Valentin Schwarz's new production cannot overwhelm the music conducted by Cornelius Meister, but it would be better served as a TV mini-series with its own original music and script.

When Richard Wagner dreamt of a festival setting to stage his operas, he wished to arouse his audience’s senses and capture their time without distractions from daily cares. To that extent, his dream was achieved when the purpose-built Bayreuth Festival Theatre, which he established and built, premiered Der Ring des Nibelungen at the inaugural festival in 1876.

One hundred and forty-six years later, this is the 16th new production of the epic four-part opus. Experiencing the enigma of the Ring and its 15 hours of music and drama over four performances during this year’s second cycle was, just as Wagner had intended it to be, like entering a meditative world where art inspires thought. And there was no shortage of thoughts to be had about Austrian director Valentin Schwarz’s fragmented concoction of ideas.

Egils Silins (Wotan), Attilio Glaser (Froh), Elisabeth Teige (Freia). Raimund Nolte (Donner), Daniel Kirch (Loge) and the chorus of the Bayreuther Festspiele. Photo © Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Key to Wagner‘s mystical universe and interconnected worlds of gods, demigods mortals, giants and dwarves — mostly sourced from Nordic and German legends but modified and reconstituted to tell the composer’s own unique story — is coming to grips with the complex relationships and genealogies.

Wotan, ruler of the gods, has quite an extended family to take charge of within a world order showing signs of cracks, which unquestionably reflect Wagner’s own socialist perspective at the time of writing the tetralogy. Often interpreted as a cautionary essay on capitalism and avarice, one should never forget that Wagner wrestled with what constitutes and drives the depths of human emotion and behaviour.

It is therefore easy to see how Schwarz created as a springboard for the Ring Cycle’s genealogical web, a sprawling ‘dynastic drama’, realised with a loosely contemporary aesthetic by designers Andrea Cozzi (sets), Andy Besuch (costumes) and Reinhard Traub (lighting). On paper it has its merits, with Wotan cast as an immoral, patriarchal tycoon sinking deeper and deeper into quicksand and the troubled leader of a dysfunctional clan in demise. Schwarz’s overarching concept unashamedly takes its cue from TV mini-series. Like any good drama, and despite how much you might know about Wagner’s epic, Schwarz’s revisionist approach constantly keeps you guessing what comes next. But fissures open frustratingly wide, and by the time the audience made its final ascent up the Green Hill for Götterdämmerung, the guessing-games had become tiring.

When the curtain rose for Das Rheingold to that magnificent, hypnotic 156-bar orchestral drone, a videoed watery moment preceded a foetal battle for supremacy between twins. Thereafter, child abduction and grooming, together with familial dynamics and prerogatives, defined Schwarz’s reimagined first evening, in which the nature-nurture card looked to be raised. Contrasts between tranquility and violence, good and evil, and power and survival were adequately drawn.

No longer world’s apart, Wotan and the dwarf and lord of the Nibelungs, Alberich, were now supposed twins. There was no hoard of gold. Instead, Alberich had kidnapped a boy from a group of children frolicking with their Rhinemaiden nannies in a splash pool. What else could have more value than gold than the life of a child? Was Schwarz suggesting that complete, abusive control over children is sinisterly presumed to bestow upon its perpetrators ultimate power, before ultimately bringing about their collapse?

Stephanie Houtzeel (Siegrune), Kelly God (Gerhilde), Katie Stevenson (Rossweisse), Daniela Köhler (Helmwige). Photo © Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Such were the questions that frequently arose as Schwarz’s armoury of devices unravelled. Gone were conventional Ring props and the intrigue they glow in throughout Wagner’s score. There was no apparent ring, no gold or dragon. Here, the Tarnhelm was little more than a baseball cap, and the sword Nothung held no particular magic. But plenty of handguns were wielded in a production that often had the whiff of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather movies.

While anomalies and gaps occur in Wagner’s episodic story, its shroud of mystical distance is spun with intoxicating musical synthesis. Wagner wrote the tetralogy’s libretto in reverse order before setting it to music. Even allowing for similar divergent narrative concessions in Schwarz’s concept, the breakdown of Wagner’s fusion of music and onstage drama suffered.

Das Rheingold lacked attention to character detailing and blocking. After the splash pool that opened the night, Cozzi’s sets provided a confusing mix of sleek modernist styling in Wotan’s spacious living room, while near-abstract space was created by a glazed room, in which the abducted child caused havoc among a group of dutiful, similar-looking girls. The quality of singing and the sensitively handled music-making under conductor Cornelius Meister assuaged the situation.

Christa Mayer’s staunch Fricka and Daniel Kirch’s theatrical Loge were particularly excellent. So too was Olafur Sigurdarson’s hefty-voiced, inferiority complex-ridden Mime and Elisabeth Teige’s vibrant Freia. As Wotan, Egils Silins made a convincing portrait of patriarchal command and Okka von der Damerau’s matriarchal Erda, almost always on stage, provided the night’s greatest dramatic moment with a tray-dropping crash and evocatively compelling statement. But as the head of a team of domestic servants that often stood stiffly at the sides? Was Schwarz bestowing Erda’s all-knowing wisdom on the servant class?

Andreas Schager (Siegfried), Igor Schwab (Grane), Daniela Köhler (Brünnhilde). Photo © Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

And what of Valhalla? Did it exist only in the mind as a place to shield one from the present, as it appeared when Wotan danced his way across one part of a previously unused mezzanine? I was half expecting a rear wall to part, revealing the grand new extension to his otherwise poorly laid-out quarters. Instead, a spiffy, boxed and illuminated pyramid, which had initially been tucked away in some shelving, was handled with odd reverence.  For the rest of the cycle it remained a significant prop, to the point of being either a prized family heirloom or a must-have, modern objet d’art. A brimmed black hat and woven shawl similarly provided imagery intended to thread meaning that was mostly lost.

Schwarz’s opener was vociferously booed (even more 6 days later) but a splendidly realised Act 1 of Die Walküre turned things around with Schwarz’s ‘dynastic drama’ feeling rather more potent, with a cleverly inserted recollection scene of the young siblings in their bedrooms. As if there wasn’t already enough scandal in Wagner’s saga — and there was plenty in his own life, too — Sieglinde was found to be carrying Wotan’s child, making Siegmund seem an inconsequential and sterile presence in the scheme of things.

As the heavily pregnant Sieglinde, Lise Davidson took on the role with formidably expressive bearing. Klaus Florian Vogt built his performance with well-paced attack, his bronzed tenor appropriately shapely, and Georg Zeppenfeld impressed hugely as Hunding. The cycle’s first Brünnhilde arrived at Freia’s wake of all places in Act 2. A compelling, self-absorbed character, she was lushly sung by Iréne Theorin after some early murkiness in her bottom range. It was a melodramatic send-off from a Mafia-like family gathering, headed by a supercharged Tomasz Konieczny as the new Wotan.

Accompanying the iconic, musical dazzle of Act 3, vainglorious Valkyries further revealed the dysfunctional nature of their family, traipsing into the same glazed room previously occupied by the girls in the previous episode. Now they are grown-up, adorned in bling and bandaged after cosmetic surgery. With Freia’s role as goddess of beauty and guardian of golden apples written out of the script, perhaps their only way of holding onto youth required a reliance on surgical intervention. The singing was feisty to match, but the highlight of the act was undoubtably Wotan’s Farewell, demonstrating Konieczny’s convincing use of pathos and splendid command in both presence and voice.

Stéphanie Müther (2nd Norn) and Kelly God (3rd Norn). Photo © Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

In the finale of Die Walküre, when Brünnhilde is usually punished and surrounded by a ring of fire, Schwarz marvellously addressed this by having her remain absent. Instead, Fricka wheeled a trolley in with a single candle representing Loge on it. Her glaring exchange with Wotan, during which he threw his wedding ring into her glass, said it all. Under Meister, the orchestra was confident and unified.

Act 1 of Siegfried failed to meet expectations after Die Walküre. However, setting the scene back in Hunding’s abode did establish an apt connection. And a coming-of-age birthday party for Siegfried’s return attended by some frightful dolls gave an indication of his twisted upbringing under the psychotic Mime, loaded with creepiness by Arnold Bezuyen. As the first of two Siegfrieds, Andreas Schager was a magnetic, swilling young brat, muscularly toned in voice but belting out his intentions with often excessive fervour at the top. The lengthy act fell flat, however, and the Forging Song failed to fuse together the industrially magnificent and heroic passage as it ought to. Konieczny’s Wotan/Wanderer was the star of the act, arriving as Siegfried’s presumed father with his own birthday gift.

Wilhelm Schwinghammer superbly rendered the fine idea that Fafner had become a bedridden and cantankerous old man. The Woodbird took form as one of his mistreated carers, piquantly sung by Alexandra Steiner, who took part in a playful exchange when meeting Siegfried. Also present at Fafner’s bedside, and earlier than Wagner intended, was a young Hagen on the sidelines and seemingly climbing up the family ranks in another of Schwarz’s more successful scenes.

Erda was now a down-and-out tramp, but monumentally sung by a returning von der Damerau, while Siegfried and Hagen palled up to overcome Wotan. Protected by Grane her bodyguard – toy horses otherwise featured as additional threaded imagery – Brünnhilde’s seeming recuperation after plastic surgery was interrupted when Siegfried showed up. Shortly after, Hagen begrudgingly headed off. Konieczny was impressive once again as Wotan/Wanderer, while the new Brünnhilde, Daniela Köhler, radiated with finesse and Andreas Schager just about burst at the seams with his reckless Siegfried.

Albert Dohmen (Hagen) and Iréne Theorin (Brünnhilde). Photo © Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Reaching Götterdämmerung, one wondered how much more Schwarz would lay on an already mentally pushed audience. Brünnhilde and Siegfried had had a young daughter and the Norns appeared as sparkling spectres in the opening and compelling scene. Grane was tortured and a seemingly stricken Waltraute entered through the bedroom window to convince Brünnhilde to hand over what should be the titular ring – here the child. It was difficult to understand why and, besides, by this stage another ring reference had been made to a jewelled knuckleduster.

It was time to let go and allow the rapturous music-making, by this time having reached its most affecting under Meister, to truly take the driver’s seat in a production that had so far seen the conductor play second fiddle. It was also an opportunity to thrill at the grand performances on stage with Theorin’s dramatically cutting and soaring return as Brünnhilde – she didn’t deserve the boos at curtain call – and Stephen Gould taking over from Schager as Siegfried and reaching more heroically subdued heights.

With the gods long gone and immersed in the nefarious world of the degenerate Gibichung, Albert Dohmen administered searing vocal heavyweight form as the now older, boxing-fit Hagen. Michael Kupfer-Radecky knocked about outstandingly as Gunther and Teige made a welcome return as a vivid, minx-like Gutrune alongside Sigurdarson‘s calculating Alberich. And then, the arrival of the chorus in majestic and nuanced voice was a stirring highlight, no matter what their cloaks and masks were saying.

In the pool from Das Rheingold, now abandoned, the tragedy of Siegfried’s chilling death scene was milked by his daughter at his side. Heaven knows why he was fishing there. And Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene ended as she danced with Grane’s decapitated head in a Salome-like trance. Finally, what looked like an attempt to remind us where we started, another renewed hope for life took the form of projected foetal twins once again. Do we have such little control over the powers of nature in who we intrinsically are?

In the end, Schwarz’s Ring was characterised by an overwhelming mishmash of ideas and a long succession of questions. What was seen rarely matched the text or reached the level of musical suggestion. Just as Wagner’s sources inspired something new, Schwarz’s ‘dynastic drama’ might resonate better as its own original mini-series with original music and script.

The final cycle of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung will be performed at the Bayreuth Theatre on 25– 30 August.

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