Götterdämmerung at Covent Garden

“Wer verschloss dich wieder in Schlaf?”

The start was interesting. Through a wall covered in random mathematical formulas came three women dressed up as Christmas trees the tree Norns (Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Marina Poplavskaya and Yvonne Howard). I thought their singing was very good, but halfway through the first scene – which is actually the prologue – the man in front of me was already in deep sleep. At least that’s when he started swinging his head back and forth – for what I know, he could have been sleeping since the lights went out, or maybe even before that.

And he was sitting behind the sleeping-man-from-Die-Walküre, who, of course, was doing the same. Seriously, I thought this time Pappano would turn and see him and poke him with his stick.

But last night the sleeping wasn’t limited to the audience…Even Hagen, a couple of scenes later, dozed off in his chair, despite having Brünnhilde and Waltraute singing a few feet from him, and didn’t wake up until the end of Act I!

Being asleep, he forgot to leave the stage, so he was present (although not awake) while BOTH GUNTHER AND SIEGFRIED reached the top of the mountain and the latter spoke to Brünnhilde, who, understandably, didn’t know who to look at; after a moment of uncertainty, she went for Gunther – after all, he wasn’t the one with a Rubik’s cube on his head.

The horse skull was still there. I guess I wasn’t the only one who had forgotten about it, since Brünnhilde, after entering the stage visibly happy, stopped, saw the skull on the floor and went serious for a fraction of second, probably trying to remember where she had seen that finding a dead horse’s head in your bedroom is not a good thing.

But horse skulls are fine if the singing is good; unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it as much as in Die Walküre. Lisa Gasteen was amazing again, I don’t know if she sang all the notes she had to but I don’t really care, I just love her Brünnhilde. I didn’t like John Treleaven as Siegfried very much – his incestuous mum and dad were far better…makes you wonder if Siegmund really is his father.

Emily Magee portrayed Gutrune as a weak woman, not in an unsympathetic way. I liked her; Hagen seem to like her too because he couldn’t keep his eyes off her a** . I suppose her acting was good, since she was carrying an Oscar (it might have been for another performance though, and in any case she threw it away right after Siegfried had died).

As for the other men, I wasn’t particularly impressed by Gunther. Peter Coleman-Wright wasn’t bad, bad I didn’t care much about his character in this production. At least most of the times I could understand what he was saying. I can’t say the same thing about Hagen – I couldn’t understand him when he was singing! And Kurt Rydl is Austrian, so I guess his German is perfect, but he wasn’t clear at all, not to me at least. A pity, because I usually like villains. Loved Peter Sidhom’s Alberich though.

Actually I think I know why I didn’t like Kurt Rydl. At some point I realized who he reminded me of. The Italian singer Lucio Dalla.

I mean, if you don’t know him you can’t understand, but trust me, from that moment on I couln’t look at him with the same eyes. I tried not to think about it, but I kept having visions of Hagen singing – and dancing – “Attenti al lupo“.

But then, now that I think about it, John Treleaven looks a bit like Paolo Limiti.

Watching Antonio Pappano was very enjoyable, especially during the most energetic bits. The two guys in front of me (sleeping beauty’s mates) spent more time watching him than the stage.

Some curtain call pics:

       

John Treleaven and Lisa Gasteen, who looked MUCH HAPPIER at the curtain calls this time (even if at Die Walküre there was the loudest cheer in the ROH’s history – well, it seemed so).

Tonino Pappano & friends looking in the direction of the sleeping-man-from-Die-Walküre who was probably still asleep:

Loge, who came onstage for the last scene for his canonic “set stuff on fire” bit, with the Academy Award (the bigger version).

Must have been pretty hot up there: the cast of Les Miserables, who appeared every now and then during the opera, took off their shirts and remained in vests and trousers; the Rheinemaidens took off everything.