Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festspiele
“They fuck you up, your mum and pa,” begins a periodically viral poem by Philip Larkin. Such is the premise of the Bayreuth Competition’s present manufacturing of Der Ring des Nibelungen, directed by Valentin Schwarz and performed by Simone Younger and now in its fourth 12 months. Like all self-respecting superhero or horror film of the 2020s, it’s actually about trauma. It’s not been the preferred manufacturing in Bayreuth, however I discovered it shifting, stimulating, sometimes irritating, and, most luckily of all, constantly robust musically and full of excellent performances.
Schwarz’s manufacturing is bracingly up to date. All of it takes place on the gods’ property, which begins as a gleaming, fashionable construction and ends it in decay, a downward trajectory echoed by its inhabitants, all members of a single household (the set design, which like most at Bayreuth is improbable, are by Andrea Cozzi). Patrice Chéreau’s legendary Bayreuth Ring gave us the decline of the European aristocracy within the face of industrialization; Schwarz’s takes us from the glamorous violence of a Sunday night time on HBO to the trashiest actuality TV exploitation. The human characters—in addition to the Rhinemaidens and, in a hanging revelation, Erda—are servants, used and continuously abused by their employers. Typically it places the cleaning soap into opera.
American corporations typically body opera staging as a bridge between the historic work and the up to date viewers, a technique to clarify issues to audiences and make items extra “related.” Not so in Bayreuth. Audiences listed here are assumed to know and care concerning the texts already. (There are not any surtitles, so it’s robust for those who don’t.) Productions work with that information. This staging isn’t ever the one Ring to rule all of them; Schwarz cares about some themes and characters greater than others and is completely advantageous with leaving, say, the intricacies of the sword-forging course of to a different manufacturing. There are quite a few textual content and musical parts which are skipped or contradicted by the stage motion. You would possibly take into account this a dealbreaker. It didn’t trouble me.
Most centrally, the manufacturing excises magic. The Rhine gold isn’t an object however quite an individual, a boy in a yellow shirt who ultimately grows as much as be Hagen. Alberich, in one of many manufacturing’s a number of modifications to the household tree, is Wotan’s outcast twin brother. As time passes, the gods age. The kid guarantees the one factor these mortal gods can’t have: youth and renewal. Valhalla has an ominous nursery of little ladies; the Valkyries attempt to recapture their youth with cosmetic surgery; Fafner is an outdated man on life help who Siegfried kills by merely pushing over. Freia (no apples) is a catatonic addict, who, after her violent abduction by the gangster giants, takes her personal life on the finish of Rheingold. We additionally don’t get many indicators of the pure world—even Grane, Brünnhilde’s horse, is a person, her loyal emotional help henchman.
Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festspiele
Within the again half, issues grow to be dreamier, significantly in static stretches like Siegfried’s awakening of Brünnhilde, the Norns (staged as Brünnhilde and Siegfried’s daughter’s dream), and Hagen’s solo monologue. Schwarz has a knack for hanging photos, the very best of which can be Wotan left alone with himself and the results of his actions in entrance of an enormous wall on the finish of Walküre. Nonetheless, Schwarz then deflates the balloon. Fricka enters with a bar cart, able to cheerfully toast the restoration of order in the home.
We see injury handed on from era to era, most clearly stemming from the varied abductions and Wotan’s “dalliances” with many of the girls in his orbit, right here explicitly sexual assault, together with towards his personal daughters. Can the survivors Brünnhilde and Siegfried escape this toxic inheritance? (Siegfried charmingly first tries out regular life by hanging out with the Waldvogel, who’s Fafner’s nurse.)
On the opening of Götterdämmerung, Siegfried and Brünnhilde are a married couple with a daughter. However you possibly can see their breakup coming, and there’s no magic potion of forgetfulness right here, simply Siegfried’s want for revenge. (Günther and Guturne, hilariously, are idiots modeled on the long-running actuality TV present Die Geissens—Germany’s reply to the Vanderpumps.) The ending, which has been barely tweaked this 12 months however nonetheless isn’t totally satisfying, offers us each the hanging physique of Wotan and a touch of hope creeping in because the redemption by way of love motive emerges.
Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festspiele
In a 2021 New Yorker essay, Parul Sehgal described the ever-present “trauma plot” as stuffed with characters whose “historical past comes spilling out, in confession or in flashback.” Characters within the Ring, notoriously, are all the time giving us backstory, a few of which we’ve seen onstage and a few we haven’t. That is partially a relic of Wagner’s compositional course of, which started with a single opera, the eventual Götterdämmerung, after which labored backward. However right here, it’s additionally testimony: characters relate and relive and may’t escape their traumas, which we acknowledge as destined to repeat. This actually is the Ring for individuals who have learn A Little Life.
These testimonies don’t all line up. The manufacturing is dramaturgically messy. As soon as Hagen reaches Götterdämmerung, he isn’t the gold anymore. Nothung the sword begins as a glowing pyramid (which additionally represents Valhalla, I learn it as an all-purpose thriller object akin to the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction), then the sword is a refashioned cane, and typically it’s a gun. The Tarnhelm doesn’t exist in any respect. Schwarz’s clarification for this, which I heard ridiculed by a number of viewers members, is that Wagner’s libretto, written backward because it was, isn’t constant both.
This inconsistency—in addition to the manufacturing’s occasional lack of engagement with the prevailing rating and textual content—does detract from the manufacturing’s cumulative impact, making it more durable to construct resonances from night to night. However I additionally suppose that staging towards Wagner could be extremely productive. Theodor Adorno wrote that “solely what injures the Wagner orthodoxy is true,” and that experimental productions ought to amplify quite than easy over contradictions and ambivalence. It’s a Bayreuth cliché to justify doing absolutely anything by claiming that “Wagner wished it this manner,” and often that’s additionally a tactic to forestall doing anything. I don’t must elaborate on why dutifully obeying all of Wagner’s needs (or what you suppose are Wagner’s needs) isn’t a good suggestion, so I’m completely satisfied to stay with some inconsistency even when Schwarz’s is typically much less a matter of dialectics and extra just like the Misplaced author’s room getting actually confused in the course of Season 5.
Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festspiele
However finally I feel Schwarz’s manufacturing finds a lot to say within the Ring about household, about what we get from our dad and mom and the way we fuck over the subsequent era, and what it’d imply to flee. Sehgal, in her New Yorker essay, argues that the “trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in flip, instructs and insists upon its ethical authority.” Schwarz’s very inconsistency and lack of tidiness—Waltraute appears to be the loopy aunt, an unreliable narrator, however we by no means actually discover out for certain—is what offers the manufacturing its wanted ambivalence and prevents it from flattening into banality. It is a knot pulled too tight to completely unravel. The music would appear to be the ethical authority, however as occasions typically counteract the rating, we are able to’t belief it, both. Just like the characters themselves, we are able to solely attempt to piece collectively what occurred.
The expertise of doing so was constantly musically satisfying and sometimes magnificent. This, this manufacturing’s fourth 12 months, will probably be its final, and as in 2024 it was led by Simone Younger, the primary lady to conduct the Ring in Bayreuth. Her interpretation was notable for its agility and refinement, with a splendidly delicate method to textures, pure transitions, and a way of stability in the home’s distinctive acoustic that was all the time singer-friendly with out sacrificing orchestral depth. Her tempi had been typically on the gradual aspect, typically a bit an excessive amount of (the tip of Rheingold) and typically to terrific impact (the Todesverkündigung). It was a formidable efficiency and a reminder that we don’t all the time must chase the most popular 23-year-old baton-waver on the circuit. Many years of expertise can repay.
Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festspiele
Probably the most controversial component of the solid for me was Klaus Florian Vogt as a dadcore Siegfried. He’s an establishment at Bayreuth, however his flute-like tenor has often been heard in lyrical roles like Lohengrin and Walther von Stolzing. That youthful vocal high quality is uncommon in Siegfrieds and with him you possibly can’t count on a Forging Track with roaring ‘ho ho hos.’ He did it his gentler method, however that regularly grew on me; this was a Siegfried who did truly sound like a clueless boy, his candy tone resonating in the home like few others’ and his diction good. The manufacturing does require a really heinous flip in Götterdämmerung that he doesn’t have the vary as an actor to tug off (involving, with no forgetfulness potion, Siegfried’s abetting of Günther’s rape of Brünnhilde on the finish of Act I), however I’m undecided anybody else might handle that both.
Catherine Foster as Brünnhilde was new to this manufacturing however to not this function in Bayreuth; I heard her within the earlier manufacturing. Her voice has held up nicely by way of greater than a decade of this strenuous singing. She typically requires time to heat up and obtained off to some tough begins, however when in a position she radiated authority and depth. Her shiny, reducing sound is finest within the rating’s loudest moments, one thing like the other of Vogt, however her sense of drama and character carried her by way of the softer ones as nicely.
Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festspiele
Different singers had been of their first few years on the Festspiele however appear poised to affix the regulars. Before everything, notice the title of Anna Kissjudit, whose Erda supplied essentially the most purely lovely singing of your complete cycle. The Hungarian contralto is at the start of what I hope will probably be a wonderful profession; her sound is heat and wealthy and vibrant and straightforward all through her vary and crammed the home effortlessly. Michael Spyres had triumphed as Walther von Stolzing just a few days earlier than his Siegmund on this cycle; his method to this decrease function once more was Italianate, with distinctive breath management and phrasing.
Tomasz Konieczny’s Wotan discovered all kinds emotional notes for an exceptionally monstrous tackle this character. Whereas his singing was not all the time clear—the primary two roles are quite excessive for him and the textual content doesn’t all the time come by way of—he succeeded as a singing actor. Christa Mayer doubled most of the mezzo roles within the cycle, as is customary in Bayreuth, and whereas her voice sounded somewhat worn as Fricka she introduced a poignant drama to Waltraute. Jennifer Holloway, whom you could bear in mind as a mezzo from numerous New York productions, was new to this manufacturing as Sieglinde and sang with ardour and depth however with a voice that always turned shrill, with a very pronounced vibrato.
As a near-manic Alberich, Olafur Sigurdarson was a really energetic presence, equally Ya-Chung Huang sang the troublesome function of Mime with accuracy in addition to theatrical dynamism. Daniel Behle was an amusingly sarcastic Loge. Mika Kares was a Hagen much less notable for the scale of his voice than its deep, gravelly timbre. (Vocal dimension was extra notable in Vitalij Kowaljow’s Hunding.) Victoria Randem was an unusually full-toned Waldvogel and made essentially the most of her expanded function on this manufacturing. Michael Kupfer-Radecky and Gabriela Scherer successfully chewed the surroundings because the Gibichungs. As one hopes to listen to in Bayreuth, smaller roles like Donner, Froh, the giants, the Norns, and the Rhinemaidens had been excellently solid with singers who we hopefully will hear in bigger roles sooner or later. (Within the case of Nicholas Brownlee’s golf club-swinging Donner, very quickly; robust Freia Christina Nilsson has already been promoted to Eva within the new Meistersinger.)
Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festspiele
After I noticed Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth Ring in 2015, I bear in mind nearly everybody hating it. There’s been a large-scale rehabilitation previously few years and lots of now name it a basic. I believe that Schwarz’s Ring will endure an identical course of; judging by the rapturous reception of everybody besides Schwarz and the design workforce, that’s already underway. Subsequent 12 months’s Ring manufacturing will probably be generated by AI, God assist us all. (What’s going to the booing on the finish seem like?) For all its flaws, this Ring is, like its gods, completely human.
Bayreuth this 12 months has sadly made headlines as a result of, unusually, on opening day just a few tickets remained unsold for some productions apart from the brand new Meistersinger and the Christian Thielemann-led Lohengrin. I don’t know what message to attract from this but, apart from noting that for those who, reader, need to go to Bayreuth subsequent summer season (or this summer season, for those who’re fast) it’s not as inaccessible as you would possibly suppose, although it may be very costly.
It’s additionally type of value it. You schlep on the market and also you get an aura. The acoustic is superb, the orchestra is improbable, and all the pieces else is, nicely, you get some very lengthy intermissions to debate no matter it’s with everybody else who’s there (and so they’ll speak—that’s how I discovered about Die Geissens). In case you don’t like what you noticed, you possibly can nonetheless come again for one thing completely totally different in just a few years. (In all probability that includes Klaus Florian Vogt in an entire new unbelievable function—he’s doing Loge subsequent 12 months, why not, certain.) Maybe the gods of Schwarz’s Ring are proper to concern the lack of their fleeting youth; in Bayreuth the skeleton of Wagner stays however the remainder is working on a brief clock. That’s the premise of the pageant’s workshop mannequin, and this Ring once more demonstrates how that may make for well timed and pressing work.
