Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner Parts One and Two: Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, Regents Opera, York Hall, Bethnal Green, London E2. 4☆☆☆☆. Review: Clare Colvin.
Photo Credit: Matthew Coughlan.
Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner Parts One and Two: Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, Regents Opera, York Hall, Bethnal Green, London E2.
4☆☆☆☆. Review: Clare Colvin.
“A marathon of intensity.”
Embarking on Regents Opera’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is like going on a journey, combining a feeling of excitement with a twinge of trepidation. After all, Wagner is very long and there are hours and hours unrolling to the end in the relentless progress towards the magnificently descriptive portmanteau word of Götterdämmerung.
Ben Woodward, Regents Opera’s conductor, with director Caroline Staunton, has spent five years cutting back Wagner’s masterwork orchestrally to 24 musicians, while not losing the score’s original power. Crisis struck when the original venue was withdrawn last year while cast and musicians were in rehearsal and tickets already selling. An urgent scout around the East End of London brought to notice York Hall in Bethnal Green, built in the 1920s and a former popular boxing match venue. It has proved an ideal substitute, in its structure of a long rectangular auditorium surrounded by audience seats, so the action is wholly concentrated on the central platform.
In Das Rheingold the river Rhein is represented by a recessed channel in mid-platform where Oliver Gibbs’s sleazy Alberich harasses the Rhinemaidens. Ingeborg Novrup Borch’s wife Fricka holds her husband Wotan to account for double-dealing with the giants who built Valhalla, and to losing their daughter Freia as a result. Wotan (Ralf Lukas) enlists the help of Loge, the God of Fire to steal the gold that Alberich has stolen from the Rhinemaidens, thus drawing down on their heads Alberich’s curse on the Ring. James Schouten’s Loge is a stand-out commedia-dell’arte turn that provides an extra flourish to the proceedings.
Das Rheingold is prologue to Die Walküre, which begins with the scene of a raging thunderstorm and a wounded man seeking shelter. It’s compulsively involving in the stark triangle of Brian Smith Walters’ fleeing Siegmund, Justine Viani’s abused wife Sieglinde, and Gerrit Paul Groen’s brutal husband Hunding. Domestic drama continues among the gods as Fricka drums her heels on the floor in a fit at Wotan’s attempt to save his beloved, transgressive twin children. Wotan indulges his favourite Valkyrie daughter Brünnhilde, magnificently sung by Catherine Woodward. Then comes her defiance when she attempts to save Siegmund from being killed by Hunding. Furious at losing control of his offspring, whom he regards as being nothing more than the instrument of his will, Wotan condemns her to mortality on a rocky mountain top surrounded only by the protective circle of fire.
Each Part of the Ring I have seen has further enriched the genius of the whole work. Last night’s Siegfried was the most sustained visually in its changes of scene - from Mime’s den with its library of books and flickering standard lamp (repaired by the Wanderer in labourer’s dungarees), Craig Lemont Walters’ flickering-tongued Fafner the dragon emerging from his red-glowing cave, Corinne Hart’s perky Woodbird steering our hero towards Brünnhilde on her fire-encircled rock, and above all the forging of the sword Nothung by Peter Furlong’s hyper-active Siegfried, in a performance that is truly riveting, and marks him out as a Siegfried for our times. I can hardly wait for Götterdämmerung.
Creatives
Conductor: Ben Woodward
Director: Caroline Staunton
Designer: Isabella van Braeckel
Cycle 2: Das Rheingold: Sunday 23 February at 5pm
Die Walküre: Tuesday 25 February at 5pm
Siegfried: Thursday 27 February at 5pm
Götterdämmrung: Sunday 2 March at 3pm