The Berlin State Opera had planned for its new Ring Cycle, a collaboration of Maestro Daniel Barenboim and Stage Director Dmitri Tcherniakov, to open in 2020. Covid-19 prevented that, and the premiere of the full Cycle was delayed until October 2022, with rehearsals during the preceding nine months. The Program stated: “…the main parts of the musical rehearsals were realized by the young Staatsoper Kappelmeister Thomas Guggeis….”  Medical concerns caused Maestro Barenboim to withdraw, and Maestro Guggeis led Cycle II, delivering sensational performances each of the four nights. His participation in the extensive musical rehearsals paid off handsomely, as the orchestra and singers were completely in sync. The singers were never rushed, with pacing and volume allowing them to fully interpret their roles. The audience responded at the end of each performance with some of the longest and loudest ovations I have heard for a conductor and orchestra. Christian Thielemann conducted Cycles I and III. (Maestro Guggeis is scheduled to lead Der fliegende Holländer at the Metropolitan Opera in May-June, 2023, and at Santa Fe Opera in July-August, 2023.)
    The operas take place in a “Research Center” studying human behavior.  The set rotates, allowing action to occur in different rooms located on the main floor of the Center; the set also can be raised to reveal two lower levels. The Center bears the acronym E.S.C.H.E. – the German word for ash tree – posted on the wall of a lobby/ entrance hall, which also has a tree at its center. The costumes and some props (such as black rotary dial telephones) in Das Rheingold suggest the action occurs about 1975. Characters appearing in multiple operas, such as Wotan, age as the Cycle continues.
    Although the Center is in Germany, it is unclear in Das Rheingold if it is located in the former East or West Germany. Extreme medical procedures – such as injection of fluids into neural pathways – are suggested, electroshock therapy is used, and occasionally groups of Stasi-like men appear to enforce compliance. German reunification would have occurred between Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, but the staff remains and psychological experiments are carried out in the same building. 
    Das Rheingold begins in a Stress Lab on the main floor of the Center. Alberich (Johannes Martin Kränzle), who may be an employee, is on a gurney with a number of interconnected electrodes on his head. Under the observation of three Rhine Maidens wearing white lab coats and several men in suits, Alberich receives electrical shocks and convulses on the gurney. He then has delusions that the Rhine Maidens are making amorous advances; they reject his overtures and he responds by breaking away with computer equipment and printouts which he believes to be the “Rhine Gold.”  Fafner (Peter Rose) and Fasolt (Mika Kares) arrive, accompanied by ominous men in overcoats who wait in the outside hall, demanding payment for their work, possibly an extension of the Center. When the Giants agree to accept the “gold” in payment, Wotan (Michael Volle) and Loge (Rolando Villazón) descend to Nibelheim, a laboratory area two levels below the Center’s main floor. As the set rises, the audience can see the level directly below the Center’s main floor — a laboratory space filled with cages of live rabbits (guinea pigs were eliminated and fewer rabbits were used after Cycle I, following inquiries from PETA officials) — and the basement level with workers or test subjects in cubicles. In case there is any doubt as to what is occurring, the words “Untersuchung Menschlichen Verhaltensmodelle in einer testgruppe” (“Investigation of Human Behavior in a Test Group”) are displayed facing the audience between the two lower levels.
    When Loge and Wotan arrive in the basement/Nibelheim, they learn from Mime (Stephen Rügamer) that the electrodes on Alberich’s head are now the “Tarnhelm.”  Alberich uses it to convince the terrified cubicle personnel, through mind control or virtual reality, that he has transformed himself into a giant serpent, and then convinces himself he has turned into a toad, and psychiatric workers remove him to the main floor. There is no ring to be taken from Alberich; only the computer equipment and documents are recovered. These are stacked to (partially) obscure Freia, but the Giants take only a hard copy notebook, and Fafner ends up shooting Fasolt and leaving. The Gods are shocked, but then display party tricks to suggest a storm and rainbow bridge.
    On paper this may seem ridiculous, but watching and hearing it unfold on stage was both appalling and fascinating. Alberich (Kränzle), clearly a victim, sang the role simultaneously reflecting physical pain, anger, revenge, disorientation, and delusions, with compelling effect. Michael Volle, a preeminent interpreter of Wotan, was in top vocal form throughout as an administrator determined to keep the Center operating as planned, enabled by the ethically challenged Loge of Rolando Villazón.  It was surprisingly believable when they doubled over laughing at Alberich in the basement Laboratory.

Die Walküre. Wotan (Michael Volle), Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe).

    Die Walküre opens about twenty years later, with Siegmund (Robert Watson), identified in a television news video as an “escaped criminal” entering the home of Hunding (Mika Kares) and Sieglinde (Vida Miknevičiūtė). Wotan, from his attached office, watches the activity through a two-way mirror, and observes the Wälsung twins as they recognize each other and then connect. Musically and vocally, this scene was exceptional: Vida Miknevičiūtė’s voice and facial expressions conveyed years of abuse and emotional neglect. After Hunding, in his policeman’s uniform, returns and then falls asleep, Siegmund pulls a kitchen knife from the wall and the twins flee. Wotan’s satisfaction from this outcome is erased by his encounter with Fricka (Claudia Mahnke), and he intervenes when Siegmund (now with a full size sword) and Hunding prepare for combat. Wotan tells Hunding to leave, and then Siegmund is wrestled to the ground by a group of guards and is “disappeared.” 
    The Third Act opens in a Lecture Hall with the Valkyries watching combat on video and selecting fallen heroes by using computer files.  Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe) arrives with Sieglinde; Wotan enters and catches Sieglinde but then forgets about her. When Sieglinde and the Valkyries have left, Wotan bids farewell to Brünnhilde and she falls asleep on the Lecture Hall’s wooden chairs, to be awakened only by “the greatest hero.”
    After a passage of approximately twenty more years, Siegfried opens with Mime and Siegfried (Andreas Schager) living in the same space, visible from the Wanderer’s office, previously occupied by Hunding and Sieglinde. Siegfried, presumably the ideal result of forty years of testing and experimentation in the Center, is an obnoxious teenager who destroys his belongings, verbally abuses Mime, and then sings Nothung as he pounds burning objects atop the kitchen table.  He finds Fafner, now an aged man in a straitjacket, and stabs him in the back before continuing on to dispatch Mime as well. He then has a second encounter with the Forest Bird (Victoria Randem), a Center Lab Assistant who has a toy bird with fluttering wings, and tells him of Brünnhilde.
    Siegfried next encounters The Wanderer, who now has a spear and tells Siegfried to stop; Siegfried responds by breaking down a door as the spear shatters. The Wanderer then brings an awake Brünnhilde into the Sleep Lab and places her on a gurney, where she falls asleep. Siegfried enters, awakens her, and becomes a raging mass of hormones, which Brünnhilde finds disconcerting, but eventually accepts. The Wanderer observes all this from a balcony, but it is clear this will not be a “match made in heaven.”

Götterdämmerung. Gunther (Lauri Vasar, Siegfried (Andreas Schager), Hagen (Mika Kares).

    In Götterdämmerung Siegfried and Brünnhilde awaken in the same house attached to the Wanderer’s office. They pledge their mutual love; he gives her a ring and she gives him Grane (a small toy horse) as he leaves with a travel bag. Siegfried arrives at Gibichung’s Hall – a Center conference room – and, although he does not drink the “potion of forgetfulness,” he has no compunction about taking up with Gutrune (Mandy Fredrich) or “winning” Brünnhilde for Gunther (Lauri Vasar). In contrast, Brünnhilde was steadfast during her interaction with Waltraute (Violeta Urmana), in an intense scene with the participants at times almost whispering. When Hagen (Mika Kares) issues his “Call to the Vassals,” a large group of Center employees or test subjects gathers in the Lecture Hall and hears allegations and denials of infidelity and perjury. Instead of a hunt, a basketball game is arranged; Siegfried tells the players of his love for Brünnhilde, and Hagen stabs him with a flagpole. He staggers back to the Stress Lab and dies, surrounded by the silently mourning Wanderer, Norns, Rhine Maidens, and Erda.
    Brünnhilde then begins her final monologue, directing the creation of Siegfried’s funeral pyre, setting it afire, and then entering the flames herself to be united with him forever in death; however, no lighting nor special effects suggest fire.  Instead, the curtain comes down and then reopens on a bare stage, and Brünnhilde enters carrying the same travel bag Siegfried took in Act I. At the back of the stage, the text of Wagner’s 1856 ending for Götterdämmerung (the “Schopenhauer ending” never set to music) is projected, implying that love is a source of suffering to be overcome. Erda appears to offer guidance from the Forest Bird, which Brünnhilde declines as she pulls down the curtain and exits the stage.
    This production, with its staging, incongruous conclusion, and irregular use of props, was thought provoking, if not to everyone’s taste. But it was musically superb with first rate singers, many of whom may not be familiar to American audiences. There is insufficient space to recognize all of the singers individually, but three require mention:  Andreas Schager, who continues his vocal mastery of the Siegfried roles, was compelling as the unpleasant result of a misguided forty-year social engineering project; Anja Kampe, who sang a clear and resonant Brünnhilde over three nights, convincingly portrayed a Center-created “Wish Maiden” who broke free to determine her own destiny; and Michael Volle who, as Wotan, realizes too late that his carefully laid plans for controlling human behavior were doomed to failure. 

© Wagner Notes, January 2023, a publication of the Wagner Society of New York. All rights reserved. Photos: Monika Rittershaus.