I ended my review of the Romeo Castellucci production of Das Rheingold, savoured by both press and audience alike, with : "Can you save The Ring with only visual theater? Both Robert Wilson and Achim Freyer have tried and failed. Will it work if your name is Castellucci?" If this Walküre demonstrates anything it is that it puts our feet back on the ground. Without the third act, I would even call it a flop. Indeed, the third act will make up for a lot but that will hardly be the director's merit.
Quite surprising was the reaction of theater expert and Castellucci exegete Johan Thielemans who declassified Castellucci's Rheingold as "contrived" and "extravagant," as "theatrical confusion." His images, "stunning but empty," moved "radically into a parallel universe, alongside that of Wagner." Thielemans, for whom the enigmatic parallel universe of the Italian magician was never a problem and who was never shy about hitting Wagner with arrows taken from the Nietzsche quote book, seemed to have become a Wagnerian. Now the “rebus theater” has dissolved itself altogether. Nor are there images that command an immediate emotional impact, Castellucci's trademark. The narrative of Die Walküre clearly inspires Castellucci much less than the philosophically tinged Rheingold. The German master seems to domesticate Castellucci. What remains of his struggles with Wagner is a very conventional staging for his standards.
In the blurry opening image, we see Siegmund glued to a plastic wall, molested in the back by powerful jets of water. With his twin sister, the interaction is immediately very confidential. The drink is served in a long tube of plexiglass. Sieglinde's dream, to meet the hero who will deliver her from her miserable marriage, she immediately projects onto this stranger whom she envelops in heraldic robes. She even puts two banners in his hand. How flag symbolism suddenly becomes possible in postmodern theater as long as it is not prescribed by the composer. Consider Lohengrin. Despite his affinity for nature, the director/scenographer removed the ash tree from the stage setting. The dark brown furniture in Hunding's hut, collected at an antique market and stacked chaotically, can also move. Hunding puts himself to sleep in a kind of confessional chair. His black sheepdog walks aimlessly across the stage. Much takes place in semi-darkness and I have often disliked Castellucci's lighting direction. For the final duet, the scene turns into a white box. The newly made love couple shower themselves with flowers during Winterstürme, with Wälsungen blood during the finale. The narrative in Siegmund's story is not supported by visuals. Neither does Siegmund's. Effortlessly, Siegmund pulls the sword from Sieglinde's robe long before there is time to do so. Is that why he deposits Nothung in Hunding's refrigerator?
Peter Wedd as Siegmund performs rather poorly. The timbre is baritonal but lacking in clarity. The voice barely projects. The Wälse-Rufe are almost laughable. Wedd is a complete miscast who ruins large parts of the first and second acts. Nadja Stefanoff's Sieglinde is feminine and vulnerable but with spine. Her beautifully timbreed soprano suffers no significant passagio problems. A slightly larger voice (needed among other things for "O hehrstes Wunder") would have brought her closer to the ideal. Until the third act, she will remain the best vocalist of the evening. Although Ante Jerkunica regurgitates half of his soup, he lacks a bit of demonization in the vocal expression.
The adulterous love between Siegmund and Sieglinde was consummated. Fricka shows a bloodstained sheet to her husband. Are we then to believe that Sieglinde remained a virgin in her marriage to Hunding? Well-trained doves perch on a stick during the debate. Fricka, in virginal white and seconded by five doubles who endorse her commanding statements with gestures, is like a nun. It is a very static scene while the doubles indulge in a limp choreography that sucks all attention away from the arguing couple. To reinforce her argument, Fricka wrings the neck of one of the pigeons. Marie-Nicole Lemieux has Fricka's dramatic outbursts fairly well under control, the descent into the chest register much less so. Interpretatively, it is also rather tensionless and insufficiently differentiated. Far worse, however, is that Gabor Bretz completely fails in his monologue. It is the litmus test for any Wotan. The voice projects very moderately and the compelling articulation of the text seems like a distant dream. Especially interpretatively, Bretz can still grow. For now, he is not a Wotan for the top league. "Götternot" was washed away by the orchestra and that was not conductor Altinoglu's fault. The blessing of the son of the Nibelung caused him a nosebleed: by the director literally, by the orchestra figuratively. With the letters on the black flags that stagehands waved during his monologue, you could form the word "idiot." The deadly encounter between Siegmund and Hunding was handled symbolically. For a director who elicits emotional responses, this was very weak for this crucial stage in the Nibelungen story. Hunding's dog ended up dangling from a rope. The rehearsal shots had suggested that the director was developing a movement dramaturgy for Wotan's spear but there was no sign of it.
The Valkyries, carrying the naked corpses of the fallen heroes, sounded rather different on an individual basis but were always capable of beautiful harmony singing. The live horses in the background, doing nothing more than a few laps with an attendant, were certainly not an added value, rather soporific. Surely the score tells something quite different! "The theater is the last temple that brings man and animal together," Castellucci believes. And : "An animal on stage is like a prayer without words." That could apply to Easy Rider, the magnificent Charolais of one and a half tons in Moses und Aron (Paris, 2015). In this Walküre, the animals are pure decorum.
Ingela Brimberg still hadn't shown anything so that we could expect a Brünnhilde of stature in the third act. However, the father-daughter duet, for all its scenic simplicity, became the highlight of the evening. We meet Wotan with his head in his hands. His journey to renunciation begins here. The fact that the director will make it a Taoist journey is evident from the Buddha head that the resigning god sometimes carries with him. Here Gabor Bretz sings his most nuanced vocal lines of the evening. It is as if he has sung this many times before. But it is mostly Brimberg who brings life to the scene. She outclasses him in terms of projection. And she radiates. She makes a much bigger impression on me than she did five years ago with Elsa (Brussels) or with Salome and Isolde in Cologne. The timbre is beautiful and the problematic transitions to the chest register are admittedly still there. She has internalized the role very well and, like Stefanoff, she shows that she accepts and understands the Wagner pathos much more than the male soloists do. Both end up as silhouettes in front of a white light screen that seems to crush the slumbering Brünhilde and transfer her to another dimension. The large hoop, symbolizing the Ring once more, catches fire after the music has already died out. Those with little time who will watch the stream can limit themselves to the third act.
Once again, the real triumphant performer is standing in the orchestra pit. Alain Altinoglu, embraced by the Brussels audience, makes the orchestra play music to suit the theater. The orchestra pit is packed. The harps are banished to the covered left side of the orchestra pit, the timpani to the right. The tempo was perfect for the stormy weather in the prelude, the timpani beautifully defined. Throughout the evening, the beautifully resonant lower strings will be the most appealing instrument group (for instance during Siegmund's death). Equally plastic are the solo moments for cello, clarinet, bass clarinet. Never does the orchestra dominate the balance in an overly violent or clamorous manner. Observing Altinoglu's agogic direction of the Orchestra of La Monnaie is a performance all by itself.
The director may now begin to consider what a dragon looks like in the Castellucci universe. This time he may not find one in a Perwez farmyard.
Watch the show via RTBF Auvio on 6 or 10 february.