‘Das Rheingold’
Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin - 15/10/22
Berlin’s new Ring - better heard than seen!
That was my judgement after two and a half hours of Rheingold last night in Berlin. More importantly as I was getting my coat I spoke to an elderly Berliner who had been attending Berlin’s state opera house ever since it was rebuilt after the war. She said “it is an insult to the people of Berlin - I have tickets for all the other operas but I won’t be coming to them.” I had a certain sympathy for that point of view but sadly we critics having been given free tickets are obliged to stay and suffer for our readers! But from the outside let me be clear this is the worst production of the Ring I have seen in my more than fifty years of opera going which includes quite a few Ring Cycles.
Also from the outset let me be clear - musically this was a very decent Ring. The orchestra under the young conductor Thomas Guggeis was excellent. The singers were consistently good, despite the nonsense they had to do in this production. Last week Slipped Disc reported on an animal rights campaign to save the rabbits on display in the laboratories on stage. I feel we should start a campaign to save opera singers from the indignities of opera directors who want to “modernise” operas.
Michael Volle was a very decent Wotan vocally, even if his acting was less than convincing. Sadly Rolando Villazon was less convincing as Loge - vocally his voice didn’t really have the heft needed for this part and sounded a bit ragged by the end; maybe he should stick to Rossini. Again he wasn’t helped by the direction which envisaged Loge as a camp comedian, entirely lacking the menace of Loge that Wagner envisaged. Erda, sung by Anna Kissjudit, was superb but looked like a portly German Hausfrau from the 1950s - no doubt an intended evocation by the director! The Rhinemaidens were all well sung but of course dressed as lab assistants in white coats in the laboratory of the ESCHER Institute. Their words had no relevance to what was happening on the stage. The giants Fasolt and Fafner, sung by Mike Karen and Peter Rose respectively, were dressed as a couple of local heavies but sang competently, even again if their words had no meaning. “Pile the gold high” looks a little out of place when there is no gold on the stage. Donner, the god of thunder, well sung by Lauri Vasar, at least got to fire a few fireworks at the end, but by that time all I could do was laugh!
So let me be clear - the responsibility for this disaster of a production, which has been consistently booed in its first cycle last week, lies firmly at the feet of director Tcherniakov and his associates. Their vision was to set it in a research institute experimenting on the human brain - no doubt hence the rabbits! The set, which constantly slid sideways and up and down, reputedly cost over a million euros, which these days is around a million pounds! It literally made no sense in relation to the text and the English surtitles made that clear. At times I closed my eyes and it sounded not a bad Rheingold, but then I opened them and the horror on the stage resumed. Of course some critics like these modern productions and one German companion last night said to me “we don’t feel happy unless we can boo the production”! Critics aren’t allowed to boo, but they are required to be critical, so I can confidently say that it was an appalling travesty of Rheingold I saw last night, and I have another 18 hours of probably similar torture to go this week! I say at the end of this production it should be condemned to the dustbin of history and free the rabbits and the poor singers from ever having to endure this dire production again!
