Self-immolation holds a horrifying yet compelling fascination for millennials and baby boomers alike. Whether performed by Buddhist monks opposing the Viet Nam War or Tunisian street vendors protesting harassment by government authorities, the fatalism of the act captures not only the oppression felt by these individuals but underscores the passion that drives them to such self-sacrifice.
Such was the conundrum viewers confronted in the final opera of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Regal Brooklyn Center Stadium 20 and other theaters in the Twin Cities on Saturday. The Metropolitan Opera Company’s performance of Gotterdammerung in its Live in HD series challenged the audience with the goddess turned mortal Brunnhilde throwing herself upon her hero-husband-traitor-lover’s funeral pyre to avenge her honor and fulfill the destruction of the gods. More than merely convincing, an actress’ portrayal of such an act must transform Brunnhilde’s passion to the level of transcendent ecstasy.
Though Deborah Voight’s immaculate voice captured the power and beauty of Wagner’s score, her acting failed to match the ecstasy embodied in Hildegarde Behrens’ performances in the role. Brunnhilde’s ride into Siegfried’s funereal flames must evoke a “passion and heroism” analogous to the Liebestod (love-death) scene found in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, but Voight’s performance, though musically magnificent, failed to project Behrens’ ecstatic abandonment.
Voight’s relative shortcomings reflected those of other major performers in the production as well. Jay Hunter Morris (Siegfried) and Iain Paterson (Gunther) were solidly professional, but evoked little passion or empathy. Wendy Bryn Harmer (Gutrune) projected a convincing combination of sorrow and outrage over Siegfried’s death while Hans Peter Konig (Hagen) and Eric Owens’ (Alberich) brief onstage moments contributed mightily to the production’s thematic effectiveness.
The impact of other aspects of the Met performance was similarly scatter-shot. By eliminating some of the opera’s musical conventions, Fabio Luisi’s conducting lightened some of the Teutonic weightiness of Wagner’s score without sacrificing its shifting moods. But impressive staging moments like the Rhine running red from Gunther washing his hands of Siegfried’s blood were offset by the less-than-spectacular apocalypse depicting Valhalla’s destruction at play’s end.
Given its quality of resources and talent, this Met version suffered from unfilled expectations. Where Gotterdammerung is supposed to culminate Wagner’s dream of “setting the world on fire through Art so that a better, new world would emerge” according to one YouTube enthusiast, this version simply maintained the emotional level of previous operas in the Cycle. A new world may be implied from this version of Wagner’s masterpiece, but not one transformed by an emotional apotheosis like the self-immolations that triggered Arab Spring.
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