At Bayreuth, Brünnhilde gives one finger to the booing audience
NewsAt last night’s final curtain calls for the end of the current Ring cycle, the Swedish soprano Irene Theorin was seen giving a one-finger salute to the audience, which was booing the cack-handed production.
The gesture may mean something different in Swedish.
One hopes.
UPDATE: Barbara Roeder writes: First some Boos for her, then pointing to people in the audience with a finger, and then her one finger… whole house booed back. I was speechless.
A question for Norman and the commentators on this site who actually know singers and conductors personally.
How much do today’s singers and conductors care about the production? For example, in the previous Bayreuth Ring Cycle, Act 3 of Siegfried began with Erda performing what the British tabloids call a sex act on Wotan and ended inexplicably with two or three realistic-looking model crocodiles wandering around the stage during the love duet. Even the most dedicated Wagnerians would struggle not to be distracted by the crocodiles.
How many singers and conductors enjoy this sort of thing?
Do any of today’s performers have the artistic and/or financial clout to insist on a production where the director’s “vision” is subordinated to that of the composer/librettist?
It’s all about money and nothing else – there is so much nonsense on German stages and more and more artists dare to speak out but most need their fees to survive! They won’t get paid like in football so they sadly need to go long with those mediocre staging
You know all those singers in Germany, do you, Tristan – So that you’re able to speak on their collective behalf? I know a number of them and the overall feeling is that while they don’t necessarily care for or agree with every staging in which they’re involved, most of them appreciate that opera is a living art form that needs to move ahead and not repeat the same exact dull routines. Alas, the gray-hair set doesn’t understand that and would prefer their opera safe, mindless and non-threatening – so that it can die along with them.
The nonsense is hardly limited to German stages. It‘s almost everywhere. Germany only has a very high number of opera houses, so you hear it more often from there.
My personal answer to that is that opera is actually musical theater, or as the Germans call it “Musiktheater”. So you would think that it would therefore consist of 50% music and 50% theater. If you look at the general trend of the last decades, the weighting has shifted in favor of theater and is currently perhaps 20 to 80. Everything is subjected to the action on stage, after all, it also satisfies the most dominant of our senses – sight.
Social media also supports this trend outside of opera. A picture on Instagram of a “dynamic and energetic” conductor now replaces an entire concert, so to speak. Again, the sense of seeing is coming more to the fore than hearing. In this mentioned case, hearing is even eliminated entirely.
As a result, directors have gained power in recent years. As a result, directors have gained power in recent years. Many of them cannot read music at all, which further promotes the decoupling of music from staging. Singers have to submit to everything because, excuse me for saying this so clearly, they have become interchangeable, more than was the case before.
So, in the end, your question if the director’s “vision” is subordinated to that of the composer (music) and or librettist (text) is rather rethoric.
Prima la MUSICA. Poi la parola. The operas of Handel, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner et al have survived a long, long time because of the music, not because of the “plot” or the stage presentation.
I was “brought up” on the Solti LPs, later augmented by vocal scores when I could afford them. The detailed stage instructions from the composer helped to create terrific mental settings for these great compositions. Then encountering the Met 1980s DVDs tended to complete them. Now some of the clips and comments describing modern efforts make me shudder. I suspect that if someone began to tamper with the text there would be an uproar. So why are producers allowed to transport these composer designed epics into their own creations? Surely the singers can decline, or don’t they care either?
When a frustrated singer shows the (propably middle) finger to an audience, that’s pretty much asking for a very public mob execution. Just saying!
Renata Scotto survived her own finger to the audience at a Met opening night of “Norma” in 1980…it showed her (universally acknowledged) fiery side.
For the most part, singers “tolerate” these miserable concepts. They don’t have much of a choice and have no say in what happens. When they sign their contracts, sometimes 3-4 years in advance, they have no idea what the concept will be. When they arrive for rehearsals, they are presented with the concept (which, during the rehearsal period, sometimes changes drastically at the director’s/designer’s whim). If they walk out of rehearsal due to the production, they risk never being hired again. They are often identified with a production for which they have very little say over…and for productions that puts them into positions where singing and acting can be very difficult. It is the job of the singer to make sure they are presenting, vocally, the best performance possible despite the “direction” (and, sometimes, there is almost NO direction)…and, in some of these productions, it’s nearly impossible to perform at all. Having said this, Ms. Theorin’s reaction, if reported accurately, is totally out of line and wrong. And, if any of the scorn for the production was directed at Ms. Theorin, that, too, is wrong. The singers have VERY little support in this business…not from the administrations, unions, and production teams. Sometimes, all they have on stage, is the understanding and cooperation of their colleagues. It can be a lonely place.
Thank you – that makes perfect sense.
Exactly. That’s the point.
Has opera at Bayreuth sunk so low that baritone/basses singing Wotan are cast for the size of their ‘willy’ if I interpret the article correctly. It might have put a smile on his face but how could she sing afterwards? More importantly, WTF does this have to do with the opera. To help with Bayreuth: I’ve got recordings!!
Good for her. Neanderthals. If you cannot offer appreciation just walk out.
Not so sure about that.
By paying over 1.000 EUR for a whole Ring cycle, each listener (and spectator) kind of buys a little share of the whole production for the ticketed evenings. And when you are the co-owner, you are entitled to voice your opinion. The performers enter that contract also by free will, getting paid. Doesn’t mean you can act disrespectful of course.
But WHO is disrespectful actually in the first place? IMO it is Mr. Schwarz.
Having said that, it is appalling to boooo if someone just performed mediocre or had forgivable lapses. Then be polite and maybe just withhold the cheering and applause.
But if someone like Mr. Schwarz brings childish fantasies and mediocre school theater quality onto the holy stage in Bayreuth, then he deserves to be “executed” artistically. My opinion.
Or maybe Katharina Wagner deserves to bee tared and feathered for her incompetence in choosing worthy stage directors.
“By paying over 1.000 EUR for a whole Ring cycle, each listener (and spectator) kind of buys a little share of the whole production for the ticketed evenings.”
You’ve got the wrong concept altogether, buddy.
NO – paying your 1000 Eur does not make you a “co-owner” in any sense whatsoever. LOL
Not in any sense, eh? Who is paying for it all then?
My comment was in response to the delusional comment before, that if you can’t give appreciation, then the only alternative would be to get silently lost. That is LOL and a very delusional and entitled comment. Of course the paying audience, paying directly for their tickets, and in Germany also indirectly for Bayreuth with their taxes, can hold the artists accountable, if they fail to perform diligently.
Certainly a discussion is necessary about the fine line between being rude, and being critical rightfully. Between attacking a person and criticising an artistic performance.
This reactive behaviour is symptomatic of the recent decline in values (Werteverfall) on the Grüne Hügel for which the festival management is solely responsible – poorly conceived productions paired with the attempt to break with tradition and conventions, although this festival is highly dependent on “passing on the fire” through the music of Richard Wagner rather than worshiping the ashes (at stuffy Villa Wahnfried).
It’s not the singer’s fault – her frustration, however, must be immense.
I was there…she deserved the booing because she sang both the Walküre and Götterdämmerung Brünnhildes appallingly. One understands not one word. All vowels curdled and top notes shrieked and with inaudible bottom. Altogether the entire Ring was a disgrace. Production, conducting and with very few exceptions second rate singers. Katharina Wagner’s contract must not be renewed next year.
In this case, the finger appears in an even worse light.
Appalling!
Next time we can expect singers to present their butts to the audience.
Gustavo: I second that! Better to moon the audience than showing them the middle finger!
…And for her encore she can put her finger in her Arschloch and then lick it clean…..Third rate screecher that she is…
but one should blame it on the dreadful Bayreuth management and the even more dreadful critics, mostly from German speaking areas who don’t know anything of quality but are amused by this rubbish deutsches Regietheater – the audience reads it and though most hate it then go with the flow – result is that the audience more and more stays away and most theaters suffer from financing their companies
The future doesn’t look good
Dear Erich amd Up-Thumbers!
Per haps she was not the optimal or ever particularly good Brunhilde, BUT she was booed constantly throughout the summer and the cretins who booed her have NO – ZERO- idea of what is involved. No performer, no matter how good/bad deserves this. Music is not a blood sport. While booing the production itself is more understandable, the kind of booing she received is ludicrous and NOT a display of passion or true understanding” criticism by the audience. Those in favor of this treatment have obviously never been a professional performer.
Blame and boo Bayreuth for engaging her if she is not up to it, but don’t embarrass yourselves by acting like pretentious fools and attacking her so personnally.
Agreed. No artist deliberately sets out to give a bad performance so should be spared the ‘boo’. On the other hand, Directors who fall over themselves to ‘shock’ the audience, are fair game.
Most singers know when they have not performed well and are their own worst critics, castigating themselves for every note missed, direction missed or phrase poorly shaped. They are also very clear as to the warmth or otherwise of an audience’s response usually via applause-ecstatic, warm or indifferent.
When boors in an audience start to boo an artist for the most part this will come from individuals who have never felt the heat of the stage and although as clients paying singers’ wages as one or two like to call themselves, infantile, gaslighting booing is the tool of fools. Go and talk about it afterwards, rail at the production, write to the management and enjoy getting worked up but give the singers a break-they are an endangered species at the moment and most booers have simply no idea what it takes to get up and perform at this level. Absolute creeps.
She’s been singing The Brunnhildes badly since Berliner Staatsoper 2019 exception GOTTERDAMMERUNG so…she must know that
Booing (and throwing rotten eggs and tomatoes on the stage) has been around since the beginning of theater. Remember when Alagna walked out of Aida after being booed in the first act? It’s part of the profession: you get cheers and you get boos. And if it makes you mad you walk out or show a finger. So what?
Let’s forget that all of these institutions are still dealing with the repercussions of the Covid interruption. They’re often times having to employ the ‘B-team’, as travel has been pretty much a nightmare. It may all get better in the future.
more likely: the top Brünnhildes of our days said „no thank you, my voice is too precious for this nonsense“ when they heard that Katharina Wagner lets a young not very knowledgeable novice director do this Ring.
The times where a call from Bayreuth could hardly be rejected might be over.
There are NO top Brunnhildes these days. That is the problem
Clearly you have not experienced a Brünnhilde performed by the astonishing Christine Goerke. Attend hers before making overly broad remarks like this.
One might think that she paid the audience rather than the other way round. But who knows, that might be the future.
“Claquety Claque: don’t talk back!”
I wish Bayreuth would do a fully authentic Wagner production. It would be the hit comedy of the decade.
There is no such thing as “authentic Wagner”, though. That term means nothing.
But that‘s a straw man. Nobody is asking for that.
What most want is artistic excellence.
Most stage directors are simply amateurs, often even neurotic morons, compared to the well trained and professionally excellent singers and musicians.
It‘s a systemic problem.
Where could the great stage directors systemically come from, who master the complexity of an opera production?
Find some Otto Schenk stem cells, and clone them.
She should have stopped signing Wagner ten years go. Her last season’s Isolde in Vienna State Opera was abhorrent too.
I only know her from a broadcast of Walkure quite a few seasons ago–perhaps more than 10 or 12. It was a MET performance. Her voice sounded shredded and tattered way back then–not anything a paying audience should have to hear in what’s purported to be a prime opera house.
Yet if that’s the only thing around, audiences will, apparently, pay to see it. For at least two decades now many opera fans will accept just about any yowling and caterwauling if the production is sufficiently provocative, and if the acting considered consistent with a director’s ‘view’ of what the work “really” means. That’s why I am considered anathema to today’s opera fans–I retreat into recordings of truly competent singers and forget the tyranny of directors asking me to accept–and pay for–their high-minded crap.
Let the downvotes accumulate!
In 2018 Theorin delivered an excellent Brunnhilde in SFO’s Ring, better than any recent Brunnhilde I can recall from Bayreuth. Or New York. Performers have ups and downs, maybe San Francisco just got lucky. But Theorin was not a bad choice based on what I heard in the house in 2018. OTOH, The garbage-production at Bayreuth this year deserved all the boos and then some.
The contempt which some of today’s artists and arts management show to the folks who pay their wages is well past its sell by date. And I don’t just mean this sort of thing.
Time to drop the conceit and arrogance and realise this: in the commercial world you would not see your job another 24 hours with that behaviour. The audience are the customers, in reality the few, who gave their time and money for your product. If they do not like it you better suck it up and learn fast in today’s climate. We are not some kind of privileged, protected charity anymore which may be the model some are still hanging on to.
I don’t know about Bayreuth, but certainly opera tickets are heavily subsidised by private philanthropy and/or state funding. People complain about the high ticket prices, but if a theatre had to break even on ticket sales alone then prices would be extortionate. So the audience doesn’t really pay the singers’ wages, at least not in full.
I couldn’t agree less. I ‘ve been to the best part of 100 performances at Bayreuth since 2000 and the audience sometimes behaves like animals. Iréne was quite justified in showing the booing yobs what she thought of them. Castorf more or less did the same thing by displaying utter contempt towards the audience at the end of the first year of his Ring; yet at the end of the final year he was cheered. That tells you something else about Bayreuth audiences: they are also fickle.
You couldn’t agree less? How is Edward’s comment factually incorrect?
Ages ago I witnessed a similar scene at the end of Trovatore at the Hamburg
State Opera. There were some scattered boos in the audience directed at the soprano (or the mezzo), and then the Trovatore, aka Franco Bonisolli, answered not with a mere finger, but with a bras d’honneur or Italian salute.
After that I wondered whether he was brave enough to take his solo curtain – and, sure enough, he was. A storm of boos, but also of bravos greeted him, and he was standing in front of the curtain, kind of conducting the audience and its boos with rhythmic movements. It was a memorable experience!
How crass, no class, no dignity, if you don’t like getting booed, take some more singing lessons.
Gosh Kaf! you must be great at what you do! spoken like a true opera expert! do u realize there are very very few people who can even get through the roles she did. Boo Bayreuth for casting her, but by don’t show your ignorance and meanness by thinking it is Ok to treat her like this.
Is a performer an artist or a laborer?
In opera, we expect an artist.
No artist is required to perform a role, but if an artist chooses to take on a role, it is not enough just to be able to hit the notes and get through the entire night, and then expect to be applauded for just finishing the job.
Getting the job done is not an artistic accomplishment. Giving a good performance is an artistic accomplishment.
By your standards, we should be grateful if the orchestra started and ended together and the conductor didn’t get lost in the score.
Dear Kaf!
You misunderstand completely my post. There is a GREAT deal of „labor“ in singing a role such as Brunhilde. As for the „artist“ part, I will let you and the many others on this site who have no real idea what is involved continue to opine about nothing. No matter how bad a performance is (and hers was not by any means fantastic) to boo so aggressively betrays a complete lack of decency and understanding on the part of the boo-er.
Paying 1000 dollars a ticket doesn’t seem to entitle you to behave like a fool! …. or, judging from the replies here, maybe it does.
Good grief, whatever happened to a classy night at the opera?
Wait, wait, wait…with some of the egregious things we see from directors on the opera stage and you still say “classy night at the opera”? From what distant past are you speaking?
There are very few great Wagner sopranos and tenors these days.
Nina Stemme how is 59- sang her last Isolde in June in Vienna.
Well, she won’t be invited back then!
Something tells me she wouldn’t have been hired again anyway.
(Stephanie Friede, anyone?)
Iréne Theorin will not be appearing at Bayreuth next year. Brünnhilde will be sing by Daniela Köhler in Siegfried and Catherine Foster in Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung. I’m hoping that it won’t be too long before these roles are assigned to Lise Davidsen and/or Elisabeth Teige. In the meantime, it would be great to hear the wonderful Yannick-Muriel Noah at Bayreuth. Check her out, Katharina!
Blaming the singer for the production is very unfair. Though not every singer in this Ring was booed, I guess it was a little bit for her. She is probably not the best in this cast but I didn‘t think she is that bad. Also I don‘t believe booing singer unless they are very unprofessional. I think Theorin did her best for this undeniably difficult role.
Booers are the football hooligans of opera. Same level of refinement and character.
She likely faced the brunt of anger at the production because of the obscenely bad staging of the non-immolation scene. That bad-beyond-words staging at the bottom of a dirty pool was the final memory people had of that long hideous evening. What singer could have done anything positive with that obscene staging?
Come back Wieland Wagner!
But I bet some “traditionalists” in the 50s cried “Come back Cosima!”
Golden ages are a fallacy – they were never golden. They only represent our own yearning today for comfort and consolation.
Ms Theorin certainly has ‘class’!! (Ha, ha.)
I think the booing was largely aimed at the production, rather than at individual singers.
You think? Well, why did the audience always boo her and not Mr. Gould or Mr. Dohmen?
Well, at least it wasn’t two fingers.
Germany now has many problems,mostly of a political and economic nature. My late father who was born & raised in Germany but lived most of his adult life in the USA would not find this artistic debacle amusing. He took me to my first classical music concert at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall long ago. Reiner and the CSO.
The Wagner shrine is past its sell by date.
At curtain call time Singers , Producers , Conductors should still respect the audience even if they are being booed. It is possible to make a simple bow and then stand back with the rest of the company for example.
In some houses the claque system still exists and that is incredibly frustrating for their target, but keeping one’s dignity when under fire is part of professional stage conduct. I think it was Pavarotti who said that if the audience boos for some reason they are usually right.
I can think of at least one producer who used to feel his production had succeeded only if there was booing, which suggested to me he was out to shock as a way of waking up his audiences.
Personally I didn’t like that approach as I prefer a production where , however abstract the concept may be ( and sometimes abstract concepts shed a new light on a work , ) there is still respect for the audience and a desire to make a connection with them through music , words and staging that makes them feel a part of and appreciate the work being presented.
I enjoyed the article writer’s sly sense of humor that the middle finger raised might mean something else in the singer’s homeland of Sweden, but I doubt it. More than ever, the opera world misses Birgit Nilsson for her voice AND humor. She, and Astrid Varnay knew what it meant or gave an audience reason to boo! Oh, how those real daughters of Wotan are missed!!
I didn’t know this singer but decided to have a listen. Gosh she is pretty awful. Very wobbly and screaching. I probably would just not have applauded her. It must have been quite a spectacle!!!
Theorin is quite a feisty lady – on and off stage!
Can’t help feeling some sympathy towards her. Amusing to see how the cream of operatic audiences behaves. Just as vulgar as any other crowd, if not more so. Glad not to be a member myself. Imagine if the public money that’s sunk in subsidies to opera around the world were redistributed to actually deserving arts projects . . .
It’s deeply unpleasant when an audience boos an individual singer. It’s therefore understandable and forgivable if that singer responds “inappropriately”.
Some singers are such superb and compelling actors that many people want to continue to attend their performances even when their voices are in decline: Jon Vickers, Gwyneth Jones, John Tomlinson, Hildegard Behrens, for example. I’ve not seen Theorin live, but even if she does fall into this category, it sounds like Schwarz’s production didn’t help the principals to deliver convincing performances. Let’s hope he has the humility and good sense to rethink and revise his production before next year.
I find the idea of booing singers quite repellent. It’s also quite unnecessary.
I remember about 10 years or more ago attending a production of Tristan at Covent Garden. Nina Stemme was Isolde and was predictably outstanding. Tristan was a tenor who was coming to the end of his career, one of the good but not great singers of the late 1980s onwards. He received polite applause and then the audience went wild for Ms Stemme.
I will never forget the expression which briefly passed over the tenor’s face.
That said, there is a lot to be said for cheering the performers to the rafters and booing a director and design team who have done their best to undermine the music.
I saw the same one, that tenor was reportedly unwell, and he indeed didn‘t sound great at all. Since you didn‘t reveal his name I won‘t either. Some singers retired too late, but well, as always we are in short supply of Wagner tenor.
This conversation has led to the biggest issue, and that is directors are having a difficult time finding a theme and setting for the Ring that is truly original, so their mind wanders towards the absurd. Play a mental exercise with yourselves and attempt to fashion your own version of The Ring. Sometimes I think the productions in the ’60s had it right. More abstract settings so the music, voice, and acting took center stage.
First they riot and ransack the US capitol. Now citizens bring their unbridled anger and intolerance to the opera house. Sad and crazy times.
Maybe the mediocre Ms Theorin is a symptom of the dysfunctional Addams Family running Bayreuth. Maybe, like the annual Kennedy Center awards, they should give the tedium a rest for a few years.
I am a 67 year old regular opera goer, and I have never in my life witnessed what might be described as a ‘traditional’ staging of a Wagner opera. Now, I’m all in favour of ground-breaking productions, but all I ask is “Can I watch even just once in my life a ‘traditional’ production of a Wagner opera? Just once?? Pretty please.
Most singers are thick and sound terrible.
Most directors understand nothing of music.
In point of fact, there is a standard contract clause for a singer that requires the artist to follow the staging, wear the costume, and generally take direction.
And since that notion was lost on Kathleen Battle, she got herself banished years ago…