Wagner – Götterdämmerung

Siegfried – Daniel Brenna
Gunther – Tuomas Pursio
Alberich – Jukka Rasilainen
Hagen – Rúni Brattaberg
Brünnhilde – Johanna Rusanen
Gutrune – Reeta Haavisto
Waltraute – Tuija Knihtilä
Erste Norn – Maiju Vaahtoluoto
Zweite Norn – Jenny Carlstedt
Dritte Norn – Sonja Herranen
Woglinde – Marjukka Tepponen
Wellgunde – Mari Palo
Flosshilde – Jeni Packalen

Finlands nationaloperas kör, Suomen kansallisoopperan orkesteri / Hannu Lintu.
Stage director – Anna Kelo.

Suomen kansallisooppera ja -baletti – Finlands nationalopera och -balett, Helsinki, Finland.  Saturday, May 25th, 2023.

This Götterdämmerung has been a long time coming.  Das Rheingold was premiered in the fall of 2019 with Walküre, originally planned for spring 2020, finally premiered in fall 2022, and Siegfried following in the spring of 2023.  The cycle was originally due to be conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, but following the delay due to the plague, conducting duties were taken over for the final three instalments by house music director, Hannu Lintu.  It’s fascinating to wonder what Salonen would have done with the score, given his long experience of conducting the music of today.  But, like so many things over the past four years, it was not to be.  It has been a privilege to visit this beautiful house and city for each instalment, and I must admit to a little sadness heading in for Act 3 today, at the thought that we have finally come to the end of the cycle.

In the previous instalments of this cycle, I found Anna Kelo’s direction to be rather prosaic, sitting on the surface of the narrative rather than giving us a deeper view of it.  Illustrating the basics of the narrative, rather than attempting to explain it.  What’s notable in this Götterdämmerung is how much Kelo has grown as a director since that Rheingold five years ago.  Back then, I found the personenregie perfunctory, with lots of standing and delivering.  Today, while there was still too much of singers being parked to gesture to the front, there seemed to be much more engagement between the characters than was the case at the start of the cycle.  That said, Waltraute was parked on the stage to gesture in her big scene and the chorus was parked and moved off again.  However, there was much more of a sense of us seeing concrete characters who really engaged with each other.  This could certainly have also been due to Johanna Rusanen’s Brünnhilde, who is such an honest and genuine stage presence, her every move filled with emotion and meaning.  Similarly, Daniel Brenna’s Siegfried was a playful, almost immature character – a continuation of his incarnation in the previous opera, rather than a mature hero.

Kelo sets the action in a timeless way.  The costumes, by Erika Turunen, seem to reflect a future, sci-fi environment, with long shiny coats for the chorus.  Much of the visual interest comes from Mikki Kunttu’s sets, lighting and video.  He gives us some striking images – whether the Norns towering over the stage weaving their rope, or a mausoleum for Siegfried that looks vaguely fascist in its imposing structures.  The lighting design, in particular, is extremely well done, the fluency with which the lighting is used to change scenes and add atmosphere is particularly striking.  That said, I did wonder whether Rusanen was given adequate acoustic support for her immolation scene, set as it was on a bare stage.  Fortunately, Kelo brought her to the front of the stage so that she could optimally be heard.  The flames that accompanied an enormous burning suspended ring as Brünnhilde called for the end, were seriously impressive.  Kelo gives us an intriguing view of the end of the gods, as figures representing Wotan, Fricka, Donner, and Loge appear in those tumultuous closing pages and are promptly dragged below the stage.  Again, visually it was impressive.  There was a clarity of storytelling here that was respectable.  Indeed, Siegfried/Gunther’s abduction of Brünnhilde in Act 1 was horrifying in its brutality.  Yet, I left the theatre wishing Kelo had asked more of the work, had taken us deeper into its psychology, rather than leaving us on the surface.

Musically, there was much to enjoy.  The consistent pleasure of this cycle has been the playing of the house orchestra.  Today, they were on glorious form.  I heard just one single split note from the brass during the entire evening.  Indeed, the brass playing was absolutely superb in its sheer discipline – the way that they voiced those dark, nocturnal chords, the fluency with which they negotiated the long, tricky passages in Act 2.  This was brass playing of real distinction.  The strings played throughout with intonation of the utmost accuracy, giving us both a carpet of deep-pile sound and bringing out those muted half-lights of the opening scene with haunting brittleness.  As for Lintu’s conducting, I found it again to be inconsistent.  His Act 1 came in at a pretty standard two hours – but it felt much longer.  Time seemed to stop still in the Norns scene, with no sense of forward articulation, the sound instead hovering in the air.  The gear changes in the opening Brünnhilde/Siegfried duet felt jerky.  That said, the tempo he chose for the Hagen/Alberich scene seemed rushed.  He did also give us a Trauermarsch of real power.  As in the Walküre, his reading felt rather micro-managed.  The house chorus, prepared by Marge Mehilane, was phenomenal.  The noise the tenors, baritones and basses made as the vassals was enormous, blasting me and the rest of the audience out of our seats.  The sound was so focused, no war of vibratos here, just a pure burst of sound as fresh as a Finnish lake, with some particularly impressive tenors.  I very much hope to return to see a more choral opera here soon. 

Rusanen was the glue that kept this evening together.  Her Brünnhilde was so human, so genuine.  She had a very brief memory lapse in the closing pages, perhaps just as a result of getting so caught up in the emotion of it, and her high C in that opening duet was a little bit further south than desirable, but these just served to remind us of how fallible this character is.  Her soprano has generous amplitude, filling the house with ease, and in its slight chalkiness, occasional swooping and womanly generosity reminds one of Dame Jones – although Rusanen is much steadier in tone than the Celtic diva.  Despite the length of the evening, Rusanen was tireless, pouring out streams of ecstatic tone in her immolation scene and dominating the vengeance trio through sheer power.  She used the text well, making the words count.  I must admit that Rusanen was a lot more satisfactory than many sopranos I’ve heard in this role over the years and would be at home in any major lyric theatre.

Brenna’s Siegfried is a known quantity, having seen him in the role in San Francisco back in 2018.  Back then, the voice showed a certain graininess and signs of fatigue that weren’t apparent this evening.  Today, the voice was firm, if not the most glamorous or largest in tone.  His narrative in Act 3, did show some sketchiness in tuning however, and the uppermost reaches were hit more with enthusiasm than accuracy.  Still, he made it to the end, which in this role is something of an achievement.  Rúni Brattaberg sang Hagen in a big, cavernous bass.  The voice is warm and rich, even if the top is now receding and thinning out.  He was unfortunately rather under-directed, frequently resorting to stock gestures and outstretched arms.  Jukka Rasilainen’s Alberich was sung in an appropriately acidic baritone, seemingly able to defy gravity in his short scene.  Tuomas Pursio’s Gunther was sung in a firm baritone, although the vibrations had a tendency to loosen somewhat on top.

Reetta Haavisto was a very pleasant surprise as Gutrune.  She surely has a very bright future in the lyric Strauss and Wagner roles.  The voice has a delightful steeliness at the core, founded on a rich and generous chestiness.  Her diction needs a little work, that ability to draw meaning from the text isn’t quite there yet, but this is a very exciting voice and talent.  I would very much like to hear her Salome.  Tuija Knihtilä gave us a Waltraute sung with real authority.  As with Brattaberg, she was rather under-directed, but she negotiated the tessitura with ease, the registers integrated.  Both the Norns and the Rhinemaidens were taken by very attractive and mellifluous voices, demonstrating the excellent quality one has come to expect during the course of the cycle. 

Today’s Götterdämmerung gave so much to enjoy.  The singing was, by and large, excellent – Rusanen and Haavisto in particular – reminding us that one of the consistent pleasures of this Ring has been the quality of the singing from an almost entirely local cast.  The future of Wagner singing in Finland is clearly very bright.  The orchestral playing was again superb and the choral singing was spectacular.  Kelo’s staging was visually interesting, with the sets and lighting particularly effective.  As the redemption through love motif rang out at the close, it was impossible to fight back the tears.  Not just for that magnificent music, but also the fact that this Ring has seen us through a time when the world has changed so much more than we could have imagined back in 2019 when it began.  That message of a world reborn is one that most definitely gave us hope as we headed out into a bright, Finnish summer evening.  The audience responded at the close with an extremely generous ovation.