For he who woke me deals me the wound!
Andreas Homoki directs Götterdämmerung in Zürich (****½) [live]
Author : Jos Hermans
Again, this final day of Wagner's tetralogy has become rather conventional. Director Andreas Homoki does what he promised : to recount the work as Wagner once intended. And he himself projects a subtle form of humor onto it. Christian Schmidt's unitary scenery, a four-room revolving villa with meter-high wooden paneling, Empire-style furniture and chesterfield armchairs, is on hand again. But in the end, the revolving stage, one of the big ideas from the beginning, will hardly be utilized. Scene changes will mostly take place at closed curtain. Even the big orchestral interludes such as Siegfrieds Rheinfahrt and the funeral music. It is as if Andreas Homoki invites us to listen to Wagner's music.
From the first prelude it is noticeable what will make up the strength and weakness of the performance from a musical point of view. The mystical mist rising from the orchestra pit resonates perfectly in the warm acoustics of the Zurich opera house but the orchestra is once again too loud. The rather moderately projecting voices of the Norns (Freya Apffelstaedt, Lena Sutor-Wernich, Giselle Allen) get to contend with the orchestra. The Homoki humor is back, as well : the crescendo of the dawn interlude culminates in Brünnhilde's beaming smile on the edge of the bed with Siegfried. The "Heil! , Heil!" ecstasy with which they conclude the duet, the two sing with hands in the air waving to the audience.
The Gibichungen wear black boots, Gunther and Gutrune a fiery red blaser, Hagen a long black cloak. Their palace hardly differs from the rooms we were shown before. Klaus Florian Vogt highlights the drinking of the forgetting potion -a crucial passage- very well. He will also master the symmetrical passage, shortly before his death, with verve. Deliciously obscene sounds the tuba in "Hier sitz ich zur wacht." It is in such atmospheric passages as the transition music to Brünnhilde's rock that the superb Philharmonia Zurich displays all sorts of precious details such as muted trumpets, and it is a pity that the orchestra reduces the intensity of its playing by playing too loudly at other times. For the listener in the audience, this is tiresome in an unhelpful way.
Camilla Nylund is not a high-dramatic soprano and in Die Walküre and Siegfried she could not fully convince me. But this is when the miracle happens and it seems as if she first had to be married to Siegfried to discover the true potential of her vocal abilities. She sings the first line of the third scene on the rock almost inaudibly but the dramatic parts of her duet with Waltraute and Siegfried astound, not so much by soprano power as by vocal beauty. The vibrato is controlled to perfection, problematic register transitions are non-existent, the many long-held notes are like pearls of eloquence. I have never heard such a flawless Brünnhilde. It is a debut like a polished gemstone. While creaky singing machines make it all the way to Bayreuth these days. Nylund will be one of the most important Brünnhildes of our time, Noseda has predicted. We will only be able to judge that at the conclusion of Götterdämmerung, I wrote last year after Die Walküre. You have read the answer. No doubt Ms. Nylund will carefully select production houses and conductors to continue her dialogue with Brünnhilde. Meanwhile, I no longer doubt that she will do just that.
During the anxious anticipation at the arrival of the Tarnhelm-Siegfried, trapped between the walls of the house and congenially supported by the orchestra, she was magnificent. Franck Evin sets the house in a hazy blue ambient light and Siegfried's voice is electronically distorted. Homoki unleashes both Gunther and Siegfried on her. When she tears off the Tarn helmet she sees Siegfried : a reference to Siegfried's later confession to Gunther that the Tarn helmet may not have covered his face properly. Homoki makes her stare at him incredulously for minutes to great effect.
The men's choir also sings very loud. In the second act, it even engages in competition with the orchestra, creating an overly loud wall of sound. Brünnhilde's confrontation with Siegfried, tedious in many a production, is thrilling and clearly presented here, and once again Camilla Nylund dominates the stage, breathtakingly confident and always very feminine in her furious transformation from wounded pride to vindictiveness. By now it is clear that she has become the sensation of this Götterdämmerung.
Homoki's best idea from the start were the chatty, giggling Rhine maidens in satin pajamas with Marylin Monroe haircuts. Here they are back in confrontation with Siegfried, and again this scene works very well. The funeral music is the loudest passage in the piece but this time the orchestra is not bursting at the seams.
In the finale, the people crowd around the tree trunk that once stood in Hundings cabin, in the glare of the world fire. A burning stuntman walkes accross the stage. A dozing Wotan watches the demise of the Valhalla on a video screen. The closing bars are reserved for the empty stage turning its final lap, mirroring the opening scene of Das Rheingold. A new cycle of robbery, betrayal and greed for power can begin.
This was also a debut for Klaus Florian Vogt. Currently, he is an indispensable part of the Wagner scene. He shows himself to be an excellent receptor of Homoki's subtle humor and his well-projecting voice smoothly makes its way through the auditorium. No doubt we will see him back in this role. Daniel Schmutzhard was convincing as the spineless psychotic Gunther. Sarah Ferede had plenty of mezzo power for Wotan's temperamental messenger Waltraute. Lauren Fagan sang an exuberant Gutrune. Christopher Purves confirmed the terrific impression he had left as the Rheingold-Alberich. Again, he articulated the short part exemplarily, with more bite than he had recently done in London. David Leigh already underperformed as Fafner. As Hagen he is a miscast, as a character a Mephisto with a sardonic smile. The timbre is unattractive and he places little personality in his delivery. Uliana Alexyuk, Niamh O'Sullivan, Siena Licht Miller were delightful once again as the Rhine maidens.
Of course, Gianandrea Noseda is once again the other star of this evening notwithstanding the overly muscular musicianship. The temporal relationships are exciting, the soloistic moments are great, the orchestral sound remains transparent all the way down to the orchestral tutti. I must retract my earlier claim that there would be 140 musicians in the orchestra pit. The cast listed in the program booklet is misleading. Zurich, a theater the size of La Monnaie, plays The Ring in reduced version like in Brussels, with 2 harps, 4 double basses, almost a dozen horns and one tuba. But what a tuba! Florian Hatzelmann is an orchestra in his own right ! Even more than Siegfried, Götterdämmerung is a feast for the tuba player.