2023-09-14 15:53:53
Well, at least we now know that Barrie Kosky doesn’t think the dwarf Alberich is a caricature of Richard Wagner’s Jews. Because he, first in a gray business suit, then later – after amorous battles with the slutty Rhinemaidens in black lace – in a lace underskirt, he also has his (artificial) cock exposed: clearly uncircumcised. The London audience at the Royal Opera House, where a new “Ring of the Nibelung” is starting with this “Rheingold,” naturally immediately raises their eyebrows at the opera.
But did we really want to know? Clearly not. Just as it makes no sense to have an ancient, naked Erda appear continuously from the origin of the world, even before the first double bass E flat, to “tell” the rest of the tetralogy – silently, of course – as a key witness.
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The over 80-year-old Rose Knox-Peebles mostly just stands around as a frightened and frightened memento mori, and we can marvel at her sagging skin in detail. And when Erda is really present, has her five-minute appearance at the end, then she waits surprisingly in the penumbra, and Wiebke Lehmkuhl sounds plump and slim from the darkness.
The beginning of the end is “Rheingold” and this is how Antonio Pappano’s choice of work can be understood. The much-loved Covent Garden music boss opens his 22nd and final season with a new “Ring”, his second at the house. Every season, until 2026/27, another part will follow, until his successor, appointed from 2025, Jakub Hrůša, who has so far been noticed more as a concert conductor (he only conducted a single Wagner opera, “Lohengrin”), will boldly do so should take over complete cycles.
The man is opera
Pappano is also worth this “ring”. Wagner sees his approach, which is entirely based on a gripping, practical theatricality – vital, agile, colorful, grippy – primarily as a dramatist, not as a diffuse mystic. Here the story is told, described and progressed brilliantly using musical means. With Pappano, every motif sounds as if it had been punched out, coherent, but without an index finger. He is very close to the conversation piece, every impulse comes from him. And the orchestra follows him gloriously, full of sound, but never with too much pressure. This man really can, he is Oper.
Of course, this is offset by a mediocre, mostly quite incomprehensible line-up of singers speaking Wagnerian German. The Rhinemaidens Katharina Konradi (Woglinde), Niamh O’Sullivan (Wellgunde) and Marvic Monreal (Floßhilde) also sound pleasing, although here they are less mermaids than dryads because they stick their heads out of the knotholes of the black fossilized world ash rubble without water.
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Then follows the alert, well-acted Christopher Purves as Alberich, who craves the Rhinegold as a golden sauce: Is it tree resin? Or the milk from Erda’s skinny breasts, which later seems to be milked from her in a pounding machine in Nibelheim? In any case, Purves hardly sings; he mostly speaks rough and shrill.
Kosky’s “Ring” bracket – visualized by Rufus Didwiszus (stage), Victoria Behr (costumes) and Alessandro Carletti (lighting) – about the “dream of the earth mother Erda, who gave birth to our homeland 4.6 billion years ago and, when she is not Wotan’s bastards gave birth, watched the devastation of their first child”, she doesn’t really get into “Rheingold”. First there is the sober theater room, in which the smoking tree debris lies under cloths.
Wotan has too few colors
They will later be closed off by black walls. And although the curtain falls on each of the three transformations, there is always only the world ash tree to be seen, regardless of whether it is the bottom of the Rhine, the open area on mountain heights or Nibelheim’s crevices. Very eco, ok, but rather pointless.
The gods, they sit in hunting clothes as country gentry like they do at a picnic during the Glyndebourne opera break. Erda is now the (clothed) waitress. People argue happily, the clever leader Kosky can do that very well in his second “Ring” attempt (after Hanover and an Essen “Götterdämmerung”), but Christopher Maltman’s beefy Wotan has far too few vowel colors. Marina Prudenskaja’s Fricka is furious. Sean Panikar’s lodge is over-present with little voice, just as the “little” gods and the clan brothers’ giants are just as funny or overly mature (Freia).
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In Nibelheim, the Nibelungen scurry around as child dwarves with grotesque heads and other buckets around a huge, muscular mime (Brenton Ryan). The Tarnhelm is a golden lower jaw as a kind of fetish tool, which of course only produces golden hands instead of giant worms and toads. And when moving into Valhalla, instead of the old but overly complex blueprints from the second scene, there is now the empty room into which Kosky once again lets rainbow-colored glitter confetti trickle down. The gods dance to this, even Wotan’s spear is just a dry ash branch, in brocade clothes.
The world ash tree will come back in the “Walküre”, and the naked Erda will certainly come back too. But how this new Kosky tetralogy should continue in a meaningful way is only vaguely stated in the British Wagner stars. And while people are still getting excited about the Bayreuth “Ring”, which is supposedly over-conceptual, this London beginning seems rather under-complex.
On September 20th, this new “Rheingold” can be seen as a live broadcast in 800 cinemas worldwide.
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