Wagner, Götterdämmerung (Le Crépuscule des Dieux) at La Monnaie in Brussels

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday February 23 2025

Conductor: Alain Altinoglu. Production: Pierre Audi. Video: Chris Kondek. Sets: Michael Simon. Costumes: Petra Reinhardt. Lighting: Valerio Tiberi. Siegfried: Bryan Register. Gunther: Andrew Foster-Williams. Alberich: Scott Hendricks. Hagen: Ain Anger. Brünnhilde: Ingela Brimberg. Gutrune: Annett Fritsch. Waltraute: Nora Gubisch. Erste Norn: Marvic Monreal. Zweite Norn: Iris Van Wijnen. Dritte Norn: Katie Low. Woglinde: Tamara Banješević. Wellgunde: Jelena Kordić. Flosshilde: Christel Loetzsch. La Monnaie Orchestra and Men’s Chorus.

Photos: © Monika Rittershaus

As I mentioned in my last article (on the subject of Calixto Bieito’s production of Das Rheingold at the Paris Opera), in what the French might call une histoire belge, La Monnaie’s Ring cycle started with Romeo Castellucci as its director, and is now ending with Pierre Audi. What I didn’t mention was that I actually missed Audi’s much-admired Siegfried in September, as I was still on holiday in Greece. So all I’ll have seen of his vision of the ‘Siegfried diptych’ - not, I believe, a mere transplant from his Amsterdam Ring - is this Götterdämmerung.

But I’ll get on to the production later. First, the music.

It’s unusual at La Monnaie, whose patrons are generally quiet, especially after lunching on fried black pudding and wortelstoemp, to see the whole of the parterre on its feet, cheering. They cheered all the singers, but cheered loudest of all for Alain Altinoglu. I read somewhere recently that there are supposedly no bad orchestras, only bad conductors, the implication being, I guess, that a good conductor can make a silk purse of a sow’s ear. Not that La Monnaie’s orchestra was ever, in the last 35 or so years I’ve been hearing it, a sow’s ear. It was always a solid, stolid pit band, good at, say, middle Verdi. But as I've mentioned before, e.g. when writing up a concert performance of Parsifal three years ago, Alain Altinoglu has coached his musicians up to almost dazzling new heights, and here they were at their absolute best (as, too, was La Monnaie’s men’s chorus, despite the curious, comical antics they get up to in the production).

Altinoglu’s approach to the score is detailed and analytical without being desiccated: perhaps something like Boulez, but with more of a smile on his face. You’re gripped by his storytelling, and time flies. In addition, his cast was almost uniformly strong. So it would be nitpicking of me, having described the standing ovation that greeted them, to dwell on any defects.

To start, the Norns were really excellent, as, to end, were the Rhinemaidens, who’d disappointed in Castellucci’s Rheingold - in other words, in case you’re now getting confused, the Rheingold that initiated this Ring now terminated, very differently (see below), by Audi.

Andrew Foster-Williams is a singer I first came across getting his nipples tweaked in Jonathan Kent’s unforgettable production of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. Since then, I’ve seen him a number of times in less comical roles, and always been struck by his dramatic and vocal commitment. In this Ring’s Das Rheingold, he only had Donner to sing. But in the Twilight, he was an appropriately weaselly, craven Gunther, with a timbre that seemed a mirror-image of former Freia Annett Fritsch’s Gutrune, as if designedly to underscore their representation as possibly incestuous twins in Audi’s production (see below again). I was a bit cool about that Freia of hers, but had found her striking as Fiordiligi some years back, also at La Monnaie, and was fascinated by her champagne-coloured, brushed-metal timbre here.

Nora Gubisch no longer has the power or range to shine in Waltraute’s higher or more agitated passages - and, in a leather jerkin with two shields, she had some bizarre business to perform - but I have to admit her quieter, more intimate tale was told very expressively indeed. However, after being stripped stark naked, doused in black paint and tortured in Das Rheingold while still phrasing beautifully, Scott Hendricks - with a lot less to do of course - seemed somehow absent in Götterdämmerung, a pale reflection of his former Alberich. A cold perhaps, since so many singers have been struck by them recently.

In the same house in 2019, Bryan Register, as I wrote at the time, ‘was a very good Tristan, particularly at the tenderest or darkest moments, when he sang daringly softly, only just audible over the pit.’ Based on his performance last Sunday, I wonder if he can still carry off the whole of Tristan (he still sings it), but his middle range is very satisfactorily sturdy, energetic and ‘crunchy’, placing the emphasis more on a ‘very strong’ and ‘very brave’ Siegfried than the ‘very young’ and ‘very stupid’ one sometimes played up in other productions.

In 2018, I noted that ‘The hard, bright metal’ of Ingela Brimberg’s voice as Elsa, also in the same house, ‘suited the more dramatic moments better than the tender ones.’ Her timbre, as Brünnhilde, is still adamantine, but carries her through the role securely, if not particularly seductively, to an impressive immolation scene.

As the custom is to leave the best till last, I come, now, to Ain Anger. He’s an imposing giant of a man, truly ‘strapping,’ as the saying goes in some often-mocked US reviews. My first encounter with him was as a Sarastro I’m afraid I called ‘dreadful,’ nearly twenty years ago in La Fura dels Baus’s ‘bouncy castle’ production of Die Zauberflöte. But perhaps I’d had a bad day, perhaps he had… whatever, twenty years have passed, and now, as Hagen, he’s absolutely in his element: resounding, dark-voiced, and possibly the one principal in this particular production who succeeded in fashioning as complete a character dramatically as vocally.

So, what about this production?

This is the eleventh Pierre Audi staging I’ve seen since I started writing my blog. But as, unlike many directors, he works with a variety of creative teams, I can’t say that his name, when it appears on programmes, evokes any particular style, or that, stumbling upon one of his productions, I might guess whose it was. He has, perhaps, a preference for abstract, geometric designs and a fondness for simple, timeless costumes, and his directing is usually efficient but unobtrusive. His productions are mildly modern, but unencumbered by intellectual concepts, i.e. not really what people call ‘regie’. Some of the most memorable afternoons or evenings I’ve had at the opera over the last 25 years have involved him as director, and I don’t remember one absolute stinker. But, as opera depends on the successful concatenation of a number of discrete elements, not just the staging, I don’t necessarily recall these productions distinctly, in the way I do those of, say, Tcherniakov, Castellucci or Warlikowski. Or even, dare I say it, in some cases of David McVicar.

Audi’s Brussels Götterdämmerung bears out what I wrote above. It combines abstract, boxy props, in metallic or plastic finishes, gliding round or suspended - alongside the odd floating nugget - above the stage, with sophisticated coloured lighting (red, blue, yellow…) and plain, timeless costumes. The result is a déjà-vu modernist aesthetic that distantly recalls Wieland Wagner - which is not to say that it doesn’t offer some very handsome images. The acting is mostly well-managed and conventional, but occasionally breaks into startlingly incongruous expressionist movements and attitudes, with one or two details I’ll deal with below that risk raising a laugh. Overall, Audi's approach didn't appeal to me: I found it largely bland and in the middle of act two I got bored. But I know some people are happy enough with it - glad, among other things, it doesn’t hammer home a philosophical Konzept of any kind.

The acts are framed by rapid-fire videos of children drawing and painting what we suppose are the story and its characters. These clips fail in whatever purpose they were meant to have, as they simply look out of place, like a gimmicky afterthought. The stage is delimited by symbols that change from act to act: a blackened tree trunk, a neon lance, a coppery (or red-gold?) metal plaque, and crumpled steel representing (I guess) the Rhine. Much use is made of two turntables as the various large objects slither around, conveniently concealing entrances and exits. Eventually, as a change from light boxes and cuboids, the central part of act three is dominated by a large, impressive, and to some extent inscrutable black sculpture hovering above the stage. In the gloom, I could make out at least one horse, a dragon’s (or dinosaur’s) muzzle, possibly an eagle and some ravens, and maybe a toad, clustered together.

Though Konzept-lite, the production does attempt a few isolated ideas. Gunther and Gutrune are got up as twins (in matching cassocks and wigs) and behave incestuously. But that’s confusing: you’re puzzled to find Gutrune so in love with Siegfried so soon after, and so upset at his death. Siegfried and Gunther go together to fetch Brünnhilde: you wonder what that adds to the plot. The Norns, at the start, are wrapped up like larvae in cocoons, combing their long locks. Alberich’s gnarled, steely hands appear first (a bit like Santa Claus's) over the edge of a tall, square, chimney-like structure before he emerges for his exchange with Hagen. The Gibichung vassals are lined up in two black blocks, sometimes standing, sometimes seated on black benches, faceless under black, pointed hoods, recalling Spanish penitents in Holy Week. In act three, the Rhinemaidens appear first as bathing beauties, with flippers (as in Bieito’s aforementioned production in Paris, which is otherwise as different as can be), then slip into slinky metallic skirts that shimmer aquatically.

Along the way, as I mentioned above, there are some almost laughable details. The Tarnhelm, for example, is a floppy, telescopic, conical sun-hat of a kind Carole Lombard once posed in in the 30s. Its gilded folds bounce up and down over Siegfried’s face. In her black leather jerkin, Waltraute, otherwise acting quite rationally, suddenly performs a wild, writhing dance with her two shields, as if emoting to Vaughan-Williams’ A Vision of Aeroplanes. Those serried ranks of penitent-vassals burst into a routine described vividly by a lissome young friend of mine in Los Angeles as ‘the herky jerky Gibichung ensemble.’

The end of the work, when we hope to be wowed by stunning, spectacular fireworks, is something of a damp squib. It is handled largely through a succession of lighting effects on a bare stage: a square of flickering red LEDs for the fire, a glowing white backdrop for Brunnhilde’s exit - to the rear and on foot - and dark blue, against a barrage of spotlights, as the Rhinemaidens subdue Hagen, apparently just by kicking and sitting on him, and together, on the floor, hold up the gold. This visual minimalism does, however, have the advantage of leaving plenty of room for the music.

Which, as I say, scored a triumph.

Note: an edited version of this post may be published on Parterre.com.

This is the trailer:

At the time of writing, the complete performance is also available on YT. 

And as a bonus, here's Maestro Wenarto's peerless Immolation Scene: