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The plan was to salute the end of Vladimir Jurowski’s 14-year stint as principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra with Wagner’s Ring, one opera per year, culminating in Götterdämmerung in 2021. Then the pandemic intervened, leaving the cycle unfinished.
It has taken three years to get back on track, and Götterdämmerung finally arrived at the weekend. Despite the hiatus, this Ring closed with a palpable feeling of cumulative achievement — conductor and orchestra have honed their Wagnerian style together.
This is where the focus has been all along, putting the orchestra in the spotlight, where it can be seen and heard with a prominence unlikely in the opera house. Every detail was clear, and that is especially important for Jurowski, who has worked with his players to ensure not a note is wasted. There were incidental pleasures on every page, the playful music of the Rhinemaidens, the colouring of nocturnal evil as Hagen dreams — and has anybody ever etched the anxious rhythms of Gutrune’s last comments with more precision?
Beyond that, the art of a Wagner conductor is knowing how to pace an opera overall, where to allow the music space to assume grandeur and depth. Jurowski has a long-term vision, but it is not that one: rather, he keeps pushing ahead and builds tension inexorably over long stretches. With the London Philharmonic Choir and London Voices making a big impact, the high drama of act two reached white heat.
With a handful of exceptions, the singers have tended to take second place in this Ring. This performance was fortunate to have Albert Dohmen as Hagen, now in his late sixties but still commanding the stage with his presence and forceful singing. Svetlana Sozdateleva gave her all as Brünnhilde, though top notes sounded perilously out of reach, and Burkhard Fritz was a sturdy Siegfried.
For the rest, Kai Rüütel-Pajula was vivid in Waltraute’s scene, Sinéad Campbell Wallace and Günter Papendell were effective as Gutrune and Gunther, and there was a good trio of Norns, especially Claudia Huckle and Claire Barnett-Jones. Jurowski now moves on to his first Ring cycle as general music director of the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.
★★★★☆
While the London Philharmonic was aiming big, the Royal Opera presented a pair of rare miniatures — Martinů’s Larmes de couteau and John Harbison’s Full Moon in March, both not much more than 30 minutes — at its Linbury theatre.
The two pieces were cleverly paired: neither is a drama in a realistic style and both deal with female protagonists challenged in finding a suitable husband. The Martinů is a slice of surreal theatre, in which a woman striving to avoid a match with Satan professes love for a hanged man instead, but it does not amount to much. The opera’s most attractive element is the jazz ensemble accompaniment, an echo of 1920s Paris, where Martinů wrote it.
The Harbison offered a kind of mirror image. This time the woman holds the upper hand, auditioning suitors in a singing competition (shades of Puccini’s Turandot) and then ordering a hopeful Swineherd who is really after her money to be beheaded. Based on a verse play by WB Yeats, part fantasy, part Noh-play, Full Moon in March balances so many mystical and paradoxical themes that one would like to focus more on the intricate text than an operatic setting allows.
Despite full-on productions by Eleanor Burke and Harriet Taylor, neither opera convinced of its worth. It was also a shame that the young singers had few opportunities to shine vocally, though Veena Akama-Makia, a Jette Parker Artist, showed a voice of potential and there was decent support from Edmund Danon and Jonah Halton. The lively Britten Sinfonia was conducted by Edward Reeve.
★★★☆☆
