(Photo: Herwig Prammer / OnP)

A very promising night indeed: Paris Opera takes its first step toward its new Ring under the direction of Calixto Bieito—one of the most exciting artists in his field—and with a promising cast. The stakes are particularly high for the company president, Alexander Neef, who would crowd his tenure with a Wagner Ring in continental Europe’s largest indoor opera house. The problem is: Paris Opera’s new “Das Rheingold” is, at best, underwhelming, bringing to light the company’s most significant managerial troubles.

This “Das Rheingold” is unfinished, not because it is one part of the cycle and by definition incomplete, but because the whole show seems to be insufficiently rehearsed. This is still a “work-in-progress.” While all the artists involved are often extraordinary, the sum is smaller than the parts. Moreover, rarely has a major opera house orchestra played as poorly as Paris Opera did in this production.

Bieito was in the house, but decided he would take his bow only at the end of “Götterdämmerung.” Of all the sins of which Bieito might have been guilty in the past, he has never been a bad narrator. His productions, with austere scenarios, often efficiently embrace symbolism, and with acute attention to the orchestra. With the scenarios uglier than usual, and the orchestra in less-than-ideal shape, his “Rheingold” makes less sense than anything he has ever produced in the house. Overall, this project is clearly not ready.

Bieito’s main idea was to connect the Ring’s plot to the contemporary revolution in Artificial Intelligence, especially in its potential subjugation of the erotic body by android machines. An elaborate deduction from the opera’s more manifest concerns, the idea is, however, not bad at all. Ever since Patrice Chéreau’s “Jahrhundertring,” stage directors have been particularly eager to connect the Ring to reflections about revolution and transformation. The tensions between the new and urban, on the one hand, and an atavistic return previous forms, on the other, are certainly at the core of Wagner’s work and his romanticism. In a certain way, the Ring is a story about urbanization and desire, taking into consideration that “Das Rheingold” revolves around precisely the building of a castle for the gods. To transfer this reflection towards what is our revolution, the rise of artificial intelligence, and on what touches our own humanity, seems a proper move.

Alberich, then, steals the gold from inside a bank—nothing original about that— and uses it to make a series of androids, including one called Gisela (played by Juliette Morel), with the intention of achieving world domination by subordinating the machinery’s body to his desires. His renunciation of love does not result in an indictment of eroticism, but rather in an embrace of pornography in its most surreal possibilities. And, pornography being famously a genre of illusions where true intercourse never happens (since its bodily fluids exchange is exterior to the body itself), the pornographic fascination with the android now seems a natural part of our destiny. The Valhalla here is nothing more than a huge motherboard data center metal box, full of wires and cables that both imprison the gods, and as magnificently leads them to power. Only a crash between five trucks is uglier than this.

The gods, on their part, are diminished to stereotypes of powerful figures that often allude to a certain North-American financial tropes. In what is certainly one of the worst-thought-through costume designs by Ingo Krügler, we have a Fafner dressed as a Larry Hagman goes to the rodeo in “Dallas,” Froh as a hippie Jesus in the likes of Scorsese’s “the Last Temptation of Christ,” Donner wearing a terrible baseball hat in democrat blue, and so on. It is not that such solutions could not have worked if better presented, but they simply did not; they were gimmicks that served no narrative function. At the end, we have to see a humiliated Freia, covering herself in mud while Loge carries a light—meaning what exactly? There must have been a meaning, but it was hard to grasp. The result is one of the most common clichés of contemporary art—an actress covering herself in mud. I saw that video at least three times at last year’s Venice’s Art Biennale—it is always bad.

But the main problem is that it was evident to me that part of the lack of the concept clarity came from an evident lack of rehearsal. That lack was apparent throughout the performance, from the Rhein maids’s lack of synchrony to the complete lack of chemistry between Wotan, Fricka, and Loge. Never have I ever seen more dreadful video projections and lighting design. The projections by Sarah Derendinger were, at best, creepy, with no apparent aesthetic intended. At the end of the show, we see an AI-generated baby (Siegmund, Sieglinde, Brunhilde? Who knows?); the image has the resolution of a low-data YouTube video, and the graphic design of a Nebula tutorial.

The scenario, the ginormous aluminum motherboard/Valhala thing, designed by Rebecca Ringst, might be Paris Opera’s version of the machine, but cheaper and less flexible. I will light a candle at Bayreuth’s church, praying that this metal box magically disappears for “Die Walküre”—or is minimally upgraded. Nothing could be more dramaturgically boring. Perhaps a bit of work on the lighting, better actor dynamics, and better video projections, might make things work; so far, however, it was clearly unfinished, full of sharp edges, and ungraspable.

Musically, it was evident that Pablo Heras-Casado has an ambitious reading of the Ring, and of Wagner’s music. It was also evident that the orchestra was not nearly as good as it needed to be to repay its obligations. Heras-Casado was good at controlling the orchestral volume—which can be an issue at Bastille—and stressing very well each of the leitmotivs in question, in a reading that knew very well how to dictate the orchestral dynamics. The problem was that, in the Ring, the orchestra relies tremendously on the brass section, and there were so many mistakes that they prevented the performance from being enjoyable in many key moments.

I heard many issues in tuning and breath breaks in all the Wagnerian climaxes. Let’s take as example what is, to me, the most beautiful moment of the score: Donner’s “Heda head hedo.” Florent Mbia was—for some reason—shirtless and shining, and his voice, from the top of the proscenium, commanded the room. Then, Heras-Casado finally reaches a true fortissimo with the orchestra—something that he clearly was saving for that moment of the night, and I hear horns replicating the motif (a fourth, a sixth, a fourth) in poor shape, with the tubas, as the motif is passed to them, breaking down so poorly that the trumpets then seemed to have gone completely under water. I understand that those are very hard instruments to play—and I have nothing but respect for players who undertake to play them. I also get that “Das Rheingold” is one of the hardest pieces to play, but there are some things that an orchestra like Paris Opera cannot afford to miss if they want to reach the excellence they claim to have: major mistakes in the brass, to me, are usually signs of improper preparation. Because the lack of precision was an issue that swept through all the brass sections—but also included the strings to a certain degree. (Perhaps “Die Walkure” will be given a longer rehearsal time).

Despite the mistakes and lack of cohesive colors, Heras-Casado’s is a proper reading of the Ring, with moments that promise much elegance. The most refined moments of the night came precisely when the conductor allowed the singers, especially those whose readings of score are imbedded in a specifically Wagnerian quality of deliverance, to seem as if they were not singing, to seem as if it just happened their speaking voice sounded that way.

The night’s protagonist, Iain Paterson, had some very heavy shoes to fill. Covering for the highly anticipated debut of Ludovic Tézier as Wotan, on paper, Paterson seems a very good replacement: he is singing the role in Vienna’s full cycle later this spring, and has sung and recorded the role for at least a decade. I personally am very fond of Mark Elder’s “Rheingold” recording with him. Nevertheless, Paterson’s performance was solid, but not extraordinary.

The collaboration between Paterson and Paris Opera has given us particularly challenging performances. His voice struggles to soar over Opera Bastille with the proper command, and his acting mode is self-restrained and sometimes wooden. It is often a poor fit with the visceral demands of stage directors like Lydia Steier, Oliver Py, and now Calixto Bieito. It is not that he is a bad actor. His shyness and peacefulness can work, but he is not as flexible as this role wants him to be. His self-restrained acting persona, instead of seeming solemn, comes across almost weak.

That said, Paterson is a professional. Struggling with his projection in the second scene of the opera, he progressively managed to make himself heard, often sacrificing part of his voice’s lower tonalities. Some moments were compelling especially the final monologue “Abenlich strahlt.”—certainly his best moment in the night.

Eve-Maud Hubeaux was certainly commanding in what might be one of the most insipid roles in all Wagnerian opera. Wandering around the stage, dressed in a vampish animal-print robe, Hubeaux made Fricka a woman who clearly commands the room. It is also important to note Hubeaux’s beautiful voice. All the mezzos and contraltos that night had beautiful voices, I must confess. I was rather impressed by how Hubeaux managed to sing everything with a blend of hatred and vocal beauty, especially in the second scene—her disdain for the Rhein maids was done to perfection.

I like my Loges with a Mimi-Herodes like voice, but I was satisfied by Simon O’Neill’s Tristanic approach to the role. Clearly unable to act in a trickster mode, and struggling a bit with the vocal projection in some moments, O’Neill reached his best moments curiously not in the third scene where he misleads Alberich, but rather in his confrontations with the ailing gods.

The only singer who had the opportunity to showcase his or her vocal and acting range to the fullest was Brian Mulligan as Alberich. The character, often relegated to the mere embodiment of the ridiculousness of rejected love, actually sounded like the most tragic of heroes in his curse scene, “Bin ich nun frei,” with that Wagnerian tonality where textual comprehensibility and vocal phrasing fully blend without effort. There are always very few singers in a generation who can do that. Do not get me wrong, Mulligan’s Alberich is tragic, but still pretty violent—and clearly more deleterious in his effects on others than are any of the gods. At the same time, however, he sounds and acts according to the most human-like of natures, and is the only character in the whole opera whose psychology is fully comprehensible to the audience.

Moving from erotic negation towards beauty itself, Eliza Boom sang Freia with the qualities that all blonde Wagnerian roles demand: with a lyrical voice, rich in a quick vibrato, she was capable of phrasing beautifully and lightly. Bieito’s approach to the role—stressing the character’s harassment by the gods—was perhaps a bit too passive considering Boom’s stage persona, but still, I was happy with her performance.

Another showcase of vocal beauty was Marie-Nicole Lemieux’s Erda. Recently the great Canadian contralto sang what was, to my mind, one of the highlights of my existence, an almost indefectible Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder” (Under Mikko Franck’s direction). Now she restores my faith in the lyrical arts by singing the most charming of all Erdas. Clearly her voice is not necessarily of that simple kind to which Wagnerian opera often resort, but her gorgeous tone, charming phrasing, and commanding stage persona—a true diva in the best sense of the word—gives her a gravitas that is hard to convey in words. Her voice sounds complex: extremely rich in all registers, with beautiful overtones and makes her as enigmatic as the role she plays. How many other singers can, in such a short appearance, make such an impression? Only her.

On the other great impressions, both Kwangchul Youn and Mika Kares performed very well as the giants Fasolt and Fafner, though in different modes. Youn’s Fasolt was refined, but with a labored sound that put his vocal work first. Kares, on the other hand, sounded exquisitely natural with a penetrating low voice that preserved a sense of lyricism and textuality in a way that, seems to me, only he can do nowadays. One can only wish to see him more.

As already stated, Florent Mbia sang Donner with great dexterity what is, to my mind, one of the best moments of the Ring, “Heda, Heda, hedo”—proving that the lyric troupe of Paris Opera has singers who clearly can take on bigger roles. And Matthew Cairns was a charming Froh, despite the role’s musical frugality.

Gehard Siegel performed Mime as one expects Mime to sound—suffering all the terrible Alberich’s abuses.
The three Rhein maids were perfectly cast, each of them showing great vocal command and projection, even though they struggled a bit with Bieito’s stage choreography. Although Isabel Signoret and Margarita Polonskaya gave beautiful performances, it was hard to not be overwhelmed by the vocal beauty of Katharina Magiera.

In certainly the most anticipated opera of the Paris season, Bieito’s “Das Rheingold” is a very frustrating experience. Frustrating because of the underwhelming aspect of its theater, clearly inferior to Bieito’s previous works. Frustrating because of the lack of exactitude and greatness in the orchestral sound. But, above all else, it is frustrating because it had almost all the elements necessary for it to have been good. Paris Opera orchestra has already played Wagner and Strauss music with much more precision and musical quality in the last couple of years; and Pablo Heras-Casado clearly is a conductor who knows extraordinarily well how to do opera. I hope he gets hired as the opera house’s main conductor.

And hopefully this production of “Das Rheingold” gets better by next year.