Anthony Negus and his remarkable cast excel in Suzanne Chaundy’s gimmick-free Melbourne Opera Die Walküre

Australia Wagner, Die Walküre: Soloists, Melbourne Opera Orchestra / Anthony Negus (conductor). Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, 9.2.2022. (JPr)

Production:
Director – Suzanne Chaundy
Set design – Andrew Bailey
Lighting designer – Rob Sowinski
Costume designer – Harriet Oxley
Video designer – Chris Hocking

Cast:
Siegmund – Bradley Daley
Sieglinde – Lee Abrahmsen
Hunding – Steven Gallop
Wotan – Warwick Fyfe
Brünnhilde – Zara Barrett
Fricka – Sarah Sweeting
Gerhilde – Rosamund Illing
Ortlinde – Eleanor Greenwood
Waltraute – Jordan Kahler
Helmwige – Olivia Cranwell
Siegrune – Naomi Flatman
Grimgerde – Caroline Vercoe
Rossweise – Sally-Anne Russell
Schwertleite – Dimity Shepherd

After two rather blighted attempts at Die Walküre in 2021, the wonderful Wagnerian Anthony Negus has struck (Rhine)gold with this production by Melbourne Opera that was livestreamed by the Australian Digital Concert Hall on its first night. Negus himself was blameless at Longborough (where he is music director) because Covid required a socially distanced semi-staging and also at English National Opera recently. The single performance of Richard Jones’s new The Valkyrie he was allotted (for all his coaching) was initially taken away from him before he was rapidly reinstated. No explanation for this was ever forthcoming but I was at his performance (sung in a dreadful English translation) and I totally believe what others told me that the orchestra and some of the singers were at their best in this Negus-led evening. Of course, the conductor probably could not believe what he was watching on – an essentially bare – stage as Jones was probably exploring some environmental themes with Wotan dressed as a lumberjack and living in a log cabin and the Valkyries as eco-warriors with their risible pantomime horses (at least the head ends). Worse came at the end of the opera and because the local council’s health and safety concerns had kiboshed any real flames to accompany Wagner Magic Fire Music, Brünnhilde was left – unimaginatively – hoisted on ropes above where the fire should have been!

The best ENO and the Met – who are their partners in this new Ring – could do is put it out of its misery immediately and learn from what Melbourne Opera have done with a staging that serves Wagner’s opera rather than any directorial Konzept. Also they show how important it is to use singers (here all Australian!) with solid Wagnerian pedigrees. Yes, I know the argument about how will any younger singers learn to sing Wagner if they are not given any opportunities but there has to be a better balance of those with the relevant experience and those without it.

In a programme note director Suzanne Chaundy admirably explained: ‘My challenge is to portray this epic work in a truly affecting way. Too often I feel the real and raw emotions are overlooked in the storytelling for the sake of a concept. Wagner is presenting a massive world of ideas that I embrace, rather than reduce to the world we live in. Our scale of design is epic and we have adopted a deeply detailed performance style to interrogate every dramatic moment. I am blessed to be working alongside collaborators who have helped shape this nuance, Anthony Negus and David Kram plus my wonderful creative team and our extraordinary cast of singing actors.’

Last year’s Das Rheingold (review click here) made me write how ‘I was reminded of past Rings I have been fortunate to see right from the opening scene, and there is nothing wrong in that of course … and how certain moments here recalled Glen Byam Shaw and John Blatchley’s famous The Rhinegold at the London Coliseum in the 1970s.’ This Die Walküre reinforced an ongoing connection between what we are seeing and the joint work of Byam Shaw and Blatchley for Sadler’s Wells/ENO as well as, that of Götz Friedrich for his Ring at Covent Garden (with Josef Svoboda’s set design) also in the 1970s as I mentioned last time too.

Andrew Bailey’s Act I set is a familiar looking hut strewn with fallen leaves and at the centre on a dais there is an extravagantly gnarled tree (with its too-obvious sword, Nothung, jutting out the bottom of it) rising through a large circle (ring?) in the roof. We recognise something here from Das Rheingold and presumably it will unify all four parts of Chaundy’s Ring which is supposed to be seen in its entirety next year. (At the start of the second act it will lower and provide a platform for Wagner’s ‘wild rocky place’ with some thick branches emerging through the hole at the centre.) Everything you need for the opening of Die Walküre is there for the long-parted twins Siegmund and Sieglinde to reunite and begin their incestuous relationship and for Siegmund’s confrontation with her knife-wielding husband, Hunding. There is a hearth, a large table and chairs for the meal and a stand where Sieglinde prepares it and shows how she drugs Hunding’s drink. Good use of video (from Chris Hocking) is another feature of Chaundy’s staging and angry clouds (which will reappear throughout the opera) accompany the opening bars – always a visceral moment with Negus conducting – depicting Siegmund’s desperate flight.

Throughout this Die Walküre Wagner’s intentions are almost scrupulously adhered to, one suspects; the sword’s hilt glows, light shines in as Siegmund and Sieglinde – who look alike here more than is usual – express their love for each other; and the curtain falls just before they consummate it. Harriet Oxley’s costumes also have a cosy familiarity to them and Siegmund even has his wolfskin! There is an odd exception but overall there is a naturalness to the acting that you do not always see.

Act II sees Wotan with straggly hair and greying beard and a patch over his missing left eye. His daughter, Brünnhilde, even has a hint of a breastplate and a helmet alongside the shield and spear she wields. Fricka who demands the twins be punished for their adultery and incest has a Norma Desmond look about her and coiled Medusa-like snakes on a turban. When Hunding catches up with Siegmund there is a credible fight between the two of them and before Siegmund can apply the coup de grâce, Wotan make him drop his sword and Hunding stabs him. He reaches out and appears to recognise Wotan as his father, Wälse.

For the final act, we have Negus inspiring an exciting ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and we watch two aerial artists (Emily Ryan and Ashlee Grunberg) rocking back and forth on sway poles as their ‘horses’ gallop through the clouds. The Valkyries – who look, well, like Valkyries – gather and prove themselves to be a spirited octet with several exciting voices. The platform rises and we see three outcrops of Basalt columns over which the odd not-so-dead ‘hero’ is thrown. There is lightning on stage (and from the crackling accompaniment from a 90-strong orchestra) as a vengeful Wotan arrives to challenge Brünnhilde about her betrayal when she disobeyed him and tried to save Siegmund. Wotan passes his sentence but while Brünnhilde will lie asleep clutching Siegmund’s wolfskin on the volcanic rock, he has agreed to her wish to be surrounded with a circle of fire that will protect her from all but the bravest of heroes (Siegfried, the child Sieglinde is carrying). Chaundy and Bailey conjure up a brilliantly realistic conflagration with dry ice and coloured lighting and it puts ENO to shame.

It must be admitted that I was listening to this through loudspeakers, but I suspect it faithfully reproduced what was heard in the theatre. All the principal singers carry their experience lightly and once again it was good to be reminded of the legendary Alberto Remedios’s portrayal of Siegmund in the open-faced, occasionally smiling, countenance of Bradley Daley whose refulgent, strong and lyrical tenor did not disappoint in his big moments ‘Wälse! Wälse! Wo ist dein Schwert?’ and a radiant ‘Winterstürme’. That he resorted on occasions to some stock operatic gestures does not detract from the overall excellence of his performance. It was interesting to see he is listed as singing Siegfried soon for Longborough Festival Opera. Daley was well-matched by Lee Abrahmsen as an impressively sung, fervent and passionate Sieglinde. Abrahmsen’s ‘Rettet die Mutter!’ (‘Save the mother!’) and climactic ‘O hehrstes Wunder!’ were notably exultant. Steven Gallop was a suitably glowering – and prone to violence – Hunding though I was not sure his bass voice was dark enough for the role.

Sarah Sweeting’s shrewish and domineering Fricka gave Wotan no chance to win their argument, it was imperiously sung and that she appeared a little overwrought must be down to Chaundy. Zara Barrett as Brünnhilde launched fearlessly into her ‘Hojotoho!’ entrance and sang throughout with great musicality, total dramatic conviction and explicit attention to the text, especially during the Act II Todesverkündigung (Annunciation of Death) and ‘War es so schmählich’ towards the end as Brünnhilde insists she doesn’t want to be demeaned.

Though Barrett towered physically over some of the cast it was Warwick Fyfe as Wotan who did that vocally. Like the best Wotans, the anguish of this king of the gods – over the hole he has dug for himself – was heard in his every utterance; anger flared fiercely as he submitted to Fricka’s will and she departs. He began his monologue with Brünnhilde reflectively and it all gradually built before he gave full value to his despair at ‘das Ende’. Rarely have I heard Hunding dismissed at the end of the second act with such a chillingly hushed ‘Geh!’. In the final scene Fyfe brought out the sternness and sadness of Wotan’s banishment of Brünnhilde, yet there was a palpable sense – as there must be – of forgiveness in his farewell (‘Leb wohl, du kühnes, herrliches Kind!’). Fyfe was also prone to some of those ‘stock operatic gestures’ though this might be excused because the role is so demanding.

Finally to the man to whom Melbourne Opera owes a great debt for what looks to be developing into a memorable Ring cycle, Anthony Negus. Few conductors today (if any?) really know the Die Walküre score as well as Negus or have his grasp of Wagner’s innate dramatic throughline whilst he can still highlight arresting details you don’t remember hearing before. The music had a real radiance, and the Melbourne Opera Orchestra sounded resplendent and astonishingly well-disciplined. The arc to the flickering flames at the end of this Die Walküre had true cathartic power.

Jim Pritchard