Wagner Götterdämmerung Stuttgart Opera
3 October 2002/12 January 2003

Director Peter Konwitschny
Staatsorchester Stuttgart/Lothar Zagrosek


Albert Bonnema (Siegfried) Luana DeVol (Brunnhilde) Franz-Josef Kapellmann (Alberich) Roland Bracht (Hagen) Hermann Iturraide (Gunther) Eva-maria Westbroek (Gutrune) Tichina Vaughn (Waltraute) Lani Poulson, Helga Rós Indridadóttir and Janet Collins (Rhinemaidens)
etc

TDK - DVOPRDNG

This is a bewildering Götterdämmerung, cobbled together from two performances, presumably to get the best of the sometimes variable singing. The orchestra under Zagrosek (excellent sound) quickly convinces one that it is a serious presentation and I enjoyed the Norns as homeless bag-ladies undoing their knitting whilst setting the scene for us. The three Rhinemaidens (one of them doubling as a Norn) are fetching on the bank of their river.

But I never expected Götterdämmerung to be funny! Luanna DeVol is a real trouper, dressed in a 'homely' manner in the first act and putting down any suggestion of mystique; the duet with Waltraute, dropping in from the sky for Brunnhilde to undo her harness, is memorable for a bout of Sumo wrestling! But the singing is generally persuasive and Albert Bonnema, with his hobby-horse, is a delight as the guileless hero and changes his whole demeanour and voice when bewitched and put into a business suit like those of the Gibichungs.

Some doubts in the second act; the vassals assembled with their weapons (mobile phones perhaps) keep those hidden and look like city office workers out for the evening and on the way to the pub. Hagen is sinister and dominates his scenes.

More doubts in the last Act and the Immolation scene. Luanna DeVol (power-dressed in a bright red suit) has no scenic imagination to help her, and there are finer accounts of it on disc and DVD; the ending is (for me) a complete cop-out, with the curtain down and only Wagner's stage directions to contemplate in the darkness. For the last bars, we watch the orchestra and the audience, and wonder why they hadn't settled for a concert performance.

The whole production and its philosophy is fairly described in the insert booklet, and I cannot do better than quote from it as to Konwitschny's concept:

Konwitschny dispenses with all the paraphernalia of the gods awaiting nightfall in their imposing hall, and sets the action on the simple wooden stage of a touring theatre company. - - Horror and comedy jostle each other. Siegfried is a naIve outsider, completely unspoilt by the iniquities of civilization. - - Brunnhilde's tragic trajectory, from the banal domesticity of her cave, through the humiliation of her rape by Gunther/Siegfried, to her rage before the trio with Gunther and Hagen in which she swears vengeance, a Fury relieving her feelings by tearing a cake to pieces, is all mapped breathtakingly by Konwitschny. - - On Konwitschny's stage, we do not get to see Valhalla going up in spectacular smoke and flame at the end. His Brunnhilde crosses a last, huge boundary in her final scene, steps out of the action and addresses the audience directly in a formal red dress as if on the platform of a concert hall [very Brechtian]. While the so-called "Redemption Motiv" rises from the orchestra pit, Konwitschny has Wagner's original stage directions projected on to a screen. Only the words and the music remain at the end of the Stuttgart Ring. The director refers us to the score: read it, listen to it ! (Claus Spahn)

We have not seen the DVDs of the earlier operas in Zagrosek's cycle and so refer you to reviews of the Stuttgart Ring on DVD to MusicWeb; that of Siegfried generously illustrated. And to those who respond to Claus Spahn's exhortation, may I take the opportunity to refer you also to my review of The Ring Disc.