✭✭✭✭✭

by Richard Wagner, directed by Tim Albery

Canadian Opera Company, Hummingbird Centre, Toronto

January 30-February 12, 2006

Götterdämmerung as directed by Tim Albery takes place in a world far different from those of the previous two installments in Canada’s first-ever Ring cycle.  The fragmentation that visually dominated Die Walküre and Siegfried is gone.  Instead, Michael Levine, production designer for the entire cycle, has set Götterdämmerung (seen January 30) in a solid, grayscale present of empty horizons and soulless modern interiors.  Fragmentation here lies in the very nature of human society.

In many scenes the stage is overhung with masses of electric cables as if to emphasize that power and communication now lie in the hands of men not gods.  The rope the Norns unsuccessfully weave turns out to be the strands of one of these cables.  The hall of the Gibichungs is an international-style corporate headquarters with Hagen, Gunther, and their male employees in suits and ties.  When Siegfried first appears among them looking like a manual laborer in a battered leather coat, we see at once he is out of his depth, an innocent in a world of cunning and greed.

The great virtue of Albery’s production is the urgency and absolutely clarity of the storytelling.  He drew meticulously detailed performances from the entire cast in response to both the text and the orchestral commentary.  Swedish bass Mats Almgren dominated the evening as an icy, lowering Hagen with a voice of dark velvet.  Baritone John Fanning created a fascinating portrait of Gunther as a man tortured by his own weakness.  As Gutrune, Joni Henson displayed a bright powerful soprano that bodes well for her future.  Chinese mezzo Guang Yang gave a riveting account of Waltraute’s narration to Brünnhilde. 

 

Physically not the archetypal Siegfried, Heldentenor Christian Franz possesses an enormous voice and is well suited to a production that focuses on Siegfried’s profound unworldliness.  His finest moments were the subtlest as in the Tarnehlm Scene when the slightest inflections suggested memory’s struggle against drug-induced amnesia.  As Brünnhilde, Frances Ginzer showed the grandeur she is capable of in her blazing confrontation with Siegfried in Act II.  In contrast, the dominant mode of her Immolation Scene was not triumph or ecstasy but resignation.  Conductor Richard Bradshaw’s brisk tempi kept the tension high, conveying the full drama of the score with no loss of detail or color.

No pyrotechnics accompanied the finale.  Only a glowing square of red signified the funeral pyre and blinding light from the wings Valhalla’s destruction.  Instead, Albery kept the focus on surviving humankind who at the end turn impassive faces away from ruin toward the first cold gleam of dawn.           

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Opera News 2006-05.

Photo: Male chorus of Götterdämmerung. ©Michael Cooper.