THE 2008 RING AT BAYREUTH

Graham Bruce

 

· 2008 was the third year of Tancred Dorst's production of Der Ring des Nibelungen and by then it had settled into something like its final form in the Bayreuth concept of the work in progress. Certainly it began well in the Prologue, yet faltered somewhat in the first evening proper, retrieved itself triumphantly in the next evening, only to disappoint in the final evening. Dorst's vision of the world of the Ring is a bleak one: after the beauty of the first scene underwater, most of the subsequent action in the Tetralogy took place in abandoned, ruined landscapes or rooms littered with the detritus of former civilizations.

 

Das Rheingold

· Few productions of the Prologue to the Tetralogy could boast such a beautiful set as designer Frank Philipp Schlössmann's stylish visualization of the Rhine scene. A vast sweep of blue rocks curved down towards us, the stony river-bottom echoed above by a projection depicting the "surface" of the Rhine, the edges of which were fringed with a grassy bank. Against the rich blue of the rocks, the brilliant orange of the Rhine maidens' costumes with their rippling wave designs produced a startling contrast. The Rhine maidens moved little as they sang: it was their virtual selves, fleeting reflections above on the swirling surface, which swam about, or their non-singing doubles, darting amid the rocks, who teased Alberich. Behind the Rhine maidens, the gold glowed like huge Art Deco sheets of toffee. Since all the singing was excellent, this was a promising start to the cycle. The visual beauty ceased above the surface of the Rhine: scene two was set in a derelict building site littered with graffiti where the gods were seen in a frozen tableau, coming to life as they joined the action. In the background, the work of the giants had produced a Valhalla which resembled a huge eye. The gods were costumed in white, Froh also carrying a rainbow-hued feather, while Donner's silver hammer was simply an extension of his hand. While the singing throughout the scene was generally very good, Arnold Bezuyen's performance as Loge dominated the stage. The descent into Nibelheim, like the other two scene changes, occurred with curtain down, a contrast to most contemporary productions which tend to show the mechanics of scene change in conjunction with some appropriate action. Nibelheim was a hall in a factory, with stairs, doors, and a plain centre panel. When Wotan and Loge's conversation here with Mime was interrupted by the sound of Alberich approaching, Wotan gestured at the centre panel which lighting then revealed as a scrim, with Alberich lurking behind. Then the scrim was raised to show a cave filled with fabulous gold objects. Later, as Alberich was cunningly persuaded by Loge to demonstrate the power of the tarnhelm, his first transformation took the form of a giant golden cobra which loomed above the golden horde, a brilliantly effective moment. So too was the transformation into the toad: a puff of smoke revealed a pair of gleaming tiny eyes at the side of the cave. In his own form, Alberich was subsequently dragged from there and hauled off as captive. Andrew shore gave a powerful performance as Alberich, making the most of his opportunity at the beginning of scene four as he berated Wotan and Loge and cursed the ring. After the brilliance of the horde we saw in Nibelheim, what was brought up as booty by the hooded Nibelungs was somewhat of a disappointment: these looked like fibrous mats sprinkled with glittering gold pieces. The practical nature of this, however immediately became apparent: the gold"mats" easily adhered to one another when the giants insisted on covering Freia with the gold; furthermore Fafner was able to hook the gold up in one piece with his spear after killing Fasolt. There was a real mist as Donner swung his hammer at the"sultry haze hanging in the air", and this white haze allowed a quite lovely rainbow projection as he called on Froh to"show the way over the bridge". At first, it was a disappointment to see the gods descend into the background for the music of the Entry of the Gods into Valhalla; however, as the music swelled to its climax, the eye-shaped Valhalla moved up to reveal a flight of stairs on which the gods climbed towards their new home. Throughout, the playing of the Bayreuth orchestra was impeccable, every detail clear in that unique Festspielhaus sound. The distinguishing feature of Christian Thielemann's conducting was his flexible tempi, always moulded to the dramatic needs of the action.

 

Die Walküre

· Schlössmann's set for Hunding's"hut" was an impressive, vaguely art deco rectangular room which seemed to have seen better days: a huge telegraph pole had crashed through one wall. During the opening storm music, contemporary youthful figures took refuge in the doorway, one of them with a bicycle. This was a feature throughout the cycle - figures from the present often invaded the background of the action, presumably aimed at lending a contemporary edge to the past narrative. That narrative, however, hardly excited as it should in this act since the performances, though adequate, were hardly intense. Actions did not appear to have proper motivation but looked contrived, and there was a deal of moving downstage to"sing to the audience". Vocally, the singers were not well-matched, the strong voices of Sieglinde (Eva-Maria Westbroek) and Hunding (Kwangchul Youn) overpowering the small, rather nasal voice of Siegmund (Endrik Wottrich). The"entry" of spring into the room which precipitates Siegmund's ecstatic "Wintersturme", was marked by the back doors bursting open, to reveal, surprisingly, a planet scarred with craters, not quite the"full moonlight" which"throws its bright light on the couple" as Wagner's stage directions suggest.

· Act 2 opened on a rocky area, at first shrouded in a mist which later rose to reveal a graveyard of abandoned statues, the"graveyard of history". Centre stage was a hole containing a rock on which Wotan stood and Brünnhilde lay. The past / present juxtaposition continued as workmen in the background delivered more statues, and another sat down to read a newspaper. The foreground action, however, in the Brünnhilde/Wotan/ Fricka and Siegmund/Sieglinde scenes, continued without ever registering the contemporary presence behind. Linda Watson's wide-of-the-mark Hojotohos introduced a Brünnhilde whose performance throughout was greatly disappointing. That Ms Watson triumphantly retrieved her performance in the later operas made her vocally fragile Walküre Brünnhilde - the voice unfocussed throughout the range, but especially in the upper register- quite puzzling. Perhaps it was a mistake for her to put in an appearance the evening before at the Southern California Wagner Society Gala dinner following Das Rheingold. In this act also, the performances lacked conviction, Michelle Breedt as Fricka venting her venom upon the audience rather than on Wotan, making the character simply a one-dimensional harridan.

· Albert Dohmen tended to act more with the voice than the body, but his sharply-pointed diction made his long scene with Brünnhilde very impressive. During the most despairing section of that narration, the rock in the hole rotated to reveal a head with one eye damaged: clearly Wotan saw himself ultimately as just another of the abandoned statues in the background, an Ozymandias-style vision of his future. The Brünnhilde/Siegmund"Annunciation of Death" scene was neither tense nor moving except in the orchestra, while Siegmund's death contained a puzzling piece of action: instead of Siegmund's sword, Notung, shattering upon Wotan's outstretched spear, thus allowing Hunding's thrust to kill him, Siegmund was killed directly by Wotan's spear, and thus Notung was not shattered. It beggared belief, then, to see Brünnhilde pick up the fragments of another sword as she rushed off with Sieglinde.

· The set for the third act was very impressive - a walled, abandoned quarry strewn with detritus (old tyres, an ironing board). Also lying about were dead heroes, which were touched into life by the Valkyries during the"Ride". Since all the Valkyries were strong voiced, this made a good start to the act. Yet, though Wotan's angry first appearance in this act was well sung, the famous farewell to Brünnhilde was insufficiently moving. The act ended with an impressive ring of fire about the sleeping Valkyrie. Again, the Bayreuth orchestra was most impressive under Thielemann's direction, providing an emotion which was largely lacking in this disappointing first evening of the Tetralogy.

 

Siegfried

· The second evening, however, returned us to the vitality of the Prologue, the direction more confident, the artists more caught up in the action. The world of the Tetralogy in Tancred Dorst's vision is a shattered world of abandoned buildings: Mime's cave was here a derelict science schoolroom, complete with blackboard, world globe, skeleton, and a bench littered with beakers and test tubes. Siegfried's entry from the forest with the bear was plausibly contracted into Siegfried wearing a bear suit. The forging scene began well (and humorously) with Siegfried reducing the sword pieces by using an industrial-strength mincing machine. He then put the pulverized sword into an oil drum and placed a screen around it. His gestures towards the drum with a stick caused fire to spurt up above the screen. Siegfried derived much fun from this magic gesture though the continual repetition eventually became tedious. Presumably we are to assume that the unseen presence of Wotan was responsible for the forging, since his previous Wanderer scene with Mime had allowed us to appreciate his magical powers as he appeared and disappeared outside the schoolroom windows. The present/past conjunctions were continued with a contemporary looking boy outside the window mimicking Siegfried's actions. Both Gerhard Siegel (Mime) and Stephen Gould (Siegfried) sang and performed well, though the latter , like many Young Siegfrieds overdid the naughty young rebel aspect of his part. Well, this was appropriate enough, perhaps, in the context of a schoolroom.

· The Act 2 set extended the idea of a land laid waste and abandoned: the cement curve of an elevated freeway ended abruptly, the trees of Wagner's forest scene here reduced to sawn-off trunks below it with not a leaf in sight. A workmen's tent decked the edge of the freeway. The opening scene between Wotan and Alberich was very well played. In this environmental wasteland, we were allowed only the barest of"nature" effects during the"Forest Murmurs" as a dim green light slightly illuminated the grey-brown soil. The dragon - Fafner's self-transformation to protect the gold - and the dragon's cave were effective, perhaps because they were only dimly visible: at Siegfried's horn call, a fissure appeared in the ground and, amid the smoke and red lighting, huge teeth could be seen. From this, the young sword-bearer dragged forth Fafner as his own self. The woodbird remained invisible until the last part of the act, only then appearing on the freeway and pointing the way for Siegfried to find Brünnhilde. By then it was very clear what a fine Siegfried Stephen Gould made. What a pleasure it was to have a Siegfried who never shouted and did not seem to tire at all.

· The third act was a triumphant success .The Wotan/Erda scene was played before a scrim in blackness apart from the lit figures, Erda rising up in a black costume with bubble-like attachments suggesting the spheres. The scrim rose for the confrontation between Wotan and Siegfried, showing us a closer view of the Walküre quarry. For the last scene, as the curtain rose, we saw the quarry from the same perspective as in Die Walküre, Siegfried having remained in position on the back wall of the quarry after smashing Wotan's spear.

· In this final scene, as Brünnhilde is recalled to life by Siegfried's kiss, Linda Watson seemed transformed in both appearance and voice. Freed of the unflattering costume of the previous evening, she now looked lovely in a flowing gown with her hair out. More importantly, she gave a most moving performance, the middle register of the voice richly expressive and the high notes ringing out without strain. Even after the extreme vocal demands of the previous two acts, Stephen Gould showed no sense of strain, with plenty of ringing, heroic notes, but also many soft passages in his most affecting performance. Impressive, too, was Thielemann's control of the orchestra, the numerous pauses and accellerandi flexibly shaped to fit the drama of the moment.

 

Götterdämmerung

· How sad, then, that the final evening did not continue the excitement generated by the Siegfried. The setting of the Norns scene showed an intensification of Dorst's bleak view of a wasted, abandoned world. Now, all we saw amidst a starry firmament was a pile of skulls on which the Norns were seated. The comment on the setting of Act 2 of Die Walküre by Norbert Abels, Dorst's dramaturg, is just as relevant here:

 

· What we see once thought itself great and imperishable. We see for ourselves the relativity of all claims to be absolutes in the face of their own frailty.

 

· There was a curtain before the lovers' effectively sung scene as Brünnhilde sent Siegfried off to do valiant deeds, fortified by her gift of magic powers, and another curtain for Siegfried's Rhine Journey. Despite following Wagner's directions, this latter curtain disappointed expectations as few directors today can usually resist expressing the visual possibilities offered by Wagner's scene painting. The Hall of Gibichungs was dominated by staircases with the by now familiar contemporary figures lounging about in the background. In the foreground, the decadent high society of the Gibichung clan was featured, Gutrune's glass constantly needing a refill from the"invisible" servant. The return to the Walkyrie quarry brought a rather dull performance of the scene between Brünnhilde and Waltraute (Christa Mayer), the latter looking too often in the direction of the conductor. Nor did the appearance of Siegfried disguised as Gunter lift the intensity. The problem throughout the act seemed to be two fold. Despite the competent singing, the performances never took fire because of the inadequate stage direction of the singers; and now the orchestral direction seemed to falter as well, Thielemann choosing extremely slow tempi for the prologue and particularly for the Waltraute scene. And what seemed like a virtue in the previous operas, namely Thielemann's flexibility of tempi, now seemed like a burden as such extremes of variation hindered the onward flow.

· Act 2 on the other hand seemed much better paced and directed . Andrew Shore's theatrical performance as Alberich ensured that his scene urging Hagen to action provided a lively beginning to the act. Then Hagen's magnificent-sounding "hoihos" as he called up the vassals to greet Gunther and Brünnhilde showed off the vocal splendour of Hans-Peter König . The arrival of the Gibichung clan brought visual and aural brilliance to the scene: the decadence already evident in Act 1 was now reflected in the men's immaculate evening dress and slicked-down hair, contrasting with the group of Hagen's thugs dressed , like their master, in high boots and brown uniforms. The women of the clan wore superb pleated gold evening dresses, their heads elongated and devoid of hair. Dorst's direction of this elegantly clad chorus was well paced in terms of movement and action, while the singing was, as always from the Bayreuth chorus, quite thrilling. Servants hauled up images of Wotan, Fricka, Donner and Froh, the gods listed by Hagen as requiring homage. It was a pity, then, that the final scene where Hagen, Gunther and Brünnhilde plot Siegfried's death brought a return to the tentative stage direction of earlier scenes and also highlighted the contrast between Ralf Lukas's merely serviceable voice as Gunther and the splendid dark voice of Hans-Peter König as Hagen.

· The surprise of the first scene of Act 3 was the setting of Siegfried's confrontation with the Rhine maidens. This reproduced the set for the first scene of the gods in Das Rheingold. The only new element in the familiar derelict building site was a drainpipe which presumably brought the Rhine maidens up, together with a couple of the blue rocks from the bottom of the Rhine. Gould overplayed the fun-loving, over-grown schoolboy act, which, while tolerable in the context of the young Siegfried, did not fit well with the character of the mature hero: he giggled, stuffed leaves in his mouth, and sprinkled these upon the Rhine maidens - all of which became tiresome to watch. The arrival of the hunting party brought in Hagen's thugs, soon joined by the decadent other followers who set out an elegant picnic. One of these was naked, a kind of"Dejeuner sur L'herbe" homage. Stephen Gould retrieved his poise to sing his narration convincingly. After Hagen's spear pierced his back, all fled leaving Siegfried to sing his final verse stretched out alone in the grafitti-spoiled, derelict site. It was a poignant, effective moment. As with the previous scene changes, the curtain closed for Siegfried's funeral music. In the final scene, Siegfried's body was first set downstage then later carried upstage into the darkness for Brünnhilde's"Starke Scheite". Linda Watson responded to Wagner's great peroration to give a strong performance of the final pages. Scenically, however, the ending was a disappointment: lots of red light and smoke did duty for the final conflagration, the"eye" of Valhalla appeared briefly and disappeared, but the Rhine maidens remained invisible, and the ring-seeking Hagen simply plunged into the darkness.

· As the orchestra rose to its wonderful climax , the"Redemption by Love" motif taking us back to Sieglinde's rapturous outburst as she learned she was to give birth to Siegfried, the contemporary had the last say in the narrative. It was a ray of light in Dorst's dark vision of the world of the Ring: the boy with the bicycle returned to cross the stage, now with a girl, and their actions made clear that they were in love.