Musical notes

How not to do Wagner
April 19, 2004

Waste in the water of the Rhine

"With the opening notes of The Rhinegold - one of the most beautiful and groundbreaking of all musical beginnings - our 'people's palace of entertainment and art' will once again shine as the jewel in the crown of London's west end." So declares Se?n Doran, the artistic director of ENO in a message at the start of the programme, adding disarmingly that the furniture company MFI has "chosen to reflect the quality of its product through sponsoring the Ring productions."

The original plan was to inaugurate the ?41m refurbishment of the Coliseum with a revival of the company's production of Nixon in China - but the delay in the reopening of the building had the unintended effect of providing something much more suitable to celebrate ENO's return from the Barbican. At least it should have done.

If The Rhinegold affords one of the most beautiful musical beginnings, this was news to the orchestra on the night I went. With thin string tone and brass playing that was less than ideally confident, these Rhine waters seemed to contain more than a hint of industrial waste. However, the orchestra, which gained confidence through the evening, was the least of the production's problems. (And I should note that the following evening they played wonderfully under Noel Davies for the revival of David McVicar's splendid production of Tosca.) Indeed, they might well have been forgiven for thinking that there was little point in finding the magic or grandeur in Wagner's depiction of the movements of the Rhine when it would turn out that the Rhine was a nightclub and the Rhine maidens pole dancers. Once the curtain had gone up, it took just a few bars to establish the leitmotifs of Phyllida Lloyd's dismal production: vocal insecurity and an indifference to the expressive possibilities of the opera that was as good as contemptuous.

Doran emphasises in his programme note the availability of cheap seats at the Coliseum and makes a point of encouraging "first-timers" to go along, but any operatic virgin who went to this Rhinegold would have no sense at all of why people should be passionate about Wagner. Lloyd's production was consistently tricksy and psychologically shallow, entirely stifling all lyrical impulse. To present the Rhine maidens merely as sexual vamps goes well enough, in an obvious kind of way, with their teasing of the dwarf Alberich when he makes advances to them, but the majesty of their triumphant celebration of their Rhine gold, and the pathos of their despair when it is stolen from them, so obvious in the music, are made merely ornamental. The gods, transplanted from their mountain top to an anonymous modern flat, become merely selfish fraudsters, but anyone with any ear for the music would know that this is not all they are.

Thirty years ago, ENO staged what was one of the great productions of the Ring. It was able to do so because it had in Reginald Goodall a conductor who had a profound grasp of Wagner's musical rhetoric and who was able to train his Anglophone singers in how to sing Wagner. It also had, in Norman Bailey, one of the finest Wagnerian singers. (The quality of the singing was also helped by Andrew Porter's translation: Jeremy Sams's new translation for the current production is no doubt more idiomatic, but makes less effort to mimic the sound of the German, and this matters given that Wagner took such care to fit the line of the music to the sound of the words.) In contrast, at least on the evidence of this Rhinegold, ENO's new production seems curiously pointless. It has a director with a tin ear for Wagner's complexities and, with honourable exceptions, has a cast that lacks the resources even to come close to doing justice to the music.

It is difficult enough to cast a Ring these days even when it is sung in German and one can look internationally to find singers. With the artistic constituency limited by the decision to sing it in English, the task probably becomes near impossible. There is real folly in deciding to put on the Ring unless one is convinced that one has the singers to do it well. Andrew Shore, it is true, was impressive as Alberich, although even his voice showed signs of strain at high volume. Tom Randle as Loge phrased musically, but didn't really manifest the bel canto lyricism that is such an important element of the part. Only Patricia Bardon as Erda had both the technique and the voice to give unmixed pleasure - and since she does not appear until very near the end, and then only briefly, she was hardly enough to save the evening. Neither Susan Parry's squally Fricka nor Robert Hayward's monochrome Wotan, seemed capable of the secure legato that must be the foundation for singing this music.

The Valkyrie is due to open in May, and that, of course, is a much deeper, more complicated and moving work than The Rhinegold, crucially - and worryingly - making far greater demands on its Wotan. Unless by then Hayward has found the vocal and Phyllida Lloyd the moral and intellectual resources to respond to the depth and variety of Wagner's demands, this will be a production of the Ring that puts a distinct stain on that jewel in the west end's crown.