Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
✭✭✭✭✭
by Richard Wagner, directed by Tim Albery
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
February 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17 & 25, 2017
“Christine Goerke Proves She Is the Greatest Brünnhilde Of Our Time”
The Canadian Opera Company’s production of Götterdämmerung is its third staging of its production directed by Tim Albery. It debuted first as a stand-alone production in January 2006, once as part of Canada’s first-ever Ring Cycle in June 2006 and now appears again in 2017. Michael Levine’s insightful modern-dress design with its emphasis on the key symbols of the work is still impressive. The clarity of Albery’s storytelling and his ability to draw finely nuanced acting from the entire cast makes the opera dramatically gripping from start to finish. Above all the current remount (seen February 8, 2017) has the finest cast one could ever hope for, with Christine Goerke absolutely magnificent as Brünnhilde.
Levine imagines the world of this opera, in contrast to Siegfried, as cold and hard. A dark grey dominates every scene of this morally compromised landscape with accents of black and white. With this as a background, Levine has a significant object in red in every scene – whether the rope that the Norns weave, the red lights signifying the flames around Brünnhilde’s mountain, the red threads of fate wound round the valkyrie’s wrist, the forty red desk chairs that represent Hagen’s power, the bloodstain on Siegfried’s T-shirt from his stab wound or the glowing red light that suffuses the chorus witnessing the destruction of Valhalla.
In only two instances are Albery’s additions to the action unhelpful. When Siegfried sings about his happiest memories just before his death, Albery has two actors dressed as ravens carry in the body of the dead Forest Bird, who in the previous opera Siegfried guided the hero to Brünnhilde’s mountain. First, interrupting such an important moment is distracting. Second, showing us that a character of a previous opera is dead is an irrelevant symbol when a principal character is dying.
The other instance occurs in Act 3 when the three Rhinemaidens try to seduce Siegfried and claim that if he were only to cast the ring into the Rhine to them, its curse would end. Albery’s notion is that the three Norns disguise themselves as the three Rhinemaidens and then dress again as Norns and begin knitting. Since the vocal composition of the two threesomes is different we can assume this was never Wagner’s idea. As for Albery, are we to think that the Norns really were the Rhinemaidens all along or that the Rhinemaidens are now playing at being Norns, whose function ended in Act 1? Confusion as the massive work reached its conclusion is unhelpful.
Having seen her trace Brünnhilde’s journey from Die Walküre and Siegfried to this opera, there can be no doubt that Christine Goerke is the greatest Brünnhilde of our time. Vocally she is a marvel. Her full soprano never loses its warmth even in the highest notes, and she sings Wagner’s huge leaps and extended notes with complete effortlessness and seemingly unlimited lung-power. Besides this, Goerke is able to colour and shade her tone to convey the connotations of every word. Were this not enough Goerke is also a consummate actor using subtle changes in posture, gesture and facial expression to communicate the huge dramatic arc Brünnhilde traverses from joy, through doubt, fear and outrage to the enlightened calm of the Immolation Scene. Never have I seen a singer portray Brünnhilde’s transfiguration by wisdom so completely. In the final scene Goerke seems to portray Brünnhilde’s soul rather than her corporeal self. Goerke’s Brünnhilde is simply one of the most awe-inspiring performances in opera I have ever witnessed.
Andreas Schager’s Siegfried is a complete contrast in a positive way. He sings with his whole body rather like a top level decathlete encountering trial after trial and succeeding at them all. He has the muscular tone of many Heldentenöre, but his voice marvellously opens up the higher he sings, and he can shade his tone also as in the Tarnhelm Scene or make it make it sound purer and more youthful as in Siegfried’s scene of recovered memory just before his death. Schager’s hearty physicality works well to embody Siegfried’s innocence and vitality as opposed to the treachery and Machiavellianism of the Gibichungs.
As Hagen, Ain Anger displays a bottomless voice as dark and as hard as flint. Vocally and dramatically he dominates all the scenes set among the Gibichungs. Martin Gantner is excellent at twisting his powerful voice to reflect the cowardliness of Gunther. Aviva Fortunata, standing in for an indisposed Ileana Montalbetti, makes a fine Gutrune and commands the stage at the start of Act 3, Scene 3, when Gutrune anxiously awaits Siegfried’s return. We realize that Hagen’s plot against Siegfried abuses the feelings of both his step-brother Gunther and his his step-sister Gutrune.
Among the singers who appear in single scenes, Karen Cargill is a standout as full-voiced Waltraute, carefully increasing the valkyrie’s anxiety in her crucial narrative about dire events unfolding at Valhalla. Robert Pomakov, whose bass only seems to grow more powerful each year, ably stands up as Alberich, Hagen’s father, to Anger’s Hagen.
One would never know this is COC Music Director Johannes Debus’s first-ever Götterdämmerung. He conducts the 106-strong COC Orchestra as if possessed. His complete command of the architecture of the score means that apparent interludes like Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, Waltraute’s narrative, Alberich’s chiding of Hagen, the Rhinemaidens’ tempting of Siegfried and Siegfried’s Funeral March do not delay the action but urgently move it forward to its inevitable conclusion. The precision and unanimity of the orchestral playing are impeccable and the structural clarity, beauty and power of its sound absolutely sublime.
Albery’s direction of the ending is stunning in its simplicity. Brünnhilde and the Rhinemaidens dance together, all four holding the ring on high, until Brünnhilde slips away into the darkness. Hagen rushes for the ring but is frozen in this position and mimes spiralling downwards to his watery death. The chorus fills the stage gazing outward as the red light of Valhalla burning floods their faces. When it fades, they slowly turn away to face the cyclorama where a new dawn, the first dawn ever without the gods, glimmers on the horizon. This Götterdämmerung is one of the most profound experiences I have have had in over 45 years of opera-going and stands as a monumental achievement for the Canadian Opera Company.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This is a version of the review that will appear later this year in Opera News.
Photos: (from top) Christine Goerke and Andreas Schager, Christine Goerke and Andreas Schager, Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde, Ain Anger as Hagen and ensemble. ©2017 Michael Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.coc.ca.
2017-02-10
Götterdämmerung