A Walküre Beyond Old and New

Mundoclasico.com martes, 19 de julio de 2005

REINO UNIDO A Walküre beyond old and new

EMANUELE SENICI

Keith Warner’s production, unveiled last March, has been Londres, martes, revived for three performances only (plus a concert 12 de julio de presentation at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC 2005. Royal Opera House, Proms) with a partially different cast: Plácido Domingo as Covent Garden. Siegmund (instead of Jorma Silvasti), Waltraut Meier as Richard Wagner, Die Walküre. Sieglinde (instead of Katarina Dalayman) and Eric Keith Warner, Halfvarson as Hunding (instead of Stephen Milling). director. Stefanos Lazaridis, set designer. Marie-Jeanne Lecca, costumes. Wolfgang Göbbel, Domingo’s voice is now perfectly suited to the lighting. Matthew Deely, associate set predominantly central tessitura of the role of Siegmund, designer. Mic Pool and Dick Straker, and he had no problem projecting it through the orchestral video. Plácido Domingo (Siegmund), Waltraut Meier (Sieglinde), Eric Halfvarson sound. By the end of the grueling first act he was (Hunding), Bryn Terfel (Wotan), Lisa obviously tired, but he recovered to deliver a very moving Gasteen (Brünnhilde), Rosalind Plowright (Fricka), Geraldine McGreevy (Gerhilde), and vocally very convincing account of the ‘Annunciation Elaine McKrill (Ortlinde), Claire Powell of Death’ scene with Brünnhilde. What remains unaltered (Waltraute), Rebecca de Pont Davies and utterly seductive is the warm, rich, bronzed timbre of (Schwertleite), Iréne Theorin (Helmwige), Sarah Castle (Siegrune), Clare Shearer his fantastic voice, which envelops the listener in a (Grimgerde), Elizabeth Sikora (Rossweise). sonorous blanket like no other tenor voice I have ever Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Antonio Pappano, heard live in the theatre. conductor Despite the odd rough patch here and there, Meier’s voice is no less suited to the role of Sieglinde. This singer possesses a seemingly endless energy, which she displayed not only in her singing, but also in her acting, doubtlessly the most accomplished of the evening, with a febrile quality to it that brought out Sieglinde’s slightly hysterical edge to perfection.

Gasteen has all the notes and the stamina required by Brünnhilde (and more), and interpreted the role with remarkable emotional and psychological insights. A certain richness and ‘depth’ was missing in the upper reaches of the voice: as a result, some climactic moments seemed a fraction short of the necessary emotional impact. But I am harping on a small detail here: who else can sing Brünnhilde today with such precision and fearlessness? Apart from some difficulties in the lower register, Plowright’s Fricka sounded fearsome and looked nastily seductive: she invented a wonderfully suggestive way of walking, in long, slow steps, that conveyed a perfect mixture of hauteur and sex appeal. Halfvarson boomed away as Hunding (what else can Hundings do? Singing this role must be so boring…), and the eight Valkyries gave their wonderful all in a fearsome but remarkably accurate rendition of their ride, trills and all.

Which leaves Terfel. I must confess that hearing him made me a little sad, and also a little angry. He has a potentially wonderful baritone voice, knows how to shape the text, acts with imposing conviction, and interprets the role of Wotan with unique insight. But, alas, his vocal technique is faulty. His voice is not properly supported, and therefore he has to push it relentlessly in order to cut through the orchestra (no wonder he is prone to canceling performances, given that he tires himself out so much). His pianos and pianissimos, being unsuppported, resemble wispered crooning, and go nowhere. Crooning was invented in the 1920s and 30s, at the same time as microphones, and works perfectly well for musicals, for example, where the singers are miked, or for recordings, but fails miserably in the theatre. I was sitting in row M of the orchestra stalls and could barely hear Terfel’s attempts at singing softly. It is both sad and upsetting to see such a uniquely talented singer hampered by such an obvious lack of proper technique, and frankly puzzling to see that this problem is virtually never mentioned in the mass of words surrounding Terfel, including reviews by otherwise perceptive critics. Pappano has been criticized for conducting Wagner as if it were Italian opera. The insight is astute, but the criticism misplaced. On the contrary, his approach is remarkable for its clarity of texture, its seductive privileging of the melodic line, and its energetic rhythmic drive. The first full blooming of the lyrical, yearning theme in the initial scene between Siegmund and Sieglinde, for example, was profoundly moving in its frank and direct intensity. The strings of the Covent Garden orchestra sounded particularly rich and creamy, but all sections followed the conductor with remarkable zest, notwithstanding occasional moments of hesitance or excessive enthusiasm in the brass. What to say of Keith Warner’s production? Critics pretty much unanimously lambasted it when it was first unveiled. It seems to me that Warner has tried very hard to go beyond the stale opposition between tradition and innovation that stifles Wagner staging these days. The intent is commendable, but its execution only partially successful. I found myself repeatedly distracted, for example, by the incessant throwing about of wolfskins worn above vaguely nineteenth-century costumes (I say vaguely because only Fricka is dressed in unambiguously nineteenth-century fashion), not to mention the propeller or ceiling fan that rotates above the stage. The furniture, which recalls 1930s modernism, is responsible for a moment of Brechtian Verfremdung of sorts: perhaps encouraged by the (utterly predictable) black trench coat worn by Hunding, at one point in Act 1 I was irresistibly reminded of Jonathan Miller’s famous Fascist-era production of Tosca, and could not help imagining that Hunding was about to turn to Siegmund and intone Scarpia’s nastily suave “Suvvia, cavaliere, riflettete, saggia non è cotesta ostinatezza vostra”. I cannot honestly say that I didn’t enjoy this moment, but I wonder whether Warner would have enjoyed it as much. There was another seemingly unplanned moment, this time much, much darker. At the beginning of Act 3 one of the Valkyries emerged from below stage with the limbs of a dead hero: an arm, a leg, the trunk. I froze in horror. Images of the scenes in the tube tunnels after last week’s London bombings have mercifully not been released, but numerous descriptions mention scattered limbs. All of a sudden it all seemed much too real, in a way not encouraged or supported by the rest of the production. For a second I just wanted to leave the theatre and run home, to the false security of the private sphere. I stayed, but, in a sense, the evening was ruined. The best performance of Walküre in the world could not have made me forget that moment of sudden horror.