2024-03-17 21:03:33
Under the baton of top conductor Kent Nagano, a concert performance of Richard Wagner’s Valkyrie took place last Saturday at the Prague State Opera. The audience was treated to a sight that is exceptional in the Czech Republic – the full cast of the orchestra as described by the author took up almost the entire stage, the singers could hardly fit on it. And the monumentality of the sound was equally dazzling.
The concert performance of Valkyrie in a historically informed interpretation is part of the extensive music-scientific project The Wagner Cycles. It was initiated by the Dresden Music Festival and brings together academics and musicians who perform one part of Wagner’s opera tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung on European stages every year, using historical instruments and taking into account the vocal and speech practice of the time of the work’s creation.
The initiative aims to explore how Wagner probably imagined the Ring and what it might have sounded like in his time. Concerts are preceded by workshops and rehearsals, where musicologists work with the orchestra and singers. It includes reconstructions of historical musical instruments and the technique of playing them or singing devices, which included talking, shouting and other non-singing sounds.
The interpretation part started last year with a concert performance of Zlata Rýna, the first of the four operas. This year it was Valkyrie’s turn, next year Siegfried is to follow. The imaginary culmination will be the release of the fourth part of Twilight of the Gods in 2026, i.e. 150 years since the world premiere of the tetralogy.
Valkyrie is still considered the most popular of all four parts. Perhaps in it, Wagner came closest to his theory of the collective work of art, the gesamtkunstwerk, in which he wanted to combine all art forms from poetry to music and singing to dance into a single whole.
It is played exceptionally in the Czech Republic
While Germans come into contact with Wagner’s music relatively intensively and the composer’s operas appear regularly on the program of the local stages, not to mention the annual Wagner festivities in Bayreuth, the local audience rarely has the opportunity to hear the author’s work.
Conductor Kent Nagano is in the foreground. | Photo: Vojtěch Brtnický
There are several reasons. In addition to the huge cast of the orchestra, for which there is neither a suitable hall nor such a large musical ensemble in the Czech Republic, Wagnerian roles place enormous demands on the singers: they are dramatic, emotionally tense, work with a large scale and tend to be enormously difficult, especially when it comes to the operatic tetralogy.
Wagner often had unrealistic ideas about interpretation – for example, he wanted his operas of up to four hours to be played without breaks between acts. Moreover, in his later work he stopped distinguishing between recitatives and arias, so the singer rarely “rests” on stage with a less demanding performance.
On the other hand, Wagner’s music has strong ties to the Czech environment. The first director of the State Opera (then the New German Theatre), Angelo Neumann, was a close friend of Wagner’s and a promoter of his work, he advocated for it to be performed in Prague as well.
From 2022, the State Opera has in its repertoire a not very successful production of The Lost Dutchman by the Norwegian director Ole Anders Tandberg, which, paradoxically, loses the most by trying to demonstrate the technical features of the new revolving stage, often at the expense of singing, and to stage the opera the way Wagner wanted it – that is, without breaks. The domestic audience is not very used to that.
The Wagner Cycles project began last year with a concert performance of The Golden Rhine, the first of the quartet of operas. | Video: Dresden Musikfestspiele
Until recently, Lohengrin, played at the National Theater under the direction of the composer’s great-granddaughter Katharina Wagner, again paid for the effort to restore the original Bayreuth production from 1967, incidentally the directorial work of her father Wolfgang. The performance was marked mainly by his stiffness, although musically and singing it was excellent.
Some time ago, the smaller stage of the North Bohemian Theater in Ústí nad Labem dared to perform Wagner’s landmark opera Tristan und Isolde, in which the composer began to work innovatively with harmony, instrumentation and melodic line, thus starting Wagner’s “opera reform”.
However, conductor Miloš Formáček shortened Ústí’s Tristan by almost an hour, also taking into account the fact that there is not a large enough audience in the region for such a demanding act, which was also reflected in the lower attendance at the premiere.
The Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra will perform Tristan und Isolde in concert at the end of March at the Rudolfinum with foreign soloists, but it will only take place at the second performance of the opera.
Soprano Christiane Libor’s currency was above all the beautiful highs, which did not lose their luster and sharpness, even when the orchestra played forte. | Photo: Vojtěch Brtnický
Valkyrie after 19 years
Valkyra was last performed in Prague in 2005, so the current one-off hosting of the Dresden project promised a unique experience, although it was only a concert version without a scenic component.
Even so, the orchestra filled almost the entire stage of the State Opera, until the soloists had to be satisfied with a relatively modest space – mainly for arrivals and departures on stage. The cast included, among other things, seven double basses, six harps, almost three dozen violinists and instruments such as the Wagner tuba and signal horn.
For this occasion, two German ensembles came together: the Dresden Festival Orchestra and the Concerto Köln ensemble, both of which focus primarily on historically informed interpretation and the search for the original sound of the piece. Under the baton of world-renowned conductor Kent Nagano, they created a well-functioning ensemble with a monumental sound. The soloists benefited from the placement on the forbin, thanks to which the voices carried well.
The story, based on the old Norse myth of the Saga of the Volsungs, tells of the reunion of Sieglinda and Siegmund – twins fathered by the god Wotan, who were separated after birth.
When the wounded Siegmund seeks shelter with Sieglinda and her husband Hunding, he falls in love with his hostess and recognizes her as his own sister. However, incest and infidelity anger the goddess of marriage and Wotan’s wife Fricka, who demands Siegmund’s death. Everything leads to a fight between the two rivals, the end of which is to be decided by the valkyrie Brünnhilda – also Wotan’s daughter, who, however, defies his will and is punished by her father for it.
The full orchestra barely fit on the stage. | Photo: Vojtěch Brtnický
Wotan outshone them all
Although two singers performed in a reported indisposition, it did not detract from the resulting impression. The representative of Sieglinda, Sarah Wegener, fought the illness bravely and despite her breathy, audibly tired voice, which sometimes failed at the end of the phrases, she sang the demanding role with dignity. At least her expression was very convincing.
The other indisposed, the sought-after Wagnerian bass-baritone Derek Welton, gave a stirring performance in which the indisposition was not very noticeable. He also supported the amazing singing line with a charismatic acting performance in expression and gesticulation, for which he received a proper ovation. One could almost say that he created the prototype of an angry, but also a remorseful ruler. He almost overshadowed everyone on stage.
The titular role of the valkyrie Brünnhilda was taken on by the German soprano Christiane Libor, whose motto was above all beautiful, ringing highs. However, her voice did not seem completely balanced, because she pressed too much in the lower positions and overloaded the vocal cords – probably in an attempt to “oversing” the orchestra behind her. Tones in a lower position thus lost their luster and sonority.
On the contrary, the representative of the goddess Fricka, Claude Eichenberger, gave a very balanced performance on all levels, and she carried the middle and lower position confidently and sonically. Her duet with Wotan, in which they believably portrayed the marital discord, was one of the best moments of the evening.
Hunding’s representative, bassist Patrick Zielke, and tenor Maximilian Schmitt sang excellently as Siegmund, although some of the more lyrical passages with Sieglinda could have done with less pressure and more relief.
The ride of the valkyries at the beginning of the third act, which is probably the most famous musical motif of the opera and has long penetrated into pop culture, was another highlight. The conductor played with the placement of the singers in the space of the stage and the auditorium, and the black dress code of the performers was enlivened by sparkling sequins and greater playfulness in the performance.
The biggest ovation was deservedly received by the 72-year-old American conductor Kent Nagano, whose musical concept was sonically and dynamically balanced. The orchestra did not go full force in all gradations at all costs, but this did not detract from the effectiveness. Nagano chose faster tempos, but it was still playable and singable, and the “lighter” version of the orchestration was good for singers as well.
Chelsea Zurflüh as Gerhilde, Karola Sophia Schmid as Ortlinde and Natalie Karl as Helmwige. | Photo: Vojtěch Brtnický
The question remains whether the singer’s interpretation differed significantly from other conceptions, if we ignore the lower tuning. For example, the program announced that in Wagner’s time singers did not use vibrato much – which cannot be said about the Prague performance – or that they used dramatic devices such as rhythmic speaking. Sarah Wegener and Derek Welton were mainly trying to do that, but otherwise the listener didn’t notice them much.
However, all the singers worked very well with the text, or with the affects and figures, which is the emotional and expressive coloring of the music according to the words. The articulation and intelligibility of the text was excellent, often even in high tones.
The audience rewarded the almost five-hour work with breaks with a long standing ovation. Undoubtedly, it was a great event that raises questions about how to work with scientific knowledge about historical interpretation and how to connect it with practice and the questions that today’s listeners ask themselves.
In Germany, the project is accompanied by a lecture tour, which, in addition to the musical side, addresses, for example, Wagner’s anti-Semitism or the gender dimension of his works. At the very least, The Wagner Cycles could be an inspiration for the next anniversary of domestic composers.
Opera
Richard Wagner: Valkýra
Dresden Festival Orchestra & Concerto Köln
Conductor: Kent Nagano
State Opera, Prague, March 9.