Off to the paternity test: Wagner's "Valkyrie" at the Bayreuth Festival

Created: 2022-08-02, 2:40 p.m

By: Markus Thiel

Valkyrie ride in the beauty salon: Sieglinde (Lise Davidsen, lying) has given birth to her child, Grane (middle), actually intended by Wagner as a horse, holds it in her arms.

© Enrico Nawrath

Sieglinde will not have a child from Siegmund?

In his Bayreuth "Valkyrie", director Valentin Schwarz shakes up the basic pillars of Wagner's "Ring".

But some additional level is only fake.

There was also a stage accident.

The stomach is swollen, the lower back hurts, the child remains unwanted.

At some point Sieglinde wants to put an end to everything with a knitting needle, but it is taken away from her.

But whose offspring is Siegfried, the future hero?

Not from the twin brother Siegmund, that's what Wagner thought.

And probably not from Husband Hunding either.

More like that lewd father of the gods who grabs her upskirt at the end of act two.

So Sieglinde a victim of abuse, perpetrator the own father Wotan?

A lively genealogical guessing game unfolds during the breaks among the Bayreuth nerds.

Because: If Siegfried sleeps with Brünnhilde in the next part of “Ring”, then she is now a stepsister and no longer his aunt, as Richard happily wanted.

Roger that?

Does not have to be.

How many riddles that director Valentin Schwarz poses with his new festival "Valkyrie".

The principle of his "Rheingold" also applies here.

Black has eaten a fool at the Wotan clan.

Above all, how you can unravel the story a little differently and push its logic to the limit, stretch it, shift weights and perhaps rethink everything.

With Siegfried's father question, Schwarz shakes the foundations of the "Ring".

Other ideas, such as the funeral service for Freia, the obviously suicidal goddess of love (otherwise only active in "Rheingold"), are pretty filling supplements for insiders.

Schwarz wants to keep the "Ring" figures present, even though they are not intended in the scenes, as extra explanatory material, so to speak.

Just like Fricka and Wotan monitor the disobedient Brünnhilde to see if she really takes Siegmund to the otherworldly Valhalla - with stage designer Andrea Cozzi a mixture of Louvre pyramid and chic loft.

Sword Nothung is just a simple pistol

But this “Rheingold” tendency is also continuing: idea input is one thing, technical implementation, the instinct for scenic balance is another.

Many characters are set too big, like the penetratingly staged flashback to Siegmund and Sieglinde's childhood.

Others fizzle out because it is no longer visible from row 15 - or because it triggers a trivial alarm: Instead of the Nothung sword, Siegmund takes a simple pistol from a folding mini Valhalla pyramid.

How this alleged super weapon is probably destroyed by Wotan the next evening?

Probably by simply removing the cartridges.

Black only superficially makes the story "interesting".

Its extra layers are fake at the leanest of moments.

At the same time, this (playing) pleasure in bending also speaks of naivety.

What is happening in this “Valkyrie” is not of interest, especially since much of it does not go beyond the bas-relief or the lively gag like the Valkyrie ride in the beauty salon.

Black only creates tension with the question: will it all work out in the end?

There he meets the conductor Cornelius Meister.

But he is further protected by the fact that he got into production late.

His "Valkyrie" is more concise than the "Rheingold", but the conducting still strives in all directions like a disorderly hairstyle.

Extreme extensions, as in Sieglinde's lament, stand next to pleasantly fluid parlando scenes in Wotan's monologue.

There are sudden outbursts of pathos and milky passages that cry out for sharpening and intensification.

Master likes to leave finger-fingered sound marks, which - heard throughout the evening - remains undecided.

And in act three he also has to deal with an unplanned Wotan.

Stage accident: Wotan singer Konieczny had to be replaced

Tomasz Konieczny had previously collapsed with an Eames lounge chair.

The baritone got to his feet with presence of mind and apparently continued to sing unmoved, but the pain was probably too great.

Michael Kupfer-Radecky, who was intended to be the cover anyway, took over the third act. He has a much finer functioning voice than his colleague.

Until the stage accident in the second act, Konieczny shows enormous presence, also vocally.

It pushes him to be the center of attention, the activity is good for the evening: Wotan as a nouveau riche bully and determined to do everything, especially in vocal expression - even if only 50 percent of it can be understood thanks to the sound distortions.

In the "Siegfried" premiere this Wednesday, Konieczny will be there again.

In terms of text intelligibility, Iréne Theorin achieves a much lower value, her Brünnhilde is hardly appropriate for Bayreuth.

But you can take shorthand of everything from the first tone of Klaus Florian Vogt.

His Siegmund remains a tenor exception, even if the voice has broadened.

But the way he sails past places where colleagues have to trick, that remains a listening pleasure.

Georg Zeppenfeld (Hunding) is, typically Valentin Schwarz, on stage more often than expected - one fervently wishes Wagner had written additional solos for this bass player.

Christa Mayer as clan mother Fricka sings with a high acid content.

And Lisa Davidsen is – also in Bayreuth – in a sing-play class of her own.

Gone are the days when the Norwegian only relied on the material of her giant soprano.

That was amazing in 2018, when the now 35-year-old released her first Wagner-Strauss album.

What has now been added: a feeling for differentiation, for text, colors, for carefully leveled dynamics and, of course, for moments when she really lets go.

Her triumphant "Siegmund!" in the first act, her monumental "supreme miracle" in the third, these are moments for the Bayreuth annals.

Of course, she knows that, everyone knows that this singer of the century will eventually be Brünnhilde here.

It's good that Lise Davidsen is waiting with that.

But maybe - you're never sure with black - something unexpected will happen in the next few days of the "Ring".