Alemania
A Family Madness
Jesse Simon
The second evening of the Staatsoper Unter
den Linden’s new Ring cycle – or the first evening proper, to follow Wagner’s
own numbering – cemented director Dmitri Tcherniakov’s pre-eminence as the
master of expectation-defying left turns. After establishing the mythological
world of the E.S.C.H.E. research institute in Das Rheingold, Mr
Tcherniakov used Die Walküre to reposition himself, adding a few new
elements and expanding the rich complexity of his vision while adhering to his
own secret logic with absolute rigour. As in the previous evening, not
everything that happened on stage had its own strict analogue in Wagner’s text
– and vice versa – but with electric performances from Vida
Miknevičiūtė and Michael
Volle, plus a steady stream of subtle magnificence from Christian Thielemann
and the Staatskapelle, the guessing-game of the staging was complemented and often
elevated by musical performances of the highest calibre.
For Die Walküre, Mr Tcherniakov did
not offer the same tour de force of visual brilliance that had been such a
prominent feature of Das Rheingold … nor did he need to. If Rheingold
is a purely mythological spectacular, Walküre marks the beginning of the
cycle’s shift in the direction of human drama, and in place of continuous set
changes, Mr Tcherniakov devoted his energies to extended scenes examining the
passions and madnesses that drive the characters. But while the action was
still nominally set within the same narrative universe as the previous evening
– Hunding’s dwelling was an artificial house observed through a large one-way
mirror in Wotan’s office, and parts of acts two and three revisited locations
from Rheingold – the scenes were rarely straightforward in their
approach.
It was not simply that the staging
dispensed with such crucial elements as the magic fire or the fight between
Hunding and Siegmund – at this point it would have been far more
surprising if Wotan carried a spear and Brünnhilde had shown up in a winged
helmet – but even within the internal logic of Mr Tcherniakov’s world,
nearly every new element seemed to come from left field. If you’d asked a
hundred members of the audience during the second interval what the Valkyries
were going to look like, probably not one of them would have answered ‘trainee
police officers’ (if that is indeed what they were supposed to be). Yet more
often than not, it was the upending of expectation that gave the staging much
of its energy.
Even the action that did appear on stage
tended to raise more questions than it answered. A news-report during the
prelude informed us that Siegmund had escaped in transit to or from an asylum,
and when he arrives at Hunding’s house – which is an observation room in the
institute – and tells his tale to Sieglinde, the staging implies we are
listening not to a story of survival but the ravings of a madman. Yet
Siegmund’s arrival seems to awaken a dormant madness in Sieglinde and the two
attempt to flee. The implication that madness is hereditary makes one wonder if
it also exists in Wotan and if it will appear in Brünnhilde and Siegfried. But
did Wotan accidentally bring madness into the world with the failed experiment
on Alberich? And if so, are his experiments with Siegmund and Sieglinde an
attempt to find a cure for the malady he unwittingly unleashed? Or is he merely
a sinister behavioural psychologist conducting his research on human
guinea-pigs? These are the sorts of questions that seemed essential at the end
of the first two instalments of the Ring, but may well be rendered irrelevant
by the end of Siegfried.
If it sounds as though the chief pleasure
in this production is that of untangling a logic puzzle, it should be said that
the puzzle would not be so compelling were Mr Tcherniakov not so skilled at
creating highly distilled dramatic scenes, full of suggestion, ambiguity and
mood. In this task he was assisted by a cast of singers for whom acting is
inseparable from vocal technique. If Michael Volle had been an exceptionally
strong member of the Rheingold ensemble, his Walküre Wotan was in
a class by itself. His usual combination of considered phrasing, commanding
tone and engaging presence allowed him to make easy work of his second act
scene with Brünnhilde: the nearly twenty minutes of background exposition that
dominates the scene (and can weigh down even the best production) have rarely
sounded so essential.
It was not merely the slow and ominous
opening of Mr Volle’s second act narration, nor even his impassioned longing
for ‘das Ende’ that made the scene so compelling, but rather the way in which
dramatic peaks and interstitial explanations were woven into a perfectly paced
whole; and as great as the scene had been, it was only Mr Volle’s second best
appearance of the evening. From the moment he arrived on stage in the third
act, it became apparent he had saved the best for last: the initial
confrontation with Brünnhilde was saturated with the intensity of his rage, but
by the end of the act the anger had softened enough to allow for a farewell of
disarming sensitivity.
If no performance could match Mr Volle in
intensity, Vida Miknevičiūtė’s Sieglinde
came remarkably close. Her voice – strident but never shrill and delivered to
the auditorium with a force that seemed almost effortless – was impressive, but
her performance was elevated most consistently by the breadth of her dynamic
and emotional range. Between the rapt narration of the stranger’s arrival at
her wedding, the hushed description of seeing her reflection in the stream and
her ecstatic naming of Siegmund – perhaps the most thrilling moment of the
first act, supported by an equally exultant orchestra – she had little trouble
establishing herself as the dominant force of the first act. If the madness in
her initial second act appearance seemed marginally less focussed, her fearful
anticipation of the battle between Siegmund and Hunding and her manic
vacillation between the desire for death and life in the third act provided the
evening with its most emotionally immediate moments.
Anja Kampe’s Brünnhilde had a spirited opening scene in the second act, and an excellent solo interlude that conveyed the extent to which doubt and confusion had entered into her previously untroubled life; but, like Mr Volle, she had clearly saved her finest singing for the third act, and her assured reason in the face of Wotan’s volatile anger set up the dynamic for a compelling confrontation. Mika Kares followed his excellent Fasolt from the previous evening with an elegantly menacing Hunding, and Claudia Mahnke’s Fricka – more direct and less forgiving than the evening before – was strong enough to provide Wotan with a formidable opponent. Only Robert Watson’s Siegmund seemed to struggle: his phrasing was full of subtle turns, especially in the quietest moments – the scene with Sieglinde before Hunding’s arrival was nicely crafted – but his nuanced delivery was too often overshadowed by the power of those around him.
As in Rheingold, Christian Thielemann drew little attention to his interpretive decisions but ensured that each scene was never less than perfectly shaped. The moderate, singer-friendly tempi adopted throughout the evening did nothing to diminish the immensity of the dramatic peaks – the joyful union of Siegmund and Sieglinde, the final ten minutes of the second act and the entirety of the Valkyrie scene generated a fearsome excitement – while his unindulgent realisation of orchestral detail yielded captivating results in Brünnhilde’s appearance to Siegmund and the melancholy calm of Wotan’s farewell. As far as Mr Tcherniakov was willing to take Die Walküre beyond the scope of Wagner’s intention, Mr Thielemann kept the evening firmly grounded in the familiar emotional landscape of the score.
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