Götterdämmerung, Regents Opera: an ambitious, skeletal take on Wagner

Telegraph

17-02-2025

Mounting Wagner's massive Ring cycle in a venue that has been described as 'the spiritual home of British boxing' takes some imagination. But Regents Opera has never been short of either imagination or ambition; they previously staged the first three instalments of their scaled-down Ring at the Freemasons Hall in Covent Garden. Now they have moved to York Hall in Bethnal Green (a leisure centre that was formerly a sports hall with a famous boxing ring) for Götterdämmerung as the tortuous struggle for the Ring reaches its climax in a death-filled denouement.
It's an effective but problematic venue, since the audience wraps around three sides of the small platform, leaving the reduced orchestra slightly stranded at the back, on the hall's raised stage. The positive result is a quite exceptional level of direct communication between singers and audience, which was galvanised with attention throughout the five hours of this denouement of the cycle, especially as the personal conflicts reached a height of intensity.
The skilful reduction of the band (by Ben Woodward, the conductor) down to 23 players from Wagner's gargantuan forces means 6 violins instead of 32, some woodwind and trumpet, though there are five horns and a bass trombone, with an occasional organ to add weight. The music flows constantly, and only occasionally flags in some interludes: inevitably perhaps, the climactic Funeral March for Siegfried does not make its earth-shattering impact in this form.
Regents Opera have built a solid following for their ambitions, and their achievement is to be judged on the highest level: they fielded a cast with some outstanding singer-actors, led by the glorious Brünnhilde of Catherine Woodward, resplendent and assured both in passion and anguish, as the opera leads to her immolation. Her Siegfried, Peter Furlong, is commendably accurate but drier of tone, yet she is well matched by Simon Wilding's commanding, evil Hagen, manipulating all around him, disposing of his father, brother, and Siegfried to recapture the Ring, until the three Rhinemaidens (Jillian Finnamore, Elizabeth Findon and Mae Heydorn) bundle him into the river.
The other standout singer is Catherine Backhouse as Waltraute, her long accusatory monologue to her sister Brunnhilde perfectly sculpted; the preening Gunther of Andrew Mayor and the red-head siren Gutrune, Justine Viani, are not quite on this level. Oliver Gibbs's Alberich has only a brief return in this opera, firmly grasped; the black-garbed chorus of Vassals, members of the London Gay Men's Chorus, are admirably forceful.
It is the gripping personal interactions between the characters in Caroline Staunton's direction that makes her view of the drama work. There is no magic Tarnhelm helmet to enable disguises, and no funeral pyre for Brunnhilde, just a constant fussy rearrangement of white blocks on the platform, and irritating references to Entartete Kunst (the Nazis' Degenerate Art) which seem to be the puzzling reason why there's a fire extinguisher, cans of beans and a cactus on stage. Stripped to its essence in drama and music, this Götterdämmerung has great potential, and needs no elaboration.