2023-10-11 14:00:34
It just happened in London and Basel, this month it is happening in Brussels, later in Dortmund and Erfurt: There are premieres of “Das Rheingold” everywhere, sometimes as a prelude to a new “Ring” opening, sometimes to his fast -Diploma. Sometimes just like that, in isolation. And in Bayreuth anyway, where the 150th festival anniversary is approaching in 2026 and the premiere of the last two tetralogy parts rounds off the entire cycle. With a lot of interpretation, if you please.
Wagner-Wumms should do it everywhere: whether in Saarbrücken (875 seats) and Klagenfurt (800 seats), in the Passionsspielhaus in Erl (1500 seats, no pit, no stage technology), for the first time ever in Detmold in 2008 (648 seats) or in 2022 Oldenburg (580 seats), even in the example theater in Minden (535 seats, orchestra on stage) – no theater building seems so small that the 14-hour “Ring” could not somehow be heaved onto the stage as a project that is as self-confident as it is megalomaniacal .
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There are no longer any dramaturgical limits. Even Bayreuth – in the Corona year 2021 – experimented with a semi-concert “Walküre” painted live and showered with colors by Hermann Nitsch, who died shortly afterwards, with a “Rheingold” puppet show in the park pool in front of the festival hall, with “Siegfried” as a VR dragon slaying and with “Twilight of the Gods” as a walk-in red giant norn ball of fate thread (by Chiharu Shiota).
And what is right for the Bayreuth hill-hoard grail temple seems cheap to a center stage (896 seats) like Braunschweig: last season they announced the expansion of the “Ring” area. Only “Götterdämmerung” was actually played in its entirety.
The intention was very contemporary: “The ‘Ring’ material serves as a starting point for multi-layered artistic reinterpretation and expansion, which develops decidedly from the qualities of a multi-department building and actively seeks exchange with urban society. The hierarchical cult of genius in the service of a total work of art is confidently contrasted with the collective excellence of the disciplines. And a utopia of the emotional technician Wagner, the unvarnished analysis of the world as it is – or could be.” Well said.
Constantly escalating contexts
The total work of art, consisting of different forms of expression of performing art and music, also consisted of “Rheingold” (as a musical theater with drama), the premieres of “Die Walküren” by Caren Erdmuth Jeß (drama with a state orchestra) and “Siegfried – Eine Movement” as a dance theater with an orchestra by Steffen Schleiermacher and Gregor Zöllig. A musical director, three directors, a choreographer, four designers, two dramaturgs as well as twelve soloists, an actor, the dance ensemble, choir, men’s extra choir and the state orchestra took part in the “Twilight of the Gods”.
And so things continue to struggle in ever-expanding contexts. In Stuttgart, where a “ring” with four directors was released for the first time in 1999/2000 – and has been copied many times (in Chemnitz there were four female directors in 2018), they started again in 2019 in a different way: three directing collectives had fun with one each “Valkyrie” act.
Compression can also be a “ring” sign. Back in the 1980s, the Bavarian State Opera premiered the entire “Ring” within ten days for the first time as part of its ongoing repertoire. Wolfgang Sawallisch also conducted Puccini and Peter Cornelius in between. Daniel Barenboim wanted to try something similar at the Berlin Lindenoper on his third “Ring” attempt last fall. He had to pass, Christian Thielemann stepped in strategically cleverly.
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At the current start of the season, however, something like a Wagnerian “Ring” epicenter seems to be in Switzerland of all places. Four out of seven Swiss music theater stages are currently working on the tetralogy.
This ranges from the four-part spectacle in the intimate Zurich house (1,100 seats), rounded off within two years with the “Götterdämmerung” at the beginning of November, which was very naively retold by Andreas Homoki, but brought to life in a shimmering musical manner by Gianandrea Noseda; about the attempt at “Siegfried” with one building block per season on the small stage in Bern (650 seats) directed by the Polish Ewelina Marcinia, who is considered a great mystic; to the “Siegfried” version for children in the Lucerne Mini Music Theater (481 seats).
The artistic director Benedikt von Peter at the Theater Basel (1000 seats), who is also the director, is particularly ambitious. Where a “Ring” attempt in stage designs by Adolphe Appia failed in 1925 and a second attempt under Hans Hollmann in 1977/78 in the new house did not get past half of it, two parts now follow one another at the start of the season. Which was and is then proclaimed with additional activities as part of the “Ring” happening – as a “festival of the senses and diversity”.
Rows of rings with the “ring”
As a prelude to the evening before, the prominent noise maker Matthew Herbert has “Rheinklang – Ein Chorritual” parade: Black-robed members of various choirs run in circles around five fire bowls on the theater square, after they have previously sung the enigmatic E major of the beginning of the “Ring” together with the wave movement individually and condensed it into a sampler.
After 15 minutes, they extinguish the flames with (supposedly) Rhine water from vessels they had brought with them, from cooking pots to the Grail chalice. The burning Valhalla is flooded by the cleansing Rhine. The struggle for power and love can begin again.
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It does that an hour later on stage. With obstacles. Peter wants to tell a patriarchal story about the “fairy tale maker” Wotan from the feminist class about his daughter Brünnhilde. It’s only her turn in “Walküre” (sung by Magdalena Anna Hoffmann for the sick but acting Trine Møller), but she’s already chatting away several times from the off, and is also standing around silently as a singer like a child’s double. But so that the toxic Wagner doesn’t get loud with his seductive sound cocktail, the narratively fluent Jonathan Nott sits with the Basel Symphony Orchestra under the stage and the sound only comes into play very indirectly – through a grid in the floor.
So everything remains simple and human, we are very close to it, but overwhelm or ecstasy never arises. That was different with Nott’s concert tetralogy with the Bamberg Symphony ten years ago at the Lucerne Festival. By the way, another tetralogy has just begun there with the “Rheingold”, this time historically informed and on old instruments…
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Bayreuth’s virtual “Parsifal”
A wooden table with chairs in front, a two-story house in the shell at the back on the left and a bare world ash tree that looks like a cat scratching post to the right, where a hole soon opens up in the ground for dwarves and the many dead – that’s the Ikea-like Basel standard stage set Natascha by Steigers, through which the Rhinemaidens now swim dry as little stick puppets and Alberich (Andre Murphy) wobbles along as a giant toad. There was a real family constellation before the rehearsal, which will be re-enacted below.
Almost everyone is always present. The first appearance of the gods is on Siegfried’s fifth birthday, to whom the grandfather presents the rest of the “Ring” as a puppet theater. But then why the mythical nonsense, the narrative confusions, the many dialogues, accusations and accusations? What if Siegmund and, at the end, Sieglinde are already there when Wotan has sex under the table with the Norns from “Twilight of the Gods” and Brünnhilde knows everything about her dysfunctional clan? What initially seems pleasantly simple becomes increasingly more complex without explaining itself.
Fricka as a dressing gown lady
Wherever Valentin Schwarz also lets people appear in the currently maligned Bayreuth “Ring”, it usually makes sense and tells something. In Basel it looks like an awkward solution, even a seasoned singer actress like the 80-year-old Chéreau-Fricka Hanna Schwarz, who has now been reduced to Erda and now suddenly has to look after her daughter Brünnhilde in the Walküre, only looks like an extra. It doesn’t clarify anything, it just confuses those less familiar with Wagner’s network of relationships.
Before the Valkyries set off on their rarely so quiet ride down the ramp on the second Basel “Ring” evening, they sing Brünnhilde text passages in the second act and sit around the campfire for girls’ evening in the first. Fricka (very narrow: Solenn’ Lavanant Linke) is reduced to a nagging dressing gown madame who sits on the packed Wotan suitcase for the fire magic; Her husband is already wearing hiker’s outfit (Nathan Berg sings it so rudely and bluntly); beforehand he even slaughtered Sieglinde (wavy: Theresa Kronthaler).
Incest with brother Siegmund (strong-voiced: Ric Furman) didn’t even happen, why should it? Siegfried has long since been conceived and lies sleeping next to his aunt’s little flame rock. You could actually save yourself two and a half acts of “Siegfried” if Mime (Karl Heinz Brandt) didn’t crawl out of the hole and collect the little one…
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Bayreuth – The live ticker
Even if “Walküre” is only three-quarters sold out, the Theater Basel is still offering two more political-performative “Ring” explanatory pieces: In “Gold, Glanz, Götter” Hans-Werner Kroesinger and Regine Dura tell humorously and cleverly along the way from the seventh foyer floor to the backdrop warehouse and through the alphorn-sounding freight elevator back from the very special Basel Rheingold, the dirty patrician money acquired through triangular trade with Indian cotton fabrics that were exchanged by slaves; that wasn’t too dirty even for Catholic missionary societies that still exist today.
Monika Gintersdorfer and Knut Klassen, on the other hand, invite you to the big stage in the “Yopougon Ring” for a musical and dance get-together with Basel’s twin city of the same name on the Ivory Coast. Wagner is transculturally decolonized by three white and four black actors with the Ivorian musical style Coupé-décalé – until each leitmotif can dance its indigenous movement concept. We’re not any the wiser afterwards, but at least it was casually funny, especially when Spaguetty Mazantomo lets his pigtails fly behind thick sunglasses.
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