Wagner Dream, Barbican - review

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