WAGNER CAST IS ON SONG, BUT STAGING IS OFF KEY
GIVEN her first big chance, Irish soprano Jennifer Davis takes it with both hands and proves that we have another prime singer for the lighter Wagnerian roles. She can only increase in confidence as the run proceeds.
Lohengrin is slow going at the best of times and Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons seems to have put on weight, physically and artistically, so it is a long evening. Luckily, the orchestra and chorus serve him well and most of Ms Davis’s colleagues are also worth hearing.
Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role has a sweet (almost oversweet) tone, but it is rare enough to hear such a good Wagner tenor. I wish he would sing out more, but I can understand the Swiss lady who told me she had come specially to hear him.
Of the two villains, American soprano Christine Goerke is a dominating, fearsome Ortrud. But it’s a pity she is dressed like a Stasi agent or concentration camp guard rather than in the sort of classic costume Wagner envisaged.
German baritone Thomas J. Mayer as Telramund is past his best, with a bad case of ‘Bayreuth bark’, and much better singing comes from his bass compatriot Georg Zeppenfeld as Heinrich der Vogler, which is just as well because the production makes him more a wimp than a king.
Director David Alden continues to have the confidence of opera administrators, though why I cannot imagine.
His staging is an ill-thought-out mishmash which gives us rifles alongside broadswords and gets more unpleasant as the evening wears on.
The overtones of fascism grow boringly obvious, with Nazi-style salutes, totalitarian architecture and Lohengrin’s swan emblem caricaturing a Nazi eagle. If this is a swipe at Wagner, it is a puerile one, aided and abetted by Paul Steinberg’s lopsided sets.
We have waited since 1977 for a new Lohengrin, but this one trots out all the cliches of the trendy ‘progressives’.
Surely the Royal Opera can find an impresario with respect for composers and their librettists.