Opera
Siegfried; Gotterdammerung (Covent Garden)
It's got to go
Michael Tanner
Ater the lows of Die Walkiire, with some weak casting and a ubiquitously try- ing production, Siegfried was positively exhilarating. Not only, most unusually, was it the most enjoyable of the four evenings in this production, but it was also the most consistently well sung. Odder still, Mime as portrayed by Graham Clark was the evening's star. Not that he realised the whole of Mime's character — that wouldn't `Whatever happened to us? Remember when we used to laugh?' have fitted in with Richard Jones's view of the work. Clark is a brilliant comedian, but not of the Hancock variety, so his Mime is not a creature gnawed by ambition and resentment, but merely a ludicrous cross- dresser — he makes ends meet by wearing Sieglinde's frock, and, we eventually dis- cover, her underclothes — who represents no threat to Siegfried. Clark's singing is characterful without caricature, his every gesture relevant to the creation of an anti- hero.
Siegfried Jerusalem's Siegfried is some- thing of a miracle. He hasn't much top left to his voice, it isn't especially large or warm, but is used with such an accurate sense of the point of what he is doing that all told he may be the best Siegfried, in both the dramas in which he appears, since Windgassen in his prime; maybe he's better than that. No longer the athletic, trim fig- ure of Kupfer's Bayreuth production, he is a decent fellow with braces and a small paunch, keen to find some tolerable com- pany, and prepared to have an adventure or two on the way; he is absolutely not heroic, but if he were that would wholly undermine the production. More of that later.
John Tomlinson's Wanderer, or 'Trav- eller' as the sur-titles irritatingly call him, produces his best and firmest tone, though the tessitura is the highest in the three dra- mas he appears in. Sonorous in Act I, pre- pared for vigorous verbal combat with Wlaschiha's incisive Alberich in Act II, and quite wonderful in his confrontation with Erda in Act III, truly rising to 'the tragic height of willing his own destruction', as Wagner put it, he is only betrayed by the production. Wagner wrote quite a lot of laughter into the part, but not as much as Tomlinson has been encouraged to indulge in throughout the cycle, including at some gruesomely inappropriate moments. And most disastrous dramatically, but typical: when the Wanderer asks Erda Weisst du, was Wotan — will?' a long, portentous silence follows, taking us back to `Das Ende!' in Act II of Die Walkiire. Not here, where the Wanderer chuckles mirthlessly for ages, before launching into his great vision of the future. Treachery.
All three women are admirable, the woodbird (one of three, presumably to keep parity between fish and fowl), Erda and the ever more inspiring Deborah Polaski. One of her numerous merits she seems to me the most impressive Briinnhilde since Astrid Varnay — is a capacity and willingness to sing quietly without sacrificing colour or body of tone. It makes the love duet very moving, and also helps Siegfried. Haitink, who conducts most of Siegfried with a masterly sense of its mainly dark colourings, and a superb line, fails to let rip sufficiently for the orgiastic end of the work. It should close with a sort of ecstatic orchestral stutter, not a simple move towards the last chord. Still, I was amazed, even if the lack of gimmicks and ploys by the producer took one away from any sense of unity in the Ring as a whole.
Everything that contributed towards Siegfried's success was countered in Geitter- dammerung. It isn't difficult to see the point of having the Norns sing without the house lights being turned down, and of their attempts to stop the curtain rising. All too easy, as so much of the insulting sym- bolism of this production is. It is very hard to forgive the brutal removal of any sense of cosmic destiny which should arise from this marvellous scene. The dawn duet was a pretty low-keyed affair too, perhaps because the over-considerate Haitink wants every note the singers produce to be heard. It achieved lift-off finally, but not as a result of that steady gain in momentum which only a tiny handful of conductors have ever been able to achieve, none of them still living.
By comparison the Gibichung scene went with a swing, though as often these decades Jones feels it necessary to make the broth- er and sister an effete, possibly incestuous pair, and to give Gunther a libellously bad clothes sense, Gap-derived, into the bar- gain. Excellent singing all round, however, with Kurt Rydl as a quite outstanding Hagen, a role which must be a great gift, but is rarely so imposingly taken as here. The Blutbriiderschaft scene remains a jar- ring episode of shooting up. Its primeval quality is underplayed by Haitink, who seems less at home in the barbarities and melodramatics of this score than in other parts of the cycle; though there are still many glorious things, such as the transition from Hagen's Watch to Brftnnhilde's rock, taken very slowly but with absolute sure- ness of purpose. Ann Murray, singing her first Waltraute, was moving but hampered by a tempo so slow that she seemed to have arrived from a particularly static opera seria. The point of the scene is to get Brunnhilde to give up the Ring, and it's not surprising that Polaski went up her ladder and didn't bother to listen.
Physical violence is crucial in this drama; but Jones is very feeble at directing it, and since Wagner too tends to be at his weak- est in writing fight-music, the horrors of Acts I and III are muted indeed — we don't even see Siegfried being killed. And what greater abdication of directorial responsibility could there be than an empty stage illuminated by one small red light for the Funeral Music? Well, we soon find out. The end of things consists of a fair number of packing cases falling over, as the damned things tend to do. Banalising every moment of the action, in the end Jones has his effect even on Wagner's furthest reach- es of sublimity. Emotion drains away from this Ring, for all its superb cast in the last two dramas and its largely magnificent con- ducting. It's got to go.
Michael Tanner's book on Wagner (Harper- Collins, £16.99) is in its second printing.
Previous page
