Götterdämmerung
Siegfried | Stefan Vinke |
Brünnhilde | Susan Bullock |
Gunther | Peter Coleman-Wright |
Gutrune | Rachel Willis-Sørensen |
Alberich | Wolfgang Koch |
Hagen | John Tomlinson |
Waltraute | Mihoko Fujimura |
Woglinde | Nadine Livingstone |
Wellgunde | Kai Rüütel |
Floßhilde | Harriet Williams |
1. Norn | Maria Radner |
2. Norn | Karen Cargill |
3. Norn | Elisabeth Meister |
Monumental in scale and scope, Götterdämmerung is a work to which it is hard to be indifferent. For many, the idea of an evening of fantasy opera lasting nearly seven hours is unimaginable, so uncongenial is the subject material and so great the attention span demanded. For Wagner fans – and Ring fans in particular – it’s a riveting theatrical and musical experience, the zenith of opera as an art form. Last night at Covent Garden was my first live Götterdämmerung, spent in the company of around three thousand of those fans.
The lead roles of Götterdämmerung are generally thought to be Siegfried and Brünnhilde, but on this occasion, there was no question in my mind who was running the show. John Tomlinson bossed the whole thing as Hagen, the scheming evil genius whose plotting results in the disasters at the end, and I’ve run out of superlatives. As an actor, he displayed schoolboy relish in the cleverness of his schemes, juxtaposed with the studious brilliance of the evil scientist and unbridled delight in Machiavellian manipulation of people. Vocally, Tomlinson’s quality of timbre and command of dynamics and line were of the very highest, aided by sensitive conducting by Pappano which allowed Tomlinson’s voice time and space to breathe.
If I had any doubts about Pappano and the Royal Opera Orchestra in last week’s Walküre, these were dispelled last night. The intensity never flagged, without a single moment in five hours of music in which I felt anything other than totally engaged. The orchestral high point was Siegfried’s funeral march, in which the repeated pairs of drum beats hit me like rifle shots, to the backing of that huge Wagnerian brass. But there was much playing to admire, from the dark strings in the opening to a multitude of woodwind quotes to the evocative calls of Siegfired’s hunting horn to the sound of no less than six harps that accompany the Rhinemaidens.
The singing was generally up to the high standards that one might expect of such a prestigious production, with no real weak links. Tomlinson aside, one moment was outstanding: the scene in which Brünnhilde disrupts her forced wedding to Gunther by accusing Siegfried of treachery. Susan Bullock was sensational, turning the furies of hell onto anyone within earshot. I didn’t feel that she hit the same heights throughout, with singing that was lovely to listen to without having quite that level of impact. Similarly, Stefan Vinke has the right voice for Siegfried – the voice of a young, impetuous man with great strength – but I did wish for a more commanding presence. Vinke’s acting was excellent, however, with Siegfried portrayed as rather blundering, heroic in strength but too uncaring and, in spite of Brünnhilde’s best efforts, too unintelligent to play a true hero’s part in influencing events. Peter Coleman-Wright gave us an equally unintelligent and slightly fey Gunther, thoroughly credible as the self-important coward who is easy prey to Hagen’s manipulation.
Generally, I loved the production. Acting performances were engaging throughout, and I found most of the visuals artistic and evocative. Stefanos Lazaridis’s sets and Marie-Jeanne Lecca’s costumes are of fairly indeterminate but basically modern period, but Warner isn’t afraid to mix these with traditional props (sword, spear, rowing boat). The tarnhelm (the helmet which serves Siegfried both as shape-changer and teleporter) is a splendid creation: a Rubik’s cube grid of darkened glass panels which echoes similar shapes in the Gibichungs’ palace. Another spectacular effect is the fluoresecent red rope of fate, which picks up similarly fluorescent red markings in the three Norns’ black robes. When Brünnhilde is brought in for the forced wedding, she is seated inside a ring of something barbed that immediately suggests the crown-of-thorns of suffering.
Wagner was a thoroughly cerebral composer who was much consumed by the philosophical and political concepts of his day. While he certainly wished to portray these concepts in his operas, you don’t need to decode them in order to appreciate Götterdämmerung: the narrative is so strong that you can simply enjoy a master storyteller spinning an excellent yarn. Besides, it’s hard to know for sure exactly which philosophical point Wagner is trying to make. Wagner himself was uncertain, and discarded no less than three different endings before settling on the one we know today: an orchestral tableau of the destruction of Valhalla viewed by silent watchers. Does this represent the destruction of capitalist tyranny by a Bakunin-inspired revolution? Or a Feuerbachian supplanting of theistic religion by some new humanist order? Or the destruction of the lesser races, to be replaced by a recreated world? We don’t know for sure, and Wagner didn’t want us to, deliberately discarding material that he considered too obvious. Warner seems to favour the last option, with a golden haired figure descending from the heavens within a giant steel ring, while naked Rhinemaidens cavort below – but I’m not entirely sure of Warner’s intent either.
In truth, Götterdämmerung didn’t challenge my intellect in the way Die Walküre did earlier in the cycle. But I was completely bewitched by the story and disarmed by the music. I think I’m joining the massed ranks of Ring fans.
David Karlin | 25 Oktober 2012
The definitive production of Wagner’s Ring will never exist: even 16 hours is not nearly long enough to explore all the baggage this work carries with it. You can’t say Keith Warner hasn’t had a jolly good try; but, despite some honing since five years ago, the closing instalment of his Ring remains as perplexing and dramatically cluttered as the other three.
The two central characters, however, are at their best, allaying any previous niggling doubts. Stefan Vinke is in valiant form as Siegfried, matched by Susan Bullock’s Brünnhilde; as the stage goes up in flames and the golden statues of the gods are lowered into their furnaces, she soars through the final scene.
Wolfgang Koch is recovered and in good voice as Alberich, stealing into his son Hagen’s dreams to urge his evil plans onwards – not that John Tomlinson, who carries much of this production on his veteran shoulders, seems to need the prompting. Peter Coleman-Wright is more a dramatic than a vocal presence as Gunther, but Rachel Willis-Sørensen gleams as Gutrune. The chorus, heard for the only time in the cycle, sound immense.
Warner said recently that the end of the Ring should be a kind of handover of responsibility for the world, from Brünnhilde to us, the audience. The Gap-advert-style models he brings on at the end sadly don’t look much like anyone sitting near me. And yet, whether the director’s message works or not, the power of experiencing all four works in little over a week still trumps everything else in opera. That’s largely due to the orchestra, something acknowledged by Antonio Pappano when he brings the players on stage to take a bow. During his decade at this address, Pappano’s Wagner has grown in stature. It is unflagging in its architecture and distinctively dynamic – and his musicians are indeed too good to be left in the pit.
Erica Jeal | 2 Oct 2012
I am not at all sure what is meant by the claim on the Royal Opera House’s website that ‘Keith Warner presents a bravura production of the fourth opera in the Ring cycle’. Anyway, ‘bravura’ or otherwise, here came Götterdämmerung, or should it have been Wagner-Dämmerung? If this is the level of Wagner performance to which we can look forward in 2013, his bicentenary, then it would be better to shut up shop now. Siegfried had had a good few virtues, as well as failings; I had blithely assumed that Götterdämmerung would have been vaguely comparable. Pride, as Wotan discovers, comes before a fall.
Little had changed in terms of Keith Warner’s production, problematical in a number of ways in 2007, though the production was far from the weakest link in the performance as a whole. Warner’s staging lays claim to a number of positive features. The role allotted to the gods, whose twilight we are supposed to be enacting, is a particular strength. They appear, as they ought yet seldom do, during the second act, as statues, vain objects of sacrifice. This was recognisable as the decaying Gibichung society Patrice Chéreau so rightly characterised as ageing, pointing to the increasing desperation of its rituals — rituals which would seek some sort of moral code in a post-religious society that knows no morality, indeed finds it impossible, as Chéreau put it, to ‘know’. (See Pierre, Boulez and P. Chéreau, ‘Commentaires sur “Mythologie et Idéologie”,’ in Programmhefte der Bayreuther Festspiele, 1977, VI, p. 81.) Wotan, I think, reappears from afar to view Siegfried’s death ; Loge summons and is consumed by fire at the end ; the statues are burned. There is also a nice – well, provocative – suggestion of incest between Gunther and Gutrune.
Alas, a great deal of incoherence remains. Why Grane is represented by a mere skull I cannot imagine. The ultimate indignity is suffered when Brünnhilde’s trusty steed is passed around as if the characters are worried that, when the music stops – one is tempted to add: ‘if only…’ – one of them will suffer a forfeit. It would be perfectly possible to have an off-stage horse, but a dead one seems pointless. Why does Waltraute appear in ‘civilian’ guise, dressed as Brünnhilde is now ? Is not the whole point of the scene the contrast between inhuman Valkyrie and Brünnhilde as human being ?
Perhaps the most glaring sequence of confusion is seen in the final scene to the first act. What I wrote in 2007 still holds word for word, so I shall save time by repeating myself: ‘Hagen’s continued presence on stage, following the move from the Hall of the Gibichungs to Brünnhilde’s rock, did not augur well. We all know that in a sense he is “still there”: his dramatic shadow hangs over the rest of the act, and the music could hardly make this clearer. Actually to have him on stage added little, except confusion as to where the action was taking place. But this was as nothing to the final scene (in which, needless to say, he remained on stage). Anyone who did not know what was supposed to be going on would have been utterly confused, since we had Siegfried as himself, wearing the Tarnhelm, and Siegfried transformed by the Tarnhelm into Gunther, on stage at the same time. All of the singing came from – audibly and visually – from the former Siegfried. This was logically incoherent, and the whole mess could easily have been avoided by following Wagner’s directions.’ The end is marred not only by having Hagen, Brünnhilde, and the vassals run around like children in the playground. Quite why the Rhinemaidens strip part way through, as opposed to being nude throughout, is anyone’s guess. Conflagration, such as it is, cannot come soon enough. What we are to make of the girl standing in a ring – a belated advertisement for the Olympic Games? – I do not know. The ‘watchers’ are an athletic bunch, though they are not called upon to put that athleticism to use; a rather more mixed sample of humanity might have been more to Wagner’s point. (Chéreau’s conclusion remains an object lesson here.)
There were some good solo performances. Mihoko Fujimura, arguably the world’s reigning Waltraute, injected as much passion as Antonio Pappano’s lethargic conducting would permit into her scene. Rachel Willis-Sørensen surprised me as an uncommonly womanly Gutrune, an eminently creditable object of Siegfried’s diverted affections. John Tomlinson’s Hagen had strength where it counted, even if he sounded a little genial to begin with. The scene with Wolfgang Koch’s once-again excellent Alberich was a rare highlight. And Stefan Vinke’s Siegfried, if hardly perfect, and a little flat of tone to begin with, was far better than one generally hears. The young Siegfried seems more suited to his voice, for whatever reason, or perhaps he was simply on better form a couple of nights before. Nevertheless, there was much to admire in a performance of stamina and considerable strength. The Norns and Rhinemaidens impressed, as did Renato Balsadonna’s splendid chorus.
Susan Bullock’s Brünnhilde was by and large a disappointment. Indeed, I am sure that this is the first time I have heard a Brünnhilde who was not considerably superior to her Siegfried. Bullock’s voice, as in Siegfried, sounds strained by the role. The contrast between her struggling and Fujimura’s proud performance was unfortunate, to say the least. Peter Coleman-Wright’s Gunther was worse, however, quite the worst Gunther I have heard. Persistently out of tone, vocally insecure, he sounded at least 103 – and not in a good way.
Pappano’s conducting was the gravest problem, reflected in a frequent tiredness sounding from the orchestra. The opening of the Prologue actually began rather well, at least in retrospect. If Wagner’s metaphysical depths remained unplumbed, then at least there was fluency, which one cannot always say with respect to Pappano’s Wagner. From the departure of the Norns, it was, alas, to be mostly downhill. Listlessness, born of an apparent lack of understanding of harmonic motion, made much of the performance seem interminable. Whether the Waltraute scene was the longest I have ever heard I have no idea, but it certainly sounded like it. The Vassals Scene was conducted with rigidity, as if it were a march from Aida. By the end of the second act, so little seemed to be at stake, so little was the score’s richness penetrated, that we might have been listening to an episode of Crossroads, an impression heightened by the shaky platform – was this deliberate? – on which the characters were walking. Lethargy was accompanied by a sound-world somewhat akin to the opaque meaningless people who do not like Debussy ascribe to Debussy. And so it went on and on and on. By the time the final theme – the glorification of Brünnhilde, redemption through/of love, whatever one wishes to call it – sounded, initial near-occlusion of the strings by a bizarrely prominent kettledrum roll seemed neither here nor there.
There are several Wagner conductors with connections to the Royal Opera who could have made not just a better job of this, but most likely produced great or at least very good performances. It may well now be impossible, but heaven and earth should have been moved to persuade Bernard Haitink to return to conduct, if not the Ring, then at least some Wagner following his 2007 Parsifal. Whatever happened to Christian Thielemann? Whatever it was ought to have been put right. Daniele Gatti and Semyon Bychkov might have been called upon. Simon Rattle and Mark Elder have both impressed in Wagner, if at a slightly less exalted level. At the Berlin State Opera, it is quite understandable that Daniel Barenboim tends to conduct many of the Wagner performances from Das Rheingold onwards; there are few, after all, to match him in this repertoire. It is less understandable that a conductor whose strengths lie elsewhere should monopolise performances of the music dramas in London. Parsifal awaits in 2013.
Mark Berry | 10 October 2012
It’s a tribute to the power of Götterdämmerung, the fourth and final opera in Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle, that this nearly five-hour Royal Opera House production is gripping despite some distinctly mediocre singing.
The orchestra under conductor Antonio Pappano is the real star of the show, and it’s fitting that all the players file onto the stage for a curtain call. The orchestral scoring of Götterdämmerung is endlessly inventive, with brass, woodwind and strings all playing rich and often seemingly autonomous roles. The Royal Opera House orchestra does it justice, most notably in the long, elegiac interlude that follows Siegfried’s death.
Sadly, the rich orchestral writing may be part of the problem. Few singers have the power to project over a late Wagnerian orchestra, and those that do may compromise on beauty of tone and subtlety of interpretation. Susan Bullock’s Brünnhilde suffers from the former problem, Stefan Vinke’s strident Siegfried from the latter. This is the one opera in which Bryn Terfel’s wonderfully lyrical Wotan does not feature — he is sorely missed. Instead, it’s the bit parts that really shine. The three Rhine maidens and the Norns who weave the rope of destiny are all excellent, and Mihoko Fujimura’s Waltraute had us pinned us to our seats.
Wagner’s vision at the end of Götterdämmerung is infamously unrealisable: he not only called for Siegfried’s funeral pyre to engulf the whole stage and even erupt into the heavens to consume the gods, but he also wanted the Rhine to flood its banks in a kind of Biblical apocalypse. There is no flood in Keith Warner’s production, though lighting effects give an impression of water. The fire is also rather underwhelming, as is perhaps inevitable after 16 hours of operatic anticipation.
But the ending works well intellectually. Rather than Götterdämmerung or Twilight of the Gods, Warner presents us with Götzendämmerung or Twilight of the Idols — the memorable name of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s last book. The gods that go up in flames in the final bars are not sitting in their heavenly palace of Valhalla; they are the pagan statues worshipped down on earth in the first act.
This is one of many directorial flourishes. Another is the arresting image of Brünnhilde cowering inside a crown of thorns in the extraordinary wedding scene. We were also transfixed by Hagen’s dream of underwater algebra that opened the second act (you had to be there). And it’s rewarding to see the final transformation of some symbols that dominate the staging throughout the cycle, such as the crimson rope of destiny that finally breaks in the prologue to Götterdämmerung, and the books of law that have by now disintegrated into fluttering sheets of paper.
As in the previous operas, some of Warner’s other ideas left us unmoved or uncomprehending or both. But those better schooled in the dark arts of Wagnerian hermetics may emerge wiser. What comes across as obscure mystification to one viewer (why on earth do the Rhine maidens lay out all those objects on the stage like street sellers in the final act?) may be clarity incarnate to the next.
Of all four operas in this Ring, Walküre remains our favourite. The music is sumptuous, the singing world-class, the staging punchy — that’s the one to catch if you can on 18 or 28 October (including on Radio 3 on the former date). Thereafter, the quality of the leads plummets, and for us that’s a major flaw. But the Ring Cycle is not really about individual operas, self-contained as they are. Seeing the whole cycle within one week is a uniquely engrossing, even invasive theatrical marathon that seeps into the deepest recesses of the mind. That doesn’t appeal to all — one of our neighbours in the amphitheatre bought his ticket from a gentleman whose wife chickened out at the last minute. But those who embrace the experience are unlikely to forget it.
Stephen Wilmot | 12 October 2012
After the prologue with the Norns, followed by Brünnhilde and Siegfried, things really opened out in Act I with John Tomlinson as Hagen in the hall of the Gibichungs. He was riveting as he explains to his half brother and sister, Gunther and Gutrune, how they might win fabulous partners. Too fabulous of course, but they are easily fooled by this son of Alberich, who then gave a superb monologue as he sits to keep watch, ending deeply and darkly with des Niebelungen Sohn (the Niebelung’s son). Dimly lit, he remains sitting for the rest of the act as Brünnhilde is first visited by Waltraute and then by Siegfried’s transformation as Gunther.
Mihoko Fujimura as Waltraute showed wonderful stage presence and diction along with huge strength and purity of tone, outshining the uncertain stage presence and excessive vibrato of Susan Bullock’s Brünnhilde. She rose effortlessly over the orchestra, ending with a wonderfully defiant Walhalls Göttern weh! (Woe to the gods of Valhalla).
In Act II, Tomlinson as Hagen steals the show, quietly of course at first when he is addressed by his father Alberich, very assertively sung by Wolfgang Koch in a little boat in the air, like a one-eyed, heavy-set version of the Mekon. As the Gibichung scenes follow, with Stefan Vinke as a boldly ingenuous Siegfried, Peter Coleman-Wright as a grandiosely weak Gunther, and Rachel Willis-Sørensen as a very strongly sung Gutrune, Tomlinson once again became the focus with a powerful call to the vassals. After Brünnhilde arrives his gaze follows her, and when he persuades her and Gunther that the only solution is Siegfried’s death, his voice took on extraordinary colour.
In Act III Stefan Vinke as Siegfried has just the right tone and bolshy attitude when meeting the Rheinmaidens, and when the hunters arrive he gives a fine account of his earlier life, urged on by Hagen. Hagen’s murder of Siegfried and subsequent attempt to grab the ring from him was very effective, and the orchestra then swept us forward with a superb funeral march. Weakness only occurs later at the hall of the Gibichungs where instead of Brünnhilde dominating Gutrune, Rachel Willis-Sørensen had the more powerful stage presence, though after feebly raising an arm just before Starke Scheite, Susan Bullock as Brünnhilde sang strongly at the end.
The final scene of Keith Warner’s production has Hagen taking the ring from Brünnhilde only to be overwhelmed by the Rheinmaidens. Images of the gods are suspended over fires, and young people come onto stage as if representing a new world order, but I would prefer the music without too much imagery. All in all, however, a memorable Ring cycle under Pappano’s musical direction, and a nice touch at the end was the entire orchestra appearing on stage for the curtain calls.
Mark Ronan | 2 October 2012
Premiere, PO |
A production by Keith Warner (2006)
This recording is part of a complete Ring cycle.