It wasn’t my intention to post twice on Wagner in 24 hours, but “the Observer’s report on the ENO’s Twilight of the Gods”:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1451219,00.html has me worried:
bq. In what will come to be regarded by opera fans as a moment of bizarre heresy – or of creative triumph – Brunnhilde, the leading character in the ENO’s new production of Wagner’s Twilight of the Gods, was portrayed as a suicide bomber. Clad in a modern jacket packed with explosives, the betrayed lover of Siegfried, played by Kathleen Broderick, obliterated the rest of the cast by detonating herself in the dramatic ‘immolation scene’ that ends the opera.
I have tickets to see this production at the end of the month and, since, I have already attended the previous three in ENO’s cycle, I’m going to go. I hope my worst fears won’t be realized.
{ 2 comments }
KCinDC 04.03.05 at 9:02 am
I don’t suppose the story was originally supposed to be published two days earlier but got bumped?
bad Jim 04.04.05 at 4:01 am
Traditionally, Brunnhilde mounts her steed and leaps into Siegfried’s funeral pyre while Valhalla burns in the background (hence the title of the piece). The nihilism of this latest production sounds approximately equivalent.
Apart from moral considerations, or the use of nuclear weapons, the majority of the audience may expect to exit the theater substantially intact, plucking the stray leitmotif from lapel or ear canal.
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