There are only a couple of reasons to hear this performance, and practically none for seeing it. I believe it is the only video remnant of the Ring Cycle at Bayreuth that was created by Tankred Dorst in 2006 when the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier dropped out at the next-to-last moment. One shudders at what von Trier might have done–he of the natural-lighting, shaky-camera school of film-making; but whereas he might have irritated, I’m afraid that Dorst, who had never directed an opera before and was 78 years old in 2006, is just dull and somewhat puzzling. Without having seen the rest of the Cycle, I’m a bit reluctant to judge the blandness and seeming “huh?-ness” of this production; but I shall report what I’ve seen, hints of sub-texts and all.
Act 1: Curtain up in mid-storm and we see a large, ruined, mostly-empty gray room save for a few chairs and a downed electrical power pole having broken through the wall. (Sets are by Frank Philipp Schlössmann.) Close examination locates a sword in the power pole. A present-day family (parents, kids, bicycle) has taken refuge from the storm, and as it abates and the parents leave, the young son sneaks up to a chair covered in a sheet, tears away the sheet, and voila!: Sieglinde in regular, if unattractive housewife garb.
Boy runs away. Siegmund waddles in wearing a tunic apparently made of torn pieces of leather and fabric. Hunding arrives with five men wearing snarling dog masks which they remove; they take seats, stage rear. Hunding doesn’t seem like such a bad guy and offers Siegmund a cup of water, which the latter prefers poured into his hands (he later accepts a cup from his sister). Wotan appears later, peeking through a window. Subtext: The gods and demi-gods live among us and Sieglinde has been domesticated, unlike her wild brother. Wotan knows what’s going on.
Act 2: After opening moments and battle cry, during which stage is dramatically awash in clouds and smoke and Wotan is standing atop a rock with Brünnhilde, clouds clear and we are back in “reality” in a huge warehouse with giant broken statuary that looks like Communist-era propaganda–workers with raised fists, etc. Two men in blue overalls and hard-hats come and go–repair men, clearly–while one of the regular folk from the start of Act 1 sits near his bicycle, reading a newspaper and chatting with passers-by. Subtext: The gods may be deciding our fate and being miserable, but our lives go on–their story is not the only story; they, like Communism, are last year’s issues.
Act 3: A bigger, ruined, slate gray edifice, walls crumbling. Heroes draped in white chiffon lie about until touched by the long spears of the Valkyries, at which time they get up and walk slowly off-stage, except for one, who remains, stage rear, hanging over a wall. When the time comes, Brünnhlide reclines on a long plank and goes to sleep; as the fire rises (and looks good), Wotan vanishes in a cloud of smoke. Subtext: None that I can spot other than everywhere you go, the world is in ruins, but the gods go on as if what they are doing actually matters. The white chiffon may imply ghosts, but who knows?
Costumes (by Bernd Ernst Skodzig) are the aforementioned torn-tunic thing for Siegmund, house-dress for Sieglinde, long black coat for Wotan, and fire-engine red dresses for all Valkyries, each with one pointy shoulder (Brünnhilde’s is the biggest and pointiest). Their hair is also fire-engine red and they carry plexiglass shields and 10-foot-tall spears. Fricka is in black and wears ram’s horns on her head; her costume looks stiff and unyielding. What the costumes have in common is ugliness.
The staging throughout is uneventful, with the occasional nice touch–the way the siblings warm to one-another immediately and size each other up–but it is more frequently chilly and disinterested. The Todesverkundegung is bland. There is little movement, other than generic operatic.
Vocally, the stars are Johan Botha and Edith Haller as the twins. He cuts an ungainly figure but sings Siegmund just about perfectly; there’s power to spare, he sings off the text, his soft singing is appropriate and touching. Haller has a warm sound and uses legato like a bel cantist; the occasional high note may fly sharp, but she’s both exciting and committed. Kwangchul Youn’s Hunding is black-voiced but poorly directed: he does not menace. Mihoko Fujimara is over-singing, but she’s nicely full of spite as Fricka.
Linda Watson’s Brünnhilde certainly has the power and the notes but she’s an old-fashioned actress, looks terrible in her awful costume, and lacks warmth and legato in the Todesverkundegung. She pleads well with Wotan in Act 3 but it’s still hard to actually believe her or warm to her steely, non-distinctive sound. Albert Dohmen’s Wotan moves from committed to disinterested; without a concept–other than “life stinks”–he’s at sea much of the time.
Conductor Christian Thielemann and the Bayreuth Orchestra create a ravishing wall of sound, and not a moment is less than aurally stunning: you listen, agape. And Thielemann’s timings are not eccentric: 60 minutes, 87 minutes, and 69 minutes. However, there are few dramatic thrills in the first two acts. The tension that should accompany the twins’ enlightenment never quite reaches a boiling point; the long Wotan/Brünnhilde dialogue of Act 2 is pretty boring. The return of Sieg and Sieg brings some excitement, but there’s an odd lack of build-up to the battle. Warm, intimate moments come off well, save for the Announcement of Death; “Wintersturme”, et al, is lovely and caressing. Act 3, on the other hand, is spectacular, with the Ride a tower of strength and power and the orchestra making up for the dynamism, beauty, and tragedy that is lacking in the singing.
With the fascinating Boulez/Chereau and the almost ideally sung, played, and acted Barenboim/Kupfer–both from Bayreuth–available on DVD, this is superfluous. Perhaps audio-only might be worth it for Thielemann’s and the orchestra’s contributions, but I can’t imagine watching this again.
