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The Family Saga - Posh vs White Trash, or The Epstein Affair Bayreuth
Festspielhaus
07/26/2025 - & August 15, 2025
Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold
Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan), Daniel Behle (Loge), Nicholas Brownlee (Donner), Mirko Roschkowski (Froh), Patrick Zielke (Fasolt), Tobias Kehrer (Fafner), Olafur Sigurdarson (Alberich), Ya‑Chung Huang (Mime), Christa Mayer (Fricka), Christina Nilsson (Freia), Anna Kissjudit (Erda), Katharina Konradi (Woglinde), Natalia Skrycka (Wellgunde), Maria Henriette Rheinhold (Flosshilde)
Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele, Simone Young (conductor)
Valentin Schwarz (Stage Director) Andrea Cozzi (Sets), Andy Besuch (Costumes), Reinhard Taub, Nicol Hungsberg (Lighting), Luis August Krawen (Videography), Konrad Kuhn (Dramaturgy)
D. Behle, T. Kehrer, P. Zielke (© Enrico Nawrath)
Several friends warned me to steer clear of Valentin Schwarz’s Ring. While I understand their reservations, I don’t share them. In fact, I quite enjoyed myself. It’s certainly true that some of the director’s ideas can’t be reconciled with the libretto, also signé Wagner. Given the complex familial ties among many characters in The Ring, Schwartz’s decision to frame the saga through the lens of family dynamics is both compelling and apt. The enduring appeal of such narratives is evident in the widespread success of shows like Succession and The Sopranos.
During the orchestral introduction, we see a video of twin fetuses. One of them tears his sibling’s eye out. The attacked fetus kicks the attacker in the crotch, damaging his testicles, eventually rendering him impotent. We conclude they are Wotan and Alberich, the former shown in many productions with a patch on one eye, and the latter, known to have renounced love for power. Interesting, but are sex and love the same thing? Another issue is the unlikelihood of fetuses being conscious or capable of causing such damage. This is pertinent, as Schwarz has chosen to remove the mythology of the work and to accentuate the mundane.
At the opening of the opera, the Rhinemaidens are nannies watching over children by a swimming pool in what looks like the North American desert, possibly Texas or Arizona. The Rhine gold and the Ring are the children, signifying a natural disaster causing sterility, a theme often featured in modern literature such as Amin Maalouf’s Le Premier Siècle après Béatrice (1992). Rather than snatch the ring, Alberich kidnaps one child from the Rhinemaidens, Hagen.
The following scene is at Wotan’s posh dwelling, a parody of a nouveau riche WASP family home. Alcohol overflows, Wotan is in his boxers and t‑shirt, downing an entire bottle of Dom Pérignon. Freia is on tranquilizers, and Donner holds his golf club as if it were his own appendage. The most astute mise à jour was the cunning Loge, now the sharp‑witted family lawyer. The project of building Walhalla is unclear, but two mafiosi replaced the giants Fafner and Fasolt. They sport imposing sunglasses, fancy suits and scarves, and ride a luxury vehicle.
There are no remarkable special effects to transition into Nibelheim, which is no Hell replete with dwarves mining gold for Alberich, but instead a daycare, with eight blond girls (the future Valkyries), one boy (the kidnapped Hagen) and an earnest teacher, Mime. How Wotan and Loge trick Alberich into becoming a dragon, then a frog (who they catch, to steal his ring) and the Tarnhelm (the magic helmet) is not clear. Parts of the Ring’s narrative are necessarily magical and should remain so.
The kidnapped boy has been corrupted by Alberich and is a horrific bully, tormenting classmates and teacher. Together with Alberich, the two wave a machine gun at the girls in daycare and at Wotan and Loge. This obviously alludes to pervasive school shootings in the real world. This is somewhat gratuitous, as these tragic events are perpetrated by a bully’s victim and not the bully himself. Off the mark but very sujet du jour.
Somehow, Wotan and Loge kidnap young Hagen and one of the future Valkyries, seizing Alberich. Hagen is taken to Wotan’s bedroom to bond with his kidnapper, the two lifting weights. I must confess these bonding scenes felt particularly disturbing, seeming to allude to different things. In their louche deal with Fafner and Fasolt, Wotan and Loge try passing off the kidnapped young Valkyrie as Hagen, but the subterfuge is revealed, and the boy is turned over to the mafiosi giants.
This summer, one cannot help but associate this new take on the Ring with the Epstein Affair involving children pimped to the rich and powerful. Using such tragic events for shock value is in poor taste, to say the least.
The passage to Walhalla is nowhere to be found, but the sonic effect of Donner striking his hammer is replaced by the swaying of his golf club. The giants’ construction seems not to be a bigger home, but rather an objet d’art, a luminescent pyramid in a glass box that the entire family seem to feed off, especially drugged‑out Freia. The choice of a Masonic symbol cannot be a mere coincidence. Ideas that now seem unclear will hopefully reveal their significance in forthcoming instalments.
Even detractors of Schwarz’s Ring were won over by the quality of the singing and orchestra. The most outstanding members of the cast were Olafur Sigurdarson’s Alberich, Daniel Behle’s Loge and Anna Kissjudit’s Erda.
Despite the brevity of the role, Kissjudit’s was uncontestedly the most beautiful voice of this ensemble. Heard a few weeks earlier in the same role in Vienna, and again in Siegfried in Milan and Vienna, twenty-nine-year-old Kissjudit is a phenomenon, reminiscent of Marilyn Horne in her prime. Like Horne, her tone is honeyed and her range vast; her low notes produce shivers and her high notes delight. As the role of Erda is entirely low lying, one could appreciate the mezzo’s rich low register. Watch out for this young lady, she will be this decade’s leading mezzo/contralto.
Behle was a truly charismatic Loge, as he was in this same work in Vienna last month. Likewise, his Ferrando in Così fan tuttein Munich three weeks ago was truly seductive. Yet again, Behle proves the secret to excellence in this role is not huge volume, but charisma and Mozartian phrasing. Unlike the other gods, the demi‑god Loge is as physically agile as he is cunning. Behle was by far the most charismatic of the nouveau riche clan, perfectly conveying Loge’s cynicism.
Icelandic baritone Olafur Sigurdarson impressed as Alberich. Admired as a particularly cruel Alberich in David McVicar’s Ring for Milan’s La Scala in Das Rheingold and Siegfried, Sigurdarson showed his versatility in playing a completely different Alberich here. In Schwarz’s staging, he’s from a trashy branch of the family and must cope with his lot, being outsmarted by “twin brother” Wotan and Loge from the more posh branch of the family. His rage is outwardly manifested but also deftly expressed in his convincing anguish. Thanks to his charisma, one almost feels sorry for him.
Christina Nilsson had the required lush lyric soprano for the role of Freia. Her timbre was refreshingly appealing and well‑suited to the role, but her luminous nature was overshadowed by her role, that of a drug‑addict. One wonders in the Epstein context of this staging if she was not abused herself as a child. She convincingly conveyed her terror of the mafiosi brothers while demonstrating a connection to her captors (especially Fasolt) in a kind of Stockholm Syndrome.
Patrick Zielke as Fasolt and Tobias Kehrer as Fafner seemed to revel in playing shady characters straight out of The Sopranos. Kehrer was an impressive Orest in Elektrain Berlin. In addition to possessing a warm basso, this exquisite actor was as convincing as a gangster as he was in the aforementioned Greek tragedy.
Mezzo Christa Mayer was an adequate Fricka, but more convincing dramatically than vocally. Her voice showed a pronounced vibrato which may be a plus for the character; a domineering virago. She fared better here than she did as Erda in Das Rheingold in Milan.
Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny is one of today’s leading Wotans. His imposing stage presence and hefty voice made him a natural as the patriarch of the Norse gods, and of the nouveau riche family. Unfortunately, he tends to sing loudly, which can compromise his phrasing. Given how much alcohol he’s asked to consume throughout the performance, it could be the acting, though I doubt it.
Australia’s Simone Young, who conducted (alternating with Alexander Soddy) in the aforementioned Ring at La Scala, seemed more inspired here than in Milan. The opening was luxuriously played, making the video narration of the feuding fetuses more biting. Unsurprisingly, the Orchester der Bayreuth Festspiele proved once again it’s in a class by itself – truly masters of this music. Throughout, Young made sure the ensemble didn’t obscure the singers, but she gave them free reign in the orchestral passages.
Schwarz’s original staging has given this Ring the feel of a Netflix series, but this is by no means a denigration. One can hardly wait to see how Norse mythology will be transformed in this family feud. In a few hours, I’ll be ensconced in Die Walküre. I find myself unexpectedly captivated by this story, even though I’m familiar with its outcome.
Ossama el Naggar
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