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rtist at work there is a strong feminist element too golaud s rape of mélisande horrifying her pregnancy almost intolerably vivid without male gaze exploitation and at least as disturbing as anything else arkel s pursuit and lying with her founded in the text but extended with well nigh perfect directorial judgement the staatskapelle berlin has long experience of debussy under barenboim in particular roth s reading brought similar structural virtues and alertness to colour the later inevitably of a somewhat different nature founded in his work with period instruments on this work wisely there was no attempt merely to replicate that we can all do without ever hearing period style on modern instruments ever again but that does not mean music making like theatre cannot or should not be in a more intelligent sense historically informed timbre here played as important a structural role as anything else pointing the way forward to boulez as malevolent harmonies their progression dramatic implication and structural role led back to multiple wagner dramas throughout the playing of the staatskapelle was at least as outstanding as one could hope to hear anywhere simon keenlyside made the transition from pelléas to golaud a while ago and continues to excel in this music and its drama or should it be the other way around his triangle with thomas blondelle and magdalena kožená was as credible revealing and terrifying as any i can recall blondelle may have been indisposed yet his pelléas was fresh alert vivid and listening between the lines doomed kožená s typically intelligent artistry founded in profound communicative gifts not least in french proved almost horrifyingly moving anne sofie von otter s geneviève presided with similar intelligence and perhaps the occasional hint of her youth and its travails stephen milling s arkel was subtly yet powerfully sketched a fascinating compelling move from hunding no wonder henrik brandstetter s yniold received such warm and vigorous applause so excellent was this performance from a soloist of the tölzer knabenchor i confess i thought he must have been an adult singer successfully aping a treble even the small roles of doctor and shepherd were memorably assumed by david oštrek this then was a highly moving and thought provoking night in the theatre in itself and for the questions it posed about stagings and their aesthetics lineage and longevity i must try to see that hamburg tristan before it is too late posted by mark berry at 12 19 pm email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels anne sofie von otter debussy françois xavier roth henrik brandstetter magdalena kožená pelléas et mélisande ruth berghaus simon keenlyside staatsoper unter den linden stephen milling thomas blondelle tuesday 7 july 2026 munich opera festival 4 die walküre 1 july 2026 nationaltheater images monika rittershaus siegmund joachim bäckström hunding ain anger wotan nicholas brownlee sieglinde irene roberts brünnhilde miina lisa värelä fricka ekaterina gubanova helmwige dorothea herbert gerhilde julie adams ortlinde elaine gvritshvili waltraute claudia mahnke siegrune niina keitel rossweiße christina rock grimgerde natalie lewis schwertleite noa beinart loge charith pidikiti director tobias kratzer assistant director matthias piro designs rainer sellmaier lighting michael bauer video manuel braun jonas dahl janic bebi dramaturgy bettina bartz olaf roth bayerische staatsorchester vladimir jurowski conductor as a student in berlin ludwig feuerbach attended lectures from among others gwf hegel and friedrich schleiermacher far from an unusual combination but prophetic for his subsequent development as the pre eminent young hegelian philosopher of love communism although he lectured at erlangen feuerbach failed to obtain a university position an ambition rendered impossible following revelation of his authorship of the atheistic thoughts on death and immortality published anonymously in 1830 a year in which revolutions once again began to sweep europe his writings including those thoughts the essence of christianity and principles of the philosophy of the future inspired many radicals in the next wave of revolutions 1848 51 although feuerbach remaining personally aloof from revolutionary activity one of those of course was richard wagner who shortly after publication of feuerbach s thoughts had gained his first experience direct and reported of revolution inspired by events in paris leipzig and even the previously quiescent dresden the seventeen year old saxon would recall in his autobiography mein leben the world of history having come to life saxony was not spared in dresden it even came to street fighting he began to attend leipzig university lectures on philosophy and aesthetics and henceforth considered himself a fervent partisan of the revolution wagner would go on read at least all three of the feuerbach books named above and in contrast to one of his great intellectual mentors stood anything but aloof from revolutionary political activity be it in practice during the 1849 dresden uprising or in the fruits of his post revolutionary exile in zurich among those were the artwork of the future dedicated to feuerbach its very title a homage and of course die walküre perhaps his single most feuerbachian drama in that the positive as well as negative side of a religion purer than yet related to christianity founded on love features most strongly in the love of siegmund and sieglinde and brünnhilde s conversion to their creed crucially at the price in reality an elevation of losing her own immortality with this walküre newly premiered tobias kratzer s munich ring reaches its second instalment i was unable to see das rheingold but on the evidence of this as well as much of his other work his near universally loved bayreuth tannhäuser various deutsche oper productions and more i hope to put that right before long even considered on its own kratzer s walküre has numerous distinctions but perhaps its most distinctive feature at least until the third act is a more overt feuerbachian element than any other i can recall i suspect it would seem so all the more in light of the rheingold but that must remain a matter of speculation by now what it certainly does is put the gods even here centre stage not only as the gods characters in this drama but emphatically as gods and emphatically not as ernst bloch put it called gods without being gods the curtain rises on a rural possibly suburban chalet by deduction it may be somewhere outside munich though it need not be this of course is hunding s house at the end of the driveway a quasi marian shrine albeit to fricka that is kratzer follows wagner absolutely in presenting a dramatic critique of religion mostly yet not only christianity albeit shrouded as it were in the guise of germanic paganism wagner is doing other things with reference to the eddas and sagas too but he is certainly doing that in unambiguously post feuerbach fashion it is here under fricka as well as hunding also under a larger indoor ecclesiastical shrine not unlike a tabernacle or reliquary perhaps denoting the rule of valhalla religion christianity more generally that siegmund takes refuge sieglinde is clearly a member of this religion too since she genuflects before the shrine even when hunding has gone and initially shamefully later with abandon celebrates her wholesale abandon ment only after covering it when in the second act wotan comes to earth like the gods of old though also if we believe the new testament ours too he is distressed not only by fricka s demolition of the new religion he has ultimately inspired but by the destruction of the shrine within his old religion one might say just as wagner s god is torn so is he visibly as well as audibly so that hunding whose cause fricka takes should be a devotee of her understanding of this religion sect perhaps will surprise no one but it is clear not assumed she even recognises herself in it i am tempted to add in biblical style and it was good save that obviously it was not for humanity we even see a ram albeit a dead one hers is a chariot if only metaphorically of death as in wagner when death occurs moreover it is unquestionably violent we are no more spared than its more direct victims when wotan in anger bids hunding kneel before fricka wagner s goddess of custom as he explained in a letter to august röckel the bourgeois property and motor owner does just that not something i have seen before she and other gods i assume froh donner and freia whom we have already seen in a drawing projected at some point during wotan s monologue observe events on the battlefield dressed in designer rainer sellmaier s mediaeval even burgundian nibelungenlied garb they offer strong connection to the mediaevalism of work wagner s selection and adoption of sources and to the hostile young hegelian critique of church and state such as had been mystically united in states such as the prussia of frederick william iv another such example if less fanatically so was the saxony in which kapellmeister wagner threatened to burn it all down and took delight in seeing just that in his opera house 8 may monday morning once again by roundabout route via barricades to town hall at s anne barricade guard shouts well mr conductor joy s beautiful divine spark s made a blaze 3rd perf 9th symphony at previous palm sunday concert opera house now burnt down strange feeling of comfort another important point i suspect from wotan s monologue in his proto parsifalian wandering he passes a church out of it ran two hooded figures disaffected youth it would seem something within me wondered whether one might be alberich in the one ring drama in which he should not appear onstage i think it was for during the ride of the valkyries a hooded figure with child surely hagen watches we shall see to be reminded at any rate of wagner s contemporary and fellow feuerbach enthusiast for a while marx and his more or less contemporaneous observation in explicit young hegelian critique of hegel that the relationship of industry alberich and in particular the world of wealth to the political world the gods is one of the principal problems of modern times was salutary and i should be surprised to learn that it had merely been my interpretative fancy so far so excellent all accomplished in fine personenregie and response thereto this is no mere concept it is an absorbing drama that of the third act is hardly less so in the latter respect although it seems strangely distant from what has gone before perhaps more will be revealed in siegfried or götterdämmerung but once past a video ride that took in much of munich brünnhilde at the helm of apocalypse now helicopter an original bavarian host of the siegestor thus returning to source as it were naturally the local audience loved it and why not numerous aspects of the city eliciting gasps of recognition and less laudably actual applause surely one can appreciate a coup de théâtre or de cinéma without pavlovian response that nonetheless we should end up in the nationaltheater may have particular warrant given it was here that against wagner s wishes ludwig ii had it all begin perhaps kratzer anticipated the applause or such reaction and turned it against the audience avant la lettre we can read it that way anyway and perhaps subsequent events will play out more fully in that respect and not too closely to stefan herheim s metatheatrical deutsche oper ring but it seemed a slight pity there is still much to admire in the emergency repair work and religious rebirth offered by valkyrie body snatchers to heroes as well as in the passionate direction and portrayal of wotan and brünnhilde thereafter that the demi god loge appears as bidden with flame at the close ties all neatly together yet i could not help but think this is really my sole cavil a more apt setting might have been found unless the point be that the opera house is now our dubious temple if so i shall happily recant again we shall see in one sense though even that helped point in the unlikely event anyone should have needed pointing to the truest heroes of all the orchestra that first performed this work wherever you may have heard it in berlin bayreuth dresden vienna or elsewhere it is unlikely to have been played better than this strings were dark yet incisive old german in a way furtwängler might have recognised dramatic in a way boulez might have done the rest of the playing was equally outstanding the ride far more than showpiece but rather quite rightly a symphonic movement taking its place in wagner s dramatic whole vladimir jurowski s conducting had its moments in better and worse senses to begin with too often one could hear as well as see him conduct wagner became a miniaturist in a sense too close to nietzsche s jibe it was all too effortful though to jurowski s credit he never tried to get this great orchestra to sound like anything other than itself the third act was more at ease with itself with far fewer odd impositions upon it it flowed in a way closer to the rhine or isar and thus the orchestra s mysterious delphic oracle sounded more unbidden save in the eternal riddle for who might have created its own gods speaking of heroes joachim bäckström made for a fine siegmund his chemistry with irene roberts s increasingly ecstatic sieglinde what a foretelling of siegfried she offered thrilling and at times disturbing to watch for kratzer did not follow wagner in his understanding of incest these twins even the religious sieglinde were positively excited by the prospect of incest as opposed to loving each other and its revelation not mattering again film revealed some of the backstory adding to rather than merely mirroring what we learned from narration at least after the first slightly disappointing instalment nicholas brownlee s wotan we had thus seen and known already his fireside sadness seen by the siblings mothers projected into a wise multivalent portrayal of the sum of present day intelligence wagner on the character immediately prior to starting work on the score of this opera ekaterina gubanova s imperious haughty godlike fricka was all one might hope for in general and in context ain anger s self assured hunding was no mere thug though he was certainly given to violence here was a man who knew his beliefs and his patriarchal rights and was willing to fight for them miina lisa värelä s brünnhilde s journey to the brink of losing immortality absorbed us through excellent wagnerian command of words music and gesture other valkyries offered singing and acting of the highest order for not the least of the work s and performance s virtues was a celebration of wagner s feuerbachian conception of the purely human and its socialist expansion into a vision political social religious and more that only in cooperation might we begin to achieve 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