Wagner - Götterdämmerung (Zurich, 2024)

Richard Wagner - Götterdämmerung (Zurich, 2024)

Opernhaus Zürich, 2024

Gianandrea Noseda, Andreas Homoki, Klaus Florian Vogt, Daniel Schmutzhard, Christopher Purves, David Leigh, Camilla Nylund, Lauren Fagan, Sarah Ferede, Freya Apffelstaedt, Lena Sutor-Wernich, Giselle Allen, Uliana Alexyuk, Niamh O'Sullivan, Siena Licht Miller

Zurich Opera Ring für alle - 26th May 2024

If there's initially a sense that the 2024 Opernhaus Zürich's Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle is getting a little tired and lacking in surprises by the time we get to Götterdämmerung, it's probably as much to do with the opera itself as the production. When you get this far, it can sometime feel like a duty just to see the cycle through to the end rather than any expectation of surprises or twists being pulled out at this late stage in a production. But see it through you must, just for the powerful conclusion that the whole story had been moving towards from very early on, and even if those surprises are fewer, the quality and consistency that has characterised the previous parts is carried through here impressively.

The only ones indeed not able to predict how the remainder of the production play out are ironically the three Norns. The universe of this Zurich production remains within the familiar backdrop of a rotating stage of rooms, the high panelled walls white again after the darkness of Siegfried. Or a little off-white maybe. The world of Götterdämmerung looks worn and neglected, a little battered, the white paint yellowing, cracking and peeling. The three Norn struggle to hold the strands of the rope of fate together, the events that the gods have enacted have worn it down, their fate is now unknown. We on the other hand have some idea of what to expect, at least as far as how the colour schemes present it.

A Rasputin-like Hagen is most definitely dressed in black for this work's divisions of those who serve nature and those whose actions hasten its destruction. The Gibichung break the simple colour coding however; Gunther and Gutrune, wearing red jackets, are of a different mold to the grand mythical forces of black and white in conflict. The time of the Eternal Ones and heroes is past, Siegfried's grey turning into a black and white suit by the time of his wedding to Gutrune and betrayal of Brünnhilde. The thread has been broken, the Sacred Ash destroyed. the Norn perhaps colour blind and therefore unable to see into the unknown future where now only destruction looms.

In this world where we are heading towards the end of an era, the key scene of Siegfried's betrayal of Brünnhilde is crucial and achieved highly effectively here. Siegfried wears the Tarmhelm while Gunther shambles on like a monster version of himself in a mask. Brünnhilde’s horror is felt, but there is the suggestion when she accidentally tears off the Tarnhelm in a struggle for the ring and momentarily glimpses the true face of Siegfried, that she lets herself succumb to the curse that has befallen all of them, a fate that she has already been forewarned off by her sister Valkyrie, Waltraute.

Again, it's the smallest of touches that make the difference here, such as a dejected Wotan making a cameo appearance in Valhalla, Freia's golden apples untouched. It might look like it's just trying to fill out what otherwise looks fairly bare minimal staging, but it's not. Such little details count here, making it feel relatable, like something human is really at stake and not just a grand myth. If you want to see the destruction of the World Ash and demand of Waltraute that Brünnhilde abandon the Ring and all it stands for as a commentary of capitalism exploiting the natural resources and the end of that road leading to climate change destruction unless nature (the Rhinemaidens) is respected, it's there clearly if you want to see it that way, even if none of it is made explicit in the staging. Not that I'm claiming that Wagner was a very early advocate of Green policies, but it's a theme that is large enough to be held within the grand mythology of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The singing keeps up the remarkably high standards and consistency of the previous parts of the cycle. And when you have good direction as you have here under Andreas Homoki, it means you can enter fully into the purpose and intent of the work. Klaus Florian Vogt can still get away with an ideal mix of youthful naivety and enthusiasm, if not quite the vocal force you expect (but which it rarely attains) for this role. There is an excellent performance here from Camilla Nylund as Brünnhilde, particularly in her confrontation and accusations of the betrayal by Siegfried. It's fitting that she outshines Vogt in this scene in her outrage. I was really impressed with her performance throughout the second Act, necessary to gives the opera the weight, grief and tragedy it needs at the tragic conclusion. David Leigh, who was the dragon Fafner in Siegfried, here takes the role of Hagen with great power and depth, his delivery clear and ominous throughout. Daniel Schmutzhard and Lauren Fagan sing the roles of Gunter and Gutrune roles well. Christopher Purves is once again brilliant as the dark and bitter Alberich.

Again, I am in awe of the musical performance here of the Philharmonia Zürich under Gianandrea Noseda. I've never rated Götterdämmerung all that highly compared to the more popular and widely performed parts of Der Ring des Nibelungen, once in jest unfairly and inaccurately suggesting that it was little more than as a compilation of variations of the leitmotifs from the earlier works, but the beauty and delicacy of the score, particularly in the linking orchestral interludes, is brought out wonderfully in this performance. The weight is perfectly balanced and emotionally attuned without ever slipping into bombast. Perhaps the close attention paid to the detail of the drama and singing help this, but that's not to take anything away from the quality of the musical direction and performance.

As the opera moves towards its conclusion it's clear that there are no major new ideas or grand concept employed here and that the success of the production lies rather in the fact that it is just very good direction that is completely in service to the drama. You look at the deceptively simple minimalism of the sets and colour schemes and wonder how it can still be so effective in establishing mood and drama, and yet it is indeed one of the most effective stagings of Der Ring des Nibelungen that I have seen. It doesn't put a foot wrong anywhere. The mood is right, the acting and singing is of the highest standard, it works hand-in-hand with the musical performance, but what really drives it is the interaction between all those elements. These are not individual performances or creative indulgences, it's a collective ensemble performance, interacting, giving and taking, acting and reacting. And maybe it's there, in how it finds a way for the spectator to connect meaningfully with this grand formidable work of mythology, that this Zurich Ring succeeds so impressively.

External links: Opernhaus Zürich, Ring für alle Video on Demand

Photos - Monika Rittershaus

Nikodijević & Abramović - 7 Deaths of Maria Callas (Munich, 2020)

Marko Nikodijević & Marina Abramović - 7 Deaths of Maria Callas

Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich - 2020

Marina Abramović, Lynsey Peisinger, Yoel Gamzou, Willem Dafoe, Hera Hyesang Park, Selene Zanetti, Leah Hawkins, Kiandra Howarth, Nadezhda Karyazina, Adela Zaharia, Lauren Fagan

Bayerische Staatsoper TV - 5 September 2020

The idea of building an opera around seven stage deaths enacted by Maria Callas in her most famous roles is such an extraordinary idea for an opera that it's likely to provoke two immediate and almost contradictory reactions. On the one hand you might think why did no one think of that before, even from the point of view of a gala performance of great arias. And then you realise why you can't do that. The emotional impact of all those tragic bel canto deaths all gathered together in one opera? And aligning them with the tragic circumstances of Maria Callas's death as well? It's going to be overload surely, emotionally overwrought and too much to take in all in one go?

Well, we are talking about the Serbian conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović, who often uses her self and her body as a provocative vehicle for her ideas, so she's not exactly one for low-key and understatement. This is a performance artist who for her piece "The Artist is Present" sat silently at a table every day at New York's Museum of Modern Art for nearly three months. Some might even see her as a narcissist and self-publicist who sees herself as something as a work of art, and in the case of her Maria Callas project for the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, she has no qualms about identifying closely with an artist in the opera world who was no stranger to making headlines.

In her opera piece, the seven operatic deaths of Maria Callas are enacted in movie sequences (directed by Nabil Elderkin) with Abramović and Willem Dafoe as her lover/killer. Abramović herself is present on the stage, lying silent and unmoving as Maria Callas on her death bed while the film sequences are projected on the walls of her hotel room in Paris, the most famous arias of those works accompanying the extravagant visuals of the re-imagined ways that those characters meet their death. The arias are all sung live by different opera singers who take to the stage like ghosts, none of them however really looking or singing like Callas. Which would be a bit much to ask for really. Abramović however ensures that there is no doubt as to who is the main subject (Callas/herself) and that it's more than just an opera gala of Callas's greatest hits.

In the first of the filmed sequences, Violetta (Hera Hyesang Park) sings 'Addio del passato' from La Traviata while lying dying of consumption in a bed, nursed and mourned by Willem Dafoe in a dreamscape of coloured mists and clouds. The death of Tosca, to the strains of Selene Zanetti singing 'Vissi d'arte' is enacted as Abramović falling from a New York skyscraper in slow motion to land with a crash on a car roof. She is wrapped in pythons as Desdemona (Leah Hawkins) in Otello, dies while removing her protective suit as Madama Butterfly's Cio-Cio-San (Kiandra Howarth) in a nuclear holocaust wasteland. And so on with Carmen (Nadezhda Karyazina), Adela Zaharia's rendition of the mad scene from Lucia Di Lammermoor and the immolation of Norma (Lauren Fagan) singing 'Casta Diva', all with a twist on the original traditional death scene.

So 7 Deaths of Maria Callas is clearly not an opera in the conventional sense, a cross between opera gala and performance art. Some might see opera as already tending in that direction, particularly if you've seen any of Romeo Castellucci's often even more abstract productions. It might not be quite as high concept as Castellucci, but as you might expect from an artist like Abramović, it's a more deeply personal and distinctive vision where the the artist/director puts herself into the art. It's a work that comes from the heart, in response to Callas and her fame as an opera singer, blending the two in a direct and emotional way. They could hardly be otherwise, the projected mini-movies accompanying the sentiments of these great arias powerful in their visual aesthetic and emotional punch.

It's clearly motivated principally by a love and perhaps even an obsession with Maria Callas, with whom Abramović clearly identifies. It blends the tragedy of Callas's life with that of opera, and that's certainly a subject worthy of an opera. It's surprising indeed that it hasn't been done before as far as I know, although Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna comes close and Franco Zeffirelli, a personal friend of Callas as well as her director, turned his fantasy about Callas into a movie Callas Forever. Evidently, focussing on the deaths of opera heroines, putting them all together like this dying in graphic and violent circumstances often at the hands of men, fits into Abramović's feminist perspective and invites you to think about the fate of women, but perhaps no more so and no more powerfully than say a full presentation of Madama Butterfly or La Traviata.

It's nearly all classic opera arias that are used for the first hour of the opera, with only recorded drone ambient noise in the interludes accompanying the Abramović voice-over of introductory texts of Callas reflecting on the different ways to die. It's a pasticcio of sorts with only an overture by fellow Serbian composer Marko Nikodijević that is new. It's only in the final third of the work that we really hear new music composed by Nikodijević as the focus for the remainder of the opera turns to Abramović as Callas in her bed in her room in Paris on the day that she dies. Dramatically there's not a lot here to grasp as Callas wills herself to get out of bed, wonders where all her former friends and colleagues have gone now, smashes a vase and leaves the room, taking her final exit. While the voice-over thoughts are distracting and scarcely illuminating, the music itself is a powerful requiem of sorts for Callas.

Is this a work of performance art that relies on the original creator? Abramović is on stage throughout and the focus in the mini movies as the tragic heroine who dies seven times in her greatest operas. Can 7 Deaths of Maria Callas have an independent life (or seven deaths) after these performances? I don't see why not. Yes, the personality of Abramović dominates but only in so far as it is she who is breathing life into the character of Callas here. Callas is big enough a personality not to be subsumed by that and there's no reason why - like any opera singer stepping into shoes that Callas once filled - that someone else can't bring their own reinterpretation of this opera performance piece. The concept is strong enough, the music is strong enough (old and new) and the work is open enough to interpretation for another artist with sufficient personality (and love for Callas and Abramović) to bring something new and personal to this. Whether anyone will want to is another matter, and whether Abramović becomes as enduring an artist as Callas worthy of being revived remains to be seen.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper TV