide in Gaza, Wagner’s message could hardly be more urgent. Will anyone listen? Doubtless. Will any of the people who need to listen do so? Almost certainly not, as signalled by the unpleasant experience of passing a key architect of Brexit Britain’s malaise, Michael Gove, on the stairs. What do these people think the Ring is about? It is a question as old as the work itself, but then the same question could be asked – doubtless was – in the theatres of Athens. A politically committed artist such as Wagner could not have been less concerned with l’art pour l’art: that was at best the world of actually existing opera houses and their ‘absolute music’. Such is never all we have, though sometimes it may feel like it. As once again, Wagner and his performers sought to ‘make clear to the men of the revolution the meaning of that [non-]revolution,’ it was possible, whatever the catastrophes outside and perhaps even on account of them, once again to be moved and challenged by Wagner’s drama in the theatre. 

I missed Das Rheingold, though if the final Götterdämmerung has not by then subsumed us all, I hope to catch up when the whole Ring is staged. Barrie Kosky’s outward-looking Kammperspiel of a Walküre seemed nevertheless to stand perfectly well on its own merits. Hallmarks not only of Kosky’s direction, indeed not only of the cast onstage, but also of Antonio Pappano’s direction of a splendidly responsive Orchestra of the Royal Opera House were listening and collaboration: qualities in shorter supply than ever as fascism deepens its grip with every day—over Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’. Trump’s politics-as-gameshow, and almost anywhere else one can think of in the benighted ‘West’ (and not only there). 

I have not been a fan of Pappano’s Wagner in the past; here, both his conducting and that orchestral response sounded transformed. (In retrospect, there may have been something of an augury in the unusually Wagnerian Turandot I heard him conduct in 2023, but the Ring is a challenge of quite another order.) Now it seemed to spring directly from the words – perhaps a little too much, rather than asserting itself as an equal partner – but, if one wanted an Opera and Drama Wagner, at least according to many readings, here it was. There was none of the orchestral scrappiness, none of the merely following (‘supporting’) singers that had bedevilled earlier Ring performances I had heard. (I skipped the last outing of Keith Warner’s Ring, or rather could not afford to go.) No Wagner performance, not even Barenboim’s or Furtwängler’s, will cover every base; this is music, as it is drama, that encompasses and suggests more than any one performance can. On its own terms, it convinced, and there was no doubting the strong relationship built with the production.   

Kosky’s production is in many ways straightforward, its overriding concept of the despoliation of Nature (chapter four of my book on the Ring) clear and fatally apparent. A tree and all that has been felled from it, presumably beginning with Wotan’s spear (in the work’s prehistory as recounted to us by the Norns in the Prologue to Götterdämmerung), offer the roots and present of the tragic calamity that has befallen this world. Designs, especially set and lighting, contribute powerfully, a black-grey-white colour scheme occasionally bloodied in red, for instance that on Siegmund as Wotan chillingly watches him expire. Perhaps at some level he cares; perhaps not. Ambiguity renders it all the more chilling. There is perhaps a touch of the actor-politician Zelensky to him: a fascinating figure, with whom the Nietzsche of The Case of Wagner would have had a field day. Continuation and re-emergence of that red, flowing from the tree and seeping into the scene with the Valkyries and their carts of heroes (also tree-like, Nature’s wholeness still just about intact), made its point unmistakeably. So did Wotan’s brutal violence: no Rheingold ‘Nicht durch Gewalt’ here, should we take it seriously. Even Fricka’s glamourous arrival in a vintage car, which could readily have seemed an expensive distraction, took its place against this backdrop, connected to it in clear musicodramatic terms, as did Beckettian emergence of characters, Endgame-like, from holes in the savaged tree in the final scenes of the second act. For all the fuss about Erda, her appearance seemed in many ways of lesser importance, though the painterly provision of her spring fruits at the end of the first act was a nice touch. The tree doubled as Brünnhilde’s rock; in lesser hands, that might have confused, yet here seemed perfectly in order, aided by interventionist surtitling. 

Binding together musical performance and stage direction was of course the cast, which worked together very well indeed—almost as if this were a repertory spoken theatre with singing, in which company members worked together day in, day out. This made for moments of extraordinarily powerful emotional impact: Sieglinde’s ‘Lenz’ jubilation; Brünnhilde’s quandary following Wotan’s monologue, spotlit simply in front of the curtain; her embrace of Sieglinde following her decision to defy Wotan; and above all, Brünnhilde’s sobbing on her separation for the rock. Natalya Romaniw and Elisabeth Strid offered powerful portrayals of our two heroines, if we may call them that, founded, like the performance as a whole, in a word-driven approach that proposed rather than detracted from musical possibilities. Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s subtle Siegmund grasped at vocal steel when required, a fine match for Soloman Howard’s Hunding-as-policeman, as rounded a portrayal as any I can recall, perhaps more so, with unforgettable physical presence. Christopher Maltman’s Wotan occasionally lacked heft, but more than often than not impressed, in another highly text-driven performance. Marina Prudenskaya seems always to offer a class act, and certainly did here as a proud Fricka, marshalling instrumental reason just as her consort has always done. Individual direction (and performance) of the other Valkyries was put to excellent dramatic ends, one daring to tarry, so as to confront Wotan with the heinousness of his deeds, only to be brutally dismissed. 

I look forward to Siegfried. 

Die Walküre, Deutsche Oper, 12 May 2024

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2020 premiere, with a different cast)

Siegmund – Daniel Frank
Sieglinde – Elisabeth Teige
Hunding – Tobias Kehrer
Wotan –Derek Welton
Fricka – Annika Schlicht
Brünnhilde – Ricarda Merbeth
Siegrune – Arianna Manganello
Roßweiße – Karis Tucker
Gerhilde – Felicia Moore
Ortlinde – Maria Motolygina
Waltraute – Elissa Pfaender
Helmwige – Flurina Stuckl
Schwertleite – Alexandra Ionis
Grimgerde – Nicole Piccolomini
Schwertleite – Lauren Decker
Hundingling – Eric Naumann

Director – Stefan Herheim
Revival director – Silke Sense
Set designs – Stefan Herheim, Silke Bauer
Costumes – Uta Heiseke
Video – William Duke, Dan Trenchard
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Dramaturgy – Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Jörg Königsdorf

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper 

Nicholas Carter (conductor)

What if the Volsung twins did not engage our sympathies so fully as they usually do? What if their actions were less positive than we tend to think? Sometimes, recently, those questions have been posed implicitly by what still seems to me a strange desire positively to reassess the Fricka of Die Walküre. Not that Wagner is the only point of reference here, but the Ring’s creator was very clear on this, both in the work ‘itself’ and in other writing. A letter to Theodor Uhlig (12 November 1851, so before he had started work on the music) speaks of Wotan’s ‘struggle with his own inclination and with custom (Fricka)’ and indeed Fricka herself refers to ‘the guiding rope of custom, rent asunder,’ which she would ‘bind anew’. Latterly, some seem to have decided to take the part of Fricka’s family-values morality. Like every character – this is part of Wagner’s greatness – Fricka is given her due, and should be in performance. A caricature, whilst tempting, will get us nowhere. What I took from the first act of Stefan Herheim’s Walküre – thus before her reappearance – was something slightly different: a willingness, refreshing if unsettling, to challenge the dominant narrative concerning Siegmund and Sieglinde, a challenge to which Fricka would assent, albeit for different reasons. Sieglinde has still been deeply wronged, of course: the evening begins with her, traumatised, unable to make the central stage piano sound. Only after several fruitless attempts does the orchestra launch its storm. It is a questionable pursuit in ‘real life’, of course, to cast doubt on how trauma may manifest itself; perhaps the same should be the case here. That said, many of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s acts seem designed to dissipate sympathy, from her insistence on kissing him far too ‘early’ and in front of the mute Hundingling (her child with Hunding, I presume), to her murder of him who, starved of affection from his father seems only to wish to find a new family with his mother and her new lover. That Siegmund too rejoices in that act underlines the predicament. His holding Hunding earlier at knife point also reverses roles somewhat. Ultimately, the strength both of acting and Personenregie (seen also, for instance, in the individual treatment of the Valkyries) made a case for reassessment. So too, arguably, did the doubt –preconceptions properly challenged – I continued to feel. The framing is powerful and provocative; that is what matters most.

 

Likewise or at least related, in the third act, the true horror of what Wotan proposes for Brünnhilde, too readily sentimentalised, comes across more clearly than I can previously recall. Portrayal of male violence, especially sexual violence, against women onstage is a controversial issue now, and rightly so. Nevertheless, Herheim’s portrayal of Valkyries raped by a host of the undead – immortality and mortality a crucial theme for Wagner’s deeply Feuerbachian drama – underlines what the god intends for his ‘favourite daughter’, too often lost in final reconciliation. Hundingling, notably, has taken his place along them; what else, after all, could he have learned from his earthly sojourn? This scene seemed to alter the dramatic, perhaps even the temporal, proportions of the third act. The latter probably were objectively different too, conductor Nicholas Carter working in tandem with the production. Throwing the dramatic weight forward had the first two scenes seem considerably more substantial, the third a logical, still deeply moving outcome to its predecessors. The emotional torrent of Wagner’s – and the once more outstanding Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper’s – strings still registered keenly, yet a shadow rightly hung over what we heard and felt.

All around, refugee suitcases formed the set, reminding us of the external world encountered in Das Rheingold. A war zone is suggested, aptly for all that unfolds, the second as much as the external acts. These people’s reappearance and different reactions to what they saw reminded us we should not take ‘their’ reactions for granted, ‘othering’ them as an undifferentiated mass. These, like the characters of the Ring many are playing, are individual human beings, not some other species known as ‘migrants’. Wagner was a refugee too and expressed pride in having been so; so is Siegmund, always ‘geächtet’, as he puts it. And so too, we should remember, is Sieglinde, returning to her Medea-like act. We always feel sympathy for Medea, so should we not for this Sieglinde too? If not, why not? From where, we might ask, are they refugees? The world around us has all too many possibilities, as does history. So too does reception history: might we not understand them also as heirs to the ‘men and women moved to the very depths of their being’ at the end of previous Ring productions. Celebrated predecessors such as Chéreau and Kupfer spring particularly to mind. For reception, always a Herheim speciality, continues to be so. The brilliant coup de théâtre of turning on the house lights when Wotan wills ‘das Ende’ may be old hat: Brecht, 1924, as a friend commented. But is that not the point here, that theatre and reception history more broadly contribute to what we see and hear, both when it conforms and when it does not? One could not want for alluring yet dangerous contrast in fire from lighting and video here either.

Carter’s direction continued to impress. If I found the opening Prelude hard-driven, then I often do; it could reasonably be replied that this is, after all, a storm. This conductor’s chemistry with the orchestra was not the least of this performance’s virtues; nor was careful shaping, without sounding unduly moulded, of paragraphs and scenes to form not only a satisfying musical whole, but one that interacts tellingly, excitingly with the action onstage. There are so many potential approaches to this music that it is perhaps impossible, even for a Furtwängler, to keep them all in the air. If, though, I sometimes missed the dramatic and dialectical despair conjured from the second act – that extraordinarily difficult yet crucial sequence – by the likes of Bernard Haitink or Daniel Barenboim, the sheer malevolence of the darker music associated not only with Hunding, but also with Wotan, was rendered strikingly immanent. It is a wonder, given the repeated telephone calls taken by someone in the far left of the stalls, that the Annunciation of Death managed to move at all, but it did. (It certainly had me devising my own such annunciation for whomever the culprit may have been.)

 

Herheim’s different conceptual approach to Siegmund and Sieglinde doubtless had consequences for perception of their performances. So too did relatively unappealing – especially so in Siegmund’s case – scenic presentation. That said, whilst Daniel Frank sang the role well enough, it did not seem to me the most keenly dramatic of performances, however considered. Elisabeth Teige engaged attention and sympathy more powerfully as time went on as his sister-bride. Tobias Kehrer’s Hunding seemed to me revisionist in an ultimately more convincing fashion, imparting deeper understanding of how and why even this most unsympathetic of characters might have turned out the way he did, without neglecting that he had. Derek Welton’s Wotan came across as perhaps more tightly, certainly more darkly, focused than that of Iain Paterson in Das Rheingold; that is perhaps in part a matter of material, but surely also pays tribute to the intelligence and musicality of this fine artist. At times, profoundly, disconcertingly other-worldly, the god could also readily turn human, all too human. Annika Schlicht’s Fricka was again not only beautifully sung, but verbally scrupulous, as here she must be all the more. From a fine complement of Valkyries, Ricarda Merbeth captured an excellent balance of waywardness – how could anyone delude himself she could for long be kept in check? – and growing compassion.

If, initially, I felt if not underwhelmed, then less overwhelmed than by the fizzing theatricality of Herheim’s Rheingold, this Walküre grew on me and has continued to do so. Music drama is, after all, not only theatre, as an increasingly Schopenhauerian Wagner would have been first to argue. At the close, Mime-as-Wagner returns, to deliver at the ‘right’ musical moment Siegfried from Sieglinde, collecting the shattered pieces of Notung too. Both Mime and Wagner soon had their doubts as to what sort of monster they had created. That here they have done so from, as it were, the very spirit of music, the ever-present piano, will surely prove significant. Soon we shall discover for ourselves.

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.

Bayreuth Festival (2): Die Walküre, 1 August 2022

Festspielhaus

Siegmund – Klaus Florian Vogt
Hunding – Georg Zeppenfeld
Wotan – Tomasz Konieczny, Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Sieglinde – Lise Davidsen
Brünnhilde – Iréne Theorin
Fricka, Schwertleite – Christa Mayer
Gerhilde – Kelly God
Ortlinde – Brit-Tone Müllertz
Waltraute – Stéphanie Müther
Helmwige – Daniela Köhler
Siegrune – Stephanie Houtzeel
Grimgerde – Marie Henriette Reinhold
Rossweiße – Katie Stevenson
Grane – Igor Schwab

Valentin Schwarz (director)
Andrea Cozzi (designs)
Andy Besuch (costumes)
Konrad Kuhn (dramaturgy)
Reinhard Traub (lighting)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Cornelius Meister (conductor)

The boos are getting louder: not, I think, for the musicians, but for the production of Valentin Schwarz, who has yet to appear for a curtain-call. That need be no bad thing artistically, though the practice itself is fascistic; should a bourgeois audience feel satisfied with what it has consumed, it will be a disturbing outcome for art. Here, though, the open mind I am endeavouring to keep concerning Schwarz’s production is struggling a little. As a distinguished Wagner scholar said to me when I met him afterwards, ‘It is getting worse.’ On the basis of what I saw in Die Walküre, I had little choice but to agree.

Short of the framing of the action as a saga of twins, which here seems more assumed to continue from Das Rheingold than illustrated, there is little at all to point to other than strange departures from Wagner’s drama, which taken separately or together fail to amount to anything very much. Siegmund and Sieglinde are, I think, taken back by their self-discovery to their childhood, joined by ‘symbolic’ star-children. (Either that, or they fantasise about the children they will have, but I think it is the former.) There is nothing wrong with that; it makes sense. But for it to have taken place in Wotan’s godly quarters seems peculiar—imagine Fricka’s thoughts on that—as well as quite at odds with what they have just sung, without obvious reason.

 It is later implied that Sieglinde, heavily pregnant throughout the first two acts, is carrying Wotan’s baby. At least I think that is why he ‘comforts’ her, whilst Siegmund and Hunding seek one another, pulling down her tights and apparently attempting to deliver the child. If not, it is a straightforward case of sexual assault, although I suppose it must have been anyway earlier. My guess would be that this is intended to enhance the parallelism between Wotan and Alberich, that both will be found to have produced children, Siegfried and Hagen, through rape. But where that leaves Siegmund, goodness knows: St Joseph with a twist, it would seem. Where, though, does that leave Hunding? He must surely have noticed. It is difficult not to conclude that Wagner’s plot would have been better left as it was.

In between, Freia’s funeral, or at least her lying in rest, had taken place. There were some germs of decent, if ultimately rather incidental ideas, here. Assuming we are still to take her as goddess of love, her death would have obvious implications (although its timing is arguably strange, given that Siegmund and Sieglinde have just met). In a Mafia-film-style mise-en-scène, a few people come to pay their respects, whilst Wotan and Fricka have their decisive confrontation. (Brünnhilde spends some of that scene in what appears to be a greenhouse. I don’t know either.) Hunding petitions the gods in person, an interesting touch. That Fricka returns at the end of the third act, after Wotan has put Brünnhilde to sleep (and made, you guessed it, his incestuous urges all too clear), suggests that she is confident in her triumph. She even wheels on a drinks trolley and offers Wotan a celebratory glass. He declines, though, so in the absence of a spear—just nothing at all, throughout—Fricka clinks together the glasses to make the requisite noise.

 

I am afraid I have no idea at all what happens in the Ride of the Valkyries. It veered all over the place—at least the BBC light entertainment place—from Dr Who to The Benny Hill Show to Casualty, with an apparently accidental turn for Diana Dors’s gender-reversal ‘The Worm that Turned’ series for The Two Ronnies. Sometimes the Valkyries were in charge, sometimes Wotan’s guards. There was a great deal of mobile telephone use. Perhaps it is time to call for a moratorium on those devices onstage, unless the director has a clear idea what they are for. As things stand, they seem to have become the new suitcases.

Lack of objects when called for and introduction of obscure alternatives does little to help. I have already mentioned the lack of a spear or any substitute.   Just as the role of Das Rheingold’s dark-haired boy is more unclear than ambiguous, so is that of the strange pyramid-in-a-box, earlier seen and quasi-worshipped upon the gods’ entry into Valhalla as if a grail-refugee from a production of Parsifal. It now reappears as a repository for a pistol. Sometimes a pistol is a Notung equivalent, sometimes not; sometimes there are several. None of it makes any sense, really, and try as I might to try to piece together some sort of explanation, I am really on the verge of giving up.

As for Grane’s reincarnation as Brünnhilde’s male, suited personal assistant, it makes even less sense when there have been a few apparently arbitrary visual references to actual horses elsewhere. Finally, there is a strong impression that the strongest acting is brought by the singers themselves to their roles. Personenregie is intermittent at best and sometimes disappears altogether in longer exchanges between characters. I suppose some of these things, minus the lack of Personenregie, might add up to something in retrospect, but I do not feel especially hopeful.

Musically, things are better, often much better. Cornelius Meister continues to impress greatly with his command of structure and detail, conveying and expressing a Wagner melos from the pit that drives and, in many respects, is the action. The sound he drew from the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra—and, I assume, to an extent, the sound its players wished to conjure too—was in some ways distant from that we might recall from old Bayreuth recordings, closer to those of other opera orchestras. Choices seem well justified to me, though, and there is no point merely trying to imitate Karl Böhm—or anyone else, for that matter. There is considerable emotional and conceptual range as the cauldron of Wagner’s Greek Chorus bubbles: quite a difference, alas, from what we see onstage.

Not, however, from what we hear onstage. Lise Davidsen’s Sieglinde was at least the equal of any I have heard. No one seems to have a bad word to say about this extraordinary soprano, and so far there seems no reason for anyone to do so. Her final peroration here, ‘O hehrstes Wunder!...’ was as vocally magnificent, riding the orchestral wave almost like no other, as it was clearly heartfelt, the culmination of a dramatic journey that now must end. Klaus Florian Vogt’s tenor will always divide opinion. Much of that is simply down to taste. Whether one liked his performance or not—and there is no getting away from the fact that its sound is very different from the baritonal Siegmunds we have come to expect—his was certainly a committed and, I think, highly likeable performance. Georg Zeppenfeld’s Hunding offered a masterclass in the role, everything present and correct, both considered and alert to the moment.

Tomasz Konieczny and Michael Kupfer-Radecky shared the role of Wotan, the former having become unable to continue during the second interval. Both gave strong performances, deeply rooted in Wagner’s text; if the ear took a little while to adjust to new sound and delivery, that was a tiny price to pay for so crucial, short-notice a substitution. Christa Mayer’s Fricka was once again first-class, fuller-throated than often one hears, and all the better for it. Iréne Theorin impressed as head Valkyrie, youthfully impetuous and headstrong, yet clearly transformed by what she had witnessed. The rest of her team was cast from depth, including a return for Mayer as Schwertleite. Had this been a concert performance, I suspect it would have moved more than it did in the theatre. This Ring, however, will continue in Wagner’s own theatre.

 

Die Walküre, English National Opera, 19 November 2021

Coliseum

Siegmund – Nicky Spence
Sieglinde – Emma Bell
Hunding – Brindley Sherratt
Wotan – Matthew Rose
Brünnhilde – Rachel Nicholls
Fricka – Susan Bickley, Claire Barnett-Jones
Gerhilde – Nadine Benjamin
Ortlinde – Mari Wyn Williams
Waltraute – Kamilla Dunstan
Schwertleite – Fleur Barron
Helmwige – Jennifer Davis
Siegrune – Idunna Münch
Rossweisse – Claire Barnett-Jones
Grimgerde – Katie Stevenson

Richard Jones (director)
Stewart Laing (designs)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Sarah Fahie (movement)
Akhila Krishnan (video)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Images: (C) Tristram Kenton
Siegmund (Nicky Spence) and Sieglinde (Emma Bell)

I wanted so much to like this more than I did. It is not quite ENO’s return to the Coliseum after you-know-what, but in many ways it felt like it. (A Philip Glass revival and a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan will have had their devotees, but they are not my potion of forgetfulness.) Anneliese Miskimmon, ENO’s Artistic Director, could not have been more welcoming in her brief address from the stage before the performance. And what could be a greater declaration of intent for a new era than a new Ring? Perhaps a Schoenberg or, still more so, a Stockhausen series? But even then, the Ring retains for many the status of non plus ultra. Its all-encompassing nature continues to surpass all competitors; no artwork has more to tell us, so it seems, at any juncture in our dubious human development.

No Ring is therefore going to be perfect; even the most exalted performance, let alone staging, will have imperfections. It would be too easy to judge perfection a lesser thing; it is not, necessarily, but it is a different thing—one which Mozart (often) has covered. Yet if a Ring in performance will always fall short, it should not fall so short as Richard Jones’s half-hearted attempt at a production, which detracted all too much from a mixed musical performance laying claim to not inconsiderable virtues. Perhaps more would have been gleaned had we seen Das Rheingold first. Starting with the second instalment is not without precedent, but I remain unconvinced that it is a good idea. Berlin’s Deutsche Oper has had to present Stefan Herheim’s new Ring as and when it can, but that is a different case, planned performances having to be cancelled, given without an audience, and so on. (How I long to see what Herheim has done!) Yet it is difficult to imagine that much light being shed on a Walküre (sorry, Valkyrie, as ENO obstinately continues to refer it) seemingly without a concept or indeed much of an idea at all. Presumably, money was tight, for what we see is not so much minimalism as people wandering a little lost around a stage that sometimes has scenery and sometimes does not. As in Jones’s recent, wretched La clemenza di Tito for the Royal Opera, there was a vague look: in this case, noir-ish ‘Scandinavia’, though it would be difficult to say anything more precise than that. ENO’s publicity suggests the idea that this is a family saga: well, sort of, I suppose, but only if that is taken to be the crucible for something greater. Use of video to show Alberich (‘Nibelung’ tattooed on his forehead), Grimhilde, and Hagen when referred to in Wotan’s narration—nothing more, just show them—seemed both patronising and pointless, though perhaps in a greater context it contributes to the banal theme of family feud. The appearance of Hunding’s clan on stage might have contributed further, but ultimately undirected (like so much else), they proved little more than a distraction, the lack of much to distract from notwithstanding.

 

Alberich (Jamie Campbell), Brünnhilde (Rachel Nicholls), Wotan (Matthew Rose)

Maybe the strange claim (Christopher Wintle) that opened one of the programme notes offered a clue to the lack of any exterior, let alone political element: ‘Most of us can agree that The Valkyrie is “about” incest.’ I do not know precisely to whom ‘us’ refers; certainly not to me, anyway. Wagner’s drama is no more ‘“about” incest’ than The Flying Dutchman is ‘about’ sailing. The point of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s love is that it breaks the violent, cruel bonds of marriage, family, and custom (which Wagner specifically identified with Fricka); that it leads Siegmund to reject immortality, and thus to put Brünnhilde on her way to doing likewise, to attaining the superior status of ‘purely human’; and precisely that it does not matter whether the Volsung twins are brother and sister, not that it does. Here, occasional straining towards a familial idea, for instance Hunding’s physical brutality to Sieglinde, seemed little more than striving after effect, given a lack of embedding in anything more than an IKEA catalogue. The production team sported more interesting clothes than those given to the cast; maybe they should have swapped.

Grimgerde (Katie Stevenson), Rossweisse (Claire Barnett-Jones),
and Siegrune (Idunnu Münch)

 

Or maybe they should have given them to the curious animals that pranced around the stage, Wotan’s ravens (I think) included: more Sesame Street than creatures of the forest. Whether the concept were malevolent or ironic, neither possibility was achieved. For some reason, a lone tap dancer did her stuff during the Ride of the Valkyries, whilst actors in horse costumes struggled around on tip toe. Why on earth Grane, understandably fidgeting, was made to balance in this way through the entirety of the final scene—and not only then—I have no idea; but then I have little idea about anything else either. Inability to set the stage ablaze at the close was attributed to a late intervention from Westminster City Council. Alas, Wotan’s protracted fumbling to attach to Brünnhilde a harness that would awkwardly suspend her above the stage, without the slightest sign of flames that had intermittently flickered earlier, seemed all too apt a metaphor. Quite what the Met, where Jones’s third (!) attempt at the Ring is heading, will make of it is anyone’s guess. It is certainly devoid enough of intellectual content to satisfy Friends of Otto Schenk. But the ‘look’, for that is all it is, and lack of discernible stage action will surely trouble many. 

Martyn Brabbins’s conducting was sane, measured, and doubtless sensitive—perhaps too sensitive—to the needs of his singers. Brabbins clearly appreciates the need to think in the broadest terms about Wagner’s structures, yet often seemed to confuse that with maintaining a slow speed throughout, occasionally changing gear when that could not conceivably be maintained any longer. A few understandable fluffs—every performance has them—notwithstanding, the ENO Orchestra played beautifully, if often in strangely subdued fashion, especially in the first act (!) I do not know how long it lasted in actual minutes, but it felt like the longest I had ever heard. By contrast, the third act often seemed rushed, if hardly short. This was clearly a work in progress, but there may be considerably more hope for improvement here than in the staging.

 

Brünnhilde

Had it not been for an initial announcement, no one would have known Nicky Spence was suffering from a cold. Siegmund is clearly a role for which he is ready—and for which he has well prepared. There are strength, vulnerability, and many other of the qualities we need, even in so unpromising a setting as this. It was difficult to discern much in the way of chemistry with Emma Bell’s Sieglinde; nor did this seem to be ironic or deconstructive detachment. However, considered on its own terms, her performance also impressed, indicative of a woman bruised yet determined to command her own destiny. Dart-playing Rachel Nicholls, lumbered with a strange skater-girl look, trod a fine, shifting line between Brünnhilde's youthful impetuosity and the glimmers of something more moving, more human—which is to say she understood what was at stake, even if Jones did not. Matthew Rose, lumbered with, well, being a lumberjack-turned-television-detective, offered a typically detailed and thoughtful performance as Wotan, though the third act did not show him at his strongest. These things vary from night to night. Brindley Sherratt's focus as Hunding varied too, though at its best it offered something darkly psychopathic. One of the strongest, most committed and sustained performances came from the team of Susan Bickley (finely observed, on stage) and Claire Barnett-Jones (also finely observed and with gleaming tone, from a box above) as Fricka. This, again, was a performance that truly used words, music, and gesture to suggest drama beyond Jones’s imagination.

 

So too did John Deathridge’s new singing translation. It was in many respects remarkably faithful not only to what Wagner said but, crucially, to what he did not, employing suggestion and ambiguity in the right places. It had an intriguing line too in something akin to Stabreim. Word order and stress played their part, as did various other considerations one might find—with profit—in reading Wagner’s own Opera and Drama. This did not, like many of ENO’s translations, attempt to draw attention to itself, still less to elicit inappropriate laughter; rather it participated in the dramatic effort in a way the singers and orchestra, if hardly the director, did. The sort of people who drone on about ‘the Coli’ and alleged halcyon days of Reginald Goodall will doubtless bemoan the lack of Andrew Porter, but their parochial concerns need not be ours.

 

Fricka (Susan Bickley) and Wotan

‘Mark well my poem,’ wrote Wagner to Liszt in 1853, enclosing a copy of the Ring in verse; ‘it contains the beginning of the world and its end.’ One might argue that beginning(s) and end happen elsewhere in the Ring; but were this the generic television ‘show’ from which Jones & Co. appeared to have taken non-inspiration, it seems doubtful, even in the unlikely event of a decision to renew for another ‘season’, that many viewers would have been remaining. To achieve not only an Annunciation of Death, but an entire Walküre, in which nothing whatsoever seemed to be at stake, was a peculiar, perverse and strangely pointless achievement. Either Jones needs to rethink—the prefix ‘re-’ may be too kind—or ENO should act decisively with courage and substitute another production or concert performances. With Wagner, in Wagner, much is or should be at stake.

Die Walküre, London Opera Company, 3 July 2021

St John’s, Waterloo

Siegmund – Brian Smith Walters
Sieglinde – Gweneth-Ann Rand
Hunding – Simon Wilding
Wotan – Simon Thorpe
Brünnhilde – Cara McHardy
Fricka, Waltraute – Harriet Williams
Gerhilde – Jacqueline Varsey
Ortlinde – Philippa Boyle
Schwertleite – Rhonda Browne
Helmwige – Natasha Jouhl
Siegrune – Carolyn Dobbin
Grimgerde – Katharine Taylor-Jones
Rossweisse – Angharad Lyddon

Rosemary Taylor (clarinets)

Jo Harris (trumpet)

William Brown (trombone, bass trumpet)

James Bower (percussion)

Peter Selwyn (piano, music director)

Wagner’s dramas, one might think, would be among the last things to return to our cultural lives. In a way, they doubtless will. For obvious reasons, a full-scale staging of Die Meistersinger would be a tall order right now, though Bayreuth proposes a few performances this summer of Barrie Kosky’s staging (widely lauded, though certainly not by me). Covent Garden has reopened its doors with Mozart: La clemenza di Tito and, now, Don Giovanni (review forthcoming), though friends in Berlin are currently enjoying Stefan Herheim’s new Rheingold at the Deutsche Oper. (How I wish I were still there!) In London, however, such possibilities seem still quite distant. The London Opera Company’s Tristan und Isolde, performed last October with piano trio in place of orchestra, was a rare beacon of light. Now, the company returns with its second instalment of Wagner—or anything else—Die Walküre, marked as a concert performance but with a degree of acting and a few small props.


Brian Smith Walters and Gweneth-Ann Rand offered pretty much everything one could hope for in the Volsung lovers. The former’s Heldentenor thrilled vocally as any Siegmund must; there was, though, much more to him than that. Like the rest of the cast, he took advantage of the lack of full staging to show just how much character narrative can develop through words and music. From outlawry and dejection to apparent victory, only to be snatched away from him by the chief of the gods himself (ever unknown to him as his father), this was a story that demanded to be told. Rand’s dignity told in sheer stage presence—even without a ‘proper’ stage—and again through words and music. She engaged us, had us feel for her, but was no mere victim; this was a Sieglinde with agency too. The titular Valkyrie herself was familiar from Tristan. Then as Isolde, now as Brünnhilde, Cara McHardy led us not merely to follow, but to share her journey from the warrior maiden’s first, thrilling ‘Hojotoho’ to a tender, closer-to-human farewell with Simon Thorpe’s Wotan. Thorpe’s performance seemed drawn from the sagas, delivered as myth that did not preclude but rather encompassed humanity. That quality was certainly present in Harriet Williams’s uncommonly sympathetic Fricka. She not only made her case—its chilling logic is, on one level at least, readily apparent—but had us understand why. Simon Wilding’s jet-black Hunding proved the perfect foil to Volsung Lenz, another considered and highly dramatic portrayal. Brünnhilde’s Valkyrie sisters impressed equally in solo and ensemble performance, aided by a lucid instrumental ride from Peter Selwyn and company.


My principal reservation nonetheless concerned the arrangement itself: not, of course, the act of arranging, but the choices made. Tristan’s piano trio with conductor (the excellent Michael Thrift) worked considerably better for me. There will always be pros and cons, and the presence of bass clarinet in particular certainly had its Wagnerian moments. The choice of clarinet/bass clarinet, trumpet, bass trumpet/trombone, percussion (mostly timpani), and piano nonetheless seemed odd. It may not have been a choice; performing forces often are not. A few times, players and singers fell out of sync, likewise instrumental ensemble itself: doubtless to be expected, though perhaps a few times more than one might have hoped. Still, I should not carp. The openings of the second and, as mentioned, third acts in particular thrilled, ensemble seemingly reinvigorated. In Wagner-starved London, few will have been disappointed. Let us see what the London Opera Company, currently seeking sponsorship, comes up with for Siegfried next year.


St John’s, Waterloo will now close until next year for restoration, the first major work to Francis Octavius Bedford’s Greek Revival building since 1951, when it was rebuilt as the official church of the Festival of Britain. That festival helped bring hope and light back to London after the privations of war and rationing. St John’s has helped many of us over the past year, not least as home to the Waterloo Festival, with its actualised theme of ‘respair’, the return of hope after a period of despair. I look forward to its reopening and, in the meantime, the continuation of its crucial ministry to neighbourhood, city, and beyond.

Wagner and Feuerbach

(Article, ‘Feuerbach’, first published in The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

Engraving from 1872, Die Gartenlaube

Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas (b. Landshut, 28 July 1804; d. Rechenberg [near Nuremberg], 13 Sep. 1872) Philosopher, attended Berlin lectures by Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Feuerbach lectured at Erlangen but failed to obtain a university position, an ambition rendered impossible following revelation of his authorship of the atheistic Thoughts on Death and Immortality (published anonymously, 1830); he relied upon income from his wife’s factory. A key member of the “Young Hegelian” school, Feuerbach inspired many 1848 radicals, whilst remaining personally aloof from revolution. Following the factory’s bankruptcy, Feuerbach’s later years were spent in relative poverty. Having read Marx’s Capital, he joined the Social Democratic Party in 1870.

Feuerbach’s interests remained founded upon the theology of his youth. Unmasking the “secret” – a typical Young Hegelian conceit – of religion as inversion, he proceeded to anthropological criticism of philosophy, understood as abstraction from theology, itself abstracted religion. Man had transferred all his greatest qualities to an imagined, transcendental being, God. Humanity was impoverished; love, the essence of religion, was perverted, even denied. Love must therefore be brought back down to earth, as Wagner attempted in the Ring, most clearly in Siegmund’s rejection of Valhalla, of immortality as promised by Brünnhilde, and subsequently, her Siegmund/love-inspired rebellion against Wotan. She loses divinity but gains humanity.

Feuerbach had become, for Wagner, “the proponent of the ruthlessly radical liberation of the individual from the bondage of conceptions associated with the belief in traditional authority” (My Life, English tr., 430). The title of Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft echoed its dedicatee’s Principles of the Philosophy of the Future. Like many of his generation, Wagner not only followed Feuerbach’s critique of religion, but extended it to political and economic life. Alberich transforms value-free Rhinegold into possessed – in more than one sense – capital, a classic case of Feuerbachian inversion. What should be loved, enjoyed, and possessed though not owned by all, enslaves the Nibelungs as if it were divine. Likewise, Wotan enjoys not only religious but political power through the fortress of Valhalla. Principles that were, at least for a time, potentially good, have come to rule over mere mortals. Those principles, sapped of life just like the World-Ash tree, have hardened into law. Wotan and Alberich battle for possession of a ring whose imagined power rules the world. As Wagner explained to August Röckel, “the essence of change is the essence of reality, whereas only the imaginary is changelessly unending,” (Letter of 25/26 January 1854). Liberation “from the bondage of [such] conceptions” was the task of the Dresden uprising and its dramatic counterparts: Volsung revolution and Brünnhilde’s elevation to the “purely human.” Such sentiments remained part of Wagner’s conception until completion of the Ring and indeed of Parsifal too, neither supplanted by nor vanquishing newer, metaphysical concerns.

To take one example, that sympathy for fellow human beings (Schopenhauer’s Mitleid), which Brünnhilde exhibits in her benedictory Immolation Scene, is prefigured in Feuerbach’s “species being.” Consciousness of fellow suffering or indeed joy is what distinguishes man from beast, and what must once again be ascribed to man rather than God. Brünnhilde’s example is intended for the “watchers” – as well as us – who might therefore heed Wagner’s Feuerbachian words of 1849: “We see that man is utterly incapable in himself to attain his destiny, that in himself he has not the strength to germinate the living seed distinguishing him from the beast. Yet, that strength, missing in man, we find, in overflowing abundance, in the totality of men. … Whereas the spirit of the isolated man remains eternally buried in deepest night, it is awakened in the combination of men,” (Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen, 12:242). Wagner’s dialectic between Feuerbach and Schopenhauer harks back to their common Romantic roots in Schleiermacher’s theology of love, creating something dramatically new.

Mark Berry, Treacherous Bonds and Laughing Fire (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006)

Ludwig Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, tr. Manfred Vogel (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1986).

Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, tr. George Eliot (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1989).

Prom 36: Philharmonia/Salonen - Webern, Mahler, and Wagner, 9 August 2018

Royal Albert Hall

Webern: Five Orchestral Pieces, op.10

Mahler: Symphony no.10: ‘Adagio’

Wagner: Die Walküre, Act I

Siegmund – Robert Dean Smith

Sieglinde – Anja Kampe

Hunding – Franz-Josef Selig

Philharmonia Orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

One of the joys of writing regularly – sometimes, just sometimes, I think too regularly – about performance has been the transformation, both conscious and unconscious, of my scholarship. My most recent published book, After Wagner, would have been and was originally intended to be quite a different endeavour, had the example of Stefan Herheim’s production of Parsifal and many other performances and productions not intruded and helped shape it otherwise. Not only did a concluding chapter on staging and performance turn into a fully fledged third part (of three chapters); perhaps more importantly, I began to read back such concerns into more ‘work-based’ writing too. Indeed, the idea for the first chapter, on Parsifal ‘itself’, initially intended as a self-standing article, arose from my reflections on another production of that work: in many ways, a very bad production, however wonderfully performed, yet one that still had me think about the role of history and historical thinking in Parsifal.

And so it was with this Prom concert too. Hearing Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia in Webern’s Five Orchestral Pieces, the opening Adagio to Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony, and the first act of Die Walküre had me scribble in my programme booklet, lest I forget, not only that I should add a specific reference to Webern and Wagner’s unendliche Melodie (‘endless melody’) in what I am currently writing. I should also explain more clearly, I realised, in the section I had drafted that afternoon, how the legacy of that idea for so much twentieth-century music, Mahler’s included, was predicated on a qualitatively different understanding of ‘melody’ from that which previously had held sway – and still, in certain quarters, does:

The term has often been misunderstood; it has little to do, even in Tristan, with the long phrases of Italian bel canto opera, but rather refers to the need for each and every note to be expressive, significant within the whole. Therein surely lies one of Wagner’s most important legacies to Schoenberg, his pupils Alban Berg and (especially) Anton Webern, and beyond, to Boulez, Stockhausen, et al. It is as much a way of understanding the greatest music of the past – usually, yet not necessarily Austro-German – and of placing works, here the Ring, within that lineage as it is of offering prescriptions for the ‘music of the future’ (a term Wagner endowed with often unacknowledged irony).

Whether that thought will make it into the final cut remains to be seen – my co-editor may be cursing yet another round of Wagnerian expansion on my part – but it can remain here, at least, with thanks to the performers and indeed to the Proms.

For, as Carl Dahlhaus pointed out, when Wagner coined the term, he did so with respect to Beethoven, divining in the Eroica Symphony the unfolding and development of a single coherent melody – perhaps not so very different from what Schoenberg, defying interpreters ever since to make final sense of his term, called the Idea of a musical work – an idea of an Idea that was unquestionably familiar and congenial to Webern, if not necessarily to be identified with his. ‘According to Wagner,’ Dahlhaus continued, ‘music is “melodic” when every note is eloquent and expressive; and in contrast to a “narrow melody,” in which the melodic element is continually interrupted in order to make room for vacuous formulae … avoidance of cadences is not the nature of the principle, but one of its consequences.’ Such was what we heard in Salonen’s – and the Philharmonia’s – Webern and Mahler, at least insofar as audience bronchial activism and telephone calls permitted. Salonen’s principal revelation here, at least for me, was Webern’s build-up of harmonic tension, owing much to Wagner, and in Webern’s case at least to Brahms too, on the (relatively!) micro- and macro-levels. Not that that was at the expense of other parameters (as Webern’s fruitfully unfaithful successors would soon term them), nor at the expense of ‘character’, but rather underlying them. 

Hearing op.10 and the Adagio together, the one emerging from the other, was a masterstroke: a familiar enough idea in itself now, largely thanks to fellow composer-conductors such as Michael Gielen and Pierre Boulez, but not always endowed with such immanent meaning. We heard what was different too, of course, the particular quality of Webern’s iridescent sweetness, his dancing: so much more echt-Viennese, for better or worse, than the ever-alienated Mahler, who perhaps speaks in more familiar tones yet to us and our condition. (Assuming, that is, we are not all Austro-German nationalists!) Yet the overwhelming quality of the climaxes, musically prepared, never appliqué, had much in common – provided, that is, one listened. How keenly, moreover, one listened to the intervals and their import at the close of the Mahler, having been led to do so by Webern – and how keenly would one therefore be led to do so in the first act of Die Walküre, following the interval.

Wagner’s storm cleared the Mahlerian air – just as was happening outside the Albert Hall in ‘real’ life too. Robert Dean Smith as Siegmund sounded in better voice than I have heard him for quite some time. Certainly his opening phrase was such as one could have taken dictation from it, verbal and musical: an implied caesura both from the expressionism of the first half and from the inhuman dialectics of Das Rheingold, whose precedent was implied to many of us. Anja Kampe’s Sieglinde answered with almost instrumental colour – a modern chalumeau, perhaps – which yet did not preclude the keenest verbal response to Wagner’s text too. As so often in Wagner, as in Mahler and Webern, emphasis upon one element and excellence therein heighten rather than detract from other elements. It was clear, very soon, that this woman was damaged (are not all the characters here?) but also that she was emphatically a human being and a woman. Philharmonia chamber music – as with Liszt, most of Wagner’s chamber music is to be found in his orchestral writing – both beguiled and underlined dramatic tension: Hunding was already present in absentia. The sadness of cellos en masse commented on and extended the message of that unforgettable cello solo at the beginning of the scene. Wind anticipated the springtime (Lenz) with which Sieglinde would later identify Siegmund.

Enter Hunding. Franz-Josef Selig, in one of the greatest performances I have heard from him – which is saying quite something! – endowed Wagner’s Stabreim with all the significance it needs, and which yet it does not always receive. Selig realised and communicated how those consonants interact with the vocal line and indeed with the orchestra. So too, clearly, did Salonen. Unendliche Melodie! The febrile, almost Erwartung-like orchestral cauldron Salonen stirred drew attention to how anti-melodic, in the bel canto sense, these vocal lines can sometimes be – even in this, one of the most lyrical of the Ring acts. Occasionally, Dean Smith sounded a bit tired here, but he recovered – and really made the most of his role as saga narrator, as did Selig. One could almost see the ghostly horses of past, invisible dramas; one certainly heard them. Gurrelieder seemed but a stone’s throw away. Whilst Sieglinde was silent, one could not help but notice that she was. Hunding’s venom – not a quality I have usually associated with the often kindly Selig – was such as to draw still greater attention to the lack of a female voice. Timpani upon his departure, likewise brass response, further darkened the scene.

One of the few doubts I entertained about the entire performance was the excessive – to me, at any rate – holding of Dean Smith’s second ‘Wälse’. Still, if that is all I have to say on the negative side, there should be much rejoicing in Valhalla. Kampe’s return incited that turn to the vernal at which she had previously hinted, Philharmonia woodwind especially responsive – and generative. How she spun her line, verbally and musically: she might almost have been taking lessons from Wagner in Opera and Drama on the poetic-musical period. Perhaps, indeed, she had. It certainly was not long before her delivery sent shivers down this particular spine. That identification of Siegmund, as yet with ‘Lenz’ took place in more of a hothouse setting than often one hears, testament doubtless not only to Salonen’s long experience with Tristan, but also to the re-examined standpoint from which he is now addressing the Ring. Release when she named him Siegmund was as much musical as – well, whatever else you want to call it. Preparation had proved just as assured as in Mahler and Webern, and had doubtless, quite rightly, been coloured by Wagner’s posthumous history in their work. This, then, proved to be a performance both magnificent and fruitful. Salonen would seem to have come to the Ring in earnest at just the right, or at least a right, time – for him, for me, and, I hope, for you too. We shall see, or rather hear, over the next few years as his Ring gathers pace both in concert and in the opera house.