In the normal course of events, Götterdämmerung should be the dramatic and musical culmination of the 15 hours which make up Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen. Regrettably this was not the case at the Semperoper Dresden. A distracting and often textually incongruent production was the most obvious problem, but uneven casting and curiously inconsistent musical direction from the Staatskapelle Dresden’s wunderkind conductor Christian Thielemann resulted in what should have been an incandescent cosmic ruination reduced to a spluttering campfire.
Throughout the cycle, stage designer Wolfgang Gussman had a perplexing preoccupation with theatre seats, chairs, boxes, balls and bald women. Director Willy Decker was not entirely bereft of original ideas but they were too often subsumed by a wanton disregard for Wagner’s specific stage directions and dramaturgical imperatives. It was a cute conceit to have the Gibich’s as social gadflies with a penchant for Dom Perignon. Gutrune is not exactly an anonymous alcoholic. Although Frank Castorf’s Ring in Bayreuth intimated as much, Decker went further in making incest not just the prerogative of the Wälsungs. Intra-sibling fornication is clearly rife in Gibichung Hall and Gutrune not only has touchy-feelies with brother Gunther but also wild sex with step-brother Hagen.
On the debit side, Wotan in Wanderer form unaccountably ambles by to watch Siegfried die then returns to hear Brünnhilde sing “O ihr, der Eide ewige Hüter!”, picking up Nothung on the way home. This not only contradicts Waltraute’s description of the alpha god sitting morose and mute in Valhalla waiting for its inevitable destruction, but also the need for ravens to relay the bad tidings, since Wotan has already heard them. The dead Siegfried doesn’t spookily raise his arm when Hagen tries to grab the ring from his finger but remains in a state of rigor mortis. Decker’s final aberration was having Gutrune mortally spear Hagen instead of the despicable demi-dwarf suffering a watery demise at the hands and fins of the Rhine daughters. The cataclysmic immolation of Valhalla was more like a mild toasting as the gods from Das Rheingold reclined in the ubiquitous theatre seats which turned semi-scarlet.
With few exceptions, the singing was similarly parboiled. The sextet of Norns and Rhine maidens were competent without being outstanding although first string-weaver Monika Bohinec had some hefty low B flats. Albert Dohmen continued his Machiavellian Alberich with vocal security but dramatic detachment. Christa Mayer won a Ring trifecta with an impassioned Waltraute, although Fricka was probably her most successful incarnation. Looking dapper in a grey dinner jacket, Gunther was lugubriously sung by Martin Gantner. As his incestuous dipsomaniac sister, Edith Haller was a convincing Gutrune with Brünnhilde-worthy top notes.