Zurich Götterdämmerung: the End is the Beginning

Noseda conducts, Homoki directs a lyrical cast

Falsche Gunther: Daniel Schmutzhard (Gunther), Camilla Nylund (Brünnhilde), Klaus Florian Vogt (wearing Tarnhelm, Siegfried) Picture by Monika Rittershaus

After seeing Andreas Homoki’s staging of Das Rheingold for Zurich Opera in the spring of 2022, I wondered if Christian Schmidt’s unitary set, the interior of a grand late 19th/early 20th century villa, might pall over the next three operas. But by the final instalment, I would say not at all. Schmidt’s revolve and the spaces he creates are good at evoking different locations and, as Wagner does in his words and music, remind us of what has gone before.

The withered trunk of a tree recalls Act 1 of Die Walküre and the doomed, incestuous love of Siegfried’s parents, Siegmund and Sieglinde, which Wagner mirrors in the strange relationship between Gunther and his sister, Gutrune, in Götterdämmerung. In a programme interview Homoki makes the interesting point that the final episode of the Ring is, apart from Brünnhilde and Siegfried’s declaration in the Prologue, a sequence of events revealing the absence of love. Gunther and Gutrune want to wed Brünnhilde and Siegfried for reasons of status and reputation (though Gutrune is probably infatuated by the idea of netting a hero/celebrity). The Gibichungs’ half-brother Hagen, fruit of a loveless union between Alberich and their mother Grimhilde, is motivated by his desire to regain the Nibelung’s ring - not out of filial affection or duty, but lust for wealth and power.