Submitted to Oxford Magazine.

 

‘grin and bear it!

Richard Wagner: Lohengrin, Welsh National Opera, Wales Millenium Centre, 26 May 2013.

A coach party of Oxford Friends of Welsh National Opera set off from Water Eaton Park and Ride on a beautiful Sunday morning to see the much heralded new production of Lohengrin at the Wales Millenium Centre, Cardiff, celebrating the composer’s bicentenary. Arriving in time for lunch and a chance to stretch one’s legs around the beautiful plaza bordering on Cardiff Bay, we were prepared to immerse ourselves for four and a half hours into the romantic world of mediaeval chivalry and magic of Brabant. Or so we had hoped.

As I wrote in reviewing a production at Covent Garden in 2009: straightforward though the plot may be, Lohengrin defies efforts to summarise it in three sentences as I usually aim to do. In modern terms the opera is best described as docu-soap, its three acts representing three, seventy-five minute episodes. It tells a fictional ‘human interest’ story within the context of historical events. The King, Heinrich I (Henry the Fowler) arrives in Brabant to forge an alliance with Saxony and Thuringia in order to defeat the Hungarians at the ending of a nine-year truce in 933. Following the death of the Duke of Brabant, Henry’s first task is to appoint their new leader. His choice is Count Friedrich von Telramund but there is a complication. Here the ‘soap’ kicks in. ‘Previously on Elsa of Brabant’: Telramund became the guardian of the late Duke’s two children Elsa and Gottfried and became engaged to Elsa. Gottfried has disappeared. The evil sorceress Ortrud persuades Telramund that Elsa is responsible for Gottfried’s death causing him to break off his engagement and he has married her. Under Ortrud’s influence he has now formally accused Elsa of murder. What we don’t yet know is that Ortrud has transformed Gottfried into a swan – not just any swan but the one that will bring, from distant Montsalvat, Lohengrin, the knight of the Grail in shining armour, who will champion Elsa in a trial by combat. The opera relates how Lohengrin marries Elsa on condition that she vows never to ask his name. Elsa is persuaded by Ortrud and Talremund to break her oath on her wedding night; Lohengrin publicly announces his identity and is preparing to leave as he came when the swan is transformed back into Gottfried who is proclaimed Duke by Heinriech

This performance got off to a good start with the WNO orchestra in top Wagner form under Lothar Koenigs against a backdrop of shadowy landscape. Apart from its acclaimed tutti, the

orchestra showed a most sublime pianissimo perfectly clear in the acoustic of the auditorium. But with the rising of the curtain disaster struck. Instead of in a public space of mediaeval Brabant (like the plaza outside the Centre) with its legends and conventions of chivalry, we found ourselves in what appeared to be a galleried military operations room with great-coated and peak-hatted generals of the twentieth century, making incongruous the opening scene of the Herald announcing with pomp the arrival of King Heinrich to an enormous fanfare from boxes on both sides of the stage which would have blown the roof off. Further incongruity arose when Lohengrin arrived by dinghy at the front door accompanied by a one-winged swan with which a cygno-erotic relationship was hinted (explaining why Lohengrin only turned up at the last minute?) and putting in mind the Owl and the Pussy Cat. From the programme we learned that all this was supposed to reflect Wagner’s own place in history, in society and his own attitudes.

When will operatic directors realise that audiences are sick to the teeth of productions which drag in references to Wagner’s own life and times, his views and philosophy and not let the drama and music speak for itself? I have said before that Wagner’s strongly held and much-documented opinions form the scaffolding within which his music dramas are constructed; once finished, the scaffolding should be removed. It has no place in performance.

We were fortunate. From the beginning of Act Two the setting became merely an irritating irrelevance as music and voices held our attention. Indeed, already in Act One, the Herald sung by Simon Thorpe with Claudio Otelli (a late substitute) as Telramund stood out, though the girls, Emma Bell, as Elsa and Susan Bickley, Ortrud, attractively dressed in pre-Raphaelite costumes had yet to make their mark. Peter Wedd as Lohengrin, without sufficient reserves of power, somehow lacked charisma appearing slightly ridiculous dressed in white among the khaki-clad soldiers. The performance came electrifyingly alive with the long dialogue between Elsa and Ortrud in Act Two and from there became more and more exciting to a blazing climax with trumpets, orchestra, chorus and soloists all contributing.

Within the constraints of the set, the choreography of the chorus was well directed, though the preparation of the nuptial chamber with two single beds, made up separately then moved together under a single cover, reminded of advice once given as honeymooners in Italy: ‘Take some strong string’!

Judged by the highest standards, as the Company should be, the chorus and principally the orchestra are among the best in the world. On this occasion they failed to assemble a cast of world-class Wagnerian soloists to match the standard they set. Above all they should be more careful in their choice of directors


29 May 2013.