Wagner Dream, Barbican - review - Music - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Wagner Dream, Barbican - review

Critic Rating
Reader Rating 0

The final hours of creative artists are a potent source of mythification and the last day of Richard Wagner's life is no exception. The composer's terminal heart attack was putatively caused by a furious row with his wife Cosima, possibly about an affair that Wagner may or may not have been having with a Flowermaiden from the previous year's production of Parsifal. But on that final day too Wagner was penning an intriguing essay about, among other things the Buddha and the emancipation of womankind.

In his opera Wagner Dream, brought to the UK for the first time as the climax of the BBC's Total Immersion weekend devoted to his music, Jonathan Harvey takes these intertwined strands of myth and fact, weaving them into a rich aural tapestry, enhanced with electronic transformations. Harvey's text - the libretto is by Jean-Claude Carrière - draws together not only the events of Wagner's last day but also the plot of a dramatic project, Die Sieger (The Victors), with which Wagner had toyed throughout his life. Telling the story of a young Indian couple, Prakriti (a low-caste servant girl) and Ananda (a young monk), whose love is thwarted, Die Sieger ends with the possibility of their union, when the Buddha finally agrees that women should be admitted to the Order. The bad news is that the union has to be a celibate one - Wagner's own ambivalence on this issue was hinted at, rather bafflingly in this presentation.

The Buddhist perspective on the themes of passion and chastity, renunciation and redemption, shared by Wagner (to a certain extent) and Harvey, provides Wagner Dream with its spiritual core.

Much of the music, like the action, is slow and meditative, suggesting altered states of consciousness. It has a floating, elusive quality, its musical gestures inchoate, as though just beyond our grasp. The hieratic writing requires monastic patience of the listener: Wagner's own leisurely paced scores whiz by in comparison.
The team of vocal soloists was uniformly strong.

Claire Booth seized the opportunity of Prakriti's paean to love, with its soaring lyricism, while Andrew Staples admirably projected the cooler ardour of Ananda. Roderick Williams was an aptly authoritative Buddha and Simon Bailey, Hilary Summers and Richard Angas were excellent in other roles.

The stiff, banal, spoken dialogue was archly delivered by a team of actors. Orpha Phelan's direction of this semi-staging (designed by Charlie Cridlan) was otherwise imaginative, often striking. Holding it all together was the ever-dependable Martyn Brabbins, who succeeded in conjuring an atmospheric experience that was greater than the sum of its parts.

All in all, in spite of its many frustrations and irritations, an important and frequently stimulating event.

BBC Symphony Orchestra: Wagner's Dream
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, Barbican, EC2Y 8DS

Comments

Don't Miss
Gala night for the Queen of arts - stars turn out in their hundreds to pay tribute

Happy & glorious

Stars turn out in their hundreds to pay tribute to Queen
Prints charming: patterned trousers for summer

Prints charming

Patterned trousers for summer
Promethipedia: the lowdown on Ridley Scott's new blockbuster Prometheus

Promethipedia

The lowdown on Ridley Scott's new blockbuster Prometheus
The Middletan: Kate Middleton has the most requested tan in London

The Middletan

Kate Middleton has the most requested tan in London
Amy Childs bares all like Britney

Dare to bare

Amy Childs vajazzles like Britney
Thais go Gaga: singer’s ‘fake rolex’ tweet sparks new tour row... but fans still mob her at airport

Thais go Gaga

Singer mobbed at airport
Trip the bright fantastic - in vertiginous neon

Fashion

Trip the bright fantastic - in vertiginous neon
Chelsea Champions League celebrations - in pictures

Victory parade

Chelsea Champions League celebrations
High-flying heroes

High flying heroes

David Oyelowo reveals all about new film Red Tails
The Twitter Diaries: Think Bridget Jones tries social networking

The Twitter Diaries

Think Bridget Jones tries social networking