Most opera lovers, even Wagner sceptics, would agree that the music to Lohengrin is an exceptional mixture of sublime beauty and high octane thrills, whatever their views of the story and indeed the composer himself. The way it was played last night, by Jakub Hrůša and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, will have delighted Lohengrin devotees and must surely have gone some way to winning over any residual doubters. The orchestral performance was captivating from the start, with shimmering split strings playing us dawn over the River Scheldt, to the surprisingly gentle ending, by way of some huge ensembles. Rarely have I heard the Royal Opera brass in such fine form, the strings so distinct and uncluttered, or the woodwind solos so blended into shifting textures.
The Royal Opera Chorus was also on terrific form. The big paean to the conquering hero which closes Act 1 truly raised the Covent Garden roof, and their softer moments – the times when the crowd fidgets nervously as it awaits events – were delivered incisively. Although there were occasional orchestral flubs along the way – that’s hard to avoid in a work this length – all told, Hrůša treated us to a masterclass in Wagnerian conducting.
Most fans of Lohengrin, even the most ardent amongst them, would admit that the story is hokum, an uneasy mix of Arthurian legend and Christian mysticism with a few Wagnerian oddities thrown in (what are Wodan and Freia doing here?) and a plot with more holes than a Swiss cheese. Creating any sort of coherence is a challenge for any director.
None of which seems to have fazed David Alden, who zeroes into the philosophical core of the opera. This a piece about the desirability of unquestioning faith, and faith means nothing without doubt. So Alden starts sowing doubt from the very beginning. This Brabant is not a happy place; the scene is dark, the buildings are distorted, the huddled masses could be out of depression-era John Steinbeck. The good people of Brabant do indeed greet Henry the Fowler enthusiastically, but they’re being “encouraged” to do so by a bunch of rifle-toting soldiers and Derek Welton’s Herald is imposing and stentorian, but cuts a disturbingly malign figure. When the pristine purity of the swan motif appears above the temple where Lohengrin and Elsa’s marriage is to be celebrated, it is swiftly echoed into a red, black and white flag looking disturbingly like a Nazi flag.
Then Act 2 arrives and Anna Smirnova puts in a show-stealing performance as Ortrud, ratcheting the doubts up to fever pitch. We know that Ortrud is an evil witch whose interest is only in her own power and the overthrow of Christianity, but that doesn’t matter – and indeed, we will later discover that the “poison” with which she fills Elsa is true: Lohengrin really is planning to leave her after a year to resume his knightly quests. Her “magic power” over her more-brawn-than-brains husband Telramund is revealed to be the magic of sex, in one of the more effective sex scenes you’ll see on an opera stage. Smirnova grabbed the story by the scruff of its neck and launched it forward.
As demanded by the medieval traditions of courtly love, the singer in the title role is called upon to combine the irreconcilable – an implacably ferocious dealer of mighty buffets in battle and the epitome of gentility in court or the bedroom. Many Wagnerian tenors accomplish one of these personalities with excellence (Klaus Florian Vogt, who sang the role here in 2018, is the epitome of the second). Few can incarnate both. Brandon Jovanovich did a particularly fine job, with an attractive tenor that morphed seamlessly between heft and satin. Jennifer Davis was a jump-in for this production’s first outing in 2018. She’s now an accomplished Elsa, giving us peaches and cream at the top and a demeanour that’s credible whether playing the innocent or the wronged woman. With Craig Colclough an engaged and earnest Telramund and Gábor Bretz as a powerful if somewhat one-dimensional Henry, you couldn’t have asked for a better singing cast.
By the end of the third act, with a multiplication of Nazi-like swan flags supposedly belonging to the good guys and Lohengrin himself surprisingly unempathetic to Elsa’s plight, Alden has messed with our brains sufficiently that we’re not really sure where our sympathies lie. It’s been a production which totally satisfied musically and which provoked far more thought and tension than any Lohengrin I’ve seen.
