This was an altogether enthralling and deeply engaging performance.
The set was a circular stage with two ramps for entrances and exits in the middle of the Symphony Hall stalls, with only a few props – gold in pots, chairs and table and a model of Valhalla. The lighting was focused around giant stands, switched on and off very explicitly, which I suppose was making a point about the life lived by the gods in the limelight.
Wagner held utopian socialist views in the 1840’s and early 1850’s, and, though they later became less all-determining in his thinking, they contribute important elements to the development of The Ring, and remained with him till the end of his life. Cosima Wagner’s Diaries in 1877 describe Wagner journeying up the Thames and expressing the view that London was “Alberich’s dream come true – Nibelheim, world domination, activity, work, everywhere the oppressive feeling of steam and fog“. Wagner had already issued a clarion call for “Revolution” in an essay by that name just prior to the May 1849 revolt in Dresden. Like Bakunin, his revolution was a call to instinct and to vitalism. It was a romanticism of revolt that sought the overthrow of states because they suppressed the instinct, the vitality of life. He saw revolution as a “supernatural force” and referred to it as “a lofty goddess.” Wagner wrote: “I [the revolution] am the ever rejuvenating, ever fashioning Life. I will destroy every wrong which has power over men. I will destroy the domination of one over the other, of the dead over the living, of the material over the spiritual, I will shatter the power of the mighty, of the law and of property. Man’s master shall be his own will, his own desire his only law, his own strength his only property. “
How to regenerate the modern world was throughout Wagner’s life an abiding concern – though his operas have very different answers to those questions both in relation to each other and even within the one work. The Ring is itself both informed by the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer (some have even argued for a Christian version of the Ring) and the earlier socialist perspective. Like any great work of art, The Ring has an infinite range of possible interpretations, but one based upon a socialist perspective makes perfect sense for Das Rheingold (less so for Gotterdammerung, say), and of course the famous Bayreuth Centenary Chereau Ring focused on frock-coated top-hatted Victorian capitalist gods.
This Rheingold – or rather RhineGold, since it was sung in an excellent English new translation – makes the Gods celebrities and populist figures – Wotan has a blingy watch, designer shoes, a shell-suit and is constantly speaking to the media (a slogan says ‘Your Lives Matter’), Fricka’s costume has a WAG look to it. The Rhine Girls are seen as in cahoots with the gods to protect the gold from the hoi polloi, and wear glittery mini-dresses, with high heels and selfie sticks . One wears a MAGA hat, and another a bishop’s mitre and cross. Alberich is seen as a Deliveroo cyclist, and the dwarves come across as hoody-wearing outsiders, some also wearing cycling helmets and Deliveroo baskets (the Tarnhelm itself becomes a cycling helmet.) Fasolt and Fafner wear hard hats, and not very smart suits and ties. The theme is therefore definitely one of a divided society, with a privileged elite and many others who are excluded outsiders, becoming a collective ‘other’ who, dressed in rainbow hoodies, both menace and adulate the gods at the end of the opera (see picture below.) Alberich comes across, therefore, more sympathetically than in some productions – he is making the best of one of the few chances of life-betterment open to him when he renounces love and takes the gold.
As an interpretation it was consistent and convincing. I suppose what it leaves out is the whole element of the despoiling of Nature by human beings which is another interpretation of the role of the Rhine maidens and the gold, and the end of Gotterdammerung which implies some sort of return to a ‘natural’ state reborn – and of course that is also what is behind Erda’s intervention at the end of Rheingold – the warning of Nature. The approach taken perhaps also doesn’t take sufficiently into account the fact that Wotan is responsible for contracts and treaties, for the realm of public order – this is part of his whole dilemma in Walkure. We will never know now how Graham Vick (who died two weeks before the opening night) might have continued this Ring, but Richard Willacy as Director clearly carried out the spirit of what Vick would have wanted.
Eric Greene was outstanding as Wotan, with stature and voice for the role (fraying a bit sometimes on the top notes, but sounding magnificent in his final reflections where the sword motif is introduced). And equally Loge played by Brenden Gunnell was brilliantly performed, as a gay hipster or heavy metal biker (red string vest, leather jacket, lots of metal, painted red nails) who was also sinister as Wotan’s violent enforcer. Chrystal E Williams as Fricka had a beautiful voice but her diction was sometimes unclear. Fasolt played by Keel Watson and Fafner by Andrew Slater were very good indeed – excellent voices, good diction and Slater had a wonderful line in sly menace (and, as he should, Watson showed the vulnerability of Fasolt). Alberich was well sung and characterised by Ross Ramgobin but his diction was sometimes unclear and maybe he sounded slightly underpowered at times – he was also ‘guilty’ of over-acting at some key moments. The huge – by Covid standards – CBSO offered wonderful -playing. Alpesh Chauhan’s performance by timing was really quite slow – I made it two hours 35 minutes, almost a Goodall-like speed, but it never felt as though the music was dragging, and climaxes were well pointed. As in all good Wagner conducting there seemed to be a seamless arc of music from the CBSO and Chauhan, with an onward measured flow which was carefully varied and correlated to meet the different moods of the music and what’s happening on stage without ever becoming disjointed.
One of the best things I’ve seen in ages!!
John's musical journey 