This may be a Ring Cycle that will not make history, and Wagner’s monumental cycle has only just begun. As proposed by Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, the Prologue evening of “Das  Rheingold” displayed an almost complete lack of interesting, cohesive ideas concerning staging; somewhat complacent conducting; and shaky casting. This should serve as a warning of the perils inherent in much of contemporary operatic productions. Many performances today struggle to survive autocratic stage directors who rely upon an over-abundance of tecno-political interference, all apparently driven by a desire to junk the past in order to satisfy the present. All this, and no apparent proposals for creating valid interpretations of venerated masterpieces, nor the direction of artworks of the future.

This situation, by more than coincidence, recalls Wagner’s own title for his 1849 treatise, “The Artwork of the Future.” This, and other prose pieces penned by the composer, served as a stimulus for the creation of his epic operas to come. In it, the importance of man’s relation to nature is paramount. This is reflected in the opening scene of “Das Rheingold,” where innocent Rhinemaidens have their pastoral existence interrupted by the violent intrusion of “Man,” who violates the natural order in his pursuit of power through greed, while simultaneously renouncing love. As a reformist, Wagner strove to save opera, trying to remove from it the very abuses that have returned to it today. To create an operatic piece of value, be it an original production or the interpretation of a historical one, one must be aware of the piece’s possibilities and avoid the trappings of the superficial.

In order to adequately comment on the Teatro alla Scala production, and view it within the broader context of contemporary operatic interpretations, one should first step back a moment in time. One should reestablish the parameters of the entire “Der Ring des Nibelungen” cycle, which Teatro alla Scala intends to unfold piecemeal: their plan ultimately resulting in two complete  cycles slated for 2026, performed within the span of a week, as was the original intention of Wagner for the 1876 Bayreuth premiere.  

Wagner’s inspiration for his composition was the Prose Edda. This compilation of Scandinavian mythology was a folkloric presentation of culture intended to inspire its people: something attractive to the composer, who aspired to establish a German National Theatre. Thus his ideals for a lyrical encapsulation of German culture were engrained in a poem written more than 500 years before his time. How can one present a Ring Cycle today, where the greatest considerations must be on how to direct a symphonically structured orchestra, while also scenically portraying Wagner’s revolutionary visions through dramatic art? The German musicologist and performer, Stefan Mickisch, dwelt on four aspects inherent to its structure, and upon which one’s interpretation balanced: the mystical-folkloristic; the psychological; the socio-political; and the spiritual-esoteric. Mickisch believed, “That a true production of the Ring has not been staged since Richard Wagner’s time. It seems almost impossible to include all the levels in a single stage production; a realization of this phantasmagoric world is probably only possible in our imagination, be it subjectively different in each of us.”

The difficulties for Teatro alla Scala’s interpretation begins within five minutes of that mythical opening to “Das Rheingold.” This opening is best listened to without the interference of those frequent story-within-a-story pantomimes one often sees staged, where the curtain is raised so that we may be subjected to the self-indulgent messages of a staging attempting to present an aphoristic message that we are supposed to have been previously unaware of. In this opening we have 132 bars, 15 pages of a score totally marked with piano, asking for softness throughout. Softness, that is, until the last eight bars where a crescendo is indicated for all instruments. Here we sense the waters of the Rhine rising up in a tonal surge that seems to wrap us within the Rhinemaiden’s melodies. Wagner asked himself if this music was the “soothing harmony needed for artistic creation.” This simplicity reveals incredible intricacies when we consider Wagner’s own description of the musical portrait depicting the undercurrents of the River Rhine. In his partial autobiography, “My Life,” he tells us, “Sleep did  not come… I sank into a somnambulistic state, in which I had the feeling of being immersed in rapidly  flowing water. Its rushing soon resolved itself for me into the musical sound of the Eb major chord,  resounding in persistent broken chords. I awoke in terror from this trance, feeling as if the waves were  crashing high above my head… Yes, the Prelude to Das Rheingold, inchoate, was then finally revealed. I  saw how it was with me–the vital flood would come from within me, and not from without.” If it is indeed folkloristic, of fairy-tale dimensions, then the Prelude reaches us like a lullaby.

In the theatre, we may therefore attempt to recognize the Prelude as if all were in a dream, wherein the deepest, almost inaudible rumblings would signal the creation of a world, or perhaps an encounter with another unknown realm. This is Man immersed in nature in Wagner’s music, and his “trance” remains a chant. Eight double basses hum, then bassoons imitate them, then eight French horns, shifting rhythm in succession, create a sense of timelessness within the first leitmotif melody of the entire Ring: that of genesis or nature. Our readiness and concentration must be ever-present, or Wagner will trick us and exclude us. Not from what appears to be intricate, complicated, or interminable, but from the hidden harmonies and richness of the tessitura of the rhythmic, symphonic, dramatic characteristics of his musical-theatrical  language. This is pure drama, and Wagner often bowed to the scenic elements that were to be represented through his music. Any musical or dramatic interpretation of a Wagnerian opera that strays too far from these vital essences can only inhibit us from exploring our own experiences of these “emotional signposts,” as Wagner was to rename his leitmotifs. Problematizing Wagner is an arduous and all-too-often underestimated task.

Bringing the Music to Us  

Teatro alla Scala’s administration has stated that the orchestra was working towards a “sound” that would evoke the acoustic characteristics of the orchestra pit of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, known for its pristine purity and the harmony created between singers and musicians. Alexander Soddy’s interpretation of Wagner’s score as linked to the  stage action was wholly satisfying, and the two-and-a-half-hour span reveals care in pacing the dramatic characteristics, sometimes to breathtaking effect. It is also true that Soddy appeared in tune with various modern-day renderings. Avoiding the bombastic, or the accented squabbling among the characters, gods and humans alike, all which would make Wagner’s vocal line and melodies appear harsh and broken, he instead extended sentimentalism. We find here touches of Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, and naturally, von Weber. 

A Prelude, then, with few subtle variations, where all becomes a bit too loud and monotonous. Soddy may have asked the horns of the Rhine motif to ‘push’ or ‘slide into’ some notes. This is contrary to what Wagner asked for while rehearsing his world-premiere: “…arriving to the high G of the horns as played very tenderly, and with sustained softness… and this with each subsequent repetition… as not a mere display of feeling, but true artistic delivery.” Had this been respected today, all would lend itself to a setting for moods, a breath of musical thought bringing us into another reality.

The orchestra of Teatro alla Scala gave the best of themselves, and for many of the usual reasons one must praise their “bravura.” The strings and winds shone above all, but one must also mention the percussionists, and acknowledge the rewarding sounds from the brass. The tonal colors in the “renunciation of love” motif were vivid, dense, and moving when pronounced by the dwarf Alberich, yet poignantly whispered later on as an echo in the scene transformation, chilling in its tragic intention. However, the scene of Erda, the goddess of wisdom, was directed weakly concerning expressiveness, musically monotonous, and her ominous, declamatory message not emphasized enough to move us. Her music should be of the uncanniest sort, complimented by eerie tonal modulations.  

 The Curtain of Guilt  

The questionable staging of Sir David McVicar proposes something that could have hardly ever been effective. The issue lies in the choice of juxtaposing the time and place of the actual setting for the dramatic action. The director also appears to have not found his key concept. He stands beside what he believes to be the unifying truths that define Wagner: Man’s greed and subsequent sense of guilt. However, this is not enough to distinguish an entire opera. In a modern interpretation of any Ring Cycle there must be a basic tenet, an overall declaration, a feeling that exemplifies the raison d’être of the original work while illustrating how its values speak to us today.  

Upon arriving at the theater, one is faced with an image projected upon a stage curtain, the main house curtain being already raised. There is a circle, suggesting a ring, and within it, as if encrusted upon a prehistoric wall, an open palm pressing out towards us. It is at once puzzling, restless, and ominous. Some may have even surmised what it represented: Man’s rapaciousness, that part of the self that would physically commit a crime to satisfy its desires. In knowing Wagner’s opera, we ask if this hand may the instrument used for violating uncontaminated nature. The existence of this inner ‘siparietto’ does flood the orchestral pit with light, taking away much of the mystery and spirituality of the Rhine’s undercurrents. It also allows for two scene changes to take place, changes that were originally intended to be magically staged as transformations in time and place. At other key  moments of the opera, a circle about the hand appears, while not very effective disco-light projections blink in alternating colors, intended to give a deeper, psychological meaning to the presence of this gruesome image.   

The curtain rises, and we have a revolving stage yet to move, with three rather huge open hands,  seemingly in marble, porcelain, or bronze, and upon which are placed the three Rhinemaidens. The backdrop depicts streaks of blue sky, there is some semblance of water, and the ambiance seems to touch upon the poetry and painting of William Blake, whose “Songs of Innocence” addresses the theme of Man and his relation to nature, so evident in all of the Ring Cycle.  

The slimy, jagged bottom of the Rhine, where the joyful, childish Rhinemaidens play until Alberich arrives is far from here. In Wagner’s text and the music, they flitter about as brats teasing an ugly, in-need-of-love, deformed creature, flippantly refusing his advances. All was poorly staged. Alberich had nothing to slip about on, yet still was unable to grasp onto one of them. They neither swam, nor skipped, but just ran around the hands, over and under, in ungracious frolicking. The stage began to revolve. Alberich was standing downstage most of the time, singing to us, leaving the Rhinemaidens to upstage him. The leitmotif of the gold was heard, and a trap door opened centerstage, and beams of the lucent metal filtered through the air. A dancer, masked, clad all in gold, appeared. Not all of us may have understood that he was the symbol of the precious element in its natural form. His gestures were contorted, though swirling. What they represented never went beyond the  obvious, attempting to follow the stage action, and in reaction to the dynamics of the music. But when Alberich ripped off gold’s mask, robbing the gold and renouncing love, the dancer is doomed, anguished, bereft of his naturalness. The gold reappeared at the end of the opera, crawling bloodied towards the haughty, yet perhaps remorseful gods, who were placed immobile upon the staircase leading to Valhalla. The dancer seemed to beg them to return the gold that had been hauled away by Alberich. This sad, melancholic stance by the gods is disappointing as it goes against the music itself, which describes them as pompous, hubristic beings about to enter their exclusive dream palace. Bourgeois possessions may afford power, but this is only a travesty, as Wagner tells us through the demigod of fire, Loge, “They are hastening on to their end, they who now deem themselves strong in their greatness. Ashamed am I to share in their dealings.” The curtain falls upon this puzzling stage tableaux, sustaining the director’s affirmation that guilt is the price we pay for our corruptions.

As the opera progresses, we are let down by one thwarted solution after another. The giants Fafner and Fasolt are truly unimpressive as they are physically presented. They have one-foot metal baskets for lower legs, and Moon Boots attached to these. They have long walking staffs, essential for maintaining balance. There are huge, prosthetic hands attached to their—very visible—human hands. Wired above their heads are bobbing masks representing their characters’ attributes. One has an ugly, unsympathetic face—the evil Fafner—and the other a non-expressive interpretation of sorrow—Fasolt, who will be killed by his brother. The actual fratricide is depicted in a melee of clumsy movements. It is reported that the singing giants learned how to move about on these contraptions for over a month: yet they could not do more than gingerly place step after step, apparently painfully.    

Another idea that did little to create action through the characters’ movements was the addition of four mime-dancers with shaved heads and nude torsos, who flittered about in black skirts almost akin to “whirling dervishes.” They accompany the giants, hold Freia captive, and also accompany the slain giant as he falls to the floor. They also move the pieces of gold being molded in Nibelheim. Two of them will follow Loge about the stage, gliding with him in his mercurial quickness, told though gestures. They also line up behind him, waving their flame-like arms in unison with him and the music, recalling the Indian deities Shiva or his consort, Kali. In essence, they are functional, not magically so, similar to the scene servants of Kabuki theatre. What was sad is that they felt out of place. They fulfilled their duties in a non-Wagnerian manner, taking attention away from the music. Another reference to East Asian theatre was the dragon-snake—Alberich transformed by use of the magic helmet, the Tarnhelm. This was wooden,  skeletal-like, and moved about by the scene servants in a way akin to a Chinese New Year’s Parade. It was not frightening at all, and diminished the great effects of Wagner’s orchestral brass blaring, which amazingly depicts a coiling, threatening reptile.

Scenic Aspirations

In this reviewer’s opinion, the worst aspect of this production was the stage set—not, as many thought, the costumes. It was conceived by Sir David, alongside Hannah Postlethwaite: the latter, perhaps, only executed the designs. This degree of involvement on the part of the director was a major mistake. Only a Zeffirelli, a Pizzi, a Bob Wilson, and maybe few others can successfully pull off this kind of creative autocracy. Aside from the three hands upon the Rhine riverbed, we had only a large stairway, center stage. It appeared to be of stone, rune-like circles carved into its sides. One flight of stairs ended and another flight ran upwards still, yet with no landing to climb to. Many referred to these steps as resembling Escher’s “Relativity,” but one believes this to be stretching the interpretation. Obviously, this was the stairway to Valhalla, which the gods would eventually climb. Yet in this interpretation the gods stand fixed, oddly idle, even doubtful, and perplexed as they looking out to the audience. Yes, their greed has turned to guilt, but this is not Wagner’s textual or musical intention. The costumes of Emma Kingsbury did not find their place within this staging either, but were nonetheless interesting. Though hybrid, they did relate to each other in a surreal way. Some appeared Elizabethan, others as if drawn by Arthur Rackham. The gods all wore masks that, when removed, caused  them all to age in the absence of Freia, the sister of Fricka, Froh, and Donner.  

The worst scene was the depiction of Nibelheim, the underground land of Alberich. Its entrance was a huge skull, center stage, supported by sticks and slanting backwards. It looked like the entrance to an amusement park’s “Gate to Hell” ride, or something out of the original King Kong film. It slides open as a door, then closes a few times all-too-neatly so that the snake can appear, and Alberich can magically  disappear by the power of the Tarnhelm. Gold slabs are poured into its mouth—gold that shall later be fashioned into a skeletal face resembling the Nibelheim gate. Through all this, the one message scenically represented is that of Man’s greed.  

 Individual Weaknesses, Ensemble Strengths

The cast must be considered an unevenly strong one and given due praise simply for singing Wagner. This is especially so for the more difficult roles, which ask a singing actor to declaim dramatic tension for hours on end while weaving through stretches of rhythmical trickery. It is said that Christian Thielemann selected the  singers. We can therefore ask ourselves why some of them were not totally what one expected. Admittedly, these are ‘live’ performances, which are always risky for scores of reasons. Adverse criticism has often been unduly aimed at established singers in live productions that makes no consideration for their established careers, and instead looks only to mishaps on the day.

The family of gods, Wotan (Michael Volle, baritone), Fricka (Okka von der Damerau, mezzo-soprano), and Freia (Olga Bezsmertna, soprano), represent both the internal struggles of a bourgeois family as well as their their botched relationships with everyone else. This includes the other gods, such as Donner (Andrè Schuen, baritone), Froh (Siyabonga Maqundo, tenor), and Loge (Norbert  Ernst, tenor). Then there is difficulty with Erda (Christa Mayer, mezzo-soprano), the Nibelungen tribe of Alberich (Ólafur Sigurdarson, baritone) and Mime (Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, tenor), and the two giants, Fasolt (Jongmin Park, bass) and Fafner (Ain Anger, bass). The gods are also at odds, albeit indirectly, with the Rhinemaidens Woglinde (Andrea Carroll, soprano), Wellgunde (Svetlina Stoyanova, mezzo-soprano), and Flosshilde (Virginie Verrez, mezzo-soprano).  

One should make an assessment here of what they each rendered onstage, and their respective vocal gifts. The Rhinemaidens were fine, vocally and stage-wise. They were all believable as water sprites, though the staging damaged their ability to carry off their requisite playfulness and sauciness. They were neither of the sea, nor the depths, and their gesturing and interactions with the dwarf Alberich were superficial. Donner and Froh had imposing voices, were dignified throughout, yet were often left alone onstage, facing walls, or just wandering about. Loge, the mercurial flame of a shifty god, whisked about the stage cunningly, accompanied unhappily by two voiceless stage servants. These imitated his gestures, becoming flickering flames, though they were scarcely effective. At times Loge’s voice wavered, and the upper register notes broke. The giants placed their voices well, coming off strong at times, though in other moments not so much. They were also truly hampered by the cylinders attached to their Moon Boots: it was as if they were walking upon eggs. More than stone-cutting artisans they appeared as Don Quixotes within a Salvador Dalí landscape. Alberich was totally convincing, carrying the weight of his importance in the action, with an imposing baritone used well and used dramatically. Mime was a bit under tone, but this could have been due to the staging. Erda sang elegantly, giving her warnings to Wotan. She did more acting with her voice as the characterization was limited on the stage. She was depicted as half Chereau Ring and half Papagena. Freia was  excellent, and fit well into the part, her delicacy of movement accentuated her being a victim of the deal  between Wotan and the giants. She sang beautifully and gave depth to her plight. Fricka, too, brought full life to the frustrated wife of Wotan. Her social drives and insecurities, nervous haste, and maneuvers to set up house in Valhalla were believable. There was a touch of royalty also, helped perhaps  by her somewhat Elizabethan dress. And Wotan? The great Michael Volle was imposing, domineering, anguished in this complex role. The voice remains a noble instrument, rich, weighty, yet never excessively seeking over-dramatic quality. We can recognize his experience as a great Lieder singer.

Wagner’s Das Rheingold, A Metaphysical Harbinger  

Where is this Ring Cycle going? Many ask, some skeptically, others hopefully. This is a common question among  Wagnerites. Yet it may not really be necessary to ask if a “Das Rheingold” has taken off  successfully. The concept may be contested, if there is a concept. Some characters of the Prologue will return, thus something of this first evening of the saga must remain. It would be useless to hypothesize, say, if the three hands on the revolving stage will end the cycle, or if Valhalla will burn. Will there be a sword stuck into the World’s Ash Tree, and will there be a tree in “Die Walküre,” and will it be Loge himself who surrounds Brünnhilde’s rock?

In history, there was only one person who ever knew where the Ring Cycle was going after “Das Rheingold,” and it was Wagner. He saw the illusions and abuses of the industrial revolution settling in. He feared the Norns looking into our future in “Götterdämmerung,” spinning the web of time until destiny snapped the golden rope. The tragedy has taken its last turn. What of our future, and the future of this Scala Ring? Maybe the thread of our futures is an expanse of golden knots, a tangle of our impulses and desires.  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

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