Opernhaus Zürich has brought its new production of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen full circle, presenting two complete cycles in May after unveiling the work’s four component operas over the past two seasons.
The cycle culminated earlier this month with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, both of which continued the director Andreas Homoki’s concept. As in the first two operas, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, Homoki unfolds the events within the confines of a sparse four-room house that rotates at varying speeds with the action. As previously noted, this less-than-original staging presents the characters as a dysfunctional extended family, whose problems and dilemmas are fought out under the same roof. Within the house, we see a conventional staging of the action, complete with the swords, spears, dragon—and, of course, the ring—all present as literal objects rather than the abstractions to which more avant-garde interpretations of Wagner’s epic often reduce them.
What was merely claustrophobic in the first two operas, however, became a bit of a bore by the end. In Siegfried, Homoki’s concept is less unappealing because the walls—previously a bland off-white—became a very dark green, a suggestion of the forested surroundings that the doomed hero, Siegfried, inhabits. The most practical advantage of the darkened effect, however, was that it made the walls less visible and therefore less intrusive. They came back in view in Götterdämmerung, though in that opera they were at least worn and frayed, evoking the established order’s march toward ultimate destruction. Not that there was much of that. One might have expected the house to burn down as the divine Brünnhilde redeems the world in the opera’s fiery Immolation Scene, in which the order of the gods goes up in smoke, and she along with it. But while we do see some flickering red light, panicked choristers rushing about for a moment, and the god Wotan observing a landscape painting as it begins to burn, the opera concludes with the same house spinning emptily, as though nothing was redeemed and as though nothing had ever happened.
This denuding of opera’s greatest philosophical work’s meaning represents a lost opportunity. But musically, the production was a worthwhile effort. Especially triumphant was the orchestra under Zürich’s music director, Gianandrea Noseda, who demonstrated a powerful and rarely equaled mastery of Wagner’s score. He played his brass hard as the evenings continued, producing superb sounds in the extended orchestral parts found in the latter two operas. Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and the Funeral March resounded with especially powerful effect in Zürich’s acoustically ideal theater, which, with only 1,100 seats, allows for rare intimacy with the score.
The Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny’s Wotan was the best-sung and most insightfully interpreted role in the production. In Siegfried, Wotan has renounced his ambitions of godly power and is known merely as “the Wanderer,” a figure who observes the events that will lead to the triumph of the opera’s title character—a grandson who has never known him. Following his stunning, steely performances as Wotan in Rheingold and Walküre, Konieczny delivered an introspective Wanderer with no diminution of power.
Meanwhile, the soprano Camilla Nylund, in her first full-cycle performance as Brünnhilde, overcame her naturally lighter voice and delivered a rapturous goddess-turned-woman in Siegfried. Appearing only in that opera’s third act, the character has been deprived of her divinity and surrounded by a magic fire over which only a hero of Siegfried’s strength can prevail. In her relatively short scene, she must show elation, vulnerability, and erotic passion—Nylund accomplished all three. But she fared less well in Götterdämmerung, in which she begins as a wifely bearer of wisdom, is later basely betrayed by an amnesiac Siegfried, and finally finds not merely supreme understanding, but also the desire to redeem the world through heroic self-sacrifice. Of course, the challenge is tremendous, but Nylund’s acting communicated the emotional turmoil. Vocally, she glossed an occasional gleam on her high Bs and Gs, and sometimes the high notes were sharp or, as in the finale Immolation Scene, undervoiced.
Much of the audience was enthusiastic to hear the German tenor Klaus Florian Vogt’s Siegfried. The part is newer for him, and his voice, which gives a wonderful Lohengrin, sits a bit too high to deliver the necessary heldentenor heft. In the more lyrical Siegfried, in which the character is younger and spritelier, Vogt’s instrument generally served him well. In Götterdämmerung, in which the part sits lower, the challenges proved greater but not completely insurmountable. His acting was more pleasant than insightful, but no one should discount his or Nylund’s musicianship, which could lead them to glories in these roles down the road.
Standouts from the remaining cast include the young American bass David Leigh’s Hagen, who delivered a booming tour de force despite a rather hokey costume that recalls bad horror movies of yesteryear. Christopher Purves’s Alberich, from whom Wotan stole the ring in Rheingold, was staunchly bitter and used his roaring baritone to show it. The tenor Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s Mime, Alberich’s servile brother who tries to raise Siegfried to win the ring for his own malign purposes, was comical but fiendish enough to create real menace. The soprano Rebeca Olvera sang a pleasing Songbird, whose role is to lead Siegfried to Brünnhilde.
Homoki’s production is being streamed and filmed. Staged revivals and a DVD recording are in the works, but this is a Ring probably better heard than seen.