FULL GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG Stuttgart 2023 Christiane Libor, Daniel Kirch, Patrick Zielke
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Götterdämmerung - Der Ring des Nibelungen (3.Tag)
- Composer: Wagner Richard
- Libretto: Richard Wagner Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Staatsoper Stuttgart, Germany
- Recorded: February 12 & 19, 2023
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Christiane Libor, Daniel Kirch, Patrick Zielke, Nicole Piccolomini, Ida Ränzlöv, Betsy Horne, Shigeo Ishino, Esther Dierkes, Stine Marie Fischer, Eliza Boom, Linsey Coppens, Martina Mikelić
- Conductor: Cornelius Meister
- Orchestra: Staatsorchester Stuttgart
- Chorus: Staatsopernchor Stuttgart
- Stage Director: Marco Štorman
- Stage Designer: Demian Wohler
- Costume Designer: Sara Schwartz
- Lighting Designer: Henning Streck
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Manuel Pujol
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: vk FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Review quoted from swr.de
Four different teams of directors are responsible for the four evenings of Richard Wagner’s four-part stage festival “Der Ring des Nibelungen” at the Stuttgart State Opera. In the final “Götterdämmerung” Marco Stormann interprets his view of the end of the world in a highly exciting scenic way – but the musical interpretation by the conductor Cornelius Meister leaves one irritated.
Disenchanted world, desecrated nature
The gods are dead, the world disenchanted. In the opening, the “Norn Scene”, pieces of the world ash felled by Wotan, the father of the gods, float like a warning sign over the stage area as flotsam of desecrated nature.
Demian Wohler found this picture for Marco Storman’s production of Götterdämmerung at the Stuttgart State Opera. On the left rises a ritual hill with a dwelling cave, totem pole and ruins of ancient temples.
Hagen manipulates Siegfried
The daughter of the gods Brünnhilde releases her beloved nature hero Siegfried from this sacred world of ruins into the big world. It is both a church interior with a Gothic arch and pulpit and an implied parliament with a lectern fitted with microphones.
Here Siegfried is manipulated by the power-mad Hagen and alienated from himself. A domesticated doppelganger of his newly won blood brother Gunther, to whom he now takes his beloved Brünnhilde by force as booty into his kingdom. The Ring of Power that was snatched from her has only symbolic value.
Children bring hope in the darkness
Storman dismantles Wagner’s already pessimistic swan song to the revolutionary overthrower in the argument scene of the deceived Brünnhilde in the second act. Here speech and counter-speech, lies, deception, fraud and self-deception become a parliamentary spectacle.
But even the demagogue Hagen does not emerge as a winner. When he finally wants to grab Siegfried’s ring, the falling debris of the world ash literally breaks his neck.
With flashlights, a crowd of children is looking for a way out of this world darkness. The children fish the multiplying, seductively glittering ring out of the water only to carelessly throw away the destructive symbol of power. A bit of hope remains for the coming generation.
Patrick Zielke as Hagen is the event of the evening
The epicenter of the production is the dark Hagen, who breaks down in his own lust for power, in terms of concept, performance and voice. Patrick Zielke is an extraordinary experience in this game.
Patrick Zielke as Hagen and Daniel Kirch as Siegfried: the audience cheers.
When he even takes over the role of his Nibelungen father Alberich in a double role and talks to himself at the beginning of the second act, he succeeds in a masterpiece of schizophrenic destruction of power. This singer is truly the event of the evening.
Christiane Libor as Brünhilde seems overwhelmed
The shift in emphasis from the world redeemer Brünnhilde to this powerful-voiced black hole – deliberately undertaken by the director – happens rather involuntarily from a musical point of view.
Because the sluggish tempos of conductor Cornelius Meister already overwhelm Christiane Libor’s Brünnhilde in the first act. One is amazed that she gets through the evening with all the exhausting altitudes until her powerful final song.
Cornelius Meister gets lost in details
Daniel Kirch as Siegfried is a vocal powerhouse in the middle register. He plays the manipulated heroic clown in an ambiguous, comical way, but tends to runaway and shrill bits.
On the conductor’s podium, on the other hand, Cornelius Meister loses himself in mannerisms when illuminating details, as is well known since his Bayreuth debut last year. The huge orchestral apparatus occasionally gives the impression that a Mahler symphony is being performed here.
Scenic top, musically – well
Reading the “Götterdämmerung” as a vocal symphony places the sound event above the suspense of the scene. This is how Wagner’s idea of the dramatic total work of art falls apart. The jubilation of the audience is perhaps more directed towards the state orchestra, which arrives on stage for the final applause.Sometimes more, sometimes less understandable i