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s was its forty third appearance performance at the staatsoper perhaps less than one might expect for so enduring a staging compare that with over 350 for the barber but then the subtlety depth and absolute refusal to play to the gallery of debussy s opera have never appealed to sections of the operatic masses i once heard someone dismiss it as boring so much the worse for them if they would not have been converted by this then i suspect it would ever elude them after all we all have blind deaf spots the only sense in which berghaus s staging seems a little dated is perhaps in aspects of hartmut meyer s designs on reflection not so much dated as not quite of our time had i looked at them innocently i might have guessed early twenty first century rather than 1991 but they still function with great power as part of a musicodramatic whole as if roth and his cast had been involved from the outset an astonishing achievement when you think about it like her fellow directors harry kupfer now also in the dorotheenstädtischer friedhof götz friedrich across the city in zehlendorf and joachim herz in leipzig as one might expect berghaus was a student of that great adoptive berliner walter felsenstein miles away at kloser on the baltic island of hiddensee they may have departed from felsenstein in post brechtian interpretation but they all built upon his equal concern for musical and dramatic elements insofar as they may be separated at all it is perhaps no coincidence that their stagings where they survive have often proved especially enduring or perhaps it is for the sell by date of a staging stands in a complex relationship to its initial qualities nothing ultimately is forever and some wonderful things can prove ultimately ephemeral not this in any case and there must surely be something in the production as well as in the intelligence and craft of those reviving it that enables such integrated results even now one certainly notices the stark colours quasi abstract yet never cold from the outset and one soon becomes emotionally and intellectually involved in the allemonde they create the lighting for whom i can find no one directly credited is at least as important and if anything still more powerful the shadows it creates are terrifying and all will attest to the dramatic role literal and metaphorical of shadow worlds in this opera the near stratospherically vertiginuous staircase representing mélisande s tower far more directly than any more realistic attempt i have seen provides sceno dramatic focus for so much and offers terror of its own much is invested in every walk up and down every place and occasion to take a seat and the rest likewise yniold s ball a childish toy an object of motion and something to follow mélisande s ring into the menacing well her deliberate not careless tossing of that ring early on into those depths offers a rare momentary instance of lightness even humour albeit set within the ever ominous increasingly terrifying workings of fate costumes and their apparent meaning or at least amenability to be read play intriguing balancing acts a hint perhaps of the brechtian commedia dell arte we know from berliner ensemble and barber alike but turned both early french and symbolist at times pelléas and golaud appear almost interchangeable at others characters and situations win through and make their similar costumes irrelevant the role of letters their reading and their consequences becomes more concrete when they appear in large form passed from character to character and at times pinned on the wall again perhaps a brechtian inheritance but one transformed by another great artist 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 au...
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