We observe Wotan, we observe Brünnhilde, we observe Siegfried, and by no means get only one impression that one is a hero and the opposite is only evil. As a substitute, we get to know the scratching, the deep dive into unconscious motivations. The “Ring” is especially about one large household. We take this story by totally different generations, by youngsters and grandchildren, and this lengthy stretch of historical past throughout the individuals and this household.
There are company — needed and undesirable — who intervene on this household story. The essential conflicts are Greek conflicts. Motivations of anger, of hatred, of affection, the need to energy. This stays inside this household, and that informs my, you can say, Nietzschean method. What’s the factor that motivates each particular person within the piece? It’s understanding the top: that they are going to die, that it’s going to finish, that point ends. All of them are looking for an answer for this.
This summer time’s manufacturing can have many singers change roles between productions as an alternative of, for instance, casting one single Wotan and Brünnhilde all through the whole cycle. Is that this associated to that generational method, or is it a extra prosaic alternative?
Like most issues in a theater, there’s the fundamental mundane factor, which is that we have now not so many Wagner singers, and they’re lowering in quantity yearly. There’s perhaps 5 individuals on the earth who can sing Wotan. Bayreuth offers these singers an opportunity for singers to evolve throughout the items. Over time, somebody can sing Fasolt and go on and sing Wotan afterward, for instance.
For the casting, I used to be in fact very concerned with Katharina Wagner. In lots of instances, it’s attention-grabbing to point out how the function, the character adjustments between items. Irene Theorin, for instance, sings Brünnhilde in “Walküre” and “Götterdämmerung,” and in between, in “Siegfried,” it’s Daniela Köhler. To make this large transition, it was nice to see — on the finish of Walküre, Irene Theorin is trapped on the cliffs by Wotan behind the magic hearth, however this particular person is altering.
