{"id":8296,"date":"2024-09-12T14:41:10","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T12:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=8296"},"modified":"2024-09-12T14:43:26","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T12:43:26","slug":"three-debuts-three-revelations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=8296","title":{"rendered":"Three Debuts, Three Revelations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, I have been taught once again to never say never. I didn\u2019t make it to the premiere of Valentin Schwarz\u2019s production of Der Ring des Nibelungen<\/em>, as I still had other some Bayreuth stagings from previous years to catch up on. Last year I gave the new tetralogy a miss as well \u2013 discouraged by the generally scathing reviews of the director\u2019s vision, the uneven, in a few cases even ill-judged cast and the return to the podium of the young, undoubtedly talented, but not very experienced Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen, who in 2021 deprived me of any vestiges of pleasure in experiencing my beloved Die Walk\u00fcre.<\/em> This season I ran out of arguments \u2013 after Cornelius Meister and then after Inkinen, the baton was taken over by Simone Young, to whose debut on the Green Hill we had been looking forward for years. The other sensational announcement was that Michael Spyres would sing Siegmund, an announcement all the more sensational given that this was a double debut \u2013 the American tenor had never sung the role on stage before. Professional curiosity prevailed, although I must confess remorsefully that I got myself accredited only for Das Rheingold<\/em> and Die Walk\u00fcre.<\/em> After what I saw and heard, I do not rule out that next year I might take one last opportunity to get to know the whole thing \u2013 if only to verify some of the interpretive tropes I spotted when analysing the first two parts of the Ring.<\/em><\/p>\n

Schwarz arrived in Bayreuth with a hard-earned reputation of an iconoclast and a rebel. He announced that he intended to direct the Ring<\/em> as if it were a four-part saga on Netflix \u2013 a story about the problems and dilemmas of a modern family, adapted to the sensibilities of today\u2019s audiences, with all the resulting dramatic consequences of this decision. Fully aware that Wagner had drawn on dozens of sources to create his own mythology, Schwarz felt himself a myth-maker as well and, as he put it, \u201cwith consistent disrespect\u201d for the libretto, made fundamental changes in it: not in the textual but in the interpretive layer. He made the conflict between the two twin brothers, Alberich and Wotan, the dramatic axis of the whole. He replaced the Rhine gold physically present in the Ring<\/em> with a multiple symbol of power. He turned Sieglinde \u2013 pregnant even before the arrival of Siegmund \u2013 into a victim of Wotan\u2019s rape, completely turning the relationship between the protagonists of Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em> upside down. As Schwarz resorted to comparisons with cinematic attempts to demythologise established myths, let me point out that in Netflix\u2019s nearly thirty-year history no one has made an adaptation so far removed from the original that the viewer \u2013 in order to understand anything about it \u2013 has to use the director\u2019s extensive commentary. Such commentary was not necessary even in the case of the mad Norwegian series Ragnarok<\/em>, whose creators took a merciless approach not only to Norse mythology, but also to Der Ring des Nibelungen<\/em> \u2013 and yet the narrative remained clear, above all for the production\u2019s main target audience, that is pimply teenagers who didn\u2019t always have a clue why a certain nursing home resident in the fictional town of Edda wore a black eye patch and was called Wotan Wagner.<\/p>\n

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Das Rheingold<\/em>. Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan), \u00d3lafur Sigurdarson (Alberich), and John Daszak (Loge). Photo: Enrico Nawrath<\/p>\n

Thus, from a conceptual point of view Schwarz\u2019s Ring <\/em>is a complete disaster, but visually a perversely attractive disaster, mainly due to Andrea Cozzi\u2019s excellent set design, Andy Besuch\u2019s fine costumes, Nicola Hungsberg\u2019s efficient lighting direction, prepared this year on the basis of Reinhard Traub\u2019s original concept, and \u2013 last but not least \u2013 the extraordinary qualities of the Festspielhaus stage, the depth of which enhances every detail and brightens every colour. However, Schwarz doesn\u2019t know how to use this brilliantly arranged space, which evokes only superficial associations with a movie set. The narrative unfolds in too many places at once, becomes distracting owing to the impossibility of using close-ups and long camera zoom-ins and, as a result, gets bogged down in the tangled, disjointed side plots.<\/p>\n

And yet it is possible to discern in all this a desperate attempt to lure the audience with the promise of a mystery. There is no gold, no ring, no Nothung in this staging, but there are symbols that are yet to be fully explained \u2013 perhaps their meaning will be unveiled in the subsequent parts of the cycle. Could it be that gold is the ghastly, cruel boy in a yellow shirt, whom Alberich kidnaps from the custody of the Rhinemaidens? Or perhaps it\u2019s just an illusion, perhaps the real metaphor for the primordial order of nature is the two children in Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em> sprinkled with golden glitter \u2013 embodied visions of the original state of innocence of Sieglinde and Siegmund? What does the pyramid, shown in various forms, mean? Could it be that in all its manifestations \u2013 from a polyhedral variation of Rubik\u2019s cube that Wotan gives the infernal boy to play with, to the luminous space that Br\u00fcnnhilde<\/span> heads for in the finale of Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em> \u2013 it is an ambiguous symbol of power and violence, the ring, Tarnhelm and Wotan\u2019s spear in one?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t get an answer to these questions and I doubt \u2013 I may be wrong, though \u2013 that we will get it at the end of the Ring<\/em>. Schwarz has some decent directorial skills, and from time to time he enlivens this incoherent tale of a toxic family with finely played episodes and charming acting scenes that, instead of developing into a coherent narrative, burst like soap bubbles. Like the brilliant, if a bit over-the-top, scene in which Erda impetuously hurls a tray full of champagne glasses against the floor before \u201cWeiche, Wotan, weiche\u201d. Like the beginning of Act I of Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em>, in which Hunding, amidst the flashes of a thunderstorm, struggles with a panel of blown electrical fuses. Like the well-captured essence of Siegmund\u2019s disappointment, when, hearing that he will not be reunited with Sieglinde in Valhalla, he abandons his suitcase packed for the journey to the palace of the fallen. Yet most of Schwarz\u2019s ideas come from nowhere and lead nowhere, and this includes the spectacular Non-Ride of the Valkyries: shrouded in bandages and recuperating in a plastic surgery clinic.<\/p>\n

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Das Rheingold<\/em>. Tobias Kehrer (Fafner), Jens-Erik Aasb\u00f8 (Fasolt), Nicholas Brownlee (Donner), Christina Nilsson (Freia), and Mirko Roschkowski (Froh). Photo: Enrico Nawrath<\/p>\n

I wonder to what extent this pandemonium of post-dramatic theatre influenced casting choices and style of performance of the various vocal parts. In Das Rheingold<\/em>, in line with Schwarz\u2019s concept, we got the twins Alberich and Wotan in the form of two repulsive shady-looking characters, whose singing \u2013 far from any canons of beauty and subtlety \u2013 carried only a powerful charge of contempt, frustration and hatred (\u00d3lafur Sigurdarson and Tomasz Konieczny, respectively). An emotionless and prematurely aged Fricka found a convincing performer in Christa Mayer, who possesses an already tired mezzo-soprano with an excessive vibrato. Freia, terrified and almost in catatonia, was heard in Christina Nilsson\u2019s lovely but at times seemingly frozen voice. Ya-Chung Huang\u2019s technically assured tenor had to cope with an extremely one-dimensional, even caricatural vision of Mime. The same applies to John Daszak, whose interpretation of Loge came as if straight from English vaudeville \u2013 which is not surprising, given that Schwarz imagined him as Wotan\u2019s family lawyer. Okka von der Damerau as Erda successfully made up for her technical shortcomings with her expressiveness. Of the two giant brothers the one I found more memorable was Fafner, sung by Tobias Kehrer with a fairly small and at times unstable, but very charming bass. Mirko Roschkowski (Froh) paled in comparison with the excellent Nicholas Brownlee as Donner (I looked up the cast of Das Rheingold<\/em> to be presented at the Bayerische Staatsoper in the autumn and discovered with satisfaction that I wasn\u2019t the only person to hear more of a Wotan in him). I found softness and lyricism only in the singing of the Rhinemaidens \u2013 this makes me all the happier to note a fine performance by the Polish mezzo-soprano Natalia Skrycka as Wellgunde. In the second instalment of the Ring<\/em> characters familiar from the prologue were joined by Wotan\u2019s traditionally screaming daughters, in comparison with whom Catherine Foster did surprisingly well in the role of Br\u00fcnnhilde<\/span>, sung musically, with great commitment and at times an indispensable sense of humour, although the English singer, who has an undoubtedly handsome soprano, as usual did not avoid problems with intonation and excessive vibrato.<\/p>\n

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Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em>.\u00a0Michael Spyres (Siegmund) and Vida Miknevi\u010di\u016bt\u0117 (Sieglinde). Photo: Enrico Nawrath<\/p>\n

Only the first act of Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em> fulfilled my dream of the truth of the most humane of Wagner\u2019s musical dramas \u2013 thanks to two phenomenal Bayreuth debutants: Vida Miknevi\u010di\u016bt\u0117, who conveyed all the anxiety, ecstasy and anguish of Sieglinde with a soprano that was quite sharp, but at the same time agile, spontaneous, sparkling with colour, impeccable in terms of both intonation and articulation; and Michael Spyres, who took Bayreuth by storm and immediately presented himself as one of the best Siegmunds in the festival\u2019s post-war history. I admire the extraordinary intelligence of this singer, who perfectly senses the moment when a change of repertoire should be made without damaging the voice and, at the same time, in full harmony with the aesthetics and performance tradition of the newly mastered roles. His German still leaves a bit to be desired (this also applies to the production of certain vowels, which continue to bring to mind associations with the French grand opera), but in terms of vividness of his voice, his uniquely baritonal sound, beautifully open top and rounded notes at the bottom of the range, and above all the sensitive, truly song-like phrasing \u2013 I think Spyres would have delighted Wagner himself. The singing of this Sieglinde and this Siegmund could move a rock: it certainly moved the ever-dependable Georg Zeppenfeld, who complemented the artistry of the two singers with an astonishingly sensitive portrayal of the unloved, frustrated Hunding.<\/p>\n

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Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em>. Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan). Photo: Enrico Nawrath<\/p>\n

It was worth coming to Bayreuth for this one act, for this hour of wonderful music making under Simone Young\u2019s tender baton. The Australian conductor tried to brighten the score of the whole Ring<\/em>, to extract hitherto neglected details from its texture, to emphasise the tragedy of gods, people and in-between beings with an almost impressionistic play of lights and shadows. She fully achieved this goal in the orchestral layer. When it came to singing, she often had to fight against recalcitrant matter, especially in Das Rheingold<\/em>, when the soloists sometimes managed to drown out, shout down and stomp down the subtly and wisely playing orchestra. How much of this was Schwarz\u2019s fault, how much was contributed by the booming singing manner, so beloved on the Green Hill, how much was contributed by the conductor herself, defending her vision against all odds \u2013 I might find out next year. I already know that the festival should let go of neither Miknevi\u010di\u016bt\u0117, Young nor Spyres. Wagner\u2019s masterpieces deserve the return of sensitive interpreters.<\/p>\n

Translated by: Anna Kijak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, I have been taught once again to never say never. I didn\u2019t make it to the premiere of Valentin Schwarz\u2019s production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, as I still had other some Bayreuth stagings from previous years to catch up on. Last year I gave the new tetralogy a miss as well \u2013 discouraged … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-mangusta","post-8296","format-standard","category-posts-in-english","category-wedrowki-operowe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8296"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8303,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8296\/revisions\/8303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}