Götterdämmerung

by Richard Wagner

seen at the Royal Festival Hall on 3 July 2016

Opera North's semi-staged semi-concert production of Der Ring des Niblungen is performed in one cycle in London this week. Richard Farnes conducts the Opera North Orchestra throughout the cycle which is staged and lit by Peter Mumford. For the 'third day' of Götterdämmerung the principal singers were Kelly Cae Hogan as Brünnhilde, Mati Turi as Siegfried, Andrew Foster-Williams as Gunther, Mats Almgren as Hagen, Giselle Allen as Gutrune, Heather Shipp as Waltraute and Jo Pohlheim as Alberich, with Fiona Kimm, Yvonne Howard and Lee Bisset as the Norns and Jeni Bern, Madeleine Shaw and Sarah Castle as the Rhinemaidens.

The final instalment of the Ring cycle was in some ways the most thrilling, with the orchestra playing easily to its already high standard - fully detailed and both delicate and overwhelming when required. The singers reprising their roles - Kelly Cae Hogan and Jo Pohlheim - maintained their excellent presence, Brünnhilde radiant to the very end, and Alberich at his most sinister in the creepy conversation with his son Hagen, a thrillingly dangerous Mats Almgren. Mati Turi sang a fairly light-hearted Siegfried (unerscoring his fatal naivety) but was not in the same league as his Brünnhilde. As the hapless Gibichung siblings, Andrew Foster-Williams made a suitably spineless Gunther while Giselle Allen was a winsome Gutrune.

The video projections had some real successes this time - the Norns' rope twisted sinuously throughout their slow but informative prologue, sometimes looking almost slimy like a living serpent, and fraying effectively at the end. The final redemptive sunrise was a calm relief after all the necessary fire and destruction. But all in all, this aspect of the performances remained the least thrilling thing about this otherwise wonderfully organised Ring.

The semi-staging in this performance was really well thought out. The Norns entered dressed in black, with black veils over their faces. These were ritualistically removed and placed on chairs while they sang, to be equally slowly retrieved as they sank towards their mother. Later, in the difficult substitution scene, Siegfried and Gunther entered together, and the taller Siegfried placed Gunther in front of him but sang all the part in a lower register, the Gibichung king mimicking all the hero's actions. At the beginning of the second act, Alberich, his hands covered in blck leather gloves, appeared from behind Hagen and seemed like an unnatural growth on his son as he half-embraced and half-pawed him - it was visually disturbing and matched the queasy music of the scene. In a subtle but effective touch, it was only at the point when Brünnhilde loses the ring that the final indications of her godhood disappeared. At the beginning of the second act, when Gunther brought her to his hall, she no longer wore the glove and bracelet on her right hand that she had hitherto always sported (I had half expected it to have been removed by Wotan at the end of Die Walküre), and she was wearing shoes. The Rhinemaidens and all the deaths were also managed effectively.

The whole cycle, experienced over six days, was a stimulating and very satisfactory experience.