“I know my ideas will perish but the Ring will remain. So why not be adventurous?”
So says Kasper Bech Holten, director of this fabulous new version
of Wagner’s four-opera cycle in a bonus-track interview with Queen Margrethe
of Denmark. And this version from the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen is indeed radically adventurous. But its strengths are the work’s traditional strengths notwithstanding.
I don’t usually take to over-innovative productions when they run counter to the intentions of the composer, as this one undeniably does. But the passion and enthusiasm of huge tracts of it more than make up for its deficiencies.
The project has a theory behind it. This is that the entire 15 hours of action are the result of Brunnhilde trying to understand what led to her betrayal by Siegfried halfway through Gotterdammerung. You see her racking through family records and flicking through photograph albums, even during the orchestra’s playing of Siegfried’s Funeral March. Indeed, the entire project has been dubbed a “feminist” Ring.
But what is most remarkable about it is that, unlike modernizing attempts elsewhere, it succeeds despite all this. When it comes to the greatest moments, theory is forgotten, and the production is true to the overriding spirit of the extraordinary music.
And the Ring, like all Wagner’s mature operas, is extraordinary. You only have
to consider what other composers of the day were writing to appreciate the imaginative reach and exceptional artistic daring that characterize these still unequalled creations.
That this version of the Ring leaps to near the top of the league is especially remarkable when you consider that none of the soloists was an international celebrity before it was issued, the Royal Danish Orchestra — whose playing is perhaps the production’s overwhelming strength — was little known prior to this event, and that the Danish Opera itself had no tradition of Wagner production. This was their first Ring in almost 100 years.
What marks it out is its commitment and its passion. The Ikea-like furniture that features in many of the scenes is, as it were, kicked aside when it comes to the crunch. “To hell with all that,” the singers seem to say. “This is Wagner, not Abba!” Then they proceed to belt it out for all they are worth.
This has been called the most passionately committed set of performances of the Ring since the centenary productions at Bayreuth in 1976 directed by Patrice Chereau. These were the first to introduce a degree of non-period material, and they opened the floodgates to a whole string of far more irreverent productions in the so-called “Eurotrash” style. This Copenhagen version would have to be counted as belonging to that school, but its huge and unexpected strength is that it climbs over the rubble and assaults the Himalayan heights, quite forgetting its mundane and laugh-a-minute origins.
And there are some weird departures from the original. Even the hugely sympathetic Danish queen, one of whose cultural foundations funded the venture, balked at Sieglinde rather than Siegmund pulling the sword out from the tree in the first act of Die Walkure. It’s one of the cycle’s great moments, but the director explains that he didn’t like the “Don’t you worry your little head with this, baby — leave it to the men” aspect of the story. Well, these things are all interconnected. Siegmund is able to pull the sword out because Wotan, who put it there and who is king of the gods, wanted him to pull it out. He was to use it to kill Hunding, Sieglinde’s abusive husband, until Wotan’s wife Fricka persuaded Wotan that family piety had to be respected, and it was Hunding, the betrayed husband, who should win the fight.
Wagner, in other words, had given the women their say all along. He gave Brunnhilde the last word, too, in her long, impassioned monologue that ends the whole cycle, and there wasn’t really any need to tip the balance even further in her favor. But there are many other departures from the original plot, and when you consider them it becomes even more remarkable that the production is the overwhelming success it indisputably is.
These are some of the other breaks with Wagner’s original: Wotan tears off Alberich’s arm to get the ring from his finger in Rheingold; Hunding walks offstage with a sneering laugh after killing Siegmund at the end of Act Two of Die Walkure rather than being himself killed by a side-swipe of Wotan’s spear; Wotan breaks his own spear in Act Three of Siegfried rather than it being broken by Siegfried; Hagen kills his father Alberich at the end of Act Two, Scene One of Gotterdammerung; and at the end of the cycle Brunnhilde, far from riding to her death into the flames, lives to hold up a new-born baby, her and Siegfried’s child, for the admiration of the audience. Wagner would have turned in his grave.
Nor is it only departures from the plot that mark this production. The settings, too, are often laughably non-Wagnerian. The original audiences were astonished to see the vast stage of their newly-built opera house at first largely unused, with the action of Act One of Die Walkure initially taking place in a tiny modern living room, though it moves later up onto the roof. The same kind of interior is used for Act One of Siegfried, so that Siegfried melts the sword fragments on a kitchen stove while Mime concocts his sleeping potion on another cooker on the floor above (getting drunk as he does so).
And, in one departure from tradition I judged an unqualified failure, the three Norns at the opening of Gotterdammerung are displayed as zanily comic modern women embedded in the audience. This conception is unfortunately far removed from the brooding resignation of Wagner’s music at this point.
Why, then, with all these bizarre changes, does this version succeed? The answer is three-fold. First, the action almost invariably moves from the cozy settings onto grander, more spacious levels (both onstage and imaginatively) as the action develops. Second, the commitment of the soloists is outstanding in virtually every case. And thirdly, the orchestral playing, and its recording, are quite simply out of this world.
The sound produced by the Royal Danish Orchestra under Michael Schonwandt is a revelation. It occurred to me that every instrument must have had a microphone embedded in it, so incisive and resonant was the effect. This can’t have been the case, but nevertheless I wouldn’t have believed such sound quality was possible before hearing it.
As for the soloists, the highest praise must go to just about all of them. Owing to problems of availability, different soloists sing Wotan in Rheingold and in the two succeeding operas. First comes Johan Reuter, then James Johnson. Both are superb. Similar problems resulted in Stig Andersen singing both Siegmund and Siegfried, with the result that he dominates the entire undertaking. But he is so marvelous, both as actor and singer, that this is no problem whatsoever. Lastly, Irene Theorin as Brunnhilde is beyond praise. The director puts her experience at the center of the proceedings, but her voice and presence would have put her there anyway.
There are many other impressive singers, and it would be tedious to list them. Mention must be made, though, of the Hunding of Stephen Milling. Such an ominous stage presence, and such a cannon’s roar of a voice, rarely combine in the opera world. He is the undoubted successor to Matti Salminen, whose Hunding so honored Patrice Chereau’s Walkure, and who was so marvelous as both Fafner and Hagen in James Levine’s 1989 New York cycle.
For the rest, there’s a real pigeon for the Wood Bird (actually three were used, the director reveals), the costumes progress from the 1920s in Rheingold to the present day in the final opera, and much of the action in Gotterdammerung evokes the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia. The transfer of power from the gods to greedy, partying, murderous humans is marvelously done.
As for other Ring cycles on the market, the 1989 New York Met version with its stellar cast is the most traditional and
can be recommended as being the cycle
as Wagner envisioned it (despite a strangely unsatisfactory Act One
of Die Walkure). The 1976 Chereau/
Boulez version throws a wonderful freshness over the operas and remains incomparable. The Barcelona Ring
of 2005, an updated version of an earlier Harry Kupfer creation, has its strong moments, but its eccentricities are not subsumed into any grander overall scheme. Only the Stuttgart version of
2004 must be dismissed outright. Some
of its monstrosities (Siegfried in a
kitchen apron) are repeated in this Copenhagen production, but Stuttgart’s rendition never pays homage to Wagner’s essential grandeur. No production that closes by simply projecting the stage directions to cover the orgasmic closing moments of Gotterdammerung can be seriously considered.
This Copenhagen Ring, then, closing with virtually the entire stage on fire, is a victory of achievement over theory. It may not be the first version for newcomers to these operas to acquire, but it can be confidently recommended as the second — after the Chereau/Boulez one, or perhaps the New York rendition — and worthy of an honored place in anyone’s collection.
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