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Siegmund as Psychopath

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Following on from Das Rheingold, the second instalment of Dmiti Tcherniakov’s Ring cycle; Die Walküre, recorded at Staatsoper unter den Linden in 2022, has now been released on video.  We are sill in the ESCHE psychological research centre.  During the Prelude we see news footage of Siegmund’s escape from the programme he is in.  He staggers into Hunding’s staff apartment to find Sieglinde.  Hunding, when he appears, is some sort of armed security guard.  This illustrates the problems I have with this production.  The psychology of the Siegmund/Sieglinde/Hunding trio works well but the back story of Wälse, Sieglinde’s forced marriage etc makes no sense at all.  Oh, and Wotan seems to be watching everything that goes on.

1.hundingsapt

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The Rheingold Research Centre

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It’s pretty difficult to judge whether or not a high concept production of Wagner’s Ring cycle is going to work or not just from Das Rheingold but I thought Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production for Staatsoper unter den Linden recorded in 2022 was pretty promising.  His world is a large research complex designated ESCHE for reasons that aren’t clear.  The time period seems to be 1970s or thereabouts.  The research is essentially psychological and the characters are variously executives, scientists and experimental subjects.

1.stresslab

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Harnoncourt 2 – Don Giovanni

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Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s 2014 cycle of the Da Ponte operas continues with Don Giovanni.  The recording has much in common with his Le nozze di Figaro, even down to the same essay in the booklet, and I’m not going to repeat what I wrote in that review.  If you haven’t read it, I recommend a look before reading the rest of this.

1.donnaelvira

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Agrippina

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Agrippina is definitely one of the most interesting of Handel’s early operas. It has very good and very varied music including a ravishing love duet in Act 3 which reminds one of Monteverdi; perhaps not surprisingly since Poppea is one of the characters singing it! The libretto, too, has something of L’incoronazione about it. It’s smart, sexy and utterly cynical which I suppose is about par for an 18th century cardinal. It’s said that Grimani based the character of Claudio, here portrayed as an oversexed buffoon (oace Robert Graves), on his arch enemy Clemens XI. s a bonus in Robert Carsen’s version there’s a rather shocking ending in which Nerone, literally, gets the last laugh.

1.desk

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