“Die Walküre” in Madrid

Much has been written about Romanticism, but not much good: In his book “Romanticism – A German Affair”, Rüdiger Safranski once warned against this art form being used and misused for ideologised realpolitik. He described Romanticism as a German tradition that culminated in National Socialism. And recalled Adolf Hitler, who sent the Jews to the gas by realising his crude interpretation of Romantic visions of doom à la Richard Wagner.

The production of Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” in Robert Carsen’s interpretation, which continued with the Valkyrie at the Teatro Real in Madrid on 12 February 2020, is also about Romanticism leading to ruin. Carsen has moved the first day of the tetralogy to the end of the First World War in the production taken over from Cologne.

In the first act, Hunding fights on the battlefields. Defeat is near and he finds a sad place to stay in a military camp (set by Patrick Kinmonth). That’s nothing new so far. What’s more, the cast of this premiere evening, which was peppered with high-calibre Wagner specialists – with the exception of Fricka, Siegmund and a few Valkyries, all of them experienced in Bayreuth – was infected by a few ailments from the orchestra pit, especially in the great act of love in the Ring. Pablo Heras-Casado on the podium of the Madrid Opera Orchestra was not yet able to gain a proper grip on the score at this point. The prelude was spongy and the singers also seemed to be increasingly struggling to harmonise due to the suddenly breaking off arcs of tension and the blaring orchestral eruptions that seemed to burst out of nowhere. Even beautifully melodious passages and precise solos could not help.

Nevertheless, the singers were of a high calibre: Adrianne Pieczonka as Sieglinde provided a musical highlight with her silvery-timbred soprano and exquisite creative ability and nuance.
Surprisingly, however, a few slight infelicities crept in during the long love duet, which could not be fully harmonised in the second act either. Overall, however, it can be said that this performance was absolutely convincing!

René Pape’s Hunding was also of particular class: without having to use the harsh, sometimes brutal intonation usually inherent in the role, Pape succeeded in creating a menacing effect through pure, differentiated characterisation and aura.

It took René Pape longer to make his debut at the Bayreuth Festival. Stuart Skelton was not there yet. Surprising, because the Australian has a differentiated, profound tenor. As Siegmund, he was convincing on this premiere evening with his creative intonation and radiant power. The long, drawn-out Wälse calls corresponded to the rigid dynamics and lengthiness of the beginning. If one feared that the staging and the musical accompaniment from the pit would continue in the same vein after the first act, then one was disabused of this fear in the second act: the ramp theatre and static suddenly disappeared with the change from the theatre of war to the control centre of the Supreme Army Command of the First World War. Next to the large fireplace in the stone hall are the highly romantic paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. At the side is a replica of the Ark of the Covenant. Fricka lolling on the white sofa like Eva Braun later on the Obersalzberg.

It was almost as if Hitler and Indiana Jones were about to walk through the door. And appropriately enough, there was a sudden hissing and bubbling from the trench to the now dynamically transformed scenery with extras in uniform. It was not the Führer who strode in, but Wotan as Kaiser Wilhelm with a walking stick. Günther Grass once described the last monarch
once chopping wood in exile, hoping for the Nazis to lead him back to power. Tomasz Konieczny played the father of the gods in his long key scene in the second act with a good treatment of the text through precise intonation and adept accentuation, making the harsh German diction, which is still difficult for him, extremely convincingly manageable and
and communicable.

In a rust-coloured dress, Daniela Sindram’s Fricka was passable with strong power, but at times a little flat. Nevertheless, she made the monarch credibly understand that his Operation Valkyrie was doomed to failure right from the start and that his dream of a place in the sun was shattered. Siegmund’s end in front of a wrecked military jeep and a snowstorm: here again, a clear drop in tension crept into the death proclamation scene.

The Ride of the Valkyries in the third act then brought home the heroes who had died on the poison gas battlefields. Above the corpses, a close and gripping farewell between father and daughter unfolded. Ricarda Merbeth in the role of Brünnhilde contributed a thoroughly velvety soprano, which, with a tendency towards flickering intonation, seemed somewhat fragile in places. Nevertheless, her farewell and plea at the end were highly intense and dense. Konieczny’s baritone was able to shape the role right to the end, and the orchestra played itself into a veritable frenzy with great outbursts in the last act.

At the end, the huge sliding door at the back of the stage opens. Obviously, it is the Auschwitz crematoria with huge gas burners: a magical fire which, with this directorial idea, understandably got stuck in the German audience’s throat from the stringently developed message. A German romanticism that, mistaken for realpolitik, leads to ruin.