Katya Kabanova, LSO/Rattle, 11 January 2023

Barbican Hall

Katěrina Kabanova – Amanda Majeski
Marfa Ignatěvna Kabanova (Kabanicha) – Katarina Dalayman
Varvara – Magdalena Kožená
Boris Grigorjevič – Simon O’Neill
Váňa Kudrjáš – Ladislav Elgr
Tichon Ivanyč Kabanov – Andrew Staples
Savël Prokofjevič Dikoj – Pavlo Hunka
Kuligin – Lukáš Zeman
Glaša, Fekluša – Claire Barnett-Jones

London Symphony Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)
London Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

Perhaps the most perfectly proportioned of Janáček’s operas, certainly one of the most emotionally and dramaturgically correct—which, in Janáček’s case, is saying quite something—Katya Kabanova has not wanted for recent performances in Britain. That is no cause for complaint, quite the contrary. That Janáček’s operas are still not at the heart of every major opera house’s repertory says nothing about the operas and, alas, a great deal about our houses and some of their audiences. Concert performances are less common: these are very much works for the stage. This current project from the London Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle to present a number of his operas in concert—I assume it is not all, though should be delighted if it were—is most welcome, not only for introducing new audiences to these fine operas, not only for affording the LSO (and Rattle) the chance to perform them, but also for giving us the opportunity to hear their orchestral writing in all its detail and power, such as might in part be lost when played in the pit.

Rattle certainly seemed to have conceived his reading with this in mind. It is doubtless fruitless to speculate, but I suspect some of the more extreme passages, whether with respect to dynamic contrast or tempo (at the slower end), would have been less so in the theatre. The LSO and an excellentcast responded in kind. Indeed, the glowing, dare I say Central European, tone of the opening bars promised—a promise finely delivered—a performance in which the orchestra was at least as much changed by its encounter with the score as vice versa. Doubtless, Rattle’s work with the Czech Philharmonic contributed to what we heard, but this was a Rattle rethinking at its best, nothing taken for granted, the fury of the later orchestral response again taking one by surprise, yet firmly in the spirit of composer and work. Where later I might have expected the full orchestra to sound a little cramped by the Barbican acoustic, that was not at all to be the case; in the absence of a new London concert hall, killed by Theresa May alongside so many of our hopes, conductor and orchestra have found new ways of living with it.

 

Climaxes were built and tended, singers included too—no one more so than Amanda Majeski in the title role. Her vocal line and all too clearly Katya’s hopes soared, preparing for a fall, when in the first act she sang to Varvara of her childhood imagination of angels flying heavenwards, continuing prophetically of the sin that threatened her. Likewise in the next act, when she resolved to see Boris and thus fully to set her tragedy in motion. A lack of stage business made such passages more conversational: perhaps neither for good nor ill, but rather just how it was. All the while, Rattle and the orchestra brought out telling detail without having it overwhelm greater line, musical and narrative. What intrigued me—I am not sure I can put my finger on why—was that this Katya seemed less saintly, more intent on pursuing her own happiness, more relatable perhaps, if less of a quasi-religious example. Given her fate, why after all should she present an example?

 

Much could be read from Majeski’s face too; as it could from that of Andrew Staples as her husband Tichon. He felt shame, as did his voice, yet still he did what his mother said. Katarina Dalayman’s Kabanicha was no mere caricature; if hardly sympathetic, perhaps she embodied a more comprehensible than usual desire for order in a community she saw threatened, rightly or wrongly, with breakdown. Her relationship with Pavlo Hunka’s sharply characterised Dikoj was likewise less caricatured than would often be the case, perhaps not merely a case of jaw-dropping hypocrisy. Simon O’Neill’s Boris was intelligently conceived, often ardent. There was likewise plenty of intelligence, and a wonderful animating spark, to Magdalena Kožená’s Varvara. She seemed veritably to brin Ladislav Elgr’s Kudrjáš to life, his second-act song delivered with verve and no little charm, Rattle splendidly highlighting the pizzicato accompaniment to help bring it to life. Claire Barnett-Jones and Lukáš Zeman both impressed in their smaller roles, making much of them in collaboration with their fellow artists. I look forward to hearing more from the latter, a new voice to me.

 

And yet, this was above all an orchestral drama. The poignancy of the brief, all-too-brief, Puccini-plus afterglow to the second act, eliciting a sadness quite different from anything one might hear in Puccini, offered another splendid, affecting example. Likewise, tellingly, the sheer strangeness of the early storm music of the third, especially from the LSO woodwind. If there were times, slightly to my surprise, when I found myself missing the completion of action that would have been achieved by a staged production—Janáček leaves much to that crucial pillar of operatic experience, knowing not only what to write but also what not to write—this was a compelling evening. If some listeners might have felt Rattle’s more spacious tempi went to far at times, for me they worked well in context. There seemed little doubt they had the assent of orchestra and cast alike.

Salome, Royal Opera, 17 September 2022

Royal Opera House

Narraboth – Thomas Atkins
Page of Herodias – Annika Schlicht
First Soldier – Simon Shibambu
Second Soldier – Simon Wilding
Jokanaan – Jordan Shanahan
Cappadocian – John Cunningham
Salome – Elena Stikhina
Slave – Sarah Dufresne
Herod – John Daszak
Herodias – Katarina Dalayman
First Jew – Paul Curievici
Second Jew – Michael J. Scott
Third Jew – Aled Hall
Fourth Jew – Alasdair Elliott
Fifth Jew – Jeremy White
First Nazarene – James Platt
Second Nazarene – Chuma Sijeqa
Naaman – Duncan Meadows

David McVicar (director)
Bárbara Lluch (revival director)
Es Devlin (designs)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Andrew George (choreography, movement)
Emily Piercy (revival choreography)
59 Productions (video)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Alexander Soddy (conductor)

This was a Salome best remembered for its singing, at least once beyond the absurdity of prefacing it with ‘God save the King’. (The production might have been adapted, I suppose, to have Herod come onstage to receive his tribute, but that was not to be.) Stepping in for Malin Byström, Elena Stikhina acquitted herself very well in the title role, short notice or not. One more or less has to forgive a lack of consonants from time to time in this role; so long as that could be agreed upon, this was an involving, increasingly commanding performance, to which Stikhina clearly gave her all. Thomas Atkins’s heartfelt lyricism heightened rather than detracted from dramatic portrayal of Narraboth: another definite highlight. John Daszak and Katarina Dalayman convinced as Herod and Herodias, both very much stage animals, though there were times when insensitive conducting had one struggle to hear the latter’s words. Jordan Shanahan’s thoughtful Jokaanan had the great virtue of leading one to concentrate on words rather than aura, though I would not have minded a little more in the latter sense too. A fine supporting cast, assembled from depth, was another signal virtue; as, doubtless, was its direction. For trying to identify precisely who is responsible for what is often a fool’s errand; opera is, or should be, a team effort to which all contribute.

Sadly, in that respect, this performance was sorely let down by the conducting of Alexander Soddy. That side of things improved somewhat, though even the final scene turned out at best Kapellmeister-ish: a reasonable sense of how it should go, yet little beyond. Earlier on, though, it was a depressing account, for which the orchestra should probably bear some responsibility too. (Who knows, though, what havoc recent ‘events’ may have wrought with rehearsal schedules?) The first scene was all over the place, stage and pit unsynchronised and plagued by balance issues that marked the entire performance. Various orchestral lines went unheard, bludgeoned by shattering insensitivity. Even when together, Strauss sounded like a poor-to-stolid Wagner imitator, the phantasmagorical magic of his orchestration going for nothing in as non-transparent a reading of his music as I have ever heard. The aestheticism that marks not only Salome’s subject matter but the score itself, Strauss’s Nietzscheanism triumphantly rejecting, even mocking, Wagner and Schopenhauer alike was disturbingly absent, replaced not with an alternative view but merely an effort to progress from one bar to the next. Strangely pronounced bass lines neither grounded nor propelled the harmony; they were just strangely pronounced. Some passages—rarely anything longer than that—were better, but really this was playing unworthy of a major international house. 

That aestheticism was, however, touched upon in the fourth revival of David McVicar’s production, here renewed by Bárbara Llano. My response to McVicar’s staging has varied over the years, increasingly suspecting that its ‘house of horrors’ approach threw too many bags into the same basket. It is also, if we are honest, looking a little tired by now. That said, I was grateful not only for the sheer professionalism at work, but all the more so for ideas—my fault, I am sure—that had barely registered with me previously. Gore is still present, most memorably in the bloodstained emergence of the naked executioner Naaman, fresh from his deed. Whether one considers that gratuitous will probably remain a matter of taste, but it seemed to me clear, indeed far clearer than before, that this was a comment not only on an interwar world of militarised, fascist violence, but also, more importantly, on the dangers and joys of an aestheticism passed from Wilde to Strauss, via Pasolini’s Salò and Sade himself to McVicar and to us. Politics and aesthetics are not to be disentangled, however much characters onstage and audience offstage might wish them to be. Nor can we forget the past; a harrowing retelling of abuse during the Dance of the Seven Veils makes that clear. There are doubtless lessons to be learned there, but no one, least of all Salome, will do so: itself, of course, an important further lesson.

Götterdämmerung, Opéra national de Paris, 18 June 2011

Opéra Bastille

Siegfried – Torsten Kerl
Gunther – Iain Paterson
Alberich – Peter Sidhom
Hagen – Hans-Peter König
Brünnhilde – Katarina Dalayman
Gutrune, Third Norn – Christiane Libor
Waltraute – Sophie Koch
First Norn, Flosshilde – Nicole Piccolomini
Woglinde – Caroline Stein
Wellgunde, Second Norn – Daniela Sindram

Günter Krämer (director)
Jürgen Bäckmann (set designes)
Falk Bauer (costumes)
Diego Leetz (lighting)
Otto Pichler (choreography)
Stephan Bischoff (video)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Patrick Marie Aubert)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Philippe Jordan (conductor)

And so, the Paris Ring comes to an end, though complete cycles are scheduled for 2013. Alas, though Wagner wrote to Liszt in 1853, ‘Mark well my new poem — it contains the beginning of the world and its destruction!’, this world, often highly promising, came to an end not with a bang but a whimper, and not in the sense intended by TS Eliot. Günter Krämer’s production, which I have previously admired, if not without reservations appeared to have run out of steam, as if to give succour to those followers of George Bernard Shaw who regard the Ring’s culmination as its fatal weakness. How anyone reading the score or poem, let alone both together, could possibly think such a thing, I do not know, but it is a point of view, albeit seemingly presented more by default than design on this occasion. Remaining with Eliot, one might charitably think the scenario a ‘heap of broken images,’ though there is no sign of the sun beating here. The erstwhile Speer-like GERMANIA is now reduced to the shell of a stadium: Nuremberg-like, I suppose, though there seems something of a confusion, admittedly commonly-held, between stadium and Kongresshalle. That, alas, more or less seems to be it. There are other touches, some irritating, some not, but I struggled to discern much of an idea, let alone something that would properly unite Götterdämmerung with the rest of the cycle. Falk Bauer’s costumes continue to do good service, here in an all-purpose relatively contemporary fashion, but none the worse for that.

It falls to me, then, with little pleasure, to delineate those ‘other touches’. Hagen is wheelchair-bound: the cliché did no harm and indeed gave physical presence to his ‘degeneracy’, though it is an image as insensitive toward the disabled as Mime’s camp extravaganza to homosexuals. What really lies behind this confinement, however, is a greater role allotted to Alberich. During the Prologue, Hagen is wheeled around by an unidentified hooded figure: I thought it might be Hagen’s father or mother, though it might merely have been an extra. That figure is present for much of the first act, eventually revealing his identity. So Hagen is doing Alberich’s bidding in a far more straightforward way than usual: a pity, since Wagner renders the ‘Schläfst du, Hagen, mein Sohn’ confrontation so rich in its ambiguity – Boulez describes it with atypical hyperbole as ‘amazing’ – but never mind. Things really fall apart, however, when it comes to the third act. Alberich, not Hagen, stabs Siegfried, but it is not clear what is gained by this. Hagen is merely wheeled off by Gutrune, whereas it is Alberich who returns onstage to deliver the final line, ‘Zurück vom Ring!’ Alberich is then speared in turn by the Rhinemaindens, and lies dead on stage as the curtain falls. (Siegfried is still there too.) The question ‘what happens to Alberich?’ is resolved, but instead one might ask, ‘what happens to Hagen?’ Is there any point in the exchange? So bold a rewriting ought at least to have provoked; here it seems merely haphazard, part of a final couple of scenes which might have arisen had one asked someone unacquainted with the Ring to guess ‘what happens next?’ There are no ‘watchers’, so crucial to the remnant of society and the possibility of a future, either. Whereas Krämer has tended previously to avoid video, now it is all over the place, first for water and fire and then for a bewildering portrayal of a Valhalla-like hero – or is it several heroes? – ascending something akin to a virtual Jacob’s Ladder during Siegfried’s Funeral March. Is heaven being reinstated, or is it merely a Feuerbachian critique of immortality that is obliquely being reiterated? The problem is: one is granted no reason to know and, frankly – sadly – little reason to care. The final video game shoot-out following Brünnhilde’s farewell was simply an embarrassment.

Haphazardness is the impression, moreover, one gains from the non-appearance of Siegfried and Gutrune at the end of the second act. They are there in the music and clearly should be on the stage: one might argue that musical presence renders visualisation unnecessary, yet I could not help but wonder whether Krämer, in his arbitrary haste to disregard Wagner’s stage directions in favour of pretty much anything, had even studied the score. Blood brotherhood is for some reason accomplished as if Siegfried were an unsuccessful vampire: again, the idea seems to have emerged from nowhere and to lead nowhere. A final case of undue confusion, which I can hardly avoid mentioning, comes at the end of the first act. There are difficulties, of course, in staging the Siegfried-Gunther-Tarnhelm matter, but having Siegfried come along with Gunther, first hiding behind Gunther – one wanted to call out, pantomime-style to Brünnhilde, ‘He’s behind him!’ – and then under the table, merely popping out to grab the ring – now, ‘He’s behind you!’ – only serves to make matters worse and to add to a general sense of tiredness. Whatever the Tarnhelm, actually visible on stage, was supposed to accomplish, it did not, but nor did a critique of its powers seem intended. A weird interpolation beforehand had been some dirndl-clad men dancing during Siegfried’s Rhine Journey. It was good to see the Rhinemaidens during that scene, however, affording a sense of place all too often absent elsewhere.

It was a visual mess, then, but Philippe Jordan might conceivably have salvaged something. Alas, the prologue and first act proved equally undisciplined in terms of conducting, despite generally impressive playing from the orchestra. Slowness without direction was the order of the day, a sluggish transition from the Gibichung Hall to Brünnhilde’s rock seemingly interminable. Yes, there is a sense of world-weariness to this drama, but forward impetus should be difficult rather than impossible. (Again, unless one conceives the work as a failure and wishes to expose it as such.) Having said ‘not with a bang but a whimper, and not in the sense intended by Eliot,’ then, there was something of Guy Fawkes’s torture rack to be endured. It has sometimes been alleged that the combined prologue and first act are simply too long, but never does it feel that way in a great, or even good, performance. For instance, Bernard Haitink’s long-distance hearing at Covent Garden almost made Wagner’s great span fly by. The Waltraute scene probably came off best, moving between extremes of speed, yet with a proper sense of the whole, rather as if it were a cantata, which in a way it is. It undoubtedly benefited from wholly committed performances on the part of Sophie Koch and Katarina Dalayman. The second and third acts were paced much better, but it was arguably too late to regain confidence by then. Perhaps Jordan was simply having an off day: his readings of the earlier dramas had certainly had their moments.

Vocally, there were two undeniable stars, who just about persuaded one not to relinquish the will to live. Hans-Peter König’s Hagen was, one strange moment of wild tuning aside, impressive indeed: black, forthright, clear of text. Dalayman continued to impress as Brünnhilde, powerful of voice, but equally attentive to the role’s subtler demands. Her Erwartung-style account of the final scene in the second act was a true wonder to experience: reminiscent of Gwyneth Jones, but in tune. Iain Paterson’s assumption of Gunther grew in stature. It is a difficult role at the best of times: to portray weakness without sounding vocally weak is no mean task. Paterson was thoughtful, conflicted, and careful with his words. Torsten Kerl simply does not possess the strength of voice to sound as a true Heldentenor, but he did what he could in a similarly thoughtful reading; it was undoubtedly a pity, however, that in any encounter with Brünnhilde, let alone Hagen, this Siegfried was so utterly overpowered. Unfortunately given the greater role allotted by the production, Peter Sidhom’s Alberich lacked presence, though all the notes and words were there. Strangely, Christiane Libor’s Gutrune came into her own in her final scene; she had previously seemed merely anonymous, without the slightest hint of the corrupting allure for which Wagner’s potion is not entirely a substitute. The end when it came, then, was welcome for all the wrong reasons – and not only because a 6 p.m. start ensured that the performance would conclude ten minutes short of midnight.

Gutrune (Christian Libor), Gunther (Iain Paterson), and Hagen (Hans Peter König)
(Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de Paris)

Alberich (Peter Sidhom)
(Charles Duprat/Opéra national de Paris)



Brünnhilde (Katarina Dalayman) and Waltraute (Sophie Koch)
(Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de Paris)

Hagen, Siegfried (Torsten Kerl), Brünnhilde, and the Chorus
(Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de Paris)

Siegfried, Gunther, Brünnhilde, and the Chorus
(Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de Paris)



Gunther, Hagen, Gutrune, Siegfried, Brünnhilde, Chorus
(Charles Duprat/Opéra national de Paris)



Siegfried's Death (Funeral March)
(Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de Paris)

Siegfried, Opéra national de Paris, 30 March 2011

Opéra Bastille

Siegfried – Torsten Kerl
Mime – Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
The Wanderer – Juha Uusitalo
Alberich – Peter Sidhom
Fafner – Stephen Milling
Erda – Qiu Lin Zhang
Woodbird – Elena Tsallagova
Brünnhilde – Katarina Dalayman

Günter Krämer (director)
Jürgen Backmann (set designs)
Falk Bauer (costumes)
Diego Leetz (lighting)
Otto Pichler (choreography)

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Philippe Jordan (conductor)

Mime (Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke) and Siegfried (Torsten Kerl)
 (Image: Elisa Haberer)



What to do for a Siegfried, or indeed for a Siegfried? Our age stands, not without reason, suspicious of charismatic heroes. Nietzsche would doubtless have pointed to our décadence and likened our descent to that from Homerian epic and the dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles, to the dramas of Euripides he so despised. After Freud, we tend to prefer the neo-Euripidean psychology of anti-heroes – not that psychology is absent in Wagner; after Hitler, we tend to prefer the venal sham of so-called representative democracy to those who would overthrow it, out of fear, a quality quite unknown to Siegfried, that we might arrive at something even worse. Either way, we remain ensnared by what Adorno and Horkheimer so tellingly termed the dialectic of enlightenment, which they traced as far back even as Homer’s Odysseus. Yet Siegfried remains. We struggle to find anyone who can sing the role, let alone to believe in him, at least in the drama that bears his name, the betrayals and tragedy of Götterdämmerung perhaps speaking more easily to us. Siegfried remains too, the ‘scherzo’ of the Ring, an aptly Beethovenian description – Wagner rarely sounds more Beethovenian than at the end of the first act – yet a challenge to an age that rarely seems able to deal with Beethoven, at least the symphonic Beethoven, either. We can only marvel at Furtwängler, quite unable, it would seem, to match him, rarely even to approach him. Yet it is not so straightforward even as that, for the tale of the boy without fear becomes intertwined with that of Wotan’s final renunciation. Of the four Ring dramas, Siegfried makes least sense by itself; it can only be understood as the third part of the cycle. Performers and directors need not only to balance the two, but to bring them into fruitful conflict.

If it would be an exaggeration to say that Günter Krämer straightforwardly sets his Siegfried in the 1960s, there are certainly elements of that era to the setting, which makes chronological sense in terms of the Speer-like designs for Valhalla at its height in Die Walküre. Mime appears to live in a relatively swish, if undeniably bad-taste, apartment. The plant growing there looks as though it might explain a good deal, including the bear’s exit through a lift: were both Siegfried and Mime hallucinating? The time-setting makes a good fit with Wagner’s conception too, given that hopes for revolution were still in the air: a Junge Siegfried twinned with les événements is far from absurd, especially in Paris, though it is a moot point whether Peter Wapnewski’s ‘rebel without a consciousness’ (Richard Wagner in seinen Helden (Munich, 1978), p.169) should have lost it through smoking marijuana rather than never having possessed it in the first place. Designs for this act are garish, verging upon psychedelic.

However, a crucial aspect of Mime’s portrayal edges us into the 1970s. Perhaps it would be hoping too much for subtlety in this respect, since it might therefore have gone unnoticed, but Mime appears, through Krämer’s direction, Falk Bauer’s costumes, and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s acting on stage, to be an outrageously caricatured homosexual, hand gestures, dancing and all, with definite tendencies towards transvestism at least. (Is that yet another dig at Wagner and his pink silk, I wonder?) Given that (s)he appears as something of a cross between John Inman and Mollie Sugden, I could not help but wonder whether Krämer were a devotee of Are You Being Served? Indeed I half expected Miss Johannes Brahms to enter stage left à la Baba the Turk. The concept takes us away from endless debates, whatever one thinks about them, concerning anti-Semitism, and retains the character’s outsider status, and actually seems to be permissible on stage, in a way that a ‘Jewish’ caricature of Mime, were one so inclined, would not be. It also opens up a new angle upon the echt-heterosexual Siegfried’s instinctive aversion towards a parent who claims to be both mother and father, though is actually neither, and who certainly has no offspring of his own. Whilst preparing to forge, Siegfried – immediately, one assumes, bien dans sa peau – mockingly mimics Mime’s gestures; clearly the outcast’s place is in the kitchen. Whether we consider it all a bit of fun, veering dangerously close to homophobia, or even, implausibly, making a serious point concerning gay adoption, is probably more a matter of taste, or at least sensitivity, than anything else. It occurred to me that someone with post-modernist inclination towards hyphens and parentheses might have entitled the first act ‘Mime: (A) His/her-(s)tory’; it is certainly one way to address the paucity of women in the drama. Perhaps a thesis has been launched. At any rate, a possible way of representing Siegfried’s upbringing somewhat overshadows, indeed becomes, the plot.

The Wanderer arrives as a tramp: fair enough. In an interesting touch, he sheds his vagrant’s clothes to become a more recognisable chief of the gods as his wager, whose brutality is often glossed over, with Mime progresses. Brutality, in terms of the aftermath of war, is certainly present in Neidhöhle too. The staging of the second act Prelude is especially interesting. Nude soldiers – although, thanks to Diego Leetz’s thickly atmospheric green lighting, it is quite some time before one knows whether they are nude – carry the Nibelung hoard in dragon formation. (One sees what one hears in the music: an all too rare occurrence in stage direction.) The hoard is composed of crates, which, one eventually makes out, have ‘Rheingold’ inscribed upon them. At the end of the Prelude, the soldiers open the crates, to reveal the weaponry with which the hoard will be defended. Rentier capital – Fafner’s Proudhonian ‘What I lie on, I own’ – constitutes power as lethal as Donner’s hammer or indeed the machine guns we see. Fafner, when he actually appears, is carried aloft, replete with crown: there is something tellingly phantasmagorical to this portrayal, almost Wizard of Oz-like. And that, of course, is at least part of the key to the Tarnhelm’s magic.

If that hits home with considerable dramatic punch, other elements of the production, especially later on, convince less. The Woodbird’s representation on stage as another wartime refugee will not please everyone, and it is a decidedly peculiar conception of an unsullied Voice of Nature. Whatever one thinks of that, it seems needlessly confused to have her played by an actress, whilst Elena Tsallagova sings the role – on this occasion, not without uncertainly – offstage. The office environment of the Wotan-Erda scene does no particular harm, but makes no particular point either: it seems somewhat clichéd. However, there is tightening of tension thereafter. The confrontation between Wotan and Siegfried for once genuinely seems a real struggle. Wagner’s emphasis might have changed from his original conception, but this is still the moment when the sword of revolution shatters the spear of state. For all our – and in many respects, the production’s – reluctance to deal with revolutionary heroism, this deed of an Hegelian world-historical hero registers with surprising force. The backdrop to the final scene both confuses and illuminates. By returning us to the Walküre and Rheingold Speer set, some form of continuity is registered, likewise the changing fortunes of ‘GERMANIA’, now down to only its first three letters. One has to accept that this is just a backdrop rather than Valhalla itself, for the sake of any sense of place.

What possesses genuine dramatic power is the idea of having Valhalla’s heroes, old-fashioned in (almost) genuine Teutonic helmets and so forth, on stage above what ought to be Brünnhilde’s rock, ready and yet unable to defend or perhaps even to attain her, unlike Siegfried, the apparent harbinger of a new age – or should that be a New Age? Wotan, or rather, as I discovered at the curtain call, his body double, staggers up the steps, yet has to be assisted by his heroes, and even then it remains a struggle. So the balance or dialectic between the two principal plot strands, if not perfect, is reinstated. Moreover, the spatial separation between Brünnhilde and her old life is rendered glaringly apparent: she is now ‘purely human’, or, as we shall doubtless discover, ‘human, all too human’. Balanced against that signal achievement, I did not find much sense of annihilation, whether political or metaphysical, at the end. Perhaps the words are held to accomplish that by themselves, and perhaps they should, though my experience is that, somewhat bafflingly, audiences often seem oblivious to what precisely Siegfried and Brünnhilde have actually been singing.

In the pit, Philippe Jordan seemed to have the ‘scherzo’ element well in hand. Masculine drive, delineating the trajectory of Siegfried’s behaviour, was counterbalanced by a welcome ‘French’ – perhaps ‘feminine’ – range of colour in the orchestra. Adorno would surely have applauded the sense of phantasmagoria, which yet did not seem, as sometimes it did during the Berlin Philharmonic’s Aix-en-Provence performances, to be present merely for its own sake. For the most part, the orchestra was on fine form, the ‘Forest Murmurs’ magical indeed. Moreover, I do not think I have heard more impressively resounding kettledrums in this work than here: not a trivial point in recounting the tale of Fafner. It seemed, however, that the early third-act slackening of tension onstage was mirrored in the pit too. The structure of this act is especially difficult to hold together: I have heard far worse, but there were moments of meandering.

Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s vocal performance was as impressive as his stage portrayal: the first act really was Mime’s story. His wheedling second-act deceptions were just as impressive, likewise the ‘evil stock-jobbers’ satire’ (Hans Mayer, ‘The “Ring” as a bourgeois parable. Wieland Wagner’s new conception and its realisation in Bayreuth,’ in Programmhefte der Bayreuther Festspiele, booklet for Götterdämmerung, 1966, p.33) confrontation with Peter Sidhom’s verbally attentive Alberich. Juha Uusitalo handled well the changing demands of role and production: both Wanderer and the emerging-returning Wotan were finely characterised and well delivered. Stephen Milling’s Fafner, however, threatened to overshadow all and sundry; his was an excellent performance in every way. The deep beauty of Qiu Lin Zhang’s voice and the dignity of her stage presence made for a notable Erda, though there were moments of less than perfect intonation. It is a cruel thing to leave Brünnhilde’s entry so late and then to expect her to do what she must. Katarina Dalayman’s delivery was not perfect but nevertheless offered moments of scintillation that augur well for Götterdämmerung. What of the hero himself? Torsten Kerl emerged with considerable credit. His resources, quite understandably, were sapped somewhat during the third act, but he recovered for a powerful final duet. Kerl was surprisingly vigorous throughout: his vocal reserves would appear to have grown considerably. What, then, to do for a Siegfried or a Siegfried? One could do much worse than start here.

Die Walküre, Opéra National de Paris, 29 June 2010

Image: Opéra national de Paris/ Charles Duprat

Siegmund – Robert Dean Smith
Sieglinde – Ricarda Merbeth
Hunding – Günther Groissböck
Wotan – Thomas Johannes Mayer
Brünnhilde – Katarina Dalayman
Fricka – Yvonne Naef
Gerhilde – Marjorie Owens
Ortlinde – Gertrud Wittinger
Waltraute – Silvia Hablowetz
Schwertleite – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Helmwige – Barbara Morihien
Siegrune – Helene Ranada
Grimgerde – Nicole Piccolomini
Rossweisse – Atala Schöck

Günter Krämer (director)
Jürgen Bäckmann (designs)
Falk Bauer (costumes)
Diego Leetz (lighting)
Otto Pichler (choreography)

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Philippe Jordan (conductor)


I surprised myself by concluding that the first instalment of the Paris Ring had been ‘all told, … the best Rheingold I have attended since Haitink’s tenure at the Royal Opera’. Die Walküre is arguably a tougher proposition still than the cycle’s Vorabend, but that earlier promise was essentially maintained. Günter Krämer’s production remained sure-footed and often imaginative; the contribution from Wagner’s Greek chorus, the Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris, was truly excellent; Philippe Jordan’s conducting grew in stature as the evening progressed; and, if the singing was rarely at a level to challenge the great interpretations we have all heard – or fancy we have – then it was at least creditable, Katarina Dalayman’s Brünnhilde proving much more than that.

The synthetic nature of Krämer’s Rheingold continues into his Walküre. Ideas might well be traced back to other productions, but that is not to say that either the particular mode of expression or the particular synthesis too closely resembles any other. No Wagner scholar would claim that he did not rely upon, that he was not inspired by, the work of his predecessors. Nor, I am sure, would any Wagner performer be so arrogant, though I have a nasty suspicion that Sir Roger Norrington, he of the Tristan-Prelude waltz, might draw close. Why should we expect stage direction to be entirely different? And should it be so, is that not more likely to be the product of default than design? What we have here are ideas that generally have a firm basis in the work, not in a quasi-archaeological obsession with Wagner’s intentions, narrowly construed, but nevertheless in meaningful dialogue with what he wrote. There is plenty of directorial leeway in deciding what to emphasise, what to develop, without necessity to transplant something entirely ‘new’ onto Wagner’s drama.

The first act is a case in point. Krämer elects to convey a greater sense than the composer prescribes of Hunding’s society. This highly militarised milieu reminds us that the brutal Hunding represents a remarkably contemporary – for Wagner and for us – bourgeois hierarchy of instrumentalisation. Hunding appears to be a middle-ranking figure in whatever civil war is raging; Siegmund hails of course from an insurrectionary wild race, fro whom nothing (at least nothing that Fricka, voice of custom would understand) is sacred. Thugs billeted upon Sieglinde, Hunding’s mere chattel, are Krämer’s invention; the violence they exude conveys Wagner’s dramatic purpose. Another social aspect emphasised, again in contradistinction to Volsung anarchistic outlawry, is that of the Valkyries. A choice is thereby set up for Brünnhilde to make. Wotan’s maidens serve a military role, in this case not only returning heroes to Valhalla but cleaning up their bodies and enrobing them. Theirs is probably the most convincingly integrated Ride I have seen: no danger here of something to be tacked on, endured, until we can return to the proper business of Wotan and Brünnhilde. Valkyries and soldiers form part of an uncomprehending society that watches the extraordinary turn of events at the end of the second act, when for Brünnhilde the first intimations of the power of love lead her to disobey Wotan’s command. Loge’s fire, when it comes, will burn brightly indeed. Yet, like the Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer’s ‘I demonstrate that religion is a hell composed of hatred for humanity and that God is the bailiff of this hell,’ the intention will be to unmask, leaving us with a view of the society left behind. Bauer, who at one point harboured plans with Karl Marx to found a Hegelian journal entitled The Archives of Atheism, knew Mikhail Bakunin well – and we know with whom Bakunin would fight upon the barricades of Dresden.

The sickness of the (painted) tree in the first act stands consonant with that of the ‘bad’ nineteenth century: a sort of sub-Pre-Raphaelite post-Romanticism. First we do not see it, then Sieglinde reveals it. Then we – or at least I – think: is that not just too poor a substitute for Wagner’s ash? But there is something more to come, revelation from behind the painting of the sword that mysterious visitor had deposited. The real forest, when viewed properly during the second act, evokes Caspar David Friedrich, but at a slight remove, as if that artist’s day has already passed, which in a way of course it has, whilst retaining a presence. Reality, and especially history become more layered than one might have thought, in a fashion akin to Wagner’s motivic method.

GERMANIA now stands tall, but Krämer and his team cleverly undercut, like Wagner, Valhalla’s grandiosity. They do it with mirrors – which both extend the scope of Jürgen Bäckmann’s set and highlight the trickery involved. Gothic letters, seen in the production picture, may be seen in black on stage and white in reflection: magically, as it were, the ‘right way around’. This, presumably, is what the gods see, or delude themselves they see. Likewise the upholders of self-righteous, hypocritical bourgeois morality: they represent a properly Feuerbachian inversion of religious practice. If Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity looms large, so does his earlier Thoughts on Death and Immortality. Where Feuerbach had praised antiquity for its lack of belief in and unawareness of the doctrine of immortality of the soul, it is now necessary to strike against that belief, as Siegmund does. Interestingly, Wotan himself takes Siegmund to his final resting place during the third act, honouring perhaps ‘das Ende’, for which the god has wished, and to which the Volsung might have pointed the way. Freia’s golden apples are littered around Valhalla, to remind us of the casual abandon with which the denizens of light have adopted their false immortal cause. Ubiquitous yet already insufficient, they equate very well to the terms of the drama so far. One might even claim that they not only support the words but compensate for a surprising absence from the music. Still, Wagner had so many balls in the air that dropping the odd apple is neither here nor there.

Erda returns at the end, reprising her slow walk across the stage. Brünnhilde elects to sleep beneath rather than upon the table Wotan has prepared for her and Siegmund. It is not yet clear what this might mean, since there is more to come, but the handling of Walküre makes me eager to find out.

Philippe Jordan’s first act opened impressively, not least on account of the tremendous bite from the opera orchestra’s strings. This was a true storm, also a musical one, a mini-exposition if you like. Tension was not always maintained, however, especially during the final scene, some of which meandered. Yet the structure of the second and third acts was far more clearly in place: a sterner task to effect, one might have thought, yet accomplished with great success. No one in the theatre seems likely to match my experience of Bernard Haitink’s direction of the potentially sectional second act, Wotan’s monologue and all, yet shape and momentum were skilfully imparted. Wagner’s endless melody was sung – and meaningfully so.

Robert Dean Smith is unlikely to win prizes for charisma, but he was for the most part a dependable enough Siegmund, even if ‘dependable’ is hardly sufficient in this role. His second cry of ‘Wälse’ seemed, surprisingly, to last for an eternity, far longer than I can otherwise recall. Jon Vickers might have brought it off, but here we ended up with an audibly strained hero for a good part of what ensued. Ricarda Merbeth portrayed a feistier, less pure Sieglinde than is often encountered. Her odd facial expressions took a bit of getting used to, but the confidence of her vocal assumption grew, culminating in a refulgent, genuinely moving ‘O hehrstes Wunder!...’ Günther Groissböck and Yvonne Naef, imperiously resplendent in Falk Bauer’s gown (pictured), made much of the words of Hunding and Fricka, and showed that they could act too. Thomas Johannes Mayer, substituting for the advertised Falk Struckmann, was a more than creditable replacement as Wotan, gaining in stature as the drama progressed. He too showed especial attentiveness towards the words, veritably hissing his contempt at Hunding, but proving equally capable of lyricism when required. Katarina Dalayman’s Brünnhilde was the star turn, however: tireless and yet a soul in transition – arguably in emergence. The demands of words, music, and stage action combined here to present a Valkyrie unlikely to be equalled by present-day exponents.

What a pity, then, that one was fortunate to hear a single bar of the second act without an onslaught of heavy coughing, the outer acts bearable only by comparison. Once again, I was reminded of Pierre Boulez’s strictures concerning opera houses; once again I doubted whether they really are the right place to stage Wagner’s music dramas. Not for nothing has the later composer-conductor voiced admiration for his predecessor’s loathing of a system in which ‘opera houses are … like cafés where … you can hear waiters calling out their orders: ‘One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!’ A Jockey Club disruption might at least have proffered entertainment as well as enragement value. If the Opéra National de Paris and the Bastille amphitheatre are doing Wagner proud, they remain hamstrung by a pernicious section of their audience. It is not difficult to imagine how Wagner would once again have railed at the city of his misère.

Wozzeck, Philharmonia/Salonen, 8 October 2009

(semi-staged performance)

Royal Festival Hall

Wozzeck – Simon Keenlyside
Captain – Peter Hoare
Marie – Katarina Dalayman
Drum Major – Hubert Francis
Andres – Robert Murray
Doctor – Hans-Peter Scheidegger
Margret – Anna Burford
First Apprentice – David Soar
Second Apprecntice – Leigh Melrose
The Idiot – Ben Johnson
A Soldier – Peter WIlman
Marie’s Child – Louis Watkins

Jean-Baptiste Barrière (video direction)
François Galard, Pierre-Jean Bouyer (image realisation)
Isabelle Barrière (live video)
Alexandre Barrière (staging)
Sian Harris (costumes)

Children’s choir amalgamated from London schools (musical director: Nicholas Chalmers)
Philharmonia Voices (chorus master: Aidan Oliver)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

And so, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s exploration of Viennese musical culture from the turn of the century to 1935 culminated with probably the greatest opera of the twentieth century, Wozzeck. (The only reason I say ‘probably’ is a nagging doubt concerning Moses und Aron, but it remains pretty much sui generis.)This was a magnificent performance, over which I have almost no reservations. Even the staging worked well. Sorry to sound jaded, but after Christof Loy’s assault upon Tristan und Isolde, I am beginning simply to feel grateful for something that tells a story straightforwardly and does not patronise the audience. I should take Alexandre Barrière’s necessarily modest contribution any day over something that tediously insists on subversion without due cause. The video added little, I thought, and occasionally distracted, but one should not exaggerate. I shall register my only real gripe first of all, which relates rather to the series than to its culmination; then we can hasten towards the fulsome praise.

I have not attended as many of the concerts as I might have expected, partly because of bad timing, but also on account of a slight disappointment in terms of the repertoire being explored. No one loves Mahler more than I do, yet, in a festival such as this, did he need to be quite so heavily represented? Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony made a welcome appearance and was superbly performed. But the absence of Webern seemed incomprehensible, especially since his music would have seemed very much Salonen’s thing; perhaps other forces were at work. One might not have expected the complete works, even though they would have fitted into a few concerts, but might not the kinship between Mahler and Webern as well as Mahler and Berg have received a nod? Rather oddly, indeed disturbingly, some of the programmes for the Philharmonia’s continental tours were more adventurous; for instance, it seemed odd that London missed out on Dame Mitsuko Uchida playing the Schoenberg piano concerto. That said, Wozzeck could hardly have been a better choice with which to climax.

Simon Keenlyside was superb as Wozzeck. Every word, every note registered. One felt the pathos; one felt the misery; and one believed utterly in the character. Some might have found him too cultured; they doubtless felt the same, magnified to the nth degree, about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. It is their loss. Katarina Dalayman was an equally credible Marie, deploying her considerable musico-dramatic resources to powerful effect; the Bible scene was as moving as I can recall, perhaps even more so. Hubert Francis had a suitably nasty swagger and self-belief as the preening Drum Major; dislike him though one might and should, one could understand how someone in Marie’s wretched position would act as she did. Robert Murray put in an excellent turn as Andres, subtly subordinate, never trying to steal the show, but crucial in his way. And, brief though her contribution may be, Anna Burford’s rich voice made its presence felt in the role of Margret; I should like to hear more of her. Peter Hoare and Hans-Peter Scheidegger properly pointed up the buffo elements in the characters of the Captain and Doctor, without neglect to their pernicious nature. And if the children’s voices could hardly sound idiomatically German, the treble Louis Watkins was truly moving as the child about whom the next drama will have to be told.

I took a little while to warm to Salonen’s performance. The first scene sounded a bit chilly, though even then the Philharmonia’s playing, give or take the very occasional, quite forgivable slip, was very fine. Having the orchestra on stage rather than in the pit permitted Berg’s writing to resound as rarely it can. Whilst it is perhaps unfair to single out players in particular, the woodwind section was truly outstanding throughout, likewise the solo strings. It was as the work progressed that I realised Salonen was playing a game of long-term strategy. Scenes were characterised, musically and dramatically, yet also formed part of a greater whole. One heard the myriad of colours that makes up Berg’s palette, with nods to Debussy and even correspondences – it would be misleading to speak of more than that – with Szymanowski, but above all, as should surely always be the case, Wagner. After the mess Antonio Pappano had made of the second act of Tristan a few days previously, I fell to thinking, as I had after Salonen’s Gurrelieder, that he would potentially make a fine Wagnerian. The dramatic punch of that final, terrible interlude shook me as perhaps never before. The final scene proved almost unbearable; there was no point even attempting to hold back the tears from my eyes. And then, it stopped: perhaps the most terrifying halt in all music. Salonen ensured that this rupture, this caesura without anything to follow – a truly negative dialectic – registered with overwhelming power. Disregard my earlier caveat over Moses und Aron: after hearing this performance, I was in no doubt as to the identity of the greatest opera since Wagner.

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (2) - Götterdämmerung, 6 July 2009

(Images copyright: Elisabeth Carecchio)

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Siegfried – Ben Heppner
Gunther – Gerd Grochowski
Hagen – Mikhail Petrenko
Alberich – Dale Duesing
Brünnhilde – Katarina Dalayman
Gutrune – Emma Vetter
Waltraute – Anne Sofie von Otter
First Norn – Maria Radner
Second Norn – Lilli Paasikivi
Third Norn – Miranda Keys
Woglinde – Anna Siminska
Wellgunde – Eva Vogel
Flosshilde – Maria Radner

Stéphane Braunschweig (director, designs, video)
Thibault Vancraenenbroeck (costumes, video)
Marion Hewlett (lighting)

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

And so, this Ring, a co-production between the Aix Festival and the Salzburg Easter Festival, has reached its conclusion. I have not seen the Rheingold yet, but have seen Die Walküre on DVD and Siegfried in the theatre. As with those previous dramas, the greatest signal achievement proved to be that of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Luxury casting seems something of an understatement when one hears so virtuosic an orchestra in the pit. There were very occasional slips, almost inevitable from the horns, but barely a handful, which really only served to remind one that these were human beings – not such a bad thing when it comes to Wagner’s tale of the twilight of the gods. There remains a degree of loss in terms of ‘old German’ orchestral sound: Karajan’s work is perhaps now more than complete. However, if one takes the internationalisation of the Berlin orchestra as a given, there were aspects of this performance that bade fair to create new standards for technical excellence. I have certainly never heard the low brass play with such dramatic force in those passages later in the first act and during the second, in which Wagner creates sounds of instrumental and harmonic ugliness wholly new, and yet entirely necessary for his drama. The trombones and Wagner tubas had to be heard to be believed. Hagen’s call to the vassals and their response registered as truly terrifying, on the basis of the voice of Wagner’ orchestral Greek chorus, at least as important in this respect as that of the excellent actual chorus.

Sir Simon Rattle continued his good work in the pit. Again, I had the impression that his interpretation would deepen with further immersion in the score, but there could be no doubt that he had the measure of its structural import and its orchestral detail. Even the BPO cannot play Göttterdämmerung by itself. Wagner conductors whom we rightly praise to the skies, for instance Hans Knappertsbusch, could often prove surprisingly casual with matters of colour, but not Rattle. His experience and that of his orchestra in French music – take the previous night’s Ravel and Boulez, concucted by Boulez himself, or Rattle’s own recent L’Enfant et les sortilèges – is put to excellent use in back-projection of a sometimes undervalued aspect of Wagner’s compositional legacy. My only real reservation was an occasional tendency to press too hard, not so much in terms of tempo, although there were one or two instances of that, as of orchestral sound. There were, especially during the first act, just a few instances of a brutalisation of sound that did not always tally with dramatic purpose. This was reminiscent not so much of Karajan’s Wagner – the Ring in particular often exhibited a chamber-like delicacy under the Austrian conductor’s baton – as some of his 1970s Beethoven.

Ben Heppner would doubtless be many listeners’ Siegfried of choice today. He certainly has the vocal resources to bring off a near-impossible role, though the results are accomplished rather than exciting. It might seem churlish, given some of the horrors to which we have been subjected, to withhold fuller appreciation but, on stage, this Siegfried cuts a less than heroic, indeed a less than convincing, figure – and this is not a dramatic strategy. There is something a little awry when Hagen exudes charismatic leadership whilst Siegfried appears to be unsuccessfully auditioning for the title role in an am-dram assault upon Peter Grimes. The lumberjack shirt did not help. In Wagner’s words, ‘The Greeks’ tragic hero stepped forward from the Chorus and, turning back towards it, said: “Behold, thus does a man act; that which you celebrate in commentaries and adages, I depict to you as irrefutable and necessary.”’ This cannot be said to have been accomplished, despite a surer command of the vocal line than one otherwise might experience. Mikhail Petrenko’s Hagen, as I have hinted, was another matter altogether. Strikingly different from the typical portrayal, this was a Hagen whose personal and political skills might well have persuaded rather than bludgeoned one into following him. I did not think him as black of tone as when he essayed Hunding, let alone when compared to other Hagens. Though not an unduly light reading, there were chilling moments of almost whispered – yet still sung – menace, ably supported by the orchestra, as well as a terrifying, partly because understated, Jekyll and Hyde routine. Confident and unabashedly sexy – when did one last think that of a Hagen? – when pulling the strings, whether with the vassals or his half-siblings, there were signs of deformity, in physical and other senses, and of potential unravelling in more private moments. This was a superb revisionist performance, in terms of stage and voice.

Katarina Dalayman’s Brünnhilde had a few wayward moments but was otherwise a strong presence. She drew upon a varied vocal palette with great discrimination, rendering her characterisation unusually credible. When she strode on stage following Siegfried’s return, there was an almost Hollywood sense of star quality, heightened, I think, by Rattle’s handling of the BPO strings. Yet the aura added to rather than distracted from her final deeds as Brünnhilde. Gerd Grochowski’s Gunther resembled his Telramund, seen recently in two productions in Berlin and in London. This is not an especially powerful voice, but Grochowski made a dramatic virtue out of a vocal necessity, with a detailed portrait of political vacillation, aided by his stage demeanour of aristocratic distraction. Emma Vetter’s Gutrune was made to resemble a cross between Linda Evans in Dynasty and the late Diana Dors, not the only occasion when Thibault Vancraenenbroeck’s costumes seemed at odds with Stéphane Braunschweig’s generally non-interventionist – some might say Konzeptlos – production (more on the latter below). This might not especially have mattered, had we been treated to a more than adequate vocal performance. I was also disappointed, surprisingly so, by Anne Sofie von Otter’s Waltraute. There was, as one might have expected, detailed attention to the words, but this remained a strangely earthbound portrayal in vocal terms. Dale Duesing’s Alberich again impressed as an example – appropriate, considering his son – of a lighter-toned, word-sensitive approach to the role. I shall be interested to see him in Das Rheingold. The Norns and Rhinemaidens were cast from strength and did not disappoint.

I am at a loss when it comes to Braunschweig’s production. There is nothing to which one could, with reason, vehemently object, but nor could I discern any insights, let alone revelations. According to a programme interview, what Braunschweig ‘likes’ in Götterdämmerung is that here, following ‘the development of great philosophical and psychological’ questions in the preceding dramas, ‘one returns to a more trivial level, to an almost bourgeois drama.’ It is a point of view, I suppose: not entirely unrelated to George Bernard Shaw’s writing off the Ring’s final drama as succumbing to the love panacea, and perhaps not entirely unrelated to the parallels with Ibsen some commentators have discovered. Yet, wrongheaded though I might have thought Braunschweig’s almost complete disavowal of Wagner’s political for the director’s – and to a certain extent Wagner’s – psychoanalytical concerns earlier in the cycle, it might have been more rewarding to have carried the latter through into the final instalment. It was now not at all clear why the characters, despite some very strong individual performances, notably those of Petrenko and Dalayman, should be of any greater significance. If Götterdämmerung takes place on a relatively ‘trivial level,’ then I hardly dare think what might qualify as profound, as world-historical. Even Alberich’s re-appearance to observe, Wanderer-like, the Immolation Scene – to start with, I thought he might be Wotan, though I have no idea whether the resemblance were deliberate – somehow seemed shorn of significance. Perhaps this nihilism was the ultimate in Wagner domesticated.

For, whereas what I had previously seen had led me to wonder whether this might turn out to be a culmination inspired by Robert Donington, it now seemed nihilist, not in a sense that Nietzsche would have understood, but simply because the ideas had run out. Even in its own terms, the production did not seem to have the Ibsen-like quality at which Braunschewig appeared to hint in the quoted programme note. Attention-seeking touches such as a final, apparently ‘amusing’ bobbing up from the Rhine of the Rhinemaidens, seemed just that. I have no especial regrets at a lack of staging for Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, but I could not help suspecting that the fall of the curtain suggested lack of interest rather than a positive decision. If it were not for the stylishly minimalist sets – yet to what end? – or the technically accomplished, if oddly reticent video projection of the Rhine in the opening scene of the third act, it is difficult to imagine what would have been lost in a concert performance. Considered almost as such, however, there was a great deal to praise.