This evening’s performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre is the second installment of the Dresdner Musikfestspiel historically informed Ring cycle with a combo of the Concerto Köln and the festival’s orchestra. As I have explained in my report from last year’s Rhinegold in Lucerna, this goes beyond playing it with original instruments — although we even had a Stierhorn — but also the attempt to recreate an authentic Wagnerian singing style based on the teachings of Wagner vocal advisor in Bayreuth Julius Hey. As much as in Das Rheingold, the regular opera-goer wouldn’t find any significantly noticeable difference in this department and would be surprised rather by an orchestral sound that unveils unusual colors, mostly related to the fact that gut strings with controled use of vibrato and less overwhelming brass blend in a more organic way and allow for a more present woodwind section. On the other hand, the experience of hearing voices wrapped (or overshadowed) by strings as a key element of a Wagner performance (with the tingle factor therein involved) is something you would not really find here. In Kent Nagano’s flowing tempi based on the concept of having singers deliver the text in conversation rhythm made this seem less of an absence but rather as an alternative sound picture. In act one, some moments sounded entirely different in transparent perspectives that made Sieglinde and Siegmund’s scene less sentimental and yet more intimate with some cello solos of baroque music purity. And yet it was the most famous pages of the score that shone at their most original: the Valkyries seemed to be riding among gushes of wind when played in violins’ gut strings.
In terms of singing, again we mostly had a Zaubeflöte cast, and I wonder if small volume has any relation to authenticity. I mean, some singers are naturally louder regardless of their techniques, and I bet that Wagner himself would have preferred a larger voice to go with his larger orchestra. But that’s just me guessing. In any case, having singers new to the repertoire brings some freshness to the proceedings iin spite of the occasional lack of familiarity with the text and the notes.
That was definitely not the case of Sarah Wegener as Sieglinde, one of the most interesting performances I have heard from a singer in a while. This is the first time I see her, and her fleece-like youthful lyric soprano is easy to like. She employs a wide tonal palette, finding interesting colors in every register, but the best part of it is that she has reserves of power and a solid breath support when she just has to sing out. She is a very expressive singer with such an intense and immediate response to her character’s predicaments that one almost believes she is experiencing all these feelings herself on stage. To make things better, not only is her diction exemplary but also there every word in the text that was uttered with full understanding of its meaning. Her Sieglinde sounded unusually four-dimensional, almost spirited in her infatuation fit Siegmund in act 1 and admirably alert in her shift from depressive to manic in her last scene with the Valkyries. I want to hear more from her in the future. She was well contrasted to Åsa Jäger, whose voice is just the right one for the part of Brünnhilde, a voluminous, warm, round soprano with juicy, easy high notes and a rich middle too. She sings with commendable discipline and musicianship too. Brava. I had seen Claude Eichenberger as the Walküre Fricka in Bern and was a bit surprised by how soprano-ish she sounded this evening. No wonder she was invited to sing Brünnhilde there next year. Her high notes sounded indeed ringing and bright. And she manages to tackle the part with naturalness and some chic too.
Other than a Tobias Kehrer ideally cast as Hunding, the other men in the cast were both on the light side for the roles. Simon Bailey has a very focused voice and stamina, what makes him sail through the part of Wotan without trouble but with less color than we’re used to hear. He delivers the text really crisply and manages to shade the tone whenever he needs, and a singer in this role definitely needs this in the final scene. If Maximilian Schmitt is probably the lightest Siegmund I have ever heard live or in recordings. Fortunately, he does not try to make his voice darker or bigger and sounds here very much like himself as Tamino or Max. This means some brittleness and a Charaktertenot-like nasality when he is required to sound heroic, but other than this he seemed in charge and offered a young-sounding, vulnerable account of the role for a change.
Last but not least, there was also a lightweight and very efficient group of Valkyries who sounded more integrated in the sound picture of this performance than the usual stentorian octet would have.