United Kingdom Wagner, Götterdämmerung: Soloists, Members of London Homosexual Males’s Refrain, Members of Regents Opera Higher Voices Refrain, Regents Opera Ensemble / Ben Woodward (conductor). York Corridor, Bethnal Inexperienced, London, 16.2.2025. (MB)
Wagner’s Ring is the drama of our time, but it’s certainly the drama of each time. Seeing Opera North’s live performance Rheingold solely 5 days after the fateful 2016 referendum, the work appeared to take its go away from that. In our current malaise, Götterdämmerung inevitably appears nearer than ever. Wagner, in any case, pointed to the good advantage of fable being its alleged fact forever, its content material inexhaustible for any age. He isn’t saying fairly the identical factor there, though neither is he saying one thing solely completely different. Tempting although it may be to proceed down that highway, the particularity of this specific manufacturing and efficiency must be our major concern. If my private expertise was lower than superb, in that I used to be unable to see Die Walküre and Siegfried, the ultimate day of Wagner’s Ring spoke principally for itself, with tantalising strategies of what I might need missed — and dearly want that I had not.
Caroline Staunton’s manufacturing continues to inform the story with nice intelligence and readability, additional framing refreshing quite than distracting. The sense of a set of objects, a museum or gallery even, has developed since Rheingold’s contest of Valhalla and Nibelheim, to one thing much less distant, incontestably ‘current’, as most of the finest Götterdammerungen have at all times been. In any Ring, ideas nearly inevitably flip to that of Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau: testomony not solely to its extraordinary high quality, nearly taking upon itself that legendary high quality to which Wagner referred, but additionally to its historic fortune, falling in the precise place on the proper time, and with the precise know-how (tv) spreading its phrase. That is unquestionably, as Chéreau remarked and confirmed, a post-religious society of more and more determined rituals, which is aware of no morality and finds it tough, maybe inconceivable, to ‘know’ in any respect. Right here, the sense of objects curated, possessed, and, just like the gold, fatefully valued – an ‘artwork market’ not so very completely different from what one would possibly encounter, say, within the Tate Fashionable’s Turner Prize – entwines with Wagner’s epic, genealogical technique, verbal and musical, of telling, retelling, including standpoints and views, by no means repeating. The world of the Norns seeks, maybe, to guard objects gathered from earlier instalments. One can see and really feel this when, as a gallery spectator, one ventures in the course of the intervals to examine the saucepan and tins, presumably Mime’s, from Siegfried, and different such objets.
The next world of the Gibichungs glories, trivially but palpably, of their extraction and abstraction, within the fetishist want so as to add to the gathering, as Alberich wanted so as to add to his hoard, Wagner’s furchtbare Not turned Lacanian. (We would replicate on that as we search so as to add to the gathering of Ring performances we’ve seen. Why are we doing this? Is it as mere collectors, maybe nearer to Nietzsche’s ‘Wagnerians’ or as one thing extra lively, as members, because the revolutionary viewers Wagner himself demanded?) I couldn’t assist however consider the denizens of Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth Götterdämmerung safeguarding their Picassos as Brünnhilde, purposely underwhelmingly, set Wall Avenue (barely) ablaze. That consumerism seems to be what drives Gunther and Gutrune to want to purchase Siegfried and Brünnhilde, although Hagen after all is aware of higher and deeper. When all is returned to the Rhinemaidens, one can learn this in all method of the way; an ecological crucial isn’t essentially to the scenic fore, although it hardly want be, since it’ll certainly current itself to any considering particular person within the midst of our local weather emergency.
As an alternative, we’re prompted to consider the position artwork and its commodification, in addition to extra normal sliding into the ‘mere’ craft, certainly ‘impact with out trigger’ Wagner identified within the extra meretricious would-be artwork of his personal time. Paris, the capital of the nineteenth century, is transposed to the Ring in a Bethnal Inexperienced boxing ring. And the ring itself, like numerous of those objects extra akin to Loge’s Rheingold toyland ‘Tand’ than the fearsome object we’ve been led to consider, good points no matter energy it might need by way of the act of investing. It’s much less a matter of it engaged on account of perception, than on account of its valuation, or maybe higher a financialised, late-capitalist merging of the 2; till, that’s, the underside falls out of the market, because it at all times will, rope of Destiny or in any other case.
Conductor Ben Woodward and his small ensemble continued to work wonders. In fact there are occasions when one longs for a full orchestra, simply as in a big theatre, there are occasions when one longs to have the ability to see the faces of these onstage. What stunned was how comparatively few they have been. Götterdämmerung certainly presents the hardest problem on this sense of the 4 dramas. Das Rheingold as Kammerspiel makes appreciable sense, however the cosmic scale and grand opéra hauntings of this story of Siegfried’s demise and Brünnhilde’s redemption, heard by way of all that has handed earlier than, appear to require one thing completely different. Sustaining pressure over its huge span is tough sufficient at Bayreuth or Covent Backyard. Even probably the most exalted orchestras will slip right here and there.
This, nonetheless, was decidedly not the second for Beckmesserish quibbles. Musical drama unfolded with care and intelligence, in tandem with the staging but removed from enslaved to it. Alternatives to listen to it anew, generally even a bit of ‘inside out’, have been gladly taken, forming a part of an general refreshment for the jaded, in addition to a riveting introduction for these enabled to attend for the primary time. The instrumentalists deserve nothing however reward for his or her contributions all through, and choral forces introduced welcome and, on this context, all of the extra telling distinction, allowing that larger-scale operatic world thrillingly to burst in.
None of this might, after all, have been achieved with out the contributions from a superb set of singing-actors. Totally different viewers members could have had completely different favourites, and all contributed to a drama that was very a lot higher than the sum of its elements. Nonetheless, I used to be notably struck by Simon Wilding’s Hagen and Catharine Woodward’s Brünnhilde (partly the roles, little doubt, although solely partly). Wilding’s Hagen, darkish and harmful, merely owned the stage, a examine in evil and its simple attraction. The scene together with his father proved particularly shifting, Oliver Gibbs not a lot reprising as growing his excellent Alberich for brand spanking new, nonetheless darker instances. Woodward’s Brünnhilde was equally blessed of stage presence. Artwork in lots of respects conceals artwork: it was tough to not really feel that this merely ‘was’ the Valkyrie, and these merely ‘have been’ the ultimate phases of her journey. She may actually sing too, providing an Immolation Scene of equal humanity and grandeur, in tandem with conductor and orchestra. It appeared, then, in some ways becoming that, on the finish of the second-act trio, maybe haunted right here extra by Verdi than Meyerbeer, Staunton ought to supply the twist of an surprising passing union between Hagen and Brünnhilde.
Gunther and Gutrune supply completely different challenges, after all. Vocal portrayal of weak characters is at all times a troublesome name, to which Andrew Mayor and Justine Viani rose very nicely certainly. The important thing, it appeared, lay in portrayal arising from the textual content, as was additionally the case with Peter Furlong’s tireless Siegfried, the character clearly, intriguingly traumatised. I think a clue to this could have been present in Siegfried; even with out, it pointed to the difficulties our age and certainly Wagner’s (later Attic tragedy too, for that matter) have present in heroism. Catherine Backhouse gave a heartfelt studying of Waltraute’s pleading. Norns and Rhinemaidens emerged in advantageous ensemble, with out sacrifice to particular person voice.
To conclude, then, could I as soon as once more counsel that any reader feeling in a position to take action would possibly contemplate supporting this extraordinary enterprise (for extra info click on right here), thrice denied Arts Council funding? The ecology of opera on this nation is now as parlous as that of the world round us. Perhaps, simply possibly, Götterdämmerung can nonetheless be averted.
Mark Berry
Manufacturing:
Director – Caroline Staunton
Assistant Administrators – Eleanor Strutt, Keiko Sumida
Designs – Isabella van Braeckel
Lighting – Patrick Malmström
Producer – CJ Heaver
Forged:
First Norn – Ingeborg Novrup Børch
Second Norn / Flosshilde – Mae Haydorn
Third Norn / Woglinde – Jillian Finnamore
Brünnhilde – Catharine Woodward
Siegfried – Peter Furlong
Gunther – Andrew Mayor
Hagen – Simon Wilding
Gutrune – Justine Viani
Waltraute – Catherine Backhouse
Alberich – Oliver Gibbs
Wellgunde – Elizabeth Findon
Vassals – Davide Basso, Max Catalano, Anthony Colasanto, Jacob Dyksterhouse, Tim Sawers, Alfred Mitchell, Ed Walters, Robin Whitehouse, Man Wooden-Gush
