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That was the case here. ‘You treat me like dogshit!’ spits Alberich, in Jeremy Sams’s English translation, and I don’t imagine that Wagner — who was explicit about wanting his operas sung in the language of their audience — would have objected. Not in the presence of such immediacy, such invention, and such feet-first commitment to the drama. Alpesh Chauhan conducted the 87 players of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with a commanding sense of when to sustain and when to let everything blaze. The singing, too, was fearlessly characterised. Wotan and Alberich were both big-talking hollow men. Keel Watson gave Fasolt a sonorous dignity and presence, and Chrystal E. Williams, as Fricka, really glowed, with a sweetness of tone that belied her queen-bitch shoulderpads. Brenden Gunnell’s Loge wielded his tenor like a goad: canny, fierce and inscrutable behind his red goggles and Hells Angel leathers.
Then there was the moment — there’s one in every BOC production — where music, visuals and meaning suddenly coalesce, expand and engulf everyone present in a way that overwhelms rational response. It came early on, as the Rhinemaidens soared and the whole interior of Symphony Hall became a vortex of glittering light. It was just a glitterball and a yellow spotlight (BOC has always been resourceful) but in that instant, Willacy and his company created something close to ecstasy — as Wagner might have put it, a complete artwork. It’s why opera, despite everything, remains the sublimest of all dramatic artforms; and why it’s vital that this company — incontestably the most artistically significant force in British opera this century — finds a way forward in Vick’s absence. It simply must.
BOC productions have a habit of relegating everything else to the footnotes. The hero of Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz is a German winemaker (and confirmed bachelor) whose best friends are a rabbi and a gypsy. Imagine what some directors would make of that. Mercifully, Julia Burbach’s production for Opera Holland Park had no agenda beyond presenting Fritz as what it is: a soft-hearted romantic comedy set in a Stella Artois-advert Arcadia, with ardent, likeable romantic leads (Matteo Lippi and Katie Bird) plus sun-kissed singing from Paul Carey Jones as Rabbi David. Beatrice Venezi conducted splashily, but I doubt anyone really minded.
The BBC Proms, meanwhile, opened to a half-full hall with Vaughan Williams, Poulenc (the Organ Concerto, with Daniel Hyde as soloist), a short, sweet commission by Sir James MacMillan and a performance of Sibelius’s Second Symphony in which Dalia Stasevska drew sweeping lines and iridescent colours from a (clearly) energised BBC Symphony Orchestra. Real meat-and-two-veg programming. But sometimes a big D major finish is exactly what hits the spot.
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