Last-minute Walküre in Bayreuth

On a hot summer's evening in Paris in 1988, two French friends phoned me from a Bed and Breakfast in Bayreuth, Germany. Marc and Pierre were  preparing to go to the opera. Nothing new - Marc and Pierre spent their lives preparing to go to the opera. Or in the case of Pierre, the more emotional of the two, recovering from going to the opera. Pierre lived his "vie lyrique" as he described the abiding passion of his life, at a very intense level.  Joan Sutherland's final "Lucia" left him too moved to speak for 24 hours.  "Parsifal" in virtually any production would leave him in a week-long state swoon. And that evening, there they both were, Pierre, the emoter,  and Marc, the organizer in a Bed and Breakfast just a few yards from the Festspielhaus. The following day would see the beginning of "Der Ring des Nibelungen." This Ring cycle would also mark the debut of a respected but not particularly well-known British bass, John Tomlinson, in the role of Wotan.

I did know Tomlinson's work. I had seen him sing to his coat as Colline in La Boheme at the ROH, and in the much more spectacular role of Baron Ochs in Strauss's Rosenkavalier at ENO. I knew that this was a Titan of a man onstage. Tomlinson, as  Wagner's flawed and troubled god,  could it seemed, move the character away from the gloomy, stately old man of some earlier productions and bring his volcanic energy to a much younger incarnation. I'd told my French friends as much. Thanks to Marc, the organizer, they had applied for Bayreuth tickets a couple of centuries in advance and were headed for a local bierstüberl in happy anticipation of an early sausage supper and a great evening of opera.

I, on the other hand, seem to lack the bit of the brain that plans. I had no ticket to Bayreuth but, as an Air France employee, I did have free air travel. Two minutes into my conversation with Pierre and I knew that I had to jump on a plane to Nuremberg and ride a train to Bayreuth where I would take my chances at getting a last minute ticket for the following day's Walküre..

Next day, there I was, walking for the first time in my life up the green hill to the Festspielhaus. I would like to say that I was moved and excited but, in truth, I was frazzled by the travel and anxious that this was a barmy undertaking that would leave me locked outside the theatre.  A small part of me hung on to a hope that I would get a returned ticket. Looking at the stately opera-goers headed up the hill was heartening. Many of them were quite old, some a tad infirm. Surely somebody would keel over before Die Walküre started?

Mark and Pierre were happily anticipating their evening. So, I saw at the top of the hill, were scores of hopeful, would-be opera-goers. Ticket hunters were everywhere and all more organized and alluring than I could ever hope to be. There were women and a few men dressed as Brünnhilde. There were several Wotans and  even a couple of Hundings. Some people had drawn cartoons on posters explaining their need for a ticket. Others held up simple banners. I had nothing.

The trumpeters came out onto the Bayreuth balcony to summon the audience. Marc and Pierre wished me luck and disappeared inside. So did most of those resourceful hopefuls. Soon, the bustling little square in front of the theatre was empty -except for me and the Bayreuth fire engine, oh and an English couple with their teenage son who had drawn lots: one act per family member.

I lost heart and drifted back down the hill to have a cup of tea on a patio next to the  more ornate old Margrave theatre. In all my years of opera-going, I had never failed to get in at the last minute. I would always declare airily that: "Wagner (or Puccini or Verdi or Strauss) knows I love him and will look after me." They always had but now, in his spiritual home, Wagner had abandoned  me.  Forlorn and disappointed I wandered back up to the theatre. I even walked round it a couple of times, thinking that I might be able to hear something, anything but all I could hear was birdsong and the distant hum of traffic. The audience spilled out. Pierre and Marc were in a state of high excitement. "Tomlinson est epoustouflant!" cried Pierre. "C'est un Wotan volcanique! Titanique!" Well yes, I knew that. "C'est la plus grand soirée de ma vie lyrique!" added Pierre never a paragon of tact.  And back they all went inside - all except me. I wandered around the lovely gardens on the hill, admired the flower beds and tried to take consolation, as did all my great composers, in nature.  But roses and beech trees and blackbirds brought no comfort that evening. I debated returning to the B and B but I couldn't resist returning to the Festspielhaus one more time. The audience flooded out into the gardens again. Pierre was in near-swoon again when, Marc, ever calm, logical and organized said, "Now that you are here, why don't we see if you can, perhaps, just look inside the theatre?" He led me towards the door and up the stairs. Nobody stopped me. I was walking up the stairs inside the Bayreuth theatre! Soon I was in the box that Marc and Pierre were sharing with two other people. The auditorium was empty during the long meal-length interval. I could gaze at the theatre and imagine all that I was missing. I had settled for doing just that when I heard Marc asking a passing usherette if "Madam could, perhaps, just stand at the back of the box for the last act?" "Why would she do that?" asked the usherette, "when the other people went home and she can sit down?"

I was in! And I was in for  Wotan's great farewell, what I consider, the most moving and beautiful passage in the whole Ring Cycle if not in the whole of western music.  The lights dimmed, I took my seat. I did not, of course, see Barenboim making his way to the podium. This was, after all, Bayreuth where he was probably in blue jeans and t-shirt under the roof that Wagner himself had decreed should be installed over the orchestra pit. So in the absolute darkness that is Bayreuth, I waited for the arrival of the Valkyries, and, later for Wotan/Tomlinson himself.  I would like to say that I sat thrilled and moved beyond description. I would like to say that, as for Pierre, it was the greatest evening of "ma vie lyrique." However, the shock of my sudden arrival overwhelmed the performance itself. Throughout the Valkyries ride and the first entrance of Wotan, I was too stunned to take in much of the action onstage. And when I did...when I finally did.....

Well, the Kupfer production was thrilling in its energy and drive but visually his use of geometric, laser-lit shapes was disappointing and unexciting. As for Tomlinson, well he played Wotan as he would continue to play him for most of his career - as a raging,  foaming at the mouth, mad-dog of a god.  Alas, and how heartfelt is that 'alas', I never quite agreed with that interpretation. Vocally, back then, the man was stupendous and  tireless. Neither he nor any of the other singers were served by a production that, while exploding with energy, still lacked visual excitement. Dark, dark sets and dreary laser cubes of light replacing Wagner's flames. For me Sir John found his Wagnerian calling when he went on to pour  that unflagging drive and energy into Hans Sachs in Graham Vick's gorgeous production at Covent Garden. There we had one of the greatest performances of the 20th century.

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Cosima Wagner's Diaries - Richard Wagner preferred blondes

Cosima Wagner's diaries are an intimidating read. In their original form they comprised 21 notebooks - kept in a Munich bank vault for years then transported to Bayreuth under police escort on 12 March 1974. Over a million words record what her beloved Richard ate and drank, when and where he walked, when he worked, what he said, when he dreamed and what he thought. And this was a man who had an opinion, alas, on everything.

The diaries stop dead when he died of a heart attack in Venice on February 13th 1883. Cosima held the dead Wagner in her arms for 24 hours. Then she accompanied the body back to Bayreuth for burial. She would live on for another 44 years but she never wrote another word.

Unconditional love of another human being does not make for happiness. Cosima adores her man but oh my she suffers. She has serious problems with her sight - not easy for a dedicated writer, and she longs endlessly and often rather casually for death. She suffers but very ambiguously from her man's infidelities - cryptic mentions are made of her own unhappiness during his dalliance with novelist Judith Gautier. At the end she suspected a liaison with Parsifal flower girl, Carrie Pringle.

But there is a surprisingly cosy side to the Wagners' life. They dance around the Christmas tree, gossip over coffee at lunch. She is awoken one night by "Richard in a purple night shirt, wandering around looking for his cheque book." He brings in a hairdresser to dye her hair blonde. Cosima comments that she is happy to go grey but Richard likes her blonde.

Wagner often travels by train and, compulsive communicator that he was, sends telegrams from every railway station. So, in the 19th century, instant communication almost rivalled today's emails. Imagine if this man had been around today. We'd have all been trembling as we opened Outlook Express. "Oh blimey! More spam from Richard!"

Wagner, King Ludwig and Bavaria

Wagner had, unsurprisingly, immense physical energy and, like his predecessors Beethoven and Schubert, he spent many hours hiking in the woods and mountains of his native Germany. Later, when he was based in Switzerland he walked the Alps with Frederick Nietzche.

In The Ring of the Nibelung, he takes us through the forests, along the rivers and up to otherwordly summits to which both his imagination and his immense physical stamina had led him. He has a festival dedicated entirely to his work in Bayreuth which nestles in the gentle hills not far from Nuremberg. But a traveller in search of the natural world that inspired The Ring, Lohengrin, Tannhauser and Tristan will also find it in the land and castles of Wagner’s patron Ludwig II of Bavaria.

Wagner was living in Stuttgart and was, as ever, up to his eyes in debt when Ludwig sent his secretary to summons the creator of Lohengrin to his presence. Suspecting a creditor’s ruse to gain access to him, Wagner refused to see the man. When he finally agreed, a chapter in his life opened up that left even Wagner, with his grandiose self-image, dazed. He was soon staying at the king’s residence at Hohenschwangau where the mythical world of his operas helped feed the fantasy world of a monarch who already had considerable problems facing reality.

Wagner was now in a position at the Bavarian court where he could order Wagnerian motifs to be played from the turrets in the morning. He had royal greetings performed by oboists of the First Infantry regiment and pulled off his greatest coup when he recreated Lohengrin’s Arrival for the king alone. On a cool November evening in 1865 a shimmering figure emerged from the mist of the lake below Ludwig’s castle. Wagner had arranged for the adjutant general to dress as Lohengrin and sail across the Alpsee in a boat pulled by a small skiff covered by a wooden swan. A delighted Ludwig ordered a repeat performance.

Wagner’s piano still stands in a room in the castle that overlooks the lake. On a winter’s day when tourists are few, snow covers the pines, the Alpsee is frozen and Ludwig’s dream castle Neuschwanstein drifts in and out of the mists, then, in a quiet moment, the true spirit of the composer can be felt as myth and nature entwine.

Seattle Ring 2001

The Ring Cycle - Seattle Opera -13, 14, 16 and 18 August 2001:

Long before Boeing , long, long before Microsoft, the city of Seattle lived off lumber from the great forests that cover its nearby mountains. And then came word that gold was to be found in those same mountains and desperate men thronged to the town. In their wake, came women brought in to be married off , not always willingly, to these wild woodsmen. For a while Seattle mined the gold miners selling them provisions before they set out on an invariably vain quest out into the unwelcoming forests where even today bears still roam and occasionally show up in suburban back gardens. A hundred years ago the centre of the original city was much lower and parts of this underground world can still be visited beneath the hollow sidewalks of downtown’s Pioneer Square.

Dark forests, mountain summits, bears, gold, unwilling wives and a hidden underground world. Is it any wonder that the Seattle Opera has established itself as one of the leading proponents of Wagner’s Ring Cycle? When General Director Speight Jenkins was casting around for a director for this new Ring production seven years ago, he expressed a wish for a “green Ring” in a naturalistic setting that would correspond to the surrounding Pacific Northwest landscape. His team of director Stephen Wadsworth, designer Tom Lynch and lighting director Peter Kaczorowski has given us a Ring that after years of Rings in space-ships, tunnels, Victorian drawing rooms is refreshingly free of any concept. From the moment of the exquisitely realized Rhine Maidens entry on to the scene ( securely attached by harnesses and moved around on wires by hidden helpers in the flies, the fearless and excellent singers swoop and dive and turn several complete somersaults 20 feet above a stage of iridescent deep-water blue), Wadsworth draws us so deeply into the emotions and psychology of Wagner’s characters both divine and mortal that no additional theories need to be grafted on to this colossal work. Stick with us, the whole Seattle team seems to be saying , with these gods and mortals and the nature that we now know so well and Wagner’s epic will flow as naturally as the Rhine itself. It does. The longeurs that this spectator has so often experienced in the first act of Gotterdammerung were absent. And even Siegfried, often a low point for any but the most dedicated Wagnerian, was the fastest-moving and most engaging that I’ve every experienced.

Lynch’s beautiful naturalistic sets from those watery Rhine depths up to Brunnhilde’s rock and the frozen winter world of the Norns support Wadsworth’s strong dramatic reading. The characters kiss and hug a lot in this Ring. Wotan, Phillip Joll, and Fricka, the wonderful, opulent-voiced Stephanie Blythe, continue to embrace and show genuine affection as they sing through their conflicts in Walkure’s Act 2. At one point he courts her with a flower picked from Valhalla’s slopes. A cynic could call this a West Coast “touchy feely” Ring but by showing a still-loving if disenchanted Fricka, Wadsworth gives this often shrewish character a pivotal role as the moral centre of the drama. When the gods ascend into Valhalla, Fricka holds back anxious and unsure. When her wish for Siegmund’s death is granted, she is there on stage to witness his end.

Wadsworth has said that he doesn’t want any of the women in the Ring to appear to be victims. And certainly the two most likely candidates, Freia, (Maria Plette) the gentle goddess of youth and Sieglinde, the doomed twin (sung with warmth, power and beauty by an utterly secure Margaret Jane Wray) are both feisty, independent women. Faced with a brutish Hunding who makes a point of imposing his kisses on her in front of Siegmund, this Sieglinde sweeps the table clear of all its symbols of her imposed domesticity before running off to share a night of love with her brother.

As the cycle progresses, British soprano, Jane Eaglen’s Brunnhilde emerges as a warm, loving Wonder Woman character. Both General Director, Speight Jenkins and Wadsworth have expressed the opinion that the supposed “redemption through love theme” that closes Gotterdammerung is more a celebration of Brunnhilde. Vocally the clarion-voiced Eaglen is increasingly worthy of celebration, particularly in Gotterdammerung where with Nilsonesque assurance she commanded the stage from the moment of her entrance. On the previous two days, the contrast between her loud and soft passages was occasionally too marked. Under Wadsworth’s sensitive coaching her acting has improved tenfold since I saw her Brunnhilde in a Scottish Opera Ring several years ago.

A cruel twist of fate helped to make this a woman’s Ring. In what could be the worst nightmare of any opera house director attempting to present the tetralogy , Speight Jenkins lost his Siegfried, the longest role in the cycle. Canadian tenor Alan Woodrow, who sings regularly at ENO, was the hope of many as a great new heroic tenor. But, alas, 24 hours before his debut, he tripped over a treadmill while accompanying his wife to the gym and severed a quadriceps muscle. Unable to walk, he sang through the first cycle from the wings while his cover, English tenor, Richard Berkeley-Steele, acted his part on stage. Jenkins later decided that this would be an unsatisfactory solution for the two remaining cycles and with some extra coaching from the director, the valiant Englishman went on to sing a part for which he had never rehearsed with an orchestra.

He showed no sign of nerves and if not quite a heroic tenor, he acted with ease and agility and gave us the rare sight of a slim, strong, youthful Siegfried.

The British contribution to this Ring was completed by Welsh baritone Philip Joll in the role of Wotan. Lacking in some majesty and a lot of volume in Rheingold, Joll summoned the necessary warmth and power to make Wotan’s Farewell the essential emotional climax of the Ring that it must be if the rest of the cycle is to move us.

Outstanding male performances came from Richard Paul Fink as Alberich and the exciting young Danish bass, Stephen Milling, as a volcanic, menacing Hunding and an equally stentorian but deeply vulnerable Fasolt.

Replacing an ailing Armin Jordan, Franz Vote conducted a sensitive, balanced Ring that perhaps lacked fireworks and was occasionally let down by the horns but grew in assurance as the days progressed.

At the end of their previous Ring Cycle, Seattle Opera earned admission to the Guinness Book of Records by staging the biggest fire on a public stage. Wadsworth and Lynch decided, wisely, that they could not follow such spectacle. Instead the scene literally flows from a distant, smouldering funeral pyre behind a carved wooden screen in the Gibichung palace, to a brief glimpse of the gods in the depths of the Rhine and on to the rebirth of nature and life as new young trees appear on the slopes of what could be Seattle’s own Mt Rainier.

A few final words on the driving force behind this Ring, the extra ordinary general director, Speight Jenkins. Where in Europe would a general director conduct a question and answer session on anything pertaining to the Ring day in question? On each performance day, Jenkins arms himself with a microphone, stands in the foyer of his theatre and for 90 minutes, answers the most obscure and erudite questions. When he was preparing this Ring, Jenkins asked for a commitment from his production team to return in 2005, 2009 and 2013. On this first showing, they have given us a Ring that confirms Seattle’s emerging reputation as an American Bayreuth. Tickets sell out a year in advance so mark those dates in your calendars now.