{"id":7111,"date":"2023-05-25T11:22:52","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T10:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=7111"},"modified":"2023-05-25T11:37:21","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T10:37:21","slug":"die-walkure-regents-opera-freemasons-hall-21-23-27-may-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=7111","title":{"rendered":"Die Walk\u00fcre. Regents Opera, Freemasons Hall, 21, 23, 27 May 2023."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Regents Opera<\/p><\/div>\n

When Keel Watson\u2019s Wotan sang of \u201cder Gottheit nichtigen Glanz\u201d (\u201cthe empty splendour of the Gods\u201d) at Freemason\u2019s Hall on Sunday it seemed like a wry comment on the venue. With every surface overlaid with marble, gold leaf or mosaic, the Grand Temple outdoes even the most lavish opera house and seems to compete with Valhalla itself. Did Regents Opera have this in mind when choosing it as the location for their shoestring Ring cycle, now on its second instalment with Die Walk\u00fcre?<\/p>\n

Director Caroline Staunton\u2019s programme note concentrated on the personal aspects of the story, the consequences for the characters of decisions already made and the tensions between their own needs and desires and the world\u2019s demands. Her production worked best when it concentrated on those relationships rather than abstruse visual symbolism. The art-gallery conceit of last November\u2019s Rheingold re-appeared in the final act, which, seeking to evoke the Nazi campaign against \u201cdegenerate art\u201d, presented us with a rather bohemian set of Valkyries rescuing paintings (not particularly degenerate ones) rather than fallen heroes. The paintings were later smashed by a masked female figure credited in the programme as \u201cWotan\u2019s Will\u201d, who proceeded to wrap the condemned Br\u00fcnnhilde in masking tape marked \u201cEntartet\u201d. They finally provided fuel for the magic fire with which Wotan encircles his daughter, recalling the burning of 5,000 artworks in Berlin in March 1939. It may all make sense by the time we get to G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung, but for the moment it seemed shoe-horned in to the narrative.<\/p>\n

As the wanderer Siegmund, Brian Smith Walters presented a convincingly weatherbeaten figure, toughened as well as beaten down by suffering. But his diction was muddy and there seemed little passion between him and his sister-bride Sieglinde, limpidly sung as she was by Justine Viani. Gerrit Paul Groen\u2018s Hunding introduced a swaggering figure of menace and mostly implied violence, despite an incongruous brown check suit. The arrival of Catharine Woodward\u2018s Br\u00fcnnhilde, a day early for World Goth Day in black leather and eyeliner, raised the dramatic and musical temperature for Act II. Launching her initial war-cries with athletic precision, she brought vulnerability as well as volume to the role, and the father-daughter relationship with Keel Watson\u2019s Wotan was affectingly realised. Watson was in every respect a worthy war-father for such a daughter, by imposing, fearsome and finally broken. The trinity of gods was completed by Ingeborg Novrup B\u00f8rch as Fricka, an authoritative and powerful presence in her pivotal scene with Watson.<\/p>\n

Some musical compromise is inevitable when Wagner is performed in the round with only 22 instrumentalists, and I couldn\u2019t help missing the extra firepower of the full Wagnerian orchestra during the \u201cRide of the Valkyries\u201d. But the band under Ben Woodward played superbly, sounding more bedded-in than they did in Rheingold, and Woodward\u2019s arrangement showed astonishing ingenuity in reproducing Wagner\u2019s orchestral colours on a smaller scale. As before, there was judicious use of Paul Plummer at the Freemason\u2019s Willis organ, adding sonority to bass lines and providing an unearthly background for Br\u00fcnnhilde\u2019s message to Siegmund. With the postponement of ENO\u2019s Siegfried Regents\u2019 is now the only Ring in town \u2013 Wagnerites should not hesitate to join this Rhine journey.<\/p>\n

At Freemasons Hall, London, Saturday 27th May, 5:30 pm https:\/\/regentsopera.com\/<\/p>\n

William Hale<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Keel Watson\u2019s Wotan sang of \u201cder Gottheit nichtigen Glanz\u201d (\u201cthe empty splendour of the Gods\u201d) at Freemason\u2019s Hall on Sunday it seemed like a wry comment on the venue. With every surface overlaid with marble, gold leaf or mosaic, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7116,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions\/7116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}