A New Beginning

Four months after making her debut in Bayreuth to conduct the entire Ring, Australian artist Simone Young returns to the podium at La Scala – following her success in Peter Grimes at the end of last season – with Das Rheingold, Wagner's grandiose musical drama that takes listeners from the depths of the Rhine to radiant Walhalla.

LP Do you remember your first encounter with Wagner's music?
SY In Sydney, where I grew up, Wagner's music was not often performed, so I came across it in school, when a teacher played us the prelude to Tristan. Later, when I first heard the Tetralogy, I was fascinated. The first time I saw a Wagner opera was in Sydney, during the 1984-1985 season. At that time, I was an accompanying pianist and working with the orchestra. We were preparing Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. About ten years later, in 1996, I went to Bayreuth to hear the whole Ring and completely fell in love with this music.

LP The Bayreuth theatre was built specifically to achieve a perfect balance between the voices and the orchestra hidden beneath the stage. How do you achieve the same effect in a traditional theatre like La Scala?
SY With hard work! I have conducted the Tetralogy in Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, and more recently, individual episodes of the Ring in Munich and London, so I have experience with very different orchestra pits and halls. The first time I conducted the Rheingold was almost 30 years ago, in 1996, and I have not stopped conducting it since. My first Tetralogy, on the other hand, was in Vienna in 1999. With Wagner, as with Verdi and Puccini, you learn very quickly what the problematic moments are for the balance between pit and stage. With Wagner, the orchestra is very important – I can't say it's more so than with Puccini because I love Puccini and his magnificent way of orchestrating – but the prominence of the instrumental part is so significant that you want to keep the symphonic colors without overpowering the voices. That is what rehearsals are for!

LP In Bayreuth's Rheingold, you worked with two artists you will meet again at La Scala. Okka von der Damerau and Christa Mayer. Have you already collaborated with the other cast members?
SY I know most of the singers, and the funny thing is that in Bayreuth, Okka played Erda and Christa, Fricka, whereas at La Scala their roles are reversed. I have worked with Michael Volle many times. The most recent was for La fanciulla del West in Berlin. I remember directing Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke in Salome in Zurich, Norbert Ernst in Vienna in various operas... With most of the cast I have worked on many different operas, so we are old friends. It's nice. On the other hand, I have never worked with director David McVicar before and I was looking forward to an opportunity like this. I have been a great admirer of his for a long time.

LP There are as many as 14 characters in this piece. In your opinion, is there a true protagonist or is it a choral work?
SY Indeed, many characters are presented in Rheingold. Some will reappear in the other episodes of the Tetralogy, such as Fricka or Mime, while others will never return. I believe that Wotan is the protagonist of the story, which begins even before the musical drama begins. In the prologue, Wotan broke a branch of the tree of life to make his spear and sacrificed one of his eyes to marry Fricka. So here already Wotan has destroyed a natural element to get what he wanted. When The Rheingold begins, Alberich, who is basically another Wotan, immediately appears on the scene: one reigns in the heavens and the other in the underworld. Another parallel can also be established between the two characters: in the first scene, just like Wotan, Alberich destroys something that belongs to nature, the gold of the Rhine. The two antagonists, therefore, are guilty of committing acts of violence against nature.

LP For the unfolding of the action, Loge also plays an essential role.
SY Loge is very fascinating; he is fire and mischief. Today, many people know the character through the Marvel movies, where he is called Loki and is the deity of deception. In the Ring as well he is a master of deception, but he is also the god of fire. Loge is interesting because he never tells lies, but he confuses people and always leads them in different directions than they intended to go. For example, he helps Wotan recover the Rhine gold but then does not warn him enough about the risks. He is a wonderful character, mercurial, or changeable and fickle, which comes from “mercury,” an element that despite being a metal is liquid and elusive. His character is just like mercury, as is his musical theme, which begins magically, is fast-paced and is often given to violas and cellos. It is amazing how Wagner was able to portray this character through music. Another interesting thing is that Loge appears only in the Rheingold but his theme returns throughout the rest of the Ring, signifying that he is never too far away.

LP Loge's is just one of dozens of underlying themes, or Leitmotifs, that form the musical fabric of the Ring. Is it essential to recognize them?
SY I have two different positions on this, because it is of course very interesting to understand the structure and the way Wagner constructed it. Recognizing the theme of Walhalla, that of Alberich, Erda, the rainbow and so on is very fascinating for those who are interested in the study of music, otherwise my advice is to follow the story, get inside the characters and the music will guide you. I don't think it is necessary to know everything in advance. Of course it's essential for me to conduct, but I'm not sure it's so necessary for the audience. I think if a person goes to hear a Wagner opera for the first time, they just have to go into the theatre with an open mind and an open heart and they will find that the music will move them.

LP In his La Scala debut last season, you conducted Britten's Peter Grimes, a sea opera, and now with Das Rheingold, you are tackling another piece in which the water element is very important. The entire first scene takes place under the waters of the Rhine.
SY The famous beginning of the Rheingold! Out of the darkness emerges a very low note from the contrabasses to which is added another low note from the bassoons, and then, from these two notes, the whole music flows out for the first three minutes, making the depth of water, its freshness, felt. It is music written in shades of dark blue and dark green. Until the music of the deities appears, it doesn't rise up to the fresh, clear air, and only then do the colors become brilliant. I love Rheingold because every scene has a clear musical basis and, at the same time, the opera is like a long bridge from beginning to end.

LP In Rheingold, Wagner uses an exuberant orchestra, including eight horns, seven harps, and more. Perhaps most striking is the effect this epic instrumental mass makes when it takes on chamber dimensions.
SY This is a typical feature of all Wagner's music. In particular, in the Rheingold score, we find moments when the composer uses only the bass clarinet or the English horn, and others when there are all the instruments plus the eighteen anvils. If you add up all the instruments, it is the largest orchestra that you could have in those days. Wagner makes use of this by creating all possible combinations of orchestral color, not only in Rheingold, but throughout the Tetralogy of course. In this opera, however, we are at the beginning of the cycle and there are a lot of sections in the conversational style, which would be a kind of recitative but different from the Italian tradition.

LP Among the many innovations in the work is the conspicuous expansion of the brass section. Would you like to point out any themes in which these instruments stand out?
SY The Walhalla theme, for example, which is heard at Wotan's first introduction at the beginning of the second scene of the Rheingold, shows wonderful writing for brass, including Wagnerian tubas, very special instruments, trombones and all the horns. One interesting thing is that Bruckner, after first hearing this kind of writing for brass, with the contrabass tuba creating the background for the other brass voices, went back to Linz and rewrote the brass part of his Symphony No. 5. So what Wagner did was really new and surprising.

LP Earlier you mentioned anvils: what does Wagner use them for?
SY The anvils introduce us to the sounds of Nibelungen's underworld. The rhythm they beat is presented by the orchestra before they begin to play, but it emerges clearly only when it is picked up by the anvils. That rhythmic figure, then, becomes something the listener never forgets and will hear again throughout the Ring cycle. The Valkyries use it, for example, and it also appears at the beginning of Siegfried, when Mime tries to forge the sword.

LP Das Rheingold ends with dazzling music accompanying the deities as they cross the rainbow and head to Walhalla. Is there not something exaggerated or even false about this ending?
SY Of course, the music of the Rheingold finale is also the music that, played by the brass, accompanies the closing of Götterdämmerung, and thus of the entire Ring. Personally, I do not like to play the disaster again. In this scene, there has already been Alberich's curse, Erda's warning, and the offstage singing of the Rhine maidens, so the viewer knows that things will not be easy, but in this finale it seems more important to me to create a triumphant effect.

Liana Püschel
Translation by Alexa Ahern