Germany Wagner, Das Rheingold: Soloists, Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin / Nicholas Carter (conductor). Deutsche Oper Berlin, 11.3.2024 (MB)
Manufacturing:
Director – Stefan Herheim
Revival director – Constanze Wediknecht
Set designs – Stefan Herheim, Silke Bauer
Costumes – Uta Heiseke
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Video – Torge Møller
Dramaturgy – Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Jörg Königsdorf
Solid:
Wotan – Iain Paterson
Donner – Thomas Lehman
Froh – Attilio Glaser
Loge – Thomas Blondelle
Fricka – Annika Schlicht
Freia – Flurina Stucki
Erda – Lindsay Ammann
Alberich – Jordan Shanahan
Mime – Ya-Chung Huang
Fasolt – Albert Pesendorfer
Fafner – Tobias Kehrer
Woglinde – Lee-ann Dunbar
Wellgunde – Arianna Manganello
Flosshilde – Karis Tucker
We start within the rehearsal room, piano onstage, huge gray slab wall and fireplace exit behind, lights above. Beneath, the orchestra tunes, truly tunes. The magic of theatre, of music theatre, of opera, and of all involved to carry it to our eyes and ears brings the 2 collectively: not essentially so we can not inform the distinction between ‘drama’ and ‘actuality’, however in order that we’re made conscious of the ever-shifting boundaries between them, how one brings the opposite into being, as can also be the case for Wagner’s associated but totally different trinity of drama, music, and gesture in Opera and Drama. That ‘guide of all books on music’ (Richard Strauss) is, in a way, the fount of all we see and listen to; onstage, it’s represented by the piano: the instrument round which so many rehearsals have taken place and at which Wagner sat to compose; from which for a lot of, although not all composers, the miracles of the trendy orchestra first come into being. A suitcase-laden procession of refugees, the perennial picture of our instances – from the vicious, racist ‘swarm’ of Cameron and Farage’s ‘breaking level’, to Merkel’s inspirational ‘Wir schaffen das’ and the welcoming crowds I noticed at Munich Hauptbahnhof – crosses the stage and initiates the motion; considered one of them, Wotan or higher the human being who will play that function, performs the celebrated E-flat with which the Ring begins. That is no ‘disaster’; it’s a actuality and, in that actuality, a chance. These individuals are the very stuff of the drama, of our drama, and of theirs. Selections made and roles performed can be issues of life and loss of life. How in another way this performs now that Merkel’s Willkommenkultur has itself been assigned to historical past, how all of the extra vital then it’s to discover a new path.
Herheim and his revival successors do that, furthermore, not by way of dwelling on origins, however by way of the openly theatrical (and musical) magic of opera. Actuality by no means fairly disappears, however the perception of Schiller, Marx, and lots of others, Wagner included, that, left to his personal units, given the liberty and the schooling to take action, man will create isn’t solely the start line, however a degree, if you’ll, of (Nietzschean, even Schopenhauerian) everlasting recurrence that but, by way of (Hegelian) historical past, isn’t merely that. The animating philosophical battle of the Ring has begun. Likewise, animating pleasure in and thru theatre, of the rehearsal piano fairly than the piano composer, of Wagner’s artistic life has been reignited, by way of the magic tips of the Rhinemaidens, Loge’s devilish flashes of fireside, ever-resourceful use and reuse of stage staples comparable to billowing sheets, and the entire Wagnerian phantasmagoria of sight, sound, and sensation. Froh’s ultimate rainbow is unquestionably, at some degree, a successor to Götz Friedrich’s rainbow tunnel within the earlier Deutsche Oper Berlin manufacturing. Historical past and, extra particularly, reception each kind and liberate us in our response.
The primary scene emerges, in typical, theatrical twin bind and alternative, each seamlessly and with seams brazenly to point out from what has gone earlier than. The actors – ‘extras’ in the event you choose, however the time period appears greater than unduly limiting – kind the Rhine from themselves: what else do refugees have? They’ve their packed belongings, after all; nonetheless extra will come from them sooner or later, the gods’ costumes included. Inciting, reflecting, and been incited by the Rhinemaidens’ play, their fantastically, sexily choreographed motion suggests a Venusberg-am-Rhein, with all of the occasional awkwardness of an orgy’s want for perpetual reignition. Alberich, or the one who turns into him, fashions himself on that saddest of theatrical figures, the clown. That’s how the others see him, after all; most poignantly of all, it’s how he sees himself once they hand him again his mirror. He has, as Wagner exhibits us, been so sorely provoked, with so little prospect of reward in a merciless non-golden age of aesthetic hedonism, that renunciation of ‘love’ – as somebody as soon as stated, ‘no matter which means’ – is an apparent subsequent step. The ring he creates appears instantly to do his bidding — till, and ay, there’s the Ring’s rub, it doesn’t. And we see it, in addition to its penalties, all through.
From these sheets come the Rhine, the mountains of the gods’ realm, even the tree on the finish from which, I assume, the subsequent instalment will spring. A premonition of Volsung twins strongly suggests so: a sparing use of video and thereby all of the extra highly effective. The entire Bayreuth undertaking was constructed on expertise, as was the world from which it sprang. So too had been they constructed on decisions of what to make use of and when, not on idiotic euphoria and concern about movie supplanting theatre or ‘synthetic intelligence’ supplanting precise, human intelligence. The hoard, maybe the most effective I’ve seen, comes from these suitcases: a real bric-a-brac present, together with musical devices (echoing, virtually actually, Alberich’s possession and instrumental use of a trumpet within the first scene) and non secular artefacts, cross and menorah included.
They cowl Freia clumsily, brutally, but additionally utterly contained in the piano from which she and Fricka, in posed nineteenth-century tableau vivant-style have risen, and thru which portal she and the giants (her love for Fasolt is movingly actual, appropriately) have handed to and from Riesenheim. Donner and Froh are splendidly caught too, stars of rock (Freddie Mercury) and disco (wig rigorously ready with hairspray, quickly misplaced) respectively. Loge is a real Mephisto to 2 Fausts, Wotan and Alberich, with a little bit – on this he’s not alone – although by no means an excessive amount of of earlier Herheim creations, the Parsifal Klingsor and the Lohengrin Herald reincarnated in one thing dazzlingly new. Alberich’s Nibelungs are, for as soon as, a real host of night time, terrifying to behold, photographs of loss of life and the undead, marching to his lead. (Once more, I recalled, a quick but telling picture from the second act of that Bayreuth Parsifal.) Certainly, all through, the methods through which motion proceeds each in time to the music and never, but by no means heedless to it, aren’t the least indication that we’re within the palms of a musical stage director. Makes an attempt at musical route, each from the piano and conducting from the rating, of the would-be leaders of our stage world, inform – and play – their very own tales too.
Artwork and its tips, then and now, aren’t actuality; they spring from it, but we see, much more clearly how they’re put collectively, while questioning all of the extra at them. They’re greater than actuality; once more, they kind and react to it, at the least probably liberating us from it. They usually cross historical past, by way of an art work’s reception, at all times a pleasure for and from Herheim. Wotan’s winged helmet for as soon as says a lot, not least within the boredom with which he discards it. So does Mime as Wagner in trademark velvet beret, a crafty tribute-cum-insult, through which the inventor of the Tarnhelm who can not ever fairly change into an artist embodies the brilliance and insecurity of his creator. But finally, that craftsman additionally brings the drama, brings us, the rating from which first he, then others learn, sings, learns, and is certain by. In a duly ambiguous illustration of Werktreue, it turns into Valhalla, the sacerdotal fortress and resting place of heroes. In the meantime, the sword, emblem of Wotan’s ‘nice concept’, is positioned by way of the piano lid, prepared for a more true, extra brave hero to extract it.
If Herheim surpassed my expectations, so too did the performances. Nicholas Carter’s musical route proved, fairly merely, a revelation. Carter has lately led performances of the Ring in Bern; returning to the Deutsche Oper, he supplied a super stability between thorough musical grounding and theatrical spontaneity. This was a efficiency through which all the things each fell near-miraculously into place and but additionally concerned itself within the dramatic right here and now, as a lot, because it should, contributing to the drama as reflecting it. Balances had been, with out exception, effectively judged, as had been tempi. What notably struck me was the keenness of ear – and talent to undertaking it – in recognition of Wagner’s totally different sorts of writing. Hardly ever, if ever, have I heard so clearly the roots in Gluckian accompagnato of Fricka’s contributions to her first change with Wotan, additionally after all tribute to the astute, rich-toned artistry of Annika Schlicht. My sole, extraordinarily minor musical disappointment lay with the anvils. All else pretty sprung off the web page as if in a musical Kammerspiel, mediated within the thoughts’s eye by the magical mechanics of the piano.
A Kammerspiel could be nothing with out its actors, and right here each particular person performances and ensemble as a complete had been second to none. There could also be (some) starrier assumptions elsewhere, however none extra alert to the enjoyment, in addition to to the need, of musico-theatrical creation. As Schlicht’s consort, Iain Paterson supplied a considerate efficiency, typical of the solid as a complete in its alertness to verbal and musical texts alike, in addition to to their alchemic response as a part of a new-yet-rooted efficiency textual content. Any Loge price his salt will steal the present, ‘durch Raub’, but Thomas Blondelle’s owned it too: tricksy, fiery, manipulative, and corrosive, in phrases and line as in gesture. Albert Pesendorfer and Tobias Kehrer shone because the giants, their performances as finely differentiated as these of Ya-Chung Huang’s clever Mime and Jordan Shanahan’s masterclass within the function of Alberich: sympathetic up to a degree, but as brutal in his forming by occasions as he had initially been hapless. This clown had grown as much as lead troops, not a troupe, his curse echoing within the ears till the shut. A wonderful trio of Rhinemaidens underlined that too, their cries piercing any makes an attempt there might need been to rejoice. So too did the coup de théâtre of Erda’s look and finely sung warning (Lindsay Ammann), rising from the prompter’s field in order, effectively, to immediate, ‘sensibly’ clad like a inventory librarian of yore. To whom, in spite of everything, ought to one flip for knowledge concerning texts?
Mark Berry
