The cast of "Götterdämmerung." (c) 2015 Union Avenue Opera and John Lamb
Union Avenue Opera’s performance of Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) was the strangest and finest opera I’ve witnessed all year. Perhaps it was the ultra-eerie set design—a screen flickering with fire like a palimpsest over ice-covered mountains—and spare stage design that let the music and voices carry the night.
But it was more than that. Wagner’s world of Valkyries and Nordic myths is one that is both familiar (think of colder, harsher gods than in Homer’s epics) and utterly strange (think of hyperborean winds blowing through the darkest, iciest places you can imagine) and you’ll get a wonderful, disorienting feeling, as UAO and company perform this fourth and final cycle in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. Götterdämmerung is like being “told” a terrifying ghost story in voices to sweet and lulling to turn from. This sort of strangeness and vertiginous beauty is worth it for its own sake. And it’s good to feel dislocated by beauty, at least for a night at UAO.
Alexandra LoBianco is utterly brilliant as Brünnhilde. Her soprano is arresting, controlled and beautiful. LoBianco’s voice—passionate and clear—would be worth your time at the performance in and of itself. But the host of characters is wonderful as well. Clay Hilley is a wonderful tenor who plays the role of Siegfried, the warrior who gives the ring to Brünnhilde, which seals their fates together. Hilley looks the role of the powerful fighter, and sings gorgeously. The prologue of Götterdämmerung was immediately seductive, in which the two leads promises themselves to each other.
David Dillard plays the role of Gunther effectively—Gunther is a would-be-assassin and leader of the Gibichung people. In the end, Dillard sings beautifully as he lends a hand in Siegfried’s demise. Rebecca Wilson plays Gutrune, sister of Gunther, and the scenes between her and Brünnhilde are amazing. Wilson is a staggeringly talented singer as well. Neil Nelson is wonderfully cast as Hagen who, in the end, is also fated by the power of the ring. Indeed, there is so much talent at UAO’s performance that it’s another wonderfully overwhelming thing to witness.
Wagner’s world of the Ring is one that holds the gods (or even God) responsible for the ills that befall man. It is a capricious world that requires of its players that they yearn for a more coherent place and time. Blessings might be attributed to Wotan (or other gods) but Wagner’s characters may also decry the banes that come their way, throwing spite and invective into the faces of the deities. After all, Twilight of the Gods suggests seismic shifts in the metaphysical realm; perhaps gods can fade, flicker and vanish as well. As the flames upon the screen engulf Valhalla, and the Rhinemaidens reclaim the ring, the curse that surrounds the central characters is abolished. But the audience understands that another era is coming to be, one in which the old gods are quite absent.
Since Twilight of the Gods is so intricate as far as plot, there is little space here to unpack most of what the opera is getting at. UAO’s condensed version of the fourth and last cycle stands on its own, and the viewers and listeners need not trouble themselves too much with subtext. UAO has seen to it that this opera, though its part of a whole, is enjoyable and strange taken by itself. Wagner’s great work demands only that you submit to this strange place and suspend your assumptions about where blame might lie: with mortals, sure, but also with their makers.
Götterdämmerung runs through August 29 at Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 Union. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 314-361-2881, or go to unionavenueopera.org.
