Fricka – Christa Mayer; Siegmund – Klaus Florian Vogt; Hunding – Georg Zeppenfeld; Wotan – Tomasz Konieczny; Sieglinde – Lise Davidsen; Brünnhilde – Iréne Theorin; Valentin Schwarz (director), Andrea Cozzi (designs), Andy Besuch (costumes), Konrad Kuhn (dramaturgy). Reinhard Traub (lighting), Luis August Krawen (video), Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Cornelius Meister (conductor
There was a good example in this production of Walküre where taking a new look at The Ring and doing something unconventional really works, and offers new insights. Wotan’s Farewell from ‘Der Augen leuchtendes Paar’ onwards becomes in this production Wotan singing in a monologue on an increasingly empty stage mainly expressing his misery at the mess he’s made of things. Brunnhilde has gone off (I’ll say more about that exit later on) and, for the Magic Fire Music, Fricka comes on to attempt a reunion, with a candle-lit tray of drinks. While it is true that Wotan still has to sing about his spear point, the clink of the spear on the ground is made by the sound of glasses when Fricka offers her glass to Wotam=n. Wotan takes not much notice of Fricka, she realises she’s failed and she goes sadly off stage to the sound of the long string melody and the brass and glockenspiels and woodwind. Clearly some people hated it and there was a fair amount of booing at the end, but it struck me as a clever way of showing us new insights into the characters and their motivations. Another good idea was having Hunding come as a suppliant to Fricka in Act 2 and being a very low class figure in this posh house
I was also thinking as I walked up the Green Hill about our current expectations of Wagner productions. We no longer expect to see Fricka’s rams or Grane (though we do see a kind of Grane in this production). We don’t expect to see Valkyries flying through the sky or even only rarely a dragon in his cave, or a toad pop up. So to what extent are we justified in our criticism of things being ignored or changed in this production?To me there’s a difference between those objects which have symbolic experience and meaning and those which don’t. A dragon does not, a sword or a spear do – but I will have to think more about this
Act 1’s Hunding house is a very rough looking place with lots of scrap metal, failing electricals and lumps of concrete all over the place. In the Prelude, Hunding, wearing a cheap suit and a tie, is trying to fix the fuse box when the curtain goes up. We immediately see that Sieglinde is already pregnant – this is presumably by Wotan. who tries to assault her later (if Hunding, this would be for me a production step too far in going off at a tangent, given the importance of Siegfried’s genealogy). The set continues unchanged until the door bangs and spring comes in. New scenery comes down from the flies creating a kind of ideal young family home with plenty of toys, bright colours and two young children playing. This again I thought was a good insight into perhaps the two’s unrealistic hopes. After Sieglinde’s ‘Du bist der Lenz’ we go back to the ramshackle house. The glowing pyramid makes a reappearance when Siegmund sees Nothung in the fire (which wasn’t there) – there was a sudden glowing light from something Sieglinde is holding in her bedroom and when opened by Siegmund contains a revolver. So Nothung is a pistol, not a sword….. This remains consistent until Siegmund dies, though how badly it was damaged isn’t clear and how the forging in Siegfried will be handled is currently a bit of a mystery. The staging of Act 1 is pretty director-proof in consisting of three individuals in a tense but clear relationship with each other. The person regie was fairly standard but still very moving
Act 2 is another part of Valhalla. Apparently, Freya’s funeral is taking place though there is no indication from on stage that this is who the coffin contains. The set remains the same throughout the Act. We meet Brunnhilde who has leather trousers and long blonde hair, and we also meet Grane who is a kind of personal servant much given to taking selfies – he helps a lot with Sieglinde’s baby (I’ll come on to that). Act 2 handling of characters on stage has some interesting touches e.g Brunnhilde is much more nervous than usual in the Todesverkundigung scene and Wotan and Fricka are hovering around in the background at first. She’s touchingly excited to be disobeying Wotan. Shockingly Wotan tries to sexually assault Sieglinde at one point – he stops I think when the fight between Hunding and Sieglinde starts. The person to person handling was done, I think, quite well by the director
Act 3 opens hilariously in a upmarket plastic surgery clinic – the Valkyries are all having plastic surgery and there are various comic moments that work rather well. This also paves the way for how Brunnhilde’s banishment by Wotan is handled – she is given a surgical coat by Grane and led off into the depths of the clinic to undergo some sort of suspended animation process. In this production by the time she comes on with Brunnhilde Sieglinde has actually had the baby and he arrives in a blanket carried by Grane. I don’t have a problem with this (it has always seemed rather daft to me that Brunnhilde should have to tell Sieglinde she’s going to have a baby – surely she should know……)
Musically, things continued to be of a very high standard (mostly). To start with the most positive , Act 1 must be the best sung I’ve ever heard in live performance. Klaus Florian Vogt’s and Lise Davidsen’s spring songs to each other were beautifully sung with very clear diction and pointing of words, and some lovely phrasing. Vogt also has the heft for the big scenes and moments – his ‘Walse’ was strong but also not overdone. Vogt’s singing in the Todesverkundigung scene was also very beautiful. Lise Davidsen heard live is quite something – her voice is massive but also beautifully controlled. Her ‘Oh hehrstes Wunder’ in Act 3 was one of the most amazing sounds I’ve ever heard in the opera house. Iréne Theorin received quite a lot of criticism in the first cycle and she must be nearing the end of her time when she can realistically sing this role – she’s apparently been singing it for 17 years – but she sounded in bright and clear voice – high notes pinged, a warm central register; she sounded very good indeed. Georg Zeppenfeld was as usual a magnificently voiced figure as Hunding. Christa Mayer was very good as Fricka too. Tomasz Konieczny has a lighter voice than one might expect as Wotan, but he worked very hard to point words and achieved a great deal of variation in tone – some of his Farewell was sung barely above a whisper; I thought he was unusually effective and certainly had no trouble in commanding the stage when needed. He had understandable problems though with some of Cornelius Meister’s exaggerated rallentandos in Act 3 – after a fairly smooth and well handled Acts 1 and 2, Meister seemed to throw caution to the winds in Act 3 and introduced some rather heavily-done gear changes to point up a particular motif or climax that seemed unnecessarily heavy (and clearly caught Wotan out a couple of times . It seems unfair to be criticising someone who only stepped in to the role 3 weeks before the first night, when the slated conductor dropped out – whether through illness, ‘artistic disagreement’, or what, who knows..) but I have to tell it as it is, and some of the orchestra seemed to get caught out at times too. At the end there were huge cheers for Davidsen and Vogt and Zeepenfeld, considerable appreciation for Konieczny and Meyer and some boos as well as cheers for Meister
So…..high quality singing, a so-so conductor and a production which varies from the brilliant to the annoying. A day’s gap now before Siegfried……
John's musical journey 