Germany Wagner, Die Walküre: Soloists, Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin / Nicholas Carter (conductor). Deutsche Oper Berlin, 12.5.2024. (MB)
Manufacturing:
Director – Stefan Herheim
Revival director – Silke Sense
Set designs – Stefan Herheim, Silke Bauer
Costumes – Uta Heiseke
Video – William Duke, Dan Trenchard
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Dramaturgy – Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Jörg Königsdorf
Solid:
Siegmund – Daniel Frank
Sieglinde – Elisabeth Teige
Hunding – Tobias Kehrer
Wotan –Derek Welton
Fricka – Annika Schlicht
Brünnhilde – Ricarda Merbeth
Siegrune – Arianna Manganello
Rossweiße – Karis Tucker
Gerhilde – Felicia Moore
Ortlinde – Maria Motolygina
Waltraute – Elissa Pfaender
Helmwige – Flurina Stuckl
Schwertleite – Alexandra Ionis
Grimgerde – Nicole Piccolomini
Schwertleite – Lauren Decker
Hundingling – Eric Naumann
What if the Volsung twins didn’t have interaction our sympathies so totally as they normally do? What if their actions had been much less constructive than we are inclined to assume? Typically, just lately, these questions have been posed implicitly by what nonetheless appears to me an odd need positively to reassess the Fricka of Die Walküre. Not that Wagner is the one level of reference right here, however the creator of the Ring was very clear on this, each within the work ‘itself’ and in different writing. A letter to Theodor Uhlig (12 November 1851, so earlier than he had began work on the music) speaks of Wotan’s ‘wrestle together with his personal inclination and with customized (Fricka)’ and certainly Fricka herself refers to ‘the guiding rope of customized, hire asunder,’ which she would ‘bind anew’. Latterly, some appear to have determined to take the a part of Fricka’s family-values morality. Like each character – that is a part of Wagner’s greatness – Fricka is given her due and ought to be in efficiency. A caricature, while tempting, will get us nowhere. What I took from the primary act of Stefan Herheim’s Walküre – thus earlier than her reappearance – was one thing barely completely different: a willingness, refreshing if unsettling, to problem the dominant narrative regarding Siegmund and Sieglinde, a problem to which Fricka would assent, albeit for various causes. Sieglinde has nonetheless been deeply wronged, in fact: the night begins together with her, traumatised, unable to make the central stage piano sound. Solely after a number of fruitless makes an attempt does the orchestra launch its storm.
It’s a questionable pursuit in ‘actual life’, in fact, to forged doubt on how trauma might present itself; maybe the identical ought to be the case right here. That stated, a lot of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s acts appear designed to dissipate sympathy, from her insistence on kissing him far too ‘early’ and in entrance of the mute Hundingling (her baby with Hunding, I presume), to her homicide of him who, starved of affection from his father appears solely to want to discover a new household together with his mom and her new lover. That Siegmund too rejoices in that act underlines the predicament. His holding Hunding earlier at knife level additionally reverses roles considerably. Finally, the power each of appearing and Personenregie (seen additionally, for example, within the particular person therapy of the Valkyries) made a case for reassessment. So too, arguably, did the doubt – preconceptions correctly challenged – I continued to really feel. The framing is highly effective and provocative; that’s what issues most.
Likewise or not less than associated, within the third act, the true horror of what Wotan proposes for Brünnhilde, too readily sentimentalised, comes throughout extra clearly than I can beforehand recall. Portrayal of male violence, particularly sexual violence, towards girls onstage is a controversial situation now, and rightly so. Nonetheless, Herheim’s portrayal of Valkyries raped by a number of the undead – immortality and mortality a vital theme for Wagner’s deeply Feuerbachian drama – underlines what the god intends for his ‘favorite daughter’, too usually misplaced in last reconciliation. Certainly, this appeared to change the dramatic, even perhaps the temporal, proportions of the third act. The latter most likely had been objectively completely different too, conductor Nicholas Carter working in tandem with the manufacturing. Throwing the dramatic weight ahead had the primary two scenes appear significantly extra substantial, the third a logical, nonetheless deeply transferring end result to its predecessors. The emotional torrent of Wagner’s – and the as soon as extra excellent Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s – strings nonetheless registered keenly, but a shadow rightly hung over what we heard and felt.
Throughout, refugee suitcases fashioned the set, reminding us of the exterior world encountered in Das Rheingold. A warfare zone is usually recommended, aptly for all that unfolds, the second as a lot because the exterior acts. These individuals’s reappearance and completely different reactions to what they noticed reminded us we should always not take ‘their’ reactions without any consideration, ‘othering’ them as an undifferentiated mass. These, just like the characters of the Ring many are enjoying, are particular person human beings, not another species often known as ‘migrants’. Wagner was a refugee too and expressed satisfaction in having been so; so is Siegmund, at all times ‘geächtet’, as he places it. And so too, we should always keep in mind, is Sieglinde, returning to her Medea-like act. We at all times really feel sympathy for Medea, so ought to we not for this Sieglinde too? If not, why not? From the place, we would ask, are they refugees? The world round us has all too many potentialities, as does historical past. So too does reception historical past: may we not perceive them additionally as heirs to the ‘women and men moved to the very depths of their being’ on the finish of earlier Ring productions. Celebrated predecessors resembling Chéreau and Kupfer spring notably to thoughts. For reception, at all times a Herheim speciality, continues to be so. The good coup de théâtre of turning on the home lights when Wotan wills ‘das Ende’ could also be previous hat: Brecht, 1924, as a good friend commented. However is that not the purpose right here, that theatre and reception historical past extra broadly contribute to what we see and listen to, each when it conforms and when it doesn’t? One couldn’t need for alluring but harmful distinction in fireplace from lighting and video right here both.
Carter’s route continued to impress. If I discovered the opening Prelude hard-driven, then I usually do; it might fairly be replied that that is, in any case, a storm. This conductor’s chemistry with the orchestra was not the least of this efficiency’s virtues; nor was cautious shaping, with out sounding unduly moulded, of paragraphs and scenes to kind not solely a satisfying musical entire, however one which interacts tellingly, excitingly with the motion onstage. There are such a lot of potential approaches to this music that it’s maybe not possible, even for a Furtwängler, to maintain all of them within the air. If, although, I typically missed the dramatic and dialectical despair conjured from the second act – that terribly tough but essential sequence – by the likes of Bernard Haitink or Daniel Barenboim, the sheer malevolence of the darker music related not solely with Hunding, but additionally with Wotan, was rendered strikingly immanent. It’s a surprise, given the repeated phone calls taken by somebody within the far left of the stalls, that the Annunciation of Loss of life managed to maneuver in any respect, nevertheless it did. (It actually had me devising my very own such annunciation for whomever the offender might have been.)
Herheim’s completely different conceptual method to Siegmund and Sieglinde probably had penalties for notion of their performances. So too did comparatively unappealing – particularly so in Siegmund’s case – scenic presentation. That stated, while Daniel Frank sang the function nicely sufficient, it didn’t appear to me essentially the most keenly dramatic of performances, nevertheless thought of. Elisabeth Teige engaged consideration and sympathy extra powerfully as time went on as his sister-bride. Tobias Kehrer’s Hunding appeared to me revisionist in an finally extra convincing vogue, imparting deeper understanding of how and why even this most unsympathetic of characters may need turned out the best way he did, with out neglecting that he had. Derek Welton’s Wotan got here throughout as maybe extra tightly, actually extra darkly, targeted than that of Iain Paterson in Das Rheingold; that’s maybe partially a matter of fabric, however absolutely additionally pays tribute to the intelligence and musicality of this effective artist. At instances, profoundly, disconcertingly other-worldly, the god might additionally readily flip human, all too human. Annika Schlicht’s Fricka was once more not solely fantastically sung, however verbally scrupulous, as right here she have to be all of the extra. From a effective complement of Valkyries, Ricarda Merbeth captured a wonderful steadiness of waywardness – how might anybody delude himself she might for lengthy be saved in test? – and rising compassion as Brünnhilde.
If, initially, I felt if not underwhelmed, then much less overwhelmed than by the fizzing theatricality of Herheim’s Rheingold, this Walküre grew on me and has continued to take action. Music drama is, in any case, not solely theatre, as an more and more Schopenhauerian Wagner would have been first to argue. On the shut, Mime-as-Wagner returns, to ship on the ‘proper’ musical second Siegfried from Sieglinde, amassing the shattered items of Nothung too. Each Mime and Wagner quickly had their doubts as to what kind of monster that they had created. That right here they’ve completed so from, because it had been, the very spirit of music, the ever-present piano, will certainly show vital. Quickly we will uncover for ourselves.
Mark Berry
