<<  -- 7 --  Roderic Dunnett    MESMERISING

And where was Wotan all this while? The abiding memory, I find, is not so much the Wotan-Brunnhilde farewell scene -- touching though that was, with the fierce, protective rapport Sir Donald so classily struck up with his Valkyrie daughter -- nor even their wonderful set-to when McIntyre roars onstage like a wasp-bitten Sean Connery to vent his wrath on his recalcitrant daughter ('hörte ihr nicht, was ich verhängt?') only to be stopped short by Miller's melting reminder that she is indeed his alter ego ('War es so schämlich, was ich verbrach?' -- a truly Shakespearian moment).

After all, Miller's determined Brünnhilde is herself, even when disobeying, the truest embodiment (it's the progeny, stupid) of his desperate longing for a truly heroic protector : the very quality he seeks in Siegfried ('Wie schüf' ich den Freien, den nie ich schirmte, der in eignen Trotze der Trauteste mir ... und aus sich wirkte, was ich nur will?').

Rather, it is Wotan's great Walküre Act II monologue, where that very realisation is made manifest from the outset ('I commune only with myself when I speak to you' : 'Mit mir nur rat ich, red ich zu dir'). Here, physically inhabited by McIntyre (as we saw from some extraordinarily true-to-life lascivious rolling on the floor with Erda in Siegfried), is a being once given to 'Liebe Lust'; a man capable of 'impetuous wishes' (jähe Wünsche) -- indeed, of 'madness' itself (Wüten) : of disloyalty and even dishonest betrayal. 'Unheil'; 'Vertrag' : why do the terms ring so psychologically true, so meaningful, sentiments so unerringly right -- whenever McIntyre utters them? Because here is a truly great interpretation, and a mountain of a performer.

What McIntyre brings is dimension: in this Tempest-like monologue -- and McIntyre with spear in tow is something of a Prospero -- suddenly all history opens; the seizure of the Rhinegold might be aeons ago, the wages-tryst with the giants thousands of years past, the sexual dalliance with Erda (that yielded Brünnhilde) could belong to now, yet also time immemorial.

In this monologue McIntyre's rheumy, misty-eyed old warrior is lost in the sands of time; and canny old rabble-rouser that he is, he takes us, the audience -- embraces us -- as witnesses to his self-immuring. It's like Olivier moping as Lear.

Yet despite Wotan's strangely un-Zeus-like reluctance to wield the thunderbolt and crush his enemies at a stroke, you still feel he could grab his spear and polish off these 'Feinden', these mortal enemies, en masse, in one thunderous, agile Last Battle. Better for him, you think, if he'd done the job himself, rather than rely on his skimpy human half-heroes -- that 'freundlicher Feind' -- whose creation costs him so dear.

Continue >>