At last, the Ring
most of us have been waiting for begins to make it onto DVD.
Warner has decided
to bypass Rheingold and start with the ‘proper’ first
evening opera: Die Walküre. This is probably a sensible
move, as many critics regard Walküre as the most popular,
certainly the warmest and most lyrical, of the cycle. It also
gives the best possible impression of the Kupfer/ Barenboim
partnership, one of the most productive, intelligent and thrilling
of recent years.
There are many Kupfer
touches apparent from the outset, and anyone who knows, for
instance, his stunning Vienna Elektra with Abbado will
recognise the same hand at work. He has his regular collaborators
Hans Schavernoch as stage designer and Reinhard Heinrich on
costumes ... and the mixture is effective. Kupfer opts for a
largely bare stage, allowing the singers plenty of freedom but
also giving a strong feeling of isolation in a big, empty world.
It looks quite literally like a highway disappearing to nowhere,
a feeling heightened by the generally gloomy lighting. What
set there is consists mainly of big, sculpted features that
make a bold gesture. Thus, Act 1 is dominated in the centre
by the great ash tree, a gnarled, twisted affair that looks
a bit like the huge watchtower at the start of Ridley Scott’s
Alien. The sci-fi (or perhaps sci-fantasy) parallels
are not unintentional, I’m sure; a great space station walkway
dominates Act 3, the costumes (as in Elektra) have a
shiny PVC surface that wouldn’t be out of place in Bladerunner
or The Matrix and the whole thing is evocatively lit
with side beams and laser effects. Thankfully, we still have
room for swords and spears, so for much of the time (the fights,
for instance) it is a production Wagner would have recognised.
It takes a bold and imaginative director to see this sort of
‘contemporary but timeless’ approach through, of course, and
Kupfer’s concept is so much more convincing than the tacky grunge-modern
production from Stuttgart that for some inexplicable reason
made it on to DVD recently. However, I still think that it’s
Kupfer’s handling of the intimate moments, allied to Barenboim’s
superbly flexible conducting, that really win the day.
We have come to
expect excellent standards of singing and playing from Bayreuth
but this Walküre really is as good as it gets. The first
act gets off to a superb start with a virile, heroically ringing
Siegmund from Poul Elming. He staggers in from the back of the
vast, mist-filled stage and we’re already on safer ground than
the Stuttgart Walküre, where Robert Gambill’s lighter-voiced
Siegmund rushed on in jogging pants and wearing a walkman. We
really believe Elming is a warrior (his ragged army fatigues
and black boots hint at American GI, but it’s only a suggestion)
and the voice is true heldentenor quality. His partnership with
Nadine Secunde’s Sieglinde is both passionately moving yet dangerously
fragile, light years away from the ridiculously unconvincing
posturing of Jessye Norman and Gary Lakes for Levine and the
Met (DG) well sung as that is. The wonderfully black-voiced
Hunding of Matthias Hoelle is simply the icing on the cake for
this first act – no cardboard cut-out villain this.
Things get even
better from here. At the heart of the next two acts we get beautifully
nuanced performances from an intensely energetic John Tomlinson
as Wotan and a bold, attractive Anne Evans as Brünnhilde, both
artists surely at their peak in the early-1990s. Tomlinson has
been accused of overacting in the past but his many grimaces
and larger-than-life gestures seem entirely appropriate as things
slip out of his control; the voice is also in magnificent form,
effortlessly filling the stage with a stream of rich, firm tone.
Evans matches him all the way, managing to keep the voice steady
under great duress. She also looks good, the long auburn hair
flowing sexily down the back of her black leather greatcoat,
a far cry from the overweight, bovver-booted ‘teenager’ we got
from Stuttgart. The superb all-British triumvirate is completed
by Linda Finnie as Fricka, another intelligent and multi-layered
assumption. This fiery marriage guardian simply will not take
no for an answer, whether this is Wotan or not.
So singing and acting
are of an exceptionally high order, with everybody in great
voice and right inside their respective characters. What really
lifts this set however, are Barenboim and the orchestra. It
was conducting and playing that largely saved the Stuttgart
Ring, at least for me, but here one is simply swept away.
The richness of those strings, the blazing brass, the detailed
wind solos, all are controlled with a mixture of utter precision
yet with a surging ebb-and-flow of passion that sounds almost
improvisatory at times. We all know of Barenboim’s Fürtwänglerian
credentials, but I’ve not heard any better from the great man
himself. It helps that the recording is totally splendid, true
surround and with amazing depth and detail. The climaxes, which
Barenboim unleashes with such force, are quite overwhelming.
It really must have helped the singers give of their best to
feel they were being supported in this way.
Camerawork is generally
good, no intrusive cutting to the pit (which mars passages of
Levine’s Ring) and only the occasional close-up being
problematic, as when we see too much of the wax dummy ‘fallen
heroes’ on their way to Valhalla at the start of Act 3, though
I don’t doubt that this would be effective from a distance in
the theatre. Kupfer had a hand in supervising the move to video
(his interview makes up most of the booklet) so generally the
emphasis is on intimacy, of the various ‘plays-of-couples’ that
litter the opera. Quite honestly, there is almost too much to
take in at one sitting (I watched each act separately a couple
of times then the whole thing through) such is the detail and
depth of the entire undertaking.
Picture quality
is worth mentioning, true widescreen and with excellent clarity
and colour. As mentioned, the booklet does include a reasonable
length interview with Kupfer, though the set cries out for on-screen
interviews with all the major players. They must have realised
they were taking part in something pretty special and it would
have been nice to share it with them. Still, we should be grateful
that this highly-praised cycle is now reaching us on DVD –
as recent Rings go, it takes the biscuit for me. Roll
on the rest!
Tony Haywood
See Das
Rheingold
Die
Walkure
Siegfried
Gotterdammerung
Siegmund – Poul Elming
(tenor)
[2 DVDs: 237:00]
