Clement Lo writes:

>Seeing that it is near Olympic time (10 days), it's quite interesting that
>this opera is being performed, with all its thematic "problems".  Given
>that this was Hitler's favourite opera (I'm treading on thin ice here),
>I suppose the spectacle will transcend the rather dark themes touched on.

I have just attended the Tuesday evening performance of the work with the
Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart.  For me of course it
is the climax of the Olympic Arts Festival.  I was tossing up as to whether
I should write a post on this subject but now that Clement has written was
he has I have little choice.  The performance I should say was a concert
performance (presumably due to lack of funding).

Edo de Waart's conducting was often only adequate.  The introduction to
Act I from its very opening bars lacked all impact, and in fact virtually
all parts of the work except those which monotonously turn up on highlights
discs were played with a similar hopeless lack of insight.  The results was
a lack of total unity that this work deserved.  Not a single one of the
singers with the remarkable exception of Ekkehard Wlaschiha as Alberich
had any deep penetrating insight at all into the character they were
portraying.  Albert Bonnema was grossly miscast as Siegfried and would be
far better off singing the role of Mime.  Elizabeth Connell as Bruennhilde
was often excellent.  Kurt Rydl was generally reasonable but seemed too
concerned with fluent vocal tone to allow the diction to come through.
This is a real problem in Wagner when for example in monologues such as
"Hier sitz' ich zur Wacht" the words are obscured.  It was never clear to
me if Hagen was at one point singing "Starke Waffen" (strong weapons) or
"Starre Affen" (rigid monkeys).  That is a problem.  From where I sat it
was almost impossible to read the translation that was provided through the
evening: mercifully so because what I could read of it was pathetic.  The
translation desiccated Wagner's poetic language.  It meant for me that I
had to listen with my knowledge of German and the original text, but only
Ekkehard Wlaschiha sang with the ability to really convey the meaning of
the words.

Despite all my reservations nothing could hold back Act III from being
the all powerful statement that it is.  I must confess to have struggled
to hold back tears listening to the Immolation Scene.  Never had it
seemed so clear to me that answering the question of Hans Sachs from Die
Meistersinger was the deepest and most fundamental concern that drove
Wagner:

   Madness! Madness!
   Everywhere madness!
   Thereby I searchingly look,
   into chronicles of cities and worlds,
   to seek the reason
   why, to the point of drawing blood,
   people torment and ill-treat each other
   in pointless rabid rage!
   (Act III Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg)

It is bitter irony indeed that Hitler's favourite was in fact Die
Meistersinger (and NOT Goetterdaemmerung).  But we must not forget
that Hitler once opened and presided over the Olympic Games, which like
Wagner's music were similarly misused for the purpose of National Socialist
propaganda.  Does that mean he has eternally poisoned the ideals of the
Olympics? NO never, no more than he has poisoned those fundamental ideals
of humanity of which Wagner's finest works are a glowing expression.

Yes, for the Ring is about the frenzied madness with which human beings
torment one another for the sake of wealth and power.  Today we live in
an age where human beings enslave one another not with the oaths resided
by Wotan the god of oaths, war, hatred, and vengeance but we call them
contracts, treatises, and agreements.  With these much of the Third World
remains bound up in debt to richer nations.  Countless starve in these
nations as a result.  Wotan lives!  And to the might of the power of his
spear we remain tightly bound in a world dominated as ever before by the
god of hatred.  The fundamental question asked by Wagner is whether it
is possible for man to rise above this in the noble bonds of universal
love and peace: Redemption through Love.  That is why Wagner chose to
consecrate Bayreuth with a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony: Alle
Menschen werden Brueder/ All mankind shall be brothers.

There could have been no more appropriate work to have performed with
the Olympic Games about to open here in Sydney than Goetterdaemmerung.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia