L’OR DU RHIN THE RHINGOLD • PARIS
★★★★★☆
Photo: Herwig Prammer
REVIEW THE RHINEGOLD : CALIXTO BIEITO SCI-FI THRILLER SPARKS OUTRAGE IN PARIS
The Rhine daughters in blue and yellow, James Bond-babe scuba dive outfits and the Gnome Albericht wrapped in a tangle of data cables herald a radical take on Rhine Gold, even as Spanish director Calixto Bieito’s brand new production opens at the Bastille Opera in Paris.
Photo: Herwig Prammer
It will soon turn out that Bieito lets The Rhine Gold unfold in the astonishing context of virtual reality in a gilded version that has been eagerly anticipated since 2020, when the premiere was postponed due to Corona.
Photo: Herwig Prammer
In the meantime, the techno-fear has really taken hold, also in art. The same goes for concern about tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, who, with the help of Trump, seem to be emerging as the new gods.
Photo: Herwig Prammer
Bieito has turned Alberich’s gold mine into a sci-fi nightmare where Westworld meets Ex Machina in a bleak techno-dystopia full of half robot bodies and chaotic amounts of cables and flickering monitors.
Photo: Herwig Prammer
In Rebecca Ringst’s set design, Valhalla has become an enormous castle of steel grids and cables, a kind of battered data center that also turns out to be equipped with a drawbridge, which is revealed in a technical highlight towards the end.
Where the controversial director is going with it all is periodically difficult to discern in this cycle prelude and will possibly only manifest itself in the upcoming episodes Valkyrien, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung over the next years.
The singers are top-notch here in Paris, as they are in the other Ring productions currently in Europe, such as London, Milan, Berlin and Brussels.
Photo: Herwig Prammer
Iain Paterson had to take over for Ludovic Tézier and delivers an authoritative Wotan, but this evening he has to be partially doubled from the wings without spoiling the experience. Brian Mulligan as Alberich and Gerhard Siegel as Mime are at their best.
The giants Fasholt and Fafner are corny costumed as a Hong Kong Chinese big investor in a silk suit and an American oil tycoon in a Stetson hat and suede fringe jacket, in a kind of thinly veiled critique of capitalism that becomes a bit comical without quite fitting into the context, where the familiar plot is smeared uncritically over the director’s insistent, conceptual idea.
Bieito’s staging challenges the audience – anything else would have been a disappointment. The result is spectacular, but also quite confusing throughout the intermission less 2.5 hours.
When was the last time you saw Rhine Gold end with a giant video close-up of a smiling child (Siegfried?) wearing a robot helmet with cables and technology sticking out of his head, smiling gleefully at the audience. An improved human? A farewell to homo sapiens? A foretaste of the end of humanity?
Reactions from the international opera press range from sceptical to astonished, depending on how puritanical the critic in question is.
On social media, the criticism is going full throttle. Stop this massacre! Give up on the rest of The Ring! Director Calixto Bieito emerges from a microcosm of pseudo-intellectuals who live in a vacuum and don’t care about the audience. Bieito’s trademark is ugliness, which in this production is further complemented by the ridicule of Wagner’s great work.
However, GOT TO SEE THIS chooses to reward Bieito’s courage with five stars and looks forward to the sequels, which will hopefully manifest the director’s idea a little more clearly.
