Bayreuth Festival (3) - Der fliegende Holländer, 29 July 2026

Festspielhaus

Daland – Mika Kares
Senta – Elisabeth Teige
Erik – Benjamin Bruns
Mary – Nadine Weissmann
Steersman – Kieran Carrel
The Dutchman – Nicholas Brownlee

Director, set designs – Dmitri Tcherniakov

Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
Lighting – Gleb Filshtinsky
Dramaturgy – Tatiana Werestchagina

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint),
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

Images: (c) Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrather

Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Dutchman and Dutchman return, still ship-less, to their small town of still smaller horizons for what may or may not be the last time. They have had a good run by recent Bayreuth standards, rightly so, and are not scheduled for next season. (Minus Tristan, all dramas from Rienzi onwards are scheduled either for this season or next.) Whilst there was naturally immense relief all round at an actual theatrical experience amidst the torture-debris of the ‘AI’-Ring debacle, things were looking a little tired, at least until a third act that continues to pack quite a punch. I doubt this was really the fault of anyone concerned, although Tcherniakov presumably did not return to direct this revival, since there was no production team present for curtain calls. Indeed, what we saw had very much the air of a repertory house revival, somewhat at odds with what is held to be the ethos of ‘Werkstatt Bayreuth’, if infinitesimally so when compared to the horrors that had unfolded the previous two nights. (I shall deal with Die Walküre in a single ‘rest of the Ring’ review following its much-awaited Götterdämmerung.)

Providing, as ever, his own set designs, Tcherniakov presents in the Prelude a pantomime in which the young ‘H.’ (Holländer, we presume) sees his mother hanging lifeless from a house window, shamed by a hypocritical, Peter Grimes-like community that had her yield – perhaps as sex worker – to Daland’s advances, only to be cast aside when no longer of use. His adult return is no seven-year ritual in search of an impossible love, but rather pursuit of revenge against the man and more broadly the community that did this. His whole life, one senses, has explicitly led up to this, as he is welcomed by the venal Daland – maybe he continues to run up such expenses? – and later his wife Mary, acted with palpable compassion by Nadine Weismann, as well as by Senta. Invited to dinner, his plan falls into place when, following interesting initial reluctance that has her decline even to come inside, Senta falls for him. The third act shows the community at large, in mirthless corporate celebration for which the Dutchman’s crew (or whatever they be) notably fail to participate. Shots are fired, Daland falling before his daughter, who nonetheless continues to hold faith in H., to be cruelly tossed aside—as surplus to his requirements as his mother had to Senta’s father’s. Daland’s house and wealth ablaze, the entire claustrophobic Nordic townscape at risk, Mary returns to kill the Dutchman. Senta’s highly disconcerting, hysterical turn between grief and celebration is ultimately transformed into compassion for the woman who has long cared for her. Perhaps, then, as we hear the 1860 post-Tristan ‘redemptive’ ending, there is a form of feminist redemption after all. Men have created and perpetuated this world and its revenge saga; if women survive, they can hardly do worse and might, just might, do better.

Oksana Liniv’s conducting remained the weakest link in the evening’s proceedings (from when I last heard it in 2024). It is a pity she could not have been replaced with someone more able and willing to respond to such a dramatic conception, or indeed any other, of the work. If the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra played well enough, it rarely sounded inspired, and one could hardly blame it. Lyniv’s alternation between pressing too hard and listlessly meandering, the latter especially apparent in a second act that seemed much longer than it was, offered a reversion to number opera seemingly not from aesthetic conviction, but because a more music-drama-focused performance could not be sustained. A sudden change of gear to breakneck speed at the close of the spinning chorus had pit and stage fall apart for several bars, the chorus compelled to find its own way back into sync, quite unaided by the conductor. 

A further sadness lay in the sound offered by a now reduced chorus,  especially at the beginning of the third act. The Festival’s decision to take an axe to what should be one of its crown jewels has regrettably had consequences, notwithstanding the musicianship of those remaining and their new director. In the title role, Nicholas Brownlee had an awkward beginning, intonation surprisingly, repeatedly awry in the first act. He grew into his own, though, to offer a compelling performance later on. Having sung two other challenging roles (Fasolt and Hunding) on two immediately preceding evenings, Mika Kares was undaunted by prospect or reality of Daland, outsinging the Dutchman in the first act and continuing to impress thereafter. Benjamin Bruns and Elisabeth Teige offered an aural, if not necessarily dramatic, glimpse of what a future Siegfried and Brünnhilde might sound like, Bruns impassioned and vocally fearless as Erik, Teige taking all in her musicodramatic stride in a role notorious for its demands. It was heartening too to welcome a fresh-voiced Kieran Carrel from Berlin’s Deutsche Oper to the Green Hill as the Steersman; let us hope this intelligent portrayal will prove neither his last visit nor role here. If I had certain reservations, then, this revival nonetheless proved quite a tonic after the anti-human production horrors of the two preceding evenings.

Bayreuth Festival (2) – Das Rheingold, 27 July 2026

Festspielhaus

Wotan – Michael Volle
Donner – Alexander Grassauer
Froh – Siyabonga Maqungo
Loge – Klaus Florian Vogt
Fricka – Anna Kissjudit
Freia – Evelyn Novak
Erda – Christa Mayer
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Mime – Gerhard Siegel
Fasolt – Mika Kares
Fafner – Peter Rose
Woglinde – Katharina Konradi
Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Flosshilde – Marie Henriette Reinhold

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

Costumes – Pia Maria Mackert  

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images (c): Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

The Bayreuth Festival has had a chequered history over its (almost) 150 years to date. It nonetheless remains, or has until now remained, in many ways an object lesson to the rest of the operatic world in how to take art seriously, how to create conditions in which it might be produced and experienced, and much else—not least with respect to the Festspielhaus amphitheatre and covered pit. That the rest of the world has failed almost entirely to heed its example may sadden us, but reflects on that world and us, not on Bayreuth, nor indeed on Wagner. As Pierre Boulez observed, whilst at work here half a century ago on the now legendary ‘Centenary Ring’ with Patrice Chéreau, perhaps with a little exaggeration, if understandably so, Wagner’s ‘diatribes’, written in turn:

… more than a century ago, are still completely relevant, for nothing has changed—the laziness of the repertory theatre, its failings, its precarious functioning, the blind choice of works, the fortuitous casting of singers and players, the lack of rehearsal, the sauve-qui-peut routine. Architecturally speaking, the Bayreuth model has remained a dead letter and we still have Italian-style theatres. … Both visually and acoustically, we continue to witness this permanent defeat of what is truly theatrical, Bayreuth having effected not the slightest improvement.

To strike a slightly less pessimistic note than Boulez, I think Bayreuth has played a notable role in effecting certain theatrical improvements, if more related to staging than stages. That 1976-80 production and numerous others – Ring stagings from Harry Kupfer and Frank Castorf, Tristan from Heiner Müller, Parsifal from Stefan Herheim, Hans Neuenfels’s Lohengrin, Tobias Kratzer’s Tannhäuser, and so on – set standards for and posed challenges to the rest of the world, just as Wagner did, and occasionally, sometimes more than that, they have been taken up, run with, even surpassed. Bayreuth as ‘workshop’ (Werkstatt), the greatest legacy of Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, created the conditions for such innovation, building on the vision and achievements of Richard himself, as well as (whisper it) the best of the Winifred era, brought such artists of vision, Boulez included, to the Green Hill, showing not only the necessary courage to fail but the equally necessary courage to rethink, to revise, to rejuvenate: Wagner’s own celebrated ‘Kinder, macht Neues!’ following that very first festival in 1876.

If,  gentle reader, you sensed a less-than-gentle ‘but’ approaching, I fear you would be anything other than mistaken. Perhaps nothing, especially in the theatre of Tannhäuser and Parsifal, is truly irredeemable; perhaps something can be salvaged from this. Imagining how lies quite beyond my little mind, though perhaps some machine will tell us. For what the Festival, incomprehensibly, has come up with to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the first Ring must be the greatest travesty ever to have been visited on it anywhere at any time, an experience so unbearable five (out of five) people I spoke to afterwards described it independently as the worst thing they had ever seen, one (Stefan Mauß, whom I have permission to quote) adding the unforgettable and entirely accurate phrase ‘visual waterboarding’, and a rebuke not only to Wagner, not only to Bayreuth, but to any conception of art that tiny, human mind of mine will ever be able to entertain. Enter the ‘AI’-Ring, mysteriously and with insufferable pretention subtitled ‘‘Ring 10010110 – vom Mythos zum Code’, seemingly undirected, and yet ‘curated’ by one Marcus Lobbes.

What we saw can be dealt with briefly. (If only one might say the same of experiencing it.) Following a mercifully image-free Prelude, beautifully and imaginatively led by Christian Thielemann, near-peerlessly performed by the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, any sense of drama, opera, or basic humanity deserts us for a parade of banal screensaver images shown upon a curtain in front of the singers, thus largely obscured and left to fend for themselves, wearing identical, indistinguishable, weirdly yet unrevealingly hideous costumes. (Final applause, for those who could bring themselves to engage, proved something of a game in trying to identify who was presenting him-/herself at any point At least it offered the first and only prospect of entertainment in the entire sorry evening.) Sometimes there was a clear reference to the Ring at Bayreuth, the first image being the celebrated representation of the Rhinemaidens in 1876, amidst genuine theatrical wizardry that enabled them to appear as if  swimming in the Rhine. (Yes, as Anna Russell told us, in the Rhine: now on the curtain.) I almost wept upon a brief appearance, in bizarrely low resolution such as would be refused by the least assiduous reviews editor, of Castorf’s Golden Motel, not out of the nostalgia I feel for that production, but because it was vaguely discernible. We did, to be fair, see a few large rings, on apparently female fingers, when the ring should first have been seen on stage with Alberich. Otherwise, endlessly, pointlessly transforming shapes came and went, sometimes returning, few with any relation to what we heard, culminating in an anonymous man and woman who turned into street (or perhaps theatre?) lights, quickly to turn back again. Some more recognisable, if irrelevant images were suggestive of  Ludwig II put in a very brief guest appearance during the descent to Nibelheim, as did very occasional glimpses of other Rheingold productions, but that was it.

The ultimately unforgivable thing was the way this abject, wasteful nonsense distracted from whatever might have remained of the drama. With that going on before our eyes, our ears (at least my ears) struggled for more than a minute or so to keep track of what was probably a very good musical performance. Not only was this entirely at odds with any idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk – in many ways, a problematical idea that will benefit from deconstruction – but with art and even humanity themselves. I managed to hear flashes of an intriguingly mobile, flowing orchestral conception shaped by Thielemann—rather along the analytical lines suggested by Wagner in an 1871 report to German Wagner societies, tracing an entire corpus of interrelated themes from the individualisation of ‘a few malleable Nature motifs’. If I sensed that most vividly in the Prelude, its low E-flat foundational in every sense and exquisitely decorated by some of the fruitiest, bubbliest woodwind I can recall hearing here, that is a comment related in no sense to the performance itself.

Vocal contributions seemed to be of a very high standard too. Not having had chance to remind myself of the cast beforehand, I had a very pleasant surprise in hearing Klaus Florian Vogt, no less, as Loge, the ringing clarity and sincerity of his tone both in consonance with the demi-god’s revelation of uncomfortable truths and in productive contrast with his wheedling strategizing. Michael Volle’s performance, lighter than one often hears from him and in keeping with the specific demands of the Rheingold Wotan, would doubtless have graced any stage, had I been able to follow it adequately; likewise Jochen Schmeckenbecher’s darker hued Alberich, Mika Kares’s evidently lovelorn Fasolt, Christa Mayer’s chalumeau-like Erda, and much else besides, Evelyn Novak's golden Freia and a fine trio of Rhinemaidens included. To claim that I properly heard any of these performance, though, would be entirely misleading, so I shall leave it there. 

According to Tina Lorenz, writing in the programme, ‘Ring 10010110 tells a radically contemporary story about how we are currently witnessing the beginnings of a transformation in the global order’. It may be a ‘contemporary’ story, but its only ‘radicalism’ lies in turning Das Rheingold and presumably the rest into an immersive Fidelio in which we as prisoners finally experience light and fresh air upon its close. The stampede for the doors was unlike any I have seen—or participated in. Some brave souls managed to agitate for opening of the theatre doors during its course and escaped, to the intense envy and admiration of the rest of us. A period of lengthy reflection, absention, and apology would be in order from all involved. Wagner deserves better, as do the musicians and audience. So too does a world, like that of the Ring, on fire thanks to wasteful, ‘technological’ domination.

Bayreuth Festival (1) - Rienzi, 26 July 2026

Festspielhaus

Images (c): Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Rienzi – Andreas Schager
Irene – Gabriela Scherer
Colonna – Andreas Baer-Kanabas
Adriano – Jennifer Holloway
Orsini – Michael Nagy
Cardinal Raimondo – Vitalij Kowaljow
Baroncelli – Matthias Stier
Cecco del Vecchio – Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Messenger of Peace – Victoria Randem

Directors, set and costume designs – Alexandra Szemerédy, Magdolna Parditka
Lighting – Bernd Gallasch
Video – Leonard Koch

Dramaturgy – Markus Kiesel  

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint)
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Nathalie Stutzmann (conductor)

On 22 May 1872, Wagner laid the foundation stone to his new festival theatre, followed by a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, probably the single most important artistic work other than his own for Wagner’s own life and work. It has reappeared for key anniversaries ever since, not least the reopening (and ‘rebranding’) of the Festival as ‘New Bayreuth’ in 1951, including this year’s sesquicentennial edition. Unable to attend that official first night, I nonetheless hastened to the still more auspicious, unquestionably more historic event of the second, the first ever Festspielhaus staging of Wagner’s third opera, Rienzi, Last of the Tribunes. Excluded by Cosima – not without warrant from The Master himself – from the Bayreuth canon, Rienzi has actually appeared once before in Bayreuth, alongside the still earlier Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot, during the 2013 bicentenary of Wagner’s birth. That initiative, likewise from Festival Director Katharina Wagner, nonetheless operated in the penumbra of the Festival proper: in the Oberfrankenhalle sports complex, albeit played by the Festival Orchestra and (unlike its two predecessors) staged within the limitations of the arena. Now, however, for the first time since 1901, a new Wagner opera was admitted to the formal Festspielhaus canon. 

How many people in the audience, on this first night or thereafter, will have known Rienzi at all, and if so to what extent, is an open question. Probably more than in many (all?) other theatres, I should guess, but still with a considerable number who will never previously have had the opportunity to see it, and doubtless some who will never have heard it. That holds implications for how to present it and for how it will be received. So too does the vexed question of a text for the work. The latter opens up a fascinating, rich, and complex world in itself, which I cannot even begin to summarise here. Suffice to say that the very idea of a complete text sits at odds with the expectations of the grand opéra genre in which Wagner was mostly, if not entirely, composing this ‘große tragische Oper’. That is, even if there were a single version, it would not necessarily – almost certainly not – have been expected that all the material would have been used for any given production and/or performance. There is not, since Wagner made revisions even before performance, and would unquestionably have done so again for future performances in which he wished to offer even a provisional, let alone definitive, version to the world. Late in life, he famously declared he still owed the world a Tannhäuser; whether he felt similarly about Rienzi is more dubious, though we might do so. If I understand correctly, the 2026 ‘Bayreuther Fassung’ of the verbal text has its foundation in that Wagner authorised in 1871 (presumably for the Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen published that year), with some textual variants nonetheless adopted, and an important, almost equal role played by the piano score in Egon Voss’s complete edition. Wagner’s stage directions are, for better or worse, ‘only seldom adopted’—which, as Brahms might have told us, any ass can see.  

Lack of surviving sources that would enable definitive presentation, as opposed to reconstruction, of particular musical versions presents another, currently insuperable problem. The autograph, given by Winifred to Hitler, disappeared one way or another with him in 1945, as did performance parts in Dresden the same year, courtesy of ‘Bomber’ Harris et al. Much more could be said – and has been – about those difficulties, but like any such difficulties, they can also present creative and intellectual opportunities, perhaps especially when coming into dialogue, conflict, whatever we wish to call it, with a festival founded on strong notions – born in Wagner himself, at least the Wagner of late life – of a textual canon. At any rate, although the idea of a ‘complete’ Rienzi is straightforwardly impossible and probably undesirable, this gave a far better sense of the shifting boundaries and potentialities of the ‘work’ than my previous theatrical encounter, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, with a version so mutilated as to verge upon the useless. 

The question then, remains: how did this new Rienzi fare—with relation to these parameters and, let us to be fair, to its own too? There are very few cases – in my personal experience, only Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal comes to mind – in which a first-year production at ‘Werkstatt Bayreuth’ has proved its strongest, and/or has not undergone considerable modification in light of stage experience. If, as we have been led to believe, this is to be a one-year-only production, that may prove unfortunate, but for the moment it is in any case all we have. My assessment would be mixed, albeit with overriding gratitude for the occasion so much as to present itself. To my mind, orchestral playing and vocal performance considerably eclipsed conducting and stage direction, although everything afforded material to consider and reflect on, both in itself and in relation to broader ideas of the Festival, its history, and its future, which is just as it should be. 

Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka’s staging had its moments, but mirroring Nathalie Stutzmann’s conducting, failed to my eyes (and ears) to form a coherent assemblage, let alone whole, whilst ultimately proving more successful than either director (Philipp Stölzl) or conductor (Evan Rogister) in Berlin. The staging opened chez Rienzi, with Irene and a child in attendance. Given the advanced state of their brother-sister relationship, I assumed the child was theirs; only in the programme, did I discover him to have been their brother. (So far as I was aware – and I may well have missed something – nothing defined who he was, the first of several signal directorial omissions.) The brother’s death whilst Rienzi and Irene pursued their relations formed the foundation of a psychosexual crisis that offered the ultimate explanation for Rienzi’s deeds thereafter. Reductionist, nous? But then we repaired to a world of rolling (and fake) news, of social media speculation about ‘keeping it in the family’ and worse, whilst opinion polls forecast apparently increased vote share for Rienzi vis-à-vis his electoral opponents, Colonna and Orsini. Whatever the scandal, it seemingly did our would-be-tribune, ‘Rienzi for Prez’, no harm, though the fickleness of the crowd ultimately would. In essentials, then, here was criticism of that which liberals have christened ‘populism’, with little fundamental recognition that the people may be right as well as wrong, and that in their systemic as well as charismatic manipulation lies the greater problem. I might add here that, in the absence of German, let alone English, titles – to my mind, a mistake for a work unfamiliar to many – some things could be filled in via placards and screens:  no bad thing, which merits commendation.

In Wagner’s second act, which formed the second half of the first of Bayreuth’s three acts, the ballet was, rather to my surprise, retained, although most of its sense was lost. Wagner’s brilliant idea, in defiance of grand opéra convention, of offering dramatically meaningful dance, in this case via an allegory of the rape of Lucretia, was ditched in favour of a Bayreuth metatheatrical show that took in many of the dramas to come, from Das Rheingold to Parsifal, all directed from the other side of the political-dramatic stage by a gilded mini-Wagner familiar from around the town (here played by a child—and very well too). If much was lost, a considerable amount was also gained, and the humour of showing us as audience rushing to the Bratwurst stall and lavatories was well observed. A turn to sacrifice and martyrdom – seemingly of the entire Rienzo family – was abrupt and, stigmata aside, a little too dependent on a screen relay of Olivet Discourse prophecies from St Matthew’s Gospel, first in English, then in Latin. Again, something more broadly rather than personally political would have been welcome, but it made its point well enough. Visual inheritance from Meyerbeer (and presentiment of Götterdämmerung) in stage positioning of Rienzi, Irene, and Adriano was striking in its complement to the score. 

The third/second act was perhaps the most successful, its colour and overall look splendidly dark. Rienzi suddenly becoming a crazed murderer, firing mortal shots, was a duly shocking moment—although I am not sure so ‘critical’ a stance to the opera and its hero was necessary or even advisable at this stage in its chequered reception. The final act(s) had politics more or less entirely collapse in favour of Rienzi as a sort of hapless Macbeth, incomprehensibly stabbed by Irene rather than meeting his death at the hands of the populace. For some reason, during the fifth act proper, they both went backstage, the world as theatre returning, the point presumably being that all of these worlds – social media, Bayreuth, politics, and more – are stages of some point. A lack of clarity in direction, though, made much of this seem weirdly arbitrary, as did Rienzi carrying on crying, gesturing, and singing for a long time after his death had apparently come. I gleaned little concerning who the ‘smaller’ characters were. One might say – unfairly to my mind – that Wagner might have offered more here; but even if one did, that surely presents a challenge or, better, an opportunity to the directors, not a fait accompli.

Rienzi explicitly looks forward to a united Italy, which in Vormärz Saxony had obvious implications for a German revolution from below. Nor for nothing did Friedrich Engels sketch a drama on the same subject at pretty much the same time. By all means try something different, but do it with more evident knowledge and understanding of that from which you are differing. Szemerédy would seemingly benefit from, among other things, a lesson in basic historical chronology if she seriously thinks, as she is quoted saying in the programme: ‘How much Hitler is actually in Rienzi? The case had to be reopened.’ None, literally none; there is no ‘case’ to answer. Hitler was born in 1889; Wagner died in 1883; Rienzi was written forty years before that. That is not what she meant, of course, but the starting point remains unfortunate and straightforwardly wrong, whether in theory or in practice.

At least as consistent a failing, though, was the directors’ failure to consider the crucial role of the Church and Papacy. If not eliminated from the words, it was entirely absent from the stage, without even a derisory substitute put in its place. One set design may well have been informed, as again the programme informed us, by a floorplan of St John Lateran, but it is difficult to imagine how anyone could have known this, nor appreciated why it might have mattered. If couching the drama in terms of opinion polls, electoral politics, and ‘private lives’ was a signal error – in drama, as in life, we need far more than #ImWithHer – so was avoiding any attempt to reinvent such broader social, political, and ideological structures of the drama. Final approach towards a video man of the future and failure to meet him are all very well, yet unprepared it went for little.

Stutzmann often drew a fine sound from the orchestra, the beginning of the Overture revealing a wondrously golden, blended sound that was not simply the achievement of the covered pit. Alas, the somewhat listless way in which it proceeded was similarly prophetic of much of what was to come. I assume part of the reason for her selection and for her interpretative choices was her attempt in Tannhäuser to emphasise its French origins, but inability to present tempi as part of a greater whole even within numbers, let alone between them, did little service to Wagner’s far from inconsiderable musical dramaturgy. I should usually be the last person to complain about a lack of applause, if perceived as merited, within acts. ‘Traditional’, ‘historically informed’, or not, I cannot stand the practice; it has been outmoded since long before Wagner (with the possible knowing exception of Strauss’s Zerbinetta). And yet here, awkward silences, born of the audience’s ‘proper’ Bayreuth respect for the unity of the act, cried out for something to fill them. It need not have been that way, but it was the conductor’s responsibility to impart a sense of unity that precluded thoughts of audience participation, even in its absence. Wolfgang Sawallisch’s live 1983 (another Wagner anniversary) Munich recording remains an object lesson, if not in forestalling applause, then more importantly in creating a convincing, compelling tonal-dramatic plan. It is not the only way to perform Rienzi; there is never one way. But it has an idea and achieves it, at least in musical terms.

Andreas Schager impressed in the title role as few have. One might cavil that this was Rienzi approached from Siegfried rather than from Restoration Paris, yet Schager, one, forgivable moment aside, proved tireless and commanding in vocal terms, if a little generalised in gesture. Although I suspect it thought it was doing just this, the production ultimately did Irene no favours, rendering her at times little more than a cipher. Gabriela Scherer made much, though, of the hand she was presented, offering a stylish, committed performance. So too did a tremendous Jennifer Holloway as Adriano, bringing thoughts of Wagner’s inheritance, partly via Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, from Fidelio to mind that the conducting, sadly, did not.  Vitalij Kowaljow’s Raimondo stood out to me from the rest, doing what he could, in light of the production’s failure, to explain the presence of a cardinal. There were, though, no grounds for vocal disappointment. Bayreuth offered a fine cast, which could have been stretched further, yet acquitted itself handsomely. The Bayreuth Festival Chorus did that and more, even in the choral passages a little too close to Meyerbeer that Wagner would understandably later commend for their emptiness. Where they become more musicodramatically interesting, including a cappella writing that points its way to other, more occasional works of the 1840s, performance was duly arresting. 

Rienzi will probably always remain a singular, problematical opera, but to repeat myself, warts and all, what we saw and heard at Bayreuth was ultimately an opportunity for which to be grateful. That there is a big-heartedness to this ‘work’ offers a salutary reminder that, whatever uninformed people will tell you, Wagner had a complex personality and outlook, with many admirable as well as many less admirable traits. The ideology of some preposterous incarnation of evil is at least as absurd as that of the Bayreuth Circle and its Master. Of course reception plays a role; it always does. But so does historical truth, however shifting and uncertain. All historical truth is, by its very nature—and by that nature standing quite opposed to ludicrous, pernicious claims by the political Right to ‘protect’ it, whether it be that of Wagner, Bayreuth, or any other historical phenomenon. Statues and memorials fall, which may be good, bad or indifferent, but that creates rather than ‘destroys’ history. So too does erecting new ones. Rienzi now has an important memorial of its own; what follows is up to us. One can only hope that Die Feen, to my mind the most consistently fine opera of the unlucky first three, will succeed—and that Das Liebesverbot will be accorded an opportunity to convince us relative sceptics too. For now, this truly historic moment will more than suffice.

Munich Opera Festival (4) - Die Walküre, 1 July 2026

Nationaltheater

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Siegmund – Joachim Bäckström
Hunding – Ain Anger
Wotan – Nicholas Brownlee
Sieglinde – Irene Roberts
Brünnhilde – Miina-Lisa Värelä
Fricka – Ekaterina Gubanova
Helmwige – Dorothea Herbert
Gerhilde – Julie Adams
Ortlinde – Elaine Gvritshvili
Waltraute – Claudia Mahnke
Siegrune – Niina Keitel
Rossweiße – Christina Rock
Grimgerde – Natalie Lewis
Schwertleite – Noa Beinart
Loge – Charith Pidikiti

Director – Tobias Kratzer
Assistant director – Matthias Piro
Designs – Rainer Sellmaier
Lighting – Michael Bauer
Video – Manuel Braun, Jonas Dahl, Janic Bebi
Dramaturgy – Bettina Bartz, Olaf Roth

Bayerische Staatsorchester
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

 

As a student in Berlin, Ludwig Feuerbach attended lectures from, among others, GWF Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher: far from an unusual combination, but prophetic for his subsequent development as the pre-eminent Young Hegelian philosopher of love-communism. Although he lectured at Erlangen, Feuerbach 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 in 1830, a year in which revolutions once again began to sweep Europe. His writings, including those Thoughts, The Essence of Christianity, and Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, inspired many radicals in the next wave of revolutions (1848-51), although Feuerbach remaining personally aloof from revolutionary activity. One of those, of course, was Richard Wagner, who, shortly after publication of Feuerbach’s Thoughts, had gained his first experience, direct and reported, of revolution, inspired by events in Paris, Leipzig, and even the previously quiescent Dresden. The seventeen-year old Saxon would recall in his autobiography Mein Leben ‘the world of history’ having come to life: ‘Saxony was not spared: in Dresden it even came to street-fighting’. He began to attend Leipzig University lectures on philosophy and aesthetics, and henceforth considered himself a ‘fervent partisan of the revolution’. Wagner would go on read at least all three of the Feuerbach books named above and, in contrast to one of his great intellectual mentors, stood anything but aloof from revolutionary political activity—be it in practice, during the 1849 Dresden uprising, or in the fruits of his post-revolutionary exile in Zurich. Among those were The Artwork of the Future, dedicated to Feuerbach, its very title a homage, and of course Die Walküre, perhaps his single most Feuerbachian drama—in that the positive, as well as negative, side of a religion purer than yet related to Christianity, founded on love, features most strongly in the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde, and Brünnhilde’s conversion to their creed, crucially at the ‘price’, in reality an elevation, of losing her own immortality. 

With this Walküre, newly premiered, Tobias Kratzer’s Munich Ring reaches its second instalment. I was unable to see Das Rheingold; but on the evidence of this, as well as much of his other work – his near-universally loved Bayreuth Tannhäuser, various Deutsche Oper productions, and more – I hope to put that right before long. Even considered on its own, Kratzer’s Walküre has numerous distinctions, but perhaps its most distinctive feature, at least until the third act, is a more overt Feuerbachian element than any other I can recall. I suspect it would seem so all the more in light of the Rheingold, but that must remain a matter of speculation by now. What it certainly does is put the gods, even here, centre-stage, not only as ‘the gods’, characters in this drama, but emphatically as gods—and emphatically not, as Ernst Bloch put it, ‘called gods without being gods’.

The curtain rises on a rural, possibly suburban chalet; by deduction, it may be somewhere outside Munich, though it need not be. This, of course, is Hunding’s house, at the end of the driveway a quasi-Marian shrine, albeit to Fricka. That is, Kratzer follows Wagner absolutely in presenting a dramatic critique of religion, mostly yet not only Christianity, albeit shrouded, as it were, in the guise of Germanic paganism. (Wagner is doing other things with reference to the Eddas and sagas too, but he is certainly doing that, in unambiguously post-Feuerbach fashion.) It is here, under Fricka as well as Hunding, also under a larger, indoor ecclesiastical shrine, not unlike a tabernacle or reliquary, perhaps denoting the rule of Valhalla/religion/Christianity more generally, that Siegmund takes refuge. Sieglinde is clearly a member of this religion too, since she genuflects before the shrine even when Hunding has gone—and, initially shamefully, later with abandon, celebrates her wholesale abandon(ment) only after covering it. When, in the second act, Wotan comes to earth, like the gods of old (though also, if we believe the New Testament, ours too), he is distressed not only by Fricka’s demolition of the new religion he has ultimately inspired, but by the destruction of the shrine within: his old religion, one might say. Just as Wagner’s god is torn, so is he, visibly as well as audibly so. 

That Hunding, whose cause Fricka takes, should be a devotee of her understanding of this religion – sect, perhaps – will surprise no one, but it is clear, not assumed. She even recognises herself in it; I am tempted to add, in Biblical style, ‘and it was good’, save that obviously it was not for humanity. We even see a ram, albeit a dead one; hers is a chariot, if only metaphorically, of death—as in Wagner. When death occurs, moreover, it is unquestionably violent; we are no more spared than its more direct victims. When Wotan, in anger, bids Hunding kneel before Fricka, Wagner’s goddess of ‘custom’ (as he explained in a letter to August Röckel), the bourgeois property- and motor-owner does just that: not something I have seen before. She and other gods – I assume, Froh, Donner, and Freia – whom we have already seen, in a drawing projected at some point during Wotan’s monologue, observe events on the battlefield. Dressed in designer Rainer Sellmaier’s mediaeval, even Burgundian-Nibelungenlied garb, they offer strong connection to the mediaevalism of work, Wagner’s selection and adoption of sources, and to the hostile, Young Hegelian critique of church and state such as had been mystically united in states such as the Prussia of Frederick William IV.

Another such example, if less fanatically so, was the Saxony in which Kapellmeister Wagner threatened to burn it all down—and took delight in seeing just that in his opera house: ‘8 May (Monday) Morning once again by roundabout route via barricades to Town Hall. At S. Anne Barricade guard shouts “Well, Mr Conductor, joy’s beautiful divine spark’s made a blaze.” (3rd perf. 9th Symphony at previous Palm Sunday concert; Opera House now burnt down. Strange feeling of comfort.)’ Another important point, I suspect, from Wotan’s monologue: in his proto-Parsifalian wandering, he passes a church. Out of it ran two hooded figures, disaffected youth, it would seem. Something within me wondered whether one might be Alberich, in the one Ring drama in which he ‘should’ not appear onstage. I think it was, for during the Ride of the Valkyries, a hooded figure with child, surely Hagen, watches. We shall see. To be reminded, at any rate, of Wagner’s contemporary and fellow Feuerbach enthusiast (for a while), Marx, and his more or less contemporaneous observation, in explicit Young Hegelian critique of Hegel, that ‘the relationship of industry [Alberich] and, in particular, the world of wealth to the political world [the gods] is one of the principal problems of modern times,’ was salutary—and I should be surprised to learn that it had merely been my interpretative fancy. 

So far, so excellent—all accomplished in fine Personenregie and response thereto. This is no mere concept; it is an absorbing drama. That of the third act is hardly less so in the latter respect, although it seems strangely distant from what has gone before. Perhaps more will be revealed in Siegfried or Götterdämmerung, but once past a video ‘Ride’ that took in much of Munich, Brünnhilde at the helm of Apocalypse Now helicopter, an original ‘Bavarian host’ of the Siegestor, thus returning to source as it were. Naturally, the local audience loved it, and why not, numerous aspects of the city eliciting gasps of recognition and, less laudably, actual applause. Surely one can appreciate a coup de théâtre or de cinéma without Pavlovian response. That nonetheless we should end up in the Nationaltheater may have particular warrant, given it was here that, against Wagner’s wishes, Ludwig II had it all begin. Perhaps Kratzer anticipated the applause or such reaction, and turned it against the audience avant la lettre. We can read it that way anyway. And perhaps subsequent events will play out more fully in that respect—and not too closely to Stefan Herheim’s metatheatrical Deutsche Oper Ring. But it seemed a slight pity. There is still much to admire in the emergency repair work – and religious rebirth? – offered by Valkyrie body-snatchers to heroes, as well as in the passionate direction and portrayal of Wotan and Brünnhilde thereafter. That the demi-god Loge appears as bidden, with flame, at the close, ties all neatly together. Yet I could not help but think – this is really my sole cavil – a more apt setting might have been found, unless the point be that the opera house is now our dubious temple. If so, I shall happily recant; again, we shall see.

In one sense, though, even that helped point, in the unlikely event anyone should have needed pointing, to the truest heroes of all: the orchestra that first performed this work. Wherever you may have heard it, in Berlin, Bayreuth, Dresden, Vienna, or elsewhere, it is unlikely to have been played better than this. Strings were dark yet incisive, ‘old German’ in a way Furtwängler might have recognised, ‘dramatic’ in a way Boulez might have done. The rest of the playing was equally outstanding, the Ride far more than showpiece, but rather quite rightly a symphonic movement taking its place in Wagner’s dramatic whole. Vladimir Jurowski’s conducting had its moments in better and worse senses. To begin with, too often one could hear as well as see him conduct. Wagner became a miniaturist in a sense too close to Nietzsche’s jibe. It was all too effortful, though to Jurowski’s credit, he never tried to get this great orchestra to sound like anything other than itself. The third act was more at ease with itself, with far fewer odd impositions upon it; it flowed in a way closer to the Rhine (or Isar) and thus the orchestra’s mysterious, Delphic oracle sounded more unbidden—save, in the eternal riddle, for who might have created its own gods.

Speaking of heroes, Joachim Bäckström made for a fine Siegmund, his chemistry with Irene Roberts’s increasingly ecstatic Sieglinde – what a foretelling of Siegfried she offered! – thrilling and, at times, disturbing to watch. For Kratzer did not follow Wagner in his understanding of incest. These twins, even the religious Sieglinde, were positively excited by the prospect of incest, as opposed to loving each other and its revelation not mattering. Again, film revealed some of the backstory, adding to rather than merely mirroring what we learned from narration—at least after the first, slightly disappointing instalment. Nicholas Brownlee’s Wotan we had thus seen and known already, his fireside sadness, seen by the siblings’ mothers, projected into a wise, multivalent portrayal of the ‘sum of present-day intelligence’ (Wagner on the character, immediately prior to starting work on the score of this opera).  

Ekaterina Gubanova’s imperious, haughty, godlike Fricka was all one might hope for, in general and in context. Ain Anger’s self-assured Hunding was no mere thug, though he was certainly given to violence; here was a man who knew his beliefs and his patriarchal rights, and was willing to fight for them. Miina-Lisa Värelä’s Brünnhilde’s journey to the brink of losing immortality absorbed us through excellent, Wagnerian command of words, music, and gesture. Other Valkyries offered singing and acting of the highest order. For not the least of the work’s and performance’s virtues was a celebration of Wagner’s Feuerbachian conception of the ‘purely human’ and its socialist expansion into a vision, political, social, religious and more, that only in cooperation might we begin to achieve our potential as a species.

Quatuor Diotima 30th anniversary concert - Mason and Beethoven, 7 June 2026

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

Christian Mason: Towards a not yet remembered past (French premiere)
Beethoven: String Quartet no.15 in A minor, op.132

Yunpeng Zhao, Léo Marillier (violins)

Franck Chevalier (viola)

Alexis Descharmes (cello)

Founded at the Paris Conservatoire in 1996, the Quatuor Diotima celebrated its thirtieth anniversary at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in typically forward-looking fashion: nowhere more so than when looking back, whether in Christian Mason’s Towards a not yet remembered past, which they premiered six weeks ago, or to Beethoven’s A minor Quartet, op.132. The quartet is more readily associated with twentieth- and twenty-first century music, but it has always performed earlier music too, bringing that distinctive standpoint to Beethoven, Schubert, and others. Having recently recorded and released a set of Beethoven’s late quartets – now, as then, the absolute summit of the repertoire – the Diotima offered programming and performance that were typically revealing, refreshing, and rejuvenating. 

Responding to earlier works for string quartet, both the 2020 The present moment used to be the unimaginable future and transcriptions and recompositions in his Tuvan (2016) and Sardinian (2018) Songbooks, the seven movements of Towards a not yet remembered past alternates application of the latter approach to the ars subtilor of the Chantilly Codex by (Jean?) Solage, Jacob Senleches, Guillaume de Machaut, and Baude Cordier, with ‘original’ composition, although how meaningful the distinction might be is, if not the point, then at least a point. In listening to recordings of the late-fourteenth-century works, Mason says he was struck by the extent to which the scores are not fixed, but rather offer the seeds of possibility for different development, depending on the manner in which they are cultivated, hoping also that the same might be true of the ‘original’ movements in his work. 

Solage – perhaps better, ‘Solage’ – emerged slow, yet febrile, gradually developing in the way one fancied (misremembered?) an ‘old’ quartet introduction doing. When ‘new’, one sensed something ‘old’, yet never fixed, behind. Which art is the more playful, the more complex? The question seemed almost, yet not quite, beside the point—as in any interpretation, or layers thereof. Sudden violent eruption, pizzicato intimacy, and more: were they sides of the same coin, necessary responses, or a handful of possibilities among many? The second movement began, it seemed, not entirely dissimilarly, though developed quite differently, its lyrical vein suggesting if not exactly the Classical procedure of a slow movement, not exactly not that either (even when it sped up). Senleches seemed – though this may have been my ears adjusting – more clearly of the past, though certainly not without contemporaneity with its impression of modern as well as earlier modality.

If the second movement were not entirely unlike a slow movement, the fourth was not entirely unlike a scherzo, at least in initial bearings (mine, perhaps, rather than anyone else’s). Like those of Chopin and Brahms, though not Beethoven, there was nothing joking about it, but tension and rhythmic propulsion were clear in work and performance. Was there something of a particular sense of witness here? I fancied so, even if I could not necessarily explain what I mean by that. Listening, historical and contemporary, can be like that—as can performance and indeed composition. Muted Machaut, upper strings chattering against a cello melody – at least in ‘our’ terms – drew a ‘modern’ response whose intensity grew and subsided in a way one could imagine Beethoven might have recognised and admired. The Cordier movement was very much a finale: ‘old’ joy to be had in dancing, but also in quasi-Classical function as a movement. This was, then, a fascinating musical tour and progress, which I hope to make again.      

Without a great break – not attacca or anything like that, but no interval – Beethoven began, similarly almost as if a response to what we had heard previously: Mason and the fourteenth century, although soon going very much its own way. (Again, this may have been more my ears than anything intrinsic to the work, or even the performance—but perhaps not.) The first movement received, at any rate, an intensely dramatic, modern(ist) reading: not imposing anything from without on the work, but rather taking nothing for granted. I thought of Michael Gielen’s symphonic Beethoven: highly recommended to those who do not know it. Form emerged from the material, just as it should. In the shadows, there was sadness, perhaps even tragedy, but resistance inevitably grew too. Beethoven is nothing if not dialectical—and again, we had this prefigured in Mason. Beethoven is also nothing without his human spirit—and this was unquestionably present. 

There are no easy answers in this music; nor was there here, the minuet quizzical, Beethoven too at play with music of the past, albeit a more recent past. The trio undoubtedly recalled Haydn, as much from the Diotima’s standpoint as Beethoven’s. But there was something darker hinted at too, the tightrope between disturbing delirium and delightfully tipsy skilfully navigated. The ‘Heiliger Dankegsang’ reimagined the Lydian mode, again recalling Mason’s play, albeit with an overriding effort at reconciliation through the fissures which was very much of Beethoven and his time. The Diotima did not take this as holy ground in the sense of something not even to be questioned, but rather as music of such stature that all must be summoned in approaching a fragile peace in dialogue between the two periods. If the joy that emerged was hard-won, so should it be. This was music of kinship with the Missa solemnis, in which nothing can or should come without a struggle, but above all without integrity. Moving through the fourth-movement transition to the finale, we likewise knew that the journey was far from complete. Indeed, the latter’s progress, even when one ‘knew’, constantly surprised. Beethoven – late Beethoven in particular – is always like that, or should be.   

Following a series of filmed tributes in multiple languages from composers with whom the Diotima has worked, ranging from a joint appearance from Rebecca Saunders and Enno Poppe, through Georges Aperghis to (spoken and written, but not seen) Helmut Lachenmann, the players launched into a Happy Birthday encore which, wonderfully in keeping both with the programme and the ensemble’s broader identity and activity, took us on a whistle-stop variation tour through musical history and styles. Key figures in the history and pre-history of the string quartet were present, Beethoven still the core, Shostakovich an insistent guest. There was a tango, a waltz, and – my favourite – a surprise ‘guest appearance’ from Wagner, courtesy of the Siegfried-Idyll. If ever you had wondered how that song might be transformed into that tone poem, this would have been your moment. And likewise, if ever you had wondered what the Wagner ‘Starnberg’ Quartet might have sounded like, if it had ever been more than a hopeful misunderstanding, this would too. Above all, though, it was a moment of celebration for a fine, enterprising quartet it is difficult to believe has been together for thirty years—but which bids fair to be so for at least thirty more.

Das Rheingold, Opéra de Marseille, 10 May 2026

Opéra Municipal de Marseille

Images: Camille Rovera

Fricka – Marion Lebègue
Freia – Élodie Hache
Erda – Amandine Ammirati
Wellgunde – Marie Kalinine
Flosshilde – Lucie Roche
Wotan – Alexandre Duhamel
Alberich – Zoltán Nagy
Mime – Marius Brenciu
Donner – Yoann Dubruque
Froh – Éric Huchet
Loge – Samy Camps
Fasolt – Patrick Bolleire
Fafner – Louis Morvan

Director – Charles Roubaud
Assistant director – Jean-Christophe Mast
Costumes – Katia Duflot
Set designs – Emmanuelle Favre
Lighting – Jacques Rouveyrollis
Video – Julien Soulier

Orchestra de l’Opéra de Marseille

Michele Spotti (conductor)

Thirty years since Das Rheingold – or L’Or du Rhin, as it was dually advertised – was last staged in Marseille, it returns as part of what I assume to be a new Ring, directed by Charles Roubaud and conducted by the Marseille Opera’s music director (also incoming Principal Guest Conductor of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper), the energetic and highly talented Michele Spotti. Marseille’s handsome art deco opera house is celebrating the occasion in some style, including an outing on the staircase for Erda’s stylish costume of thirty years ago (director also Charles Roubaud, designer Katia Duflot). 

This too is stylishly conceived, evoking a time when the house was new: round about 1930, I should guess. The opening scene takes place, as in a sense it should, beneath the bank of the Rhine, albeit in the guise of a ‘Rheinbank’ vault. As the Prelude progresses and the curtain rises, a cleaner goes about his business, dreams of ‘higher’ things on his mind as his theatrical sweeping, in time with the music’s close, suggests. This is Alberich, soon to be teased by glamorous employees indeed, Rhinemaidens with keys to the safe and its gold bars. So, if Wagner dramatises primal conversion of value-free gold into capital, here we see a redramatisation such as happens every day, indeed every second, in our accursed age of capital. There never was a golden age: on that Wagner is clear. As we did with Patrice Chéreau at Bayreuth and have done many times since, we witness a specific case of Alberich’s ‘theft’ – in essence, he simply offers the asking price, though that is already to argue in the language of private property and capital – in a world created by the gods and yet already shaped by his forerunners.   

The second scene introduces us, as one might expect, to older ‘money’ and power. Here, is a gilded age, redolent in particular of the United States, the age of Gatsby – they were careless people, Wotan and Fricka – with art deco to boot. It does not portray the house or its origins directly, but one might be led, as one is with the North American trappings, to reflect in kind. A nice touch is an ornamental, visibly protected tree in the corner, the light of Freia’s apples extinguished following her abduction. Another is that an Empire-State-Building like Valhalla can be partially seen, through the mists: yes, as Wagner intended, albeit for the age of King Kong. Video projection enables us to witness Alberich’s transformations in Nibelheim, whilst we hear him when invisible via totalitarian tannoy. Such points of detail are welcome, not because everything necessarily has to be done in this way, but because they anchor the drama with stage action that has been thought through. The beginning of the final scene I found a little disappointing: empty, without much to look at or have one think, but perhaps that was the point, prior to entry into the new tower via gilded lift (ring any bells, Donner(ld)?) 

Spotti’s musical direction was resourceful, given the relatively small orchestra at his disposal. Wind naturally came more to the fore than they might usually do, but that opportunity was seized to have us hear a good deal of that detail. Not that the Marseille strings were underwhelming, far from it; at their best, they played with an appropriately golden sheen. Some musicians were heard from beyond the pit, a pair of harpists in a box above included. The latter certainly worked hard for their gold. If there were a few awkward corners – this is far from an easy score for any orchestra – Spotti marshalled his forces with flair and assurance. It was a relatively broad reading - just over two-and-a-half hours, I think – but only occasionally, above all during the beginning of the final scene, did tension sag. I have heard many performances considerably more lacking in starrier houses. 

Zoltán Nagy’s Alberich would have graced any house, conceived and brought to life with a theatricality that did not preclude but rather gave birth to musical excellence. His way with Wagner’s words was similarly captivating. Much the same could – and should – be said of Samy Camps’s Loge, a definite star turn. Alexandre Duhamel’s Wotan was more mixed: initially sounding somewhat parted and unusually vibrato-laden, though it improved. Marion Lebègue made the most of Fricka, bringing words and music vividly off-page on-stage. Gangster giants – dead ringers, as it were, for Babylon Berlin’s Ringverein – were presented by Patrick Bolleire and Louis Morvan, the dark brutality of the latter’s Fafner properly chilling. A fine trio of Rhinemaidens and, in general, a cast with excellent ensemble contributed to the important lesson, familiar to many of us in London from Regents Opera’s ringside events, that Wagner should not, should not be left solely to our metropolitan theatres. Emphasis, in both cases, on story-telling and character definition, not eschewing conceptual apparatus yet also not being overwhelmed by it, forms a crucial part both of our operatic ecology and of a continuing tradition of Wagner as nineteenth-century theatrical drama that can yet speak to us today.

Parsifal, Vienna State Opera, 8 April 2026

Images: © Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn

 

Amfortas – Gerald Finley
Gurnemanz – Franz-Josef Selig
Parsifal – Klaus Florian Vogt
Klingsor – Werner van Mechelen
Kundry – Jennifer Holloway
Titurel – Matheus França
Younger Parsifal – Nikolay Sidorenko
Squires – Florentina Serles, Daria Sushkova, Andrew Turner, Adrian Autard
First Knight of the Grail – Carlo Osuna
Second Knight of the Grail – Alex Ilvakhin
Flowermaidens – Ileana Tonca, Mariia Zherebiateva, Anna Bondarenko, Ilia Staple, Jenni Hietala, Isabel Signoret

Director, designs, costumes – Kirill Serebrennikov
Lighting – Franck Evin
Assistant director – Evgeny Kulagin
Assistant designer – Olga Pavliuk
Assistant costume designer – Tatina Dolmatovskaya
Video and photography – Aleksey Fokin, Yurii Karih
Fight coordinator – Ran Arthur Braun
Dramaturgy – Sergio Morabito
Actors

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Thomas Lang)
Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Axel Kober (conductor)

More by happy accident than design, my Easter Monday Rheingold in Salzburg was followed only two evenings later in Vienna by Parsifal from the same director, Kirill Serebrennikov. Whilst the former marked the first instalment, if the third performance, of a new Ring, the latter was the final performance in a revival of a production first seen in 2021 and reviewed here at its first revival last year. My thoughts on the production largely remain similar to 2025, though there will doubtless have been small changes, given a largely new cast, Klaus Florian Vogt the only singer to reprise a principal role. I shall doubtless also have seen different things and reacted differently to what I saw, so I shall recapitulate, without reading my former review, before proceeding to those performances. Conductor Axel Kober remained in the pit, as of course did the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, although how many players will have been the same I do not know. 

Serebrennikov’s role as a film as well as stage director is, as in Das Rheingold, apparent throughout. In this vision of Monsalvat correctional facility (the ‘l’ given by a cross) we are made to think and feel, if not quite as Wagner would have had us do – how can we ever know? – then in a way certainly preferable to any moribund attempt to imitate, the threadbare letter mistaken for the spirit, just as the ‘l’ Cross has almost vanished when we (and the characters) return for the third act to a building and institution that remains even after its initial purpose has died. So far, so Wagnerian one, might say, penetrating in historical decay at least to the essence of this Grail community tale. In some ways, this is Kundry’s tale: she as photojournalist documents the regime and its hardships, writing a lengthy investigative (exploitative?) story for the glossy magazine ‘Schloss’ managed by Klingsor, which may or may not contribute to institutional demise. 

The question of gaze is interesting: there is clearly something strongly homoerotic to the film visions not only of the young Parsifal (Nikolay Sidorenko) revisited or remembered by his later self (Vogt also on stage, a ghost who sings). ‘Er ist schön, der Knabe!’ as Klingsor cannot help but admit. Whether the prison activities, physical training, ‘play’ wrestling and all, themselves partake in such homoeroticism will partly be a matter for the beholder. There is, however, no question in the case of the swan, another young inmate who approaches the inexperienced Parsifal on film, only swiftly to be felled, his body taken away by guards whose relationship to the prisoners, not least old lag and tattoist Gurnemanz, is anthropologically fascinating if occasionally narratively tricky. Lingering shower shots as the pure fool cleanses himself tell one tale, which may or may not be concluded by filmic resurrection for the swan (a prison nickname perhaps?) at the close. 

But we should not forget that, if Gurnemanz is Wagner’s narrator, Kundry is in many ways Serebrennikov’s. Not only do prisoners act up for her, young Parsifal learning to flex his biceps in imitation of others by the time of his release from what seems to have been a week-long sentence, days recorded on the film, at the close of the first act. But she is photographer and writer, clearly a more serious as well as successful figure than fashionista Flowermaidens who get nowhere with their lust, when young Parsifal comes to the office, ritually stripped and bashful, to be reclothed in tighty whitie Calvin Kleins and still tighter black leather trousers. Kundry has her way beyond Wagner’s kiss, if not the whole way, whilst the older Parsifal, powerless to intervene in a past that is past, attempts to save his younger self. So the gaze represented, arguably embodied too, extends beyond the homoerotic, even beyond the queer, to the female too. Whatever names we may wish to accord this or these, such orientations and identities stand(s) in opposition to singular, heteronormative patriarchy, here a quasi-monastic prison in itself. Notably, there is no Voice from Above at the end: it is Kundry herself, less released by death than released by life. 

Kober’s conducting was largely brisk and no-nonsense. It was less overtly an ‘interpretation’ than many might conductors might give, though in so complex a score there is unquestionable art in giving the impression of letting it and the wonderful Vienna orchestra speak for themselves. If there were times when greater variation in tempo on both micro- and macro-levels might have been desirable or at least interesting, there were great dynamic range and considerable timbral variety – if not that of, say, a Barenboim – to the orchestra doing what it does best. The chorus was outstanding – surely outstandingly trained too – throughout; it would be tempting to take that for granted, but its marriage of precision and heft was not the least of the evening’s achievements. 

Vogt and Sidorenko gave tireless, complementary performances as Parsifal, their interaction and non-interaction moving as well as suggestive. Hearing Vogt in this role almost inevitably summons memories – for those who have heard it anyway – of his Lohengrin, an historico-genealogical layering that is fruitful if not necessary. This Parsifal must play the game we play yet retain freshness on the way to experience, far from the only instance of work and production gaining in turn from their interaction. Some dislike Vogt’s voice – excessively, I cannot help but think – but that is surely neither here nor there. He reminds us that he is justly a major artist in this repertoire, has been for many years, and shows no sign of going anywhere yet. Jennifer Holloway will sing Adriano in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus’s first ever Rienzi this summer. Her Kundry was well acted, well sung, increasing in overt confidence in fine parallel with Serebrennikov’s concept. Franz-Josef Selig could not reasonably be faulted as Gurnemanz, marriage of words and music an object lesson. The greater ambiguity, even occasional malevolence, of the character in this production was subtly suggested without caricature. Gerald Finley’s Amfortas made a similarly intelligent impression, unquestionably founded in and at ease with Wagner’s words and their changing meaning. Werner van Mechelen made his mark not only as Klingsor but as this Klingsor, Smaller roles were all well taken, often illuminatingly so. Like Kundry, probably Parsifal too, Wagner’s Bühnenweihfestspiel again found itself released by the new life staging and performances can and did impart.