The End of Bewilderment

April 29th is Zubin Mehta’s birthday. As a gift to its most beloved musical director, Florence unveiled a new production of Götterdämmerung, a joint Ring Cycle venture with the Valencia Opera started two years ago.

After a performance lasting six hours (including two intermissions), Zubin and the full cast had a 15 minutes standing ovation by an audience packing every one of the 2.500 seats of the huge Teatro Comunale. Then, 250 lucky guests moved to a Gala Birthday Dinner in Palazzo Tornabuoni; we returned to our hotel at around 3 a.m. After a run in Florence until May 9th, the production will be seen in Valencia in June at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, where in July a full fledge Ring Cycle is scheduled. According to present plans, the full Cycle will be back in Florence in 2013, the bicentenary of Wagner’s birth, for the inauguration of the new Park of the Music now being built near the main Railway Station.

The Florence- Valencia Götterdämmerung and the other parts of the Cycle (shown in June 2007 and in October 2008) have been greeted by the Italian press as “the very best Ring” of the first part of the XXI century. Before expressing such a strong opinion, I would want to see, at least, the two new productions of Götterdämmerung completing the Ring Cycles of Cologne-Venice (next June) and Aix-en-Provence – Salzburg (next July). No doubt, the Florence-Valencia Ring is a landmark not only for the interpretation of Wagner masterpiece but for the musical theatre as a whole. It is the end of bewilderment in a live musical theatre performance.

Three years ago when the project was presented, the whole idea seemed daring and a bit foolish: to entrust the production of the Ring to the Catalan avant-garde group La Fura dels Baus ; in its previous operating experience (e.g. Debussy’s Le Marthyre de Saint Sebastien ) La Fura has drastically cut the score and introduced fully naked mimes and rather explicit stage movements. It appears (but is could be a hearsay) that at the initial contact, La Fura expressed the intention to compact in two-three hour the nearly 15 hour score, horrifying Maestro Mehta who just in Florence had conducted in 1979-81 a memorable Ring. Gradually Carlus Pedrissa (the stage director) and La Fura developed an entirely new approach to the Cycle. This approach is in full bloom in Götterdämmerung. There are not any socio-political undertones, but a delicate balance between science fiction and poetry. Science fiction is modern XXI century way to represent the myth: all possible special effects are employed (3D movie projections on ten screens , elaborate stage machinery, flying objects, suspended swimming pools for the Rhinemaiden, complex lightings, the audience participation in Siegfried’s funeral march). And the myth? It does not revolve around the end of capitalistic industrial world and the promise of a better new age, but it is based upon the final verses of “Siegfried’sTod”, the initial text of what three decades later, became the Ring. These verses were never put to music in Götterdämmerung (indeed deleted from the final text – in nearly 30 year the young red hot revolutionary Richard Wagner had became a bourgeois himself); in short, they state that after the fall of the Gods, in a world without Lord, there will be only Love”. A lay pantheistic simple philosophy.

If the set and direction are the end of bewilderment, the reviewer is bewildered by the harmony between the stage, the pit and the voices. La Fura has been an earnest and successful effort to follow each and every note of the score.

As the triumph of love is the main theme of this Götterdämmerung, love itself is being rhapsodized in all possible combinations: conjugal love in the “day break”, wild sex (nearly a rape with coitus interruptus) in Siegfried’s approach to a sensual , and sex starving Gutrune, a full orgy in Brünnhilde’s rock, teasing petting in the scene of Siegfried with the Rhinemaden , lust for unsatisfied love by Günther, Hagen and Alberich . Again as love is at the center of Götterdämmerung as well as of the Ring , Mehta has a lyric approach to the score , quite different from that (very dramatic) of the Florence 1979-81 Ring. The Maggio Musicale Orchestra and Chorus responded in an excellent manner.

Also, both Mehta and La Fura have, at their disposal, a better cast of singers and actors than that of the 1979-81 when Jean Cox as Siegfried was already way over bend. Lance Ryan is well known to the American and German audience, but he has seldom sung in Italy. Notably, he has never shown his athletic qualities. In this Götterdämmerung, as soon as he is welcome to dinner in the Gibichung royal hall, the Canadian tenor, as any good red blooded but well mannered North American, takes off his dirty forest wilderness clothes to shower and put on a proper attire: his high “Cs” and legatos are beautiful under the shower and when , due to Hagen’s potion, tries to do it with Gutrune on the dinner table and in front of his hosts. He can even sing hanging by his feet in the confrontation with in Brünnhilde in the second act. And he can shoot an acute after another. Not a full heldentenor, but a very good tenor with a crystal clear timbre.

Brünnhilde is another North American , Jennifer Wilson, recently applauded as Isolde in Los Angeles. She is as overweight as expected by a Walkyrie and, albeit very good with the high tonalities, she has some difficulties in descending to low pitched tones. She masters the role technically by molding the use of her voice to fully explode in the final holocaust scene.

The Ghichung Kingdom is a modern Metropolis for rather vulgar nouveaux riches. In the smoke stocks of a declining industrial society, a ticker – similar to those of Cnbc or any other all news TV financial channels – reports the stock exchange news. Gutrune is a sexy lyric soprano (Bernardette Flaitz), Günther a well round baritone (Stefan Stoll), Hagen a deep basso (Hans Peter Köning), Alberich a less deep basso bordering on a baritone voice (Franz-Joseph Kapellman). Of all the other singers, a special mention is needed for Catherine Wyn-Rogers (Waltraute), the only semi-Divinity in this very human Gesmtkunswerk (total theater) centered on love.

Giuseppe Pennisi | 03 May 2009

L’inaugurazione del 72°Maggio Musicale Fiorentino è avvenuta sotto il segno di Wagner, con Götterdämmerung, completando cosi l’intero ciclo del Ring iniziato due anni or sono. L’idea di mettere in musica questo ciclo di opere che compongono “L’anello del Nibelungo” venne a Wagner giaà nel 1841, quando soggiornava in Francia, per poi sviluppasrsi attraverso una gestazione complessa e travagliata e che compre un ampio arco di tempo che va dal 1851 al 1874. L’intero Ring avrà la sua prima rappresentazione integrale allo Festspielhaus di Bayreuth dal 13 al 17 agosto 1876. L’argomento deriva dall’Edda, raccolta poetica scandinava del XIII secolo, e dal Nibelungenlied, poema epico del medioevo tedesco. Composto dopo “Tristan und Isolde”, Götterdämmerung, ha due straordinari momenti, strettamente correlati tra loro: l’iniziale scena d’amore fra Brünnhilde e Siegfried, un amore fatto di esaltazione trascendentale e l’olocausto di Brunnhilde che ne è solo apparentemente la tragica conclusione, ma che in realtà appare essere come un’ulteriore sublimazione, di fronte al crepuscolo degli de, cioè di un mondo fatto solo di ansia di potere. Questo ‘allestimento fiorentino è affidato ancora alla Fura dels Baus e al regista Carlos Padrissa. Uno spettacolo che, a mio parere, risulta essere come il meno riuscito rispetto alle altre giornate, soprattutto per l’utilizzo eccessivo di proiezioni filmate, pedane mobili e simbolismi spesso incomprensibili. In sostanza, un concetto registico che complica ulteriormente un lavoro già di pre se intricato. Lo spettacolo, almeno visivamente, è di altissima qualità: le proiezioni (Franc Aleu) e le luci (Peter van Praet) sono curatissime in ogni dettaglio, un macchinario scenico complesso e anche efficace ma avremo preferito un linguaggio più umano” come il Fura e Padrissa sono anche maestri. Molto bella la “marcia funebre”, con il corpo di Siegfried che attraversa la platea, sollevato dai bravissimi mimi e ancora il finale dell’opera con una piramide umana che rappresenta il Walhalla, al crollo del quale i corpi appaiono sospesi nel vuoto, immobili, illuminati da una luce accecante. La buona riuscita di questa Tetralogia la si deve soprattutto a Zubin Mehta e all’Orchestra del Maggio Musicale, in una delle loro migliori prestazioni. Mehta sensibile e raffinato interprete ha scavato nelle sonorità più intime dello spartito cavando suoni e armonie di squisita fattura. Possiamo solo appuntargli una lettura dai tempi eccessivamante lenti. Sulla scena ha agito un cast, se non di fuoriclasse, almeno più che onorevole. Jennifer Wilson, Brünnhilde, ha fatto sfoggio di una voce possente e sicura, ma allo stesso tempo morbida. Non le sarebbe nuociuto un maggior mordente nel finale, ma probabilmente è stata trattenuta dai tempi del direttore. Lance Ryan, Siegfried, molto quotato come interprete wagneriano, alla realtà dei fatti appare un interprete dovizioso, molto partecipe scenicamente, ma con forzature vocali. Hans Peter Konig, Hagen, pur con qualche ruvidezza supera per interpretazione il sia pur buono Gunther di Stefan Stoll. Molto musicale, ma vocalmente debole, la Gutrune di Bernadette Falitz e più che soddisfacente la prestazione di Catherine Wyn-Rogers nel ruolo di Waltraute. Teatro gremito da un pubblico partecipe e coraggioso, viste le sei ore abbondati dello spettacolo, che ha meritatamente premiato tutti gli interpreti con applausi convinti e calorosi.

Lukas Franceschini | 22 Maggio 2009