Das Rheingold - Arnold Bezuyen (Mime), Ensemble

I’m not too familiar with the work of Austrian stage director, Valentin Schwarz, who’s directing his first Ring cycle at Bayreuth this year postponed from 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but I do know that he came to prominence in tandem with set designer Andrea Cozzi, after winning the 2017 The Ring Award, an international competition for stage direction and stage design in musical theatre held on a triennial basis in the Austrian city of Graz.

A prestigious event for sure, The Ring Award enables and encourages a critical reflection of current trends and developments in musical theatre offering a platform to young artists in getting international resonance for their ideas of what contemporary musical theatre should be like while providing a professional platform for planning and realizing actual performances.

The groundwork for The Ring Award was laid in 1995 with the founding of the Wagner Forum Graz, a committed cultural association that consciously places the examination of the work and influence of Richard Wagner, the great artistic innovator of his time and creator of timeless masterpieces of music theatre, in a contemporary context and follows current general cultural developments with keen interest.
Obviously, the importance of such high-ranking competitions as The Ring Award brings huge rewards and widespread attention to the winners. And a couple from the 2008 competition, German stage director Tobias Kratzer and set/costume designer Rainer Sellmaier, benefited greatly from their success.

As a result Kratzer and Sellmaier received an invitation to work at Bayreuth and duly opened the 2019 Bayreuth Festival in a blaze of glory with a glowing production of Tannhäuser, the one opening with an aerial video sequence showing Venus driving a battered-up old Citroën Type-H van (Venusberg on wheels) through the Thuringian valley. Thankfully, the opera’s still in the repertoire and on the bill for this year’s Bayreuth Festival, the 110th edition.

Following in their wake Valentin Schwarz and Andrea Cozzi arrived on the Green Hill this year. They certainly hit the headlines, when Katharina Wagner announced that they would be responsible for the new Ring at the 2020 Bayreuth Festival, the 109th edition. But due to Covid-19 this festival was postponed to 2021 and then only offered a reduced programme which included three concert performances of Die Walküre.

A director in his ascendancy, Valentin Schwarz has worked in some prestigious houses over the past few years. For instance, he directed Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte at Theater an der Wien, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at Staatstheater Darmstadt and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale at Opéra National de Montpellier while his production of York Holler’s Der Meister und Margarita was seen only last year at Oper Köln.

Without question, directing Wagner, especially the Ring, poses a tremendous artistic challenge for any director but Schwarz took that task head on conjuring up a good and interesting but bizarre production. However, I like directors who push boundaries and as with Frank Castorf’s controversial Ring at Bayreuth staged for Wagner’s bicentennial in 2013, Schwarz follows in his wake.

Change is necessary, I feel, at Bayreuth to ensure a healthy future for the festival and, indeed, elsewhere, too. I’m of the opinion that Wieland Wagner ushered in a new dawn on the Green Hill when he dumped the elaborate naturalistic sets and grand productions common in his grandfather’s day replacing them by minimalist affairs - all against forceful opposition. For instance, his Brechtian-influenced Parsifal in 1951 (the first Bayreuth Festival after the Second World War) was booed to bits in company, with Patrice Chéreau’s politically motivated centenary Ring in 1976 receiving the same reception. Surprisingly, today, they’re now hailed as masterpieces.

However, opening Schwarz’ realization of Das Rheingold, a back-projection video sequence featured a faint ripple of water representing the Rhine conjured up by video artist, Luis August Krawen. The opening scene really fired my imagination with video footage dominating the entire stage, focused on an umbilical cord slowly unfolding against those deep and disturbing dark opening chords of the prelude. Eventually, the umbilical cord revealed embryonic twins in the womb - one being Wotan, the other Alberich. Brothers? How strange? However, the warring deuce soon found themselves at odds with one another as Alberich was seen throwing a punch to Wotan’s eye while the dwarf got it fair and square in the groin. There was more ambiguity like this to come from Schwarz.

The Rhinemaidens were smartly turned out with pleated knee-length skirts, frolicking about in a swimming-pool. The poisonous dwarf Alberich is having a fun time playing in the pool with large coloured beach balls in the company of a bunch of eight young girls (future Valkyries?) all made up to look alike and being cared for by the Rhinemaidens seen in this production as chaperones.The young charges certainly gave Alberich (sung by Olafur Sigurdarson with gusto and flair) a good run for his money while the well-loved trio - who sang and acted well - comprised Lea-ann Dunbar (Woglinde), Stephanie Houtzeel (Wellgunde) and Katie Stevenson (Roßweiße).

Often threatening his foes with a revolver Wotan is not seen in this production as a God as the libretto quite clearly states but acts more like a company chief executive or, maybe, head of the family. However, in this pivotal role, Latvian bass-baritone, Egils Silins sang and acted the part with great panache parading around his custom-built and richly furnished house dishing out orders here, there and everywhere as befitting his important status in life. But not content with his lot he was often seen looking out of his office window dreaming of Valhalla with his sidekick, Loge (sung suavely and so insincerely by Daniel Kirch) at his beckon call and always egging him on.

According to Schwarz, the Ring is mainly about one big family with the story running through different generations; therefore he employs and puts children at the heart of his production. A theory I harbour in this respect is to the fact that he may be simply trying to portray the importance of innocence against the overall dark side of the story of the Ring depicting, as it does so vividly, greed, power, corruption and practically everything else in between including rape and incest.
Although born with Original Sin (depending, of course, upon your Christian viewpoint) children are primarily innocent and untarnished by the trials and tribulations of life and, therefore, any ill-treatment of them is a disturbing subject. Abuse, of course, comes with power in all shapes and forms and the Ring is all about power over someone or other witness Alberich’s treatment of Mime and, indeed, Wotan’s treatment of Fricka but, surprisingly, in Die Walküre she gets the upper hand for once.

But the upper hand was certainly in the Giants’ grasp as they dispensed the dirt to get their mean way over the ransom money for building Valhalla. Looking like Hollywood B movie gangsters with revolvers at the ready they arrived to collect their pay in a black-painted vintage Porsche. And it was beside the Porsche where Fafner (Wilhelm Schwinghammer) delivered the killing blow taking out his brother Fasolt (Jens-Erik Aasbø) to grab the golden bounty (and power) for himself. The gold here was a young boy kitted out in a black-and-yellow baseball hat and shirt wearing black shorts who was seen in the Nibelheim scene as a delinquent in school (he found it hard, though, trying to deactivate the school’s CCTV camera!) along with eight girls (young Nibelungs?) under the tuition and strict control of Mime.

And that familiar and well-loved scene in which Wotan and Loge trick Alberich over the powers of the Tarnhelm egging him on to turn himself into a dragon or a toad floundered a bit. There was no dragon and, indeed, no toad apart from the kids’ drawings of dragons. Imagination was greatly needed here. Wagner, however, is quoted as saying that imagination creates reality. Well, not quite, I’m afraid, Richard!

Overall, this was a well-cast show and an exemplary performance emanated from Christa Mayer as Fricka who at the end of the opera was nervously cradling a lighted square box harbouring a flickering triangular image of Valhalla (which turned up frequently throughout the cycle) while Elisabeth Teige delivered a commanding performance as Freia busy shining her golden apples (what else!) with Okka von der Damerau’s voice as strong as ever and totally committed to the role of Erda. And the two minor roles of Donner and Froh - which I always associate with those two minor characters in Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - were extremely well portrayed by Raimund Nolte and Attilio Glaser.

The set designer, Andrea Cozzi, came up trumps all round. For instance, in Rheingold, free-standing simplistically designed mobile sets smoothly eased into place like a jigsaw puzzle with further sets coming from the grid seen to good effect when it came to formulate Wotan’s swishy residence while the school classroom was simply a class-covered box and, with a bit of trickery, turned itself into the underground city of Nibelheim. The magic and mystic of the stage holds no bounds.

Really, I’ve never giving any thought as to what happens to Freia after Rheingold when her life is spared after Wotan throws the cursed ring on to the Giants’ hoard of gold in exchange for her. But when the curtain went up on Die Walküre, one of the first things I noticed on stage was a white decorative coffin adorned with white stargazer lilies. The occupant: Freia. How bizarre!

Another bizarre situation arose with Sieglinde (sung magnificently by Lise Davidsen) who was seen already pregnant before her reunion with her long-lost brother, Siegmund, portrayed by the ‘prince’ of the Green Hill, Klaus Florian Vogt. The couple, though, are only seen in a romantic embrace and the father of Sieglinde’s child turned out to be Wotan: the baby in the womb, Siegfried. Another odd and, indeed, ugly situation was thrown up when Wotan attempted to rape Sieglinde carried out in a raw, graphic and forceful manner which I found most distasteful.

A great scene, though, unfolded surrounding the Valkyries dressing up to the nines (courtesy of costume designer, Andy Besuch) as if ready to launch themselves on a hen night out. They were undergoing beauty therapy treatment with face packs and all the palaver that goes with it while the Fallen Heroes, odd as it may seem, acted as general factotums serving them champagne with a team of maids on hand to serve afternoon tea.

Earlier in the opera where Fricka demands Wotan stand up for Hunding in a duel because he has been the victim of incestuous adultery another strange twist reared its ugly head when Wotan faces Siegmund in what could be well described as a dysfunctional family argument. He simply shoots him at point-blank range (Nothung replaced in favour of a revolver) with Hunding standing by his side.

When Wotan dismisses Brünnhilde to her rock for disobeying his orders there was no gracious farewell and no rock. No fire, either. What’s going on here, I thought. Somewhat unexpectedly Fricka turned up with a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses on a dumb waiter with a lighted candle (a nod by Schwarz to the burning rock) to raise a toast to her success over her husband who acted hesitantly in his actions while Brünnhilde was not to be seen anywhere. After fumbling a bit, Wotan sulkily left the stage nervously holding the Wanderer’s deep-rimmed black hat while leaving Fricka gleeful in her moment of glory.

Without doubt, this was a marvellous and invigorating account of Die Walküre featuring a brilliant and well-polished team of principals comprising Klaus Florian Vogt (Siegmund), Georg Zeppenfeld (Hunding), Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan), Lise Davidsen (Sieglinde), Iréne Theorin (Brünnhilde) and Christa Mayer (Fricka). The class of 2022.

When the curtain lifted on Siegfried one is greeted by Mime’s scruffy den with the greedy and greasy occupant seen as a wizard running a puppet theatre while Siegfried, barging in from the forest full of high spirits, cast aside a bearskin and gets down to business of forging Nothung. Schwarz decides now is the time to put away the revolver in favour of the sword thereby getting closer to the libretto.

In comparison to Mime’s ‘junkyard’ den, Fafner spent some of his ill-gotten gains on a swishy ultra-modern designer apartment. As he warms himself in front of a raging dragonish-burning fire from the comfort of a hospital-type bed, Mime steps in, dumps him on the wooden floor and that’s it. He’s gone for good with the Wanderer and Alberich looking on in disbelief, relaxed by the fireside mind you.

The tête-à-tête between Siegfried and Mime proved good ‘knock-about’ comedy and carried out, too, in a relaxed manner on a corner-suite sofa (originally used for Wotan’s flashy residence in Rheingold) with Golden boy and the Woodbird (cheerfully sung by Alexandra Steiner) enjoying the show. Stepping in quickly, though, Siegfried was quick off the mark to make the sofa Mime’s last resting-place.
Schwarz, I feel, possesses an ironic sense of humour which came to the fore in this scene in as much as Nothung was pulled from a swordstick namely Mime’s disabled crutch. Anyway, it was surplus to requirements. The pupil outstripped the master. Siegfried tricked the old trickster for the last time.

Of course, act three of Siegfried is everyone’s favourite with the performers utilising all areas of the minimalist set comprising a variety of platforms seen on varying levels with Brünnhilde (this time sung by Daniela Köhler) with Grane by her side (acted by Igor Schwab) approaching Siegfried through a flooded lemon-green stage with a cosmetic surgery bandaged head. Maybe it was meant to be a flashback to her Valkyrie sisters who enjoyed the same sort of pampering and beauty treatment earlier in the cycle. Who knows!

But when Brünnhilde gets ‘unbandaged’ by her super-charged hero ready to greet the sun and light in that big expressive number ‘Heil dir, Sonne! Heil dir, Licht!’ the orchestral playing leading up to this pivotal moment was so gripping and intense that it brilliantly captured the romantic spirit that existed between the two lovers as they jubilantly confess their devotion for each other while falling into each other's arms. Romantic to the core, eh! Without doubt, Daniela Köhler and Andreas Schager delivered wonderful and gifted performances that stamped their credentials on their respective roles.

For sure, an inventive director, Schwarz in Götterdämmerung conjures up a new character, the child of Siegfried and Brünnhilde, who now embodies the Ring. Inevitably, the child comes between the quarrelling parents and in darkness Gunther decides to turn up and ties it to a dining-chair and then decides to violently bash Brünnhilde against a wall in an insane moment. Grane fares even worse to the extent that Brünnhilde finds his head in a white plastic shopping-bag. Weird!

The scene of Gibiching Hall posed a question. The only decorative picture in the hall showed Hagen, Gunther and Gutrune as big game hunters - another bizarre touch by Schwarz and, indeed, a new discovery - proudly standing beside a dead zebra, maybe one they bagged on safari in Kenya while a recently killed elephant was lying on the floor. How bizarre is that!

With shoulder-length hair, wearing a baseball hat, Gunther comes over as a weak and completely barmy nervously charging around Gibiching Hall wearing a T-shirt stating: ‘Who the fuck is Grane?’ In stark contrast, however, his sister, Gutrune, comes over as a sexy and glamourous individual attired in a long-flowing bright-green dress repeatedly (and boringly) checking her mobile. And their half-brother, Hagen (Albert Dohmen) usually seen chilling the air around him just by his presence came over in this production as a tame individual. Slightly disappointing! But as a performer he came over extremely well as, too, did Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Gunther and Elisabeth Teige as Gutrune.

In the final scene of Götterdämmerung one returns to the very beginning: the swimming-pool where the unruly young Hagen was kidnapped ‘armed’ with a red-and-white water-pistol. But gone are its glory days. It’s devoid of water and in disrepair echoing, perhaps, the destruction and downfall of Wotan and his acolytes.

One witnesses Siegfried fishing with his young son in a small muddy puddle. It’s the spot where Hagen stabs him in the back while his henchmen look down upon him questioning his behaviour. Hagen, seemingly uneasy about his actions, is seen charging about the stage justifying his cruel act.

The ending of the cycle mirrored the beginning as one witnessed the Rheingold ‘twins’ shown once more as embryos in the womb. This time round, though, they’re seen embracing one another perhaps ushering in the start of a new world order.

Swedish dramatic soprano, Iréne Theorin, as Brünnhilde, delivered a brilliant rendition of the great Immolation scene that ends Götterdämmerung, widely recognised as one of Wagner’s greatest pieces. At the end, Brünnhilde simply cradles Grane’s severed head on her chest before lying down asleep next to her dead hero, Siegfried.

As a substitute to the raging fire which normally brings Götterdämmerung to a close, Schwarz went against the grain and, indeed, against audience expectation by employing a flood of horizontal white neon strip lighting that slowly unfolded to the opera’s last note! Hagen makes one last effort to get the ring but to no avail. At curtain-call Schwarz was booed to bits but the performers were cheered to the rafters. But that’s Bayreuth for you!

However, you needed to keep your wits about you in Schwarz’s realization of the Ring and, just like Castorf, he keeps you guessing at every imaginable turn. Some things you got, some you didn’t. But it was that kind of production. Over the course of its tenure on the Green Hill, I think the rape scene with Sieglinde needs to be re-evaluated and I have a sneaking suspicion that Schwarz (his first Ring cycle at such a young age and at Bayreuth, too) will look at other areas, too.

What doesn’t need changing, though, is the conductor, Cornelius Meister, Stuttgart’s General Music Director, also making his Bayreuth debut. His Wagner debut came with Tannhäuser at Theater Heidelberg in 2004. Previously, he conducted Tristan und Isolde for Royal Danish Opera, Copenhagen, in 2010. He’s also busy at Stuttgart getting a new Ring ready for presentation in the spring of next year, directed by Stephan Kimmig, the first staging of the cycle at Stuttgart since the 1990-2000 season. I hope to be there.