NOTES ON THE BAYREUTHER FESTSPIELE 2002
This was our first experience of the Festspiele and we were grateful
to the Wagner Society for the opportunity of attending. The Bayreuth
experience was wonderful but challenging, beginning with five consecutive
nights at the Festspielhaus. We saw Meistersinger, Lohengrin,
Tannhaüser and the Ring: our two free days were after
Walküre and after Siegfried. I understand that
this was unusual and that there are normally more free days. I am
an opera addict, but I must say that I found this schedule a little
punishing and would have appreciated a few more days off.
Our first evening was Meistersinger, the last revival of the
Wolfgang Wagner production: Herr Wagner was there to take curtain
calls at the end and was warmly received. The production and sets
(also by Wagner) were traditional: there was a large curved backdrop
on which were projected images of church frescos (Act One), Nürnberg
rooftops (Act Two), and, most impressively, forest foliage with dappled
sunlight for the final scene of Act Three. Here one could feel the
atmosphere of nature and particularly the forest, so important to
German literature and legend, which one can still experience throughout
Germany, but which was notably missing from the recent Sydney production
of Der Freischütz. Christian Thielemann conducted, rather
sedately; Robert Holl was a phlegmatic Sachs. Emily Magee as Eva was
young and vibrant, with Endrik Wottrich suitably dashing as Walther
- I had no trouble believing in these two as a couple.
Lohengrin, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, was for me probably
the most satisfying experience of the Festival. Again, the production
(by Keith Warner, with sets by Stefanos Lazaridis) was traditional.
We were transported to medieval times where mythical swans and knights
of the grail fitted well with the historical characters. During the
Prelude, the curtain rose to display a truly magical dense forest,
dark and brooding; it sloped on all sides down towards the front of
the stage, where a small clearing led to a pool. As the shimmering
and weaving phrases grew more solid and declamatory, a silver swan
rose slowly from the pool, before descending again as the music ebbed
away.
The Saxon army in serried ranks was lowered from above on a frame
- impressive but rather static, as only the first row or two were
actual singers; the rest were dummies. Robert Dean Smith was heroic,
good-looking and youthful as Lohengrin; Roman Trekel an impressive
herald. Both Petra-Maria Schnitzer as Elsa and Linda Watson as Ortrud
sang and acted well. King Henry (Stephen West) was portrayed as an
ageing, frail Amfortas-like character, not the commanding figure we
had in Siegfried Vogel in Sydney. The set for the non-forest scenes
was a platform which tilted alarmingly, not unlike a raft being tossed
by stormy seas. The singers at times seemed in real danger of falling
off.
In Lohengrin, as in many of the performances, I missed the
onstage trumpets (not to mention the groups of brass in the upper
loges) we enjoy in Sydney. In fact, I would say that the recent Sydney
productions of Lohengrin and Tannhaüser stand up
quite well in comparison with those in Bayreuth.
Tannhaüser, the new production for this year's festival,
was a bit like the curate's egg. Parts of it were excellent. Roman
Trekel, fronting for the second night in a row, was moving as Wolfram.
John Wegner was a suitably pugnacious Biterolf.
The production, by Philippe Arlaud, was comprehensible (unlike some
aspects of the Ring), but did not resonate with me. This was the Dresden
version, so there was no bacchanale: Christian Thielemann again conducted.
The initial Venus-Tannhaüser scene portrayed Venus (Barbara Schneider-Hofstetter)
as a strange love-goddess: rather than being voluptuous and abandoned,
she was elaborately coiffed and dressed, rather like a Christian Dior
model of the 1960s - beautiful to look at, but untouchable, while
Tannhaüser sat, uninvolved, at the foot of her large bed-like
platform. When asked to sing, he picked up a sheet of music and read
from it in a desultory fashion, but his heart was clearly not in the
exercise and he looked away from Venus. At the sudden keychange which
marks the transformation from the Venusberg to the meadow of the next
scene, Venus' platform shot backwards and upwards, far into the middle
distance, so that she became quite tiny - a breathtaking coup de théâtre
that can only be done on large stages such as Bayreuth, the Met or
Vienna and that still makes one gasp.
Covered with bright red poppies, the meadow was a cavernous tunnel,
with grass and flowers on the ceiling as well as the floor. One reviewer
was reminded of Teletubbies. Was it a tunnel of love, or a vagina
dentata? Certainly, it posed difficulties for the singers' movement
(treading on the flowers) and acoustics. The hunters were in a sort
of timeless costume with Bavarian hats. They were accompanied by some
ladies in 19th century dress who realised that this was
men's business and started comparing feathers in the background before
departing the scene as Tannhaüser was welcomed back to the fold.
Act Two began promisingly with Ricarda Merbeth as Elisabeth, an innocent
blonde young girl, not as knowing about the stirrings within her as
Maria Pollicina in the Sydney production a few years ago. Kwangchul
Youn was an imposing, if youthful, Landgraf. For the entry of the
guests I missed the onstage trumpets we enjoyed in Sydney, though
we heard later that the set had been so reverberant that carpet had
had to be laid down, so perhaps they were a late scratching. The set
was similar to the Sydney production's, with the hall resembling a
tiered opera house rather than the historical hall at Wartburg (subject
of an exhibition at Villa Wahnfried during the Festival). In the centre
of the floor, however, was a huge phallic blue pillar. Among the guests,
some women were clearly cult followers of Tannhaüser, aroused
and intoxicated by his singing, while the majority of onlookers were
scandalised. As Tannhaüser leaves for Rome, Elisabeth, still
not understanding the feelings he has awakened in her, turns reluctantly
towards Wolfram.
Act Three was the most successful. The wonderful introduction set
the scene as shadows fell in the meadow, with Tannhaüser's helmet
at a wayside shrine. The pilgrims' chorus was impressive, but lost
power at the climax when they knelt at their triumphant "Hallelujah!".
Roman Trekel as Wolfram sang a heart-breakingly wonderful "O du mein
holder Abendstern". Glenn Winslade's Rome narration was robust and
ringing - almost too much so, without the exhaustion one might expect
- a minor quibble. He gave a wonderful performance in a problematic
production.
Jürgen Flimm's 2000 Ring production was in its third season,
and I understand that quite a bit has been changed since its first
outing. Nonetheless, I found much of it puzzling and obscure in a
way that the "minimalist" Strosser Ring in Adelaide was not. It was
conducted by Adam Fischer.
In Das Rheingold, the Rheintöchter looked a bit drab
and all too fleshly, rather than sprite-like. Hartmut Welker as Alberich
sang marvellously - a credible late 20th century thuggish
business opportunist. From the seediness of the first scene we were
transported to the Valhalla building site, equally dusty and drab.
Nibelheim was glistening and modern - Alberich was doing well in life,
impeccably dressed in a smart suit, with an office to match and a
workshop floor that was very "now". The fourth scene, with Valhalla
now a majestic ship-like fortress looming in the distance, continued
in the contemporary industrial mode. The exception to the everyday
modern dress was the appearance of the giants (Johann Tilli as Fasolt
and Philip Kang as Fafner), who looked rather like Native American
chiefs on stilts. Other singers deserving particular mention are Olaf
Bär as a rather lightweight Donner, Endrik Wottrich as Froh,
and Arnold Bezuyen as a very vigorous Loge, replacing Graham Clark,
who was ill. Michael Howard sang well as Mime. The goddesses were
Mihoko Fujimura (Fricka), Anja Kampe (Freia) and Simone Schröder
(Erda).
Die Walküre opened in a hut that was a mixture of the
primeval and the refined. A bleached-timber room (hardly a hut) with
louvred windows was furnished with elegant 18th century
furniture. The room had been invaded by bullrushes behind which the
obligatory tree-trunk loomed solidly. Hunding was a modern hunter,
dressed in battle fatigues. The appearance was more Chekhov than Wagner.
The singing, however, was truly thrilling: Violeta Urmana and Robert
Dean Smith, with Philip Kang as Hunding, made this act for me the
highlight of the whole cycle. I found it hard to imagine Waltraud
Meier and Placido Domingo (who were appearing in Munich in these roles
this summer) being more exciting, but those who had seen them at Bayreuth
said that they were.
Act Two, set in a steel-grey, cavernous, cell-like part of Valhalla,
showed Wotan (Alan Titus) as a troubled CEO surrounded by stylish
office furniture. Mihoko Fujimura as Fricka was impressive and moving.
Fricka can sometimes appear rather shrewish and two-dimensional, a
"cheap shot" of Wagner's, but here she was noble and dignified; petite
but with a wonderful deep mezzo tone which made one quite weak at
the knees as she heaped coals of fire on the hapless Wotan. Brünnhilde
was also a reversal of the usual form: Evelyn Herlitzius, rumoured
to be a former dancer, made an acrobatic entrance. She and her sisters
were tough young street-fighters, wiry rather than god-like. She sang
powerfully, but the ringing high notes were accompanied by a noticeable
vibrato. From the second act of Walküre onwards, several
scenes of the Ring were set in a desolate landscape with what looked
like a barbed wire fence down one side and some army huts in the distance.
This suggestion of modern warfare was most strikingly evoked by the
stream of young soldiers led into Valhalla by the Valkyries. They
were just too similar to the television images we see of present-day
conflicts, most recently in Afghanistan. In the Adelaide Ring, the
heroes were corpses, but here they were alive, not heroic but everyday
young men, trooping inexorably towards death. Brünnhilde, bereft
of her armour and clad only in a simple black dress, was laid to rest,
not on a rock, but on a pile of helmets and other detritus of war.
The Siegfried Siegfried was Christian Franz (Wolfgang Schmidt
sang the role in Götterdämmerung). He sang and acted
well, looking much more like Mime than Siegmund, though this scene
was inexplicably set in Hunding's hut. The ash-tree was at a more
rakish angle, poking out the back door rather than through the ceiling.
Helmut Pampuch replaced an indisposed Graham Clark as Mime, doing
sterling service in both acting and singing. The dragon was well done,
with billowing parachute silk giving the appearance of a huge menacing
caterpillar with a human face. When Siegfried kills the dragon, the
caterpillar part disappeared down a hole, leaving Fafner as an old
man slumped in a wheelchair.
Götterdämmerung began with the Norns in a vast and
desolate place, furnished though with Sieglinde's chairs. They were,
however, at least dealing with the rope of fate. A niggling problem
I had with this production was the number of times singers were expected
to sit down while singing, and sometimes do things like eat breakfast
(Siegfried) or even smoke a cigarette. This may be appropriate theatrically
for a kitchen-sink drama, but it makes it hard for the singers to
project in a work like this. Brünnhilde had to sing much of "Zu
neuen Taten" while seated.
The Gibichungs were a very bourgeois crowd, all in suits in their
glass and steel factory-cum-office. Gunther (Olaf Bär) was a
smooth but ineffectual character, unsubtly indicated in this production
by his perennial inability to light his cigarette. Hagen (John Tomlinson),
in contrast, was a towering figure with a voice to match and an air
of Karl Marx about him. During the final scene, he inexplicably stabbed
himself with Notung, though it puts an end to the possibility of Alberich's
descendants regaining the ring. As smoke and fire appeared, the set
gradually opened up to reveal what appeared to be almost limitless
space, and the crowd, in everyday clothes now, quietly and simply,
walk back towards the embers of Valhalla. A glimpse of a new dawn,
and then the curtain fell.
It wasn't clear to me that Flimm has said any more in this production
than Patrice Chéreau did in the 1976 centenary production,
apart from pointing the finger at contemporary white-collar workers
and entrepreneurs rather than nineteenth century industrialists, but
I did find it hard to come to grips with and perhaps a repeat viewing
might give fresh insights.
[Bill Brooks]
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