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In Search of a Ring of ConfidenceDateline: 23rd August, 2004My reflections on Bayreuth 2004 and its current Ring Cycle are as fresh as my tuxedo - at this moment still drying out from the thunderstorm which greeted Act 3 of Götterdämmerung last Thursday. Of course, there's much to be said for a thunderstorm with the finale of Götterdämmerung. Especially, since modern directors seem to have dwindling ideas as to how to make an impact with it themselves. And it is precisely the apparent failure of successive directors to fulfil their proper role that is the issue of this article. Which begs the question: what is the director's role in Wagner's Ring? As a start, we might briefly consider the distinction between his role in the play and in the opera generally. That reminds us immediately and routinely of the uniqueness of every production, of whatever form or period of theatre. It also, I hope, brings us into a state of mind to appreciate that, of all people, Wagner sets down clear standards, in terms of his own works at least, for anyone proposing to step onto the conductor's podium or into the director's chair. Those standards are synonymous with the nature of the composer's invention - that of the music drama itself. The idea that any director, least of all any of today's, might be expected to recognise certain limitations to his/her own absolute artistic rule is prima facie anathema - even heresy! To some it may seem insulting to fine directors such as Brooke, Daltry, Eyre, Hall, Miller and others whose work I so greatly respect. Enough to know that they above all are the more likely to see this argument as challenge rather than bar to their creativity. Look, for a moment, at what has recently been done to Wagner. And, yes, of course I'll begin with Richard Jones - though I am by no means certain that his 1994 Ring at Covent Garden is the best example of maltreatment. Except in one, for me, fundamental, respect. I've no objection to skittish or, for that matter, naked Rhine Maidens, though I see impracticalities in the latter as a result of the inability of English, if not all British, audiences to behold human flesh without, at best, giggles or, at worst, letters to The Times. However, overtly lampooned nakedness in this context is the worst of all worlds in that it turns characters intended to be taken at face value into caricature. And if Wagner's vision is not seen to be taken 'seriously' by its performers, what chance is there for us, the audience. There is clearly a strong case for Wotan with spear and perhaps, although I've yet to be convinced by one, a case for Wotan in a pin stripe suit. Any argument for Wotan in pin-stripe suit and with spear, however, has to be pretty watertight! In fact, my overriding concern about Ring productions is not to resist updating or 'modernising' or to urge directors to set the operas always in the time, setting and costume of early performances. All I ask is that staging should measure up to the score. Therein, evidently, lies the challenge that is continually defeating able men and women. The hurdle to be overcome by today's directors who would renegotiate Wagner's Ring, in particular, with the worthy objective of communicating it to new audiences is that, in the process of metamorphosis it loses its essential stature as legend. Valkyries can so easily become ridiculous when played, as Wagner wanted; 'modernised' with anything less than the greatest care and flair, that outcome is almost inevitable. There may be a connection here with the ground rules for pantomime. A dame who seeks to persuade the audience, especially the children, that he is a woman is lost from the start. Certainly, a villain who is less than 150 per cent villainous is likely to be ignored by every onlooker under 15! All opera requires suspension of belief, if only because people do not, usually, sing to one another in private, let alone in the office. Il Travatore and much other Verdi is set in places where singing seems natural while Mozart's characters may sing for precisely the reason that they are un-natural! For most of Wagner's stories, and for the entirety of The Ring of Nibelung, anything about the staging remotely suggesting a story of everyday life and ordinary country folk instantly kills whatever vision of Valhalla the producer may have had in mind stone dead from the start. Jürgen Flimm's current production at Bayreuth seemed about to quell most, if not all my anxieties with a Rhinegold brimming with almost mythical promise, from its credible seabed to its vision of Valhalla at the curtain. Even in Valkyrie this sense of style appears to be surviving - until the ladies of the title start swinging around in a scene that makes Phyllida Lloyd's new production for ENO at the London Coliseum seem positively inspired. Leapfrogging incidents of extraneous characters and dancing wood birds in Siegfried, the grand finale presents the destruction of the wrong building (it certainly isn't the vision of Rhinegold or Valkyrie) and the curtain falls on the last moments of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When traditionalists like the Friends of Bayreuth close their eyes to enjoy performances, I feel only sadness for their apparent weariness. When relatively young and fresh onlookers do so, I am alarmed. Richard Wagner was by whatever account one studies, single minded, selfish, demanding - and a genius. He, almost certainly, single-handedly created the music drama. He did not do anything for musical comedy, despite the mischievous fun to be found in The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. Nothing that did not enhance the drama was to be countenanced. This applied to the opera house itself which should ideally be built like the operas themselves, precisely to his design. Eighty years ago George Bernard Shaw, who found Wagner more old-fashioned than Bach, Beethoven, Handel and Mozart, declared there was no need to import German singers or look to Bayreuth for performances of The Ring or Parsifal since much better were to be heard in England. That may safely be regarded as the view of one of the first to opt for Wagner with feet up and eyes closed. The trouble for all of us with a love of live theatre is that Shaw's preference for concert performance, without even so much as the distraction of Brünhilde's dress or reflection of light on the horns, is increasingly popular today. I understand why, successively, new directors of our National Theatre have pledged themselves to win new audiences. And that implicit in that ambition is that they should be much younger audiences. How else will theatre, opera, ballet, jazz and all else in the country, survive into a future which holds, as ever, changing cultural tastes? All the same, it would be nice to be convinced that the mature artistic palates of older audiences were sometimes respected rather than dismissed as reactionary. While recognising the excellent work of fringe artists such as the French company, Les Grooms with their lively Threepenny Ring for brass and tent, no-one seriously suggests that, as a regular exercise, Wagner's music be re-scored for chamber orchestra or electronic organ. It is worth reminding ourselves regularly, that Richard Wagner, with or without the help of Ludwig of Bavaria, wrote most of the score for The Ring only after he had himself written, in poetic form, the story. Is it too much to ask that directors remember this - and that the music for the scenes they are setting is already the major yardstick for their own creativity? Kevin Catchpole Articles Indices:
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