Where in Europe can you find an audience capable of immersing themselves in the middle of the week for five hours (from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., intermissions included) in the new production of a Wagnerian opera? In Berlin, where 1,400 people attended, Monday, October 3, The Valkyrie (The Valkyrie), second part of the Tetralogy by Wagner presented at the start of the season at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in a new staging by Dmitri Tcherniakov.
The day before, Sunday October 2, the Wagnerian furia had charred, in L’Or du Rhin, Rolando Villazon, ex-tenor turned baritone, whose Loge, too Italianate, disagreed with the mephitic standards of the character. On the second evening, Robert Watson’s Siegmund takes it for his rank. The American tenor, who has a pretty timbre, did not totally deserve it, but his undersized voice and his lackluster incarnation appeared a clear notch below those of his partners, starting with the incandescent Sieglinde of Vida Mikneviciute, whose fiery vocal line, sky-high highs, and stage firepower seemed to defy both orchestra and fate.
The twins, illegitimate children of Wotan (patriarch whose hair has turned white) have been separated for a long time. Finally reunited, they will recognize each other, love each other, run away, watched by their father behind the one-way glass of his office, like laboratory animals subjected to experimentation. Two scenic spaces, mounted on a spinner, adjoin, including the very functional apartment with glass walls, perfectly equipped, where the blonde Sieglinde lives recluse, in slippers, with her husband, the terrifying Hunding, a policeman launched in pursuit of a delinquent with a white spot on his head, which he discovers at his home on his way home. Tcherniakov spares nothing from this cramped daily life, where the man brutalizes the woman conquered by force, pees standing up before going to bed and keeps his loaded gun close to him.
Once again, the direction of the actor is of a formidable accuracy
Once more, the direction of actor is of a frightening accuracy. No sensuality between the incestuous brother and sister, but a violently paroxysmal desire. Death is on their heels, but Siegmund has found the magic sword that was supposed to protect them. Wotan can rejoice under the mantle to have generated free beings, capable of disobedience. The backlash will only be more cruel. If Wotan’s ignominious surrender to Fricka, the law-keeper wife, takes place in the opulent paneled conference room, it is in the basements of the research center that the lovers on the run, lost among the rabbit cages , will have to undergo the death sentence which condemns them henceforth.
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