On December 7, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala opened its 2010-2011 opera season with Richard Wagner’s “Die Walkure”, a co-production with Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden directed by Guy Cassiers and musically conducted by Daniel Barenboim, which followed on from the magnificent “Das Rheingold” performed at the same theater in May of the same year. The Belgian Guy Cassiers, assisted by Enrico Bagnoli for sets and lighting, video projections by Arjen Klerkx and Kurt D’Haesseler, magnificent choreography by Csilla Lakatos and, finally, splendid costumes by the famous Belgian designer Tim Van Steenbergen, continues his work on the Wagnerian “Ring” with great and perfect relevance. This time, he underlines the disorder of a “dysfunctional family” that projects its damage and violence outwards into a world dominated by Wotan’s will to power, in which, as Cassiers again points out,
every spectator can recognize himself. Particularly on December 7, when the gotha of European finance and, as far as France is concerned, Jacques Attali, Nicolas Joel, Carole Bouquet, Dominique Meyer (who has become the director of the Vienna Staatsoper), then stylist John Richmond (with his wife Elena) and many other celebrities, gathered together.
The first act is very empty and static, but the sudden ardor with which Siegmund and Sieglinde embrace at the end
is proportional to the vertiginous vertical progression of the score, and has nothing to envy Patrice Chéreau, and may even cause a real shock in the spectator. In the second act, a magnificent green dominates, with a forest of spears that become trees, dominated by a skilful play of lights. At the same time, there are asteroids and a real planet that turns and moves, even without its fixity, with a much more flexible scene. The third act, on the other hand, is very baroque, dominated by the flight of the Valkyries and above all by the red, the fire that surrounds Brunnhilde, who falls asleep very slowly to the magical lullaby orchestrated by Wotan and made famous by Marguerite Yourcenar. The vocal line-up was obviously magnificent, ranging from veterans Waltraud Meier as Sieglinde and John Tomlinson as Hunding, to the perfect Siegmund of New Zealander Simon O’Neill, discovered at Bayreuth, to the young Vitalij Kowaljow as Wotan and Ekaterina Gubanova’s noble Fricka. But the real star and triumph of the evening was Nina Stemme’s Brunnhilde, with her bewitching voice and magnificent stage presence, much helped by the staging. The agreement with the Scala Orchestra was magical and perfect, with Daniel Barenboim becoming the “maestro scaligero” until 2015, thanks to this very subtle reading of the score, full of charm and finesse and very narrative. Another “novelty” that made this December 7 event exceptional was the presence of RAI, Mezzo for France, Servus for Austria and many other European channels, who were able to leave us with memories of a work on the Wagnerian “Ring” that will continue until 2015, greeted by the final enthusiasm of the entire hall, and which promises to be one of the major artistic pillars of Stéphane Lissner’s passage at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala.
Giacomo Di Vittorio
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