VALKYRIE • LA SCALA MILANO
★★★★★☆
Photo: Teatro alla Scala | Brescia e Amisano
REVIEW VALKYRIE: CONVENTIONAL FANTASY IN STELLAR CAST AT LA SCALA
The second part of Scottish director Sir David McVicar’s staging of Wagner’s Ring at La Scala Opera in Milan opens in fire. Out of the flames and smoke staggers what turns out to be the excellent heroic tenor Klaus Florian Vogt as Siegmund, who slumps exhausted on the forest ground. Moments later, Sieglinde appears and throws her love at him.
The set design and general ambience of this large-scale Valkyrie production, like McVicar’s Rhine Gold last year, seeks a stylish, conventional look in its effective mix of adventure and fantasy.
Rocks, castle walls, swords, wolf fur, drinking horns. In fact, the only thing missing is some quirky surprises. That’s not necessarily a negative characterization. Wagner would certainly have been happy with this faithful interpretation of his iconic work.
The smoke has just time to clear before the owner of the castle, Hunding (a damn good Günther Groissböck), comes home from hunting with his pack of wolf-skin clad forest rockers who don’t look like anyone you’d want to meet on a dark night.
The trouble starts when Siegmund pulls the Notung sword out of the magical tree in the castle courtyard and then screws his sister for their mutual pleasure.
Photo: Teatro alla Scala | Brescia e Amisano
The blood shame is realised with a naturalness that seems transgressive every time I experience The Valkyrie, and you think of Wagner’s libretto. Maybe it was just another time.
Both Voigt and soprano Elza van den Heevers as Sieglinde deliver fine vocal performances. The orchestra, led by conductor Simone Young, is convincing – especially the strings, which play with a soaring, dramatic sound of dark wood.
A festive opening night audience in Milan’s magnificent opera house goes to the Prosecco break with satisfied faces.
Photo: Teatro alla Scala | Brescia e Amisano
First-class singers, led by an immensely well-sung Michael Volle as Wotan, are the focus of a slightly long second act set in a static moonscape of blue-black rocks that occasionally take on human forms depending on how they are exposed to light, smoke and angles on the revolving stage. At once refined and menacing.
The second act consists primarily of ‘companionable conversations.
Firstly, between Wotan and his wife Fricka (Okka von der Damerau), who thinks that Sigmund has reached the limit of his licentiousness.
Photo: Teatro alla Scala | Brescia e Amisano
Then between Wotan and his favorite daughter Brünnhilde when he must explain why Sigmund’s immortality must be revoked. Camilla Nylund lives up to her reputation as the best Brünnhilde interpreter of all time with her effortless vocal power and confident stage presence.
Finally, in the opera’s point of no return, where the scoundrel Hunding stabs Siegmund from behind.
In flashes, a strange construction of a high-tech horse strides around the stage with a steel shining head, mounted on a curved chrome frame, harnessed to the back of a dancer that inspires fear.
The iconic scene of the Ride of the Valkyries unfolds as a bit of an anticlimax, mainly because of these carnival-like horses jumping around between each other on bent metal legs a la paraolympic athletes, somehow setting the wrong mood.
The set design is otherwise excellent, centred around a gigantic death mask that fills the entire floor, on which and around which the cast unfolds the final scene with Wotan reluctantly punishing his favorite daughter by imprisoning her in a ring of fire indefinitely.
Photo: Teatro alla Scala | Brescia e Amisano
A musical and emotionally gripping finish that rounds off a stylish performance that is true to its source material and nowhere near as vandalizing.
High international level and five stars from Got to see this. Siegfried, the third part of the Ring, will premiere at Scala in June. Stay tuned.
