by Unlike too many Ring cycles, Zürich Opera’s new staging will remain in the memory for many of the right reasons, not the wrong ones. This is a fresh and clever cycle that is full of interest and has a consistently good musical reputation.
The main achievement of the Zürich Ring is the integration of music and theatre. Andreas Homoki’s production and Christian Schmidt’s neoclassical sets provide a unified visual framework. They are oriented around a rotating axis of rooms and interconnected arrangements. Homoki has made it clear that his aim is to move “in the opposite direction” from what he calls the “meta-levels of interpretation” of Ring’s other productions, especially those that dominate German opera houses. . That doesn’t mean this is an uninterpretable cycle. But it does mean that Homoki trusts Wagner more than some modern directors do: he has the Ring of a narrator on stage.
It works admirably in Das Rheingold, where the action and settings, as well as the cast of characters, change more quickly than in the rest of the tetralogy. The rotating set is revelatory here. It allows Rheingold’s incredibly loud score and text, full of dark humor and subtlety as well as big themes of politics and power, to unfold with extraordinary clarity. This preference for uncluttered encounters and the focus on individual dilemmas is maintained throughout the entire cycle.
One example of Homoki’s care over detail will stand for many others across the four operas. Wotan’s spear is the embodiment of rule-based authority. He is subsequently left conspicuously behind when he descends into the Netherlands to steal the ring of power in Das Rheingold, and for much of his journey as The Wanderer in Siegfried. In Rheingold, the spear is then retrieved only after Wotan keeps his word and gives the ring to the giant Fafner. But, as he does so, Wotan disappears, a reminder that he is not only keeping his promise by giving up the ring but that he is fatally weakened at the same time. As a result, the ensuing entry into Valhalla is a weak and meaningless victory.
Homoki is honest enough to admit that the Ring’s sprawling narrative cannot be neatly packaged into an overly rigid format. Wagner makes too many radical demands on that. The trees, rocks and fire in Die Walküre and the sword forging, dragon and wooden bird in Siegfried are all there, but rarely focused. This is a Ring where the words and the music are the most important.
Sometimes the need to keep everything within the rotating set becomes maddening, but Homoki’s direction of travel is never completely lost. The deeper theme of authority flows from Wotan and flows instead towards the lives of the people there from beginning to end. The final flaming tableau at the end of Götterdämmerung emphasizes and directly echoes Wotan’s doomed dream of undisturbed power in Das Rheingold.
Zürich’s music director Gianandrea Noseda directs the cycle with energy and directness and an admirable instinct to push forward. Act one of Die Walküre burst out of the blocks, as did the epic prelude to act three of Siegfried. The Philharmonia Zürich doesn’t always live up to its claims, but it does provide a visceral orchestral experience, and the sense that this is a shared enterprise among the musicians is remarkable. Part of the presence is explained by the intimacy of the Zürich opera house, whose 1,100-seat capacity is far less than Covent Garden’s 2,300 or New York’s Met 3,800.
No wonder singers like to play in a house this big. This cycle drew a mix of Wagnerian vocal experience with important singers of the day moving into new roles. Tomasz Konieczny is as good as it gets as Wotan these days. He performs admirably – this is a production that demands a lot of stage nuance from his principals – and the bass-baritone’s voice is flexible and darkly incisive even in the most enduring passages. The Wanderer in Siegfried was the best of all.
Camilla Nylund’s Brünnhilde, making her debut in a role that she could lead for years to come, was beautifully sung, but only intermittently successful. Her lyric soprano sometimes struggled to play through the orchestra or ensemble, but her final scene in Götterdämmerung showed the quality and range at her disposal. Klaus Florian Vogt’s move into the role of Siegfried was so fine in his parts but without conveying the heroic ring that the part needs at key moments. Christopher Purves was obsessively obsessive as Alberich, but never descending into hack villainy.
These are the days of strength for Wagner’s operas in Europe, and for the Ring in particular. In the 2024-25 season, important new cycles will begin in Milan under Christian Thielemann, in Munich under Vladimir Jurowski, and in Paris under Pablo Heras-Casado. Next season, Covent Garden will add Die Walküre by Antonio Pappano to its cycle under the direction of Barrie Kosky, and in 2026, Bayreuth will unveil its 150th anniversary production in the house where Wagner first presented the cycle in 1876. It is unusual . post-pandemic flowers. But the truth is that the Zurich Ring already sets the bar high for them all.
• The four parts of the Ring of Zürich can be streamed, free of charge, until 15 June 2024 on opernhaus.ch/streaming and are also available on Medici.tv.
