Die Walküre (Bridgewater Hall, Manchester)
What is the best way to introduce someone to Wagner, granted that, for assorted reasons, his art is thought to be exceptionally forbidding? I have always found that it’s enough to provide a few dates, to place him in respect of his forebears and contemporaries; to say a few things about his artistic aims — which involves saying a little about how he thought art, opera in particular, relates to society — give a brief outline of the plot of whichever opera is to be performed, and make sure that the tyro follows the words. And that is all. Anyone who takes to Wagner’s music-dramas is likely to want, in the first place, to hear and see more of them, and then to find out more about the man who wrote them. It’s at that stage that some guidance from a reasonably knowledgeable person will come in handy. The information needed for the first encounter is almost certain to be found in the programme, or in the CD booklet.
Two years ago the Hallé, under Sir Mark Elder, gave a notable performance of Götterdämmerung, spread over two evenings, an excellent idea, since Act I is so lengthy and emotionally taxing. Act I was preceded by Elder’s giving a short talk, which set the scene and the tone ideally. The performance made it on to CD, and its impressiveness is there for all to hear.
This year it was the turn of Die Walküre, in some ways a less daunting work than Götterdämmerung, and the opera I have often found to be the most accessible for getting someone to grasp the unique kind of magnetism and grandeur of Wagner’s art. It is a work of such urgency that the close of Act I has one longing to go on immediately to Act II, and the end of that act, the pivotal and possibly the greatest act of the Ring, propels one into Act III.
So I wasn’t so enthusiastic about the idea of once again having Act I on the first evening, and the rest on the next. Nor did I much like the idea of preceding the performance with a feature called ‘The Madness of an Extraordinary Plan’, a phrase from a letter of Liszt to Wagner, but an unhappily cumbrous title. The orchestra assembled; Elder appeared; then Roger Allam, playing Wagner, ambled on, shrugged on a dressing-gown, and sat at a table, while two women in white, Deborah Findlay and Sara Kestelman, stood either side of him, interrupting him with a wide range of quotations, unattributed of course, from Cosima, Brahms, King Ludwig, and many others, most notably Nietzsche. But the remarks to and about Wagner were not in any context, and Nietzsche’s in particular, brilliant and penetrating as they are, are so ambivalent that they could only be confusing.
Meanwhile Wagner ranted, as is his wont when presented as a figure in a mini-drama, pouring out passionate views on a diverse range of subjects, again quite isolated from one another and from what his two female persecutors-cum-muses were saying. And at what seemed random points the orchestra played bleeding soundbites from the Ring operas. This bewildering farrago, assembled by Gerard McBurney and directed by Neil Bartlett, went on for about an hour.
Once the work itself got under way, the superfluity of the introduction became still more obvious. Elder is a considerate conductor to his singers, and favours broad, often extremely broad tempi, but the dawning passion of Siegmund and Sieglinde came across almost as powerfully as it can in a concert performance with minimal gestures, and Sieglinde in a glamorous evening dress. The men were clothed more informally. Clive Bayley is a powerful Hunding, with a more jet-black voice than any contemporary German bass. Yvonne Howard was a poignant Sieglinde, but she had taken the part over at short notice and was glued to the score. In Act III she sang sensationally. The Siegmund of Stig Andersen is absolutely reliable and sometimes exciting. There was a certain restraint about Act I, though, as if it were the dress rehearsal.
It was on the next afternoon that things really warmed up. Elder told us that Eglis Silins, the Wotan, might be in acute vocal difficulty, but after a brief period of nervousness he sang the most penetrating, beautiful, heartrending, complex Wotan I have heard for many years. He lacks a few low notes, but apart from that he must be destined for greatness, and is already a revelation. Susan Bullock, the most engaging of heroic sopranos, sang a passionate, intense Brünnhilde, though her voice sometimes undermines her always noble intentions. Susan Bickley’s Fricka was stunning, majestic and indeed definitive. The Valkyries were a quite remarkable team, several of them sounding as if they couldn’t wait to be promoted to Brünnhilde.
While Act I had hung fire, and Act II needed more emphatic rhythmic vitality, a more positive trajectory, Act III surged to its surpassing climax, and Wotan’s farewell was so spellbinding that I reeled out of the Bridgewater Hall at 8 p.m. —there had been a long dinner interval — wondering what on earth to do until it was time to go to bed. I went back to the hotel and sat and mused.
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