Ingela Brimberg / Umsagnir

'The Valkyries were superb.'

“The entire cast was cheered by the public, but Stuart Skelton in the role of Siegmund was the most acclaimed. Along with him, were René Pape (Hunding), Tomasz Konieczny (the god Wotan), Adrianne Pieczonka (Sieglinde), Ricarda Merbeth (Brünnilde), Daniela Sindram (Fricka), Julie Davies (Gerhilde), Samantha Crawford (Ortlinde) and Sandra Ferrández (Waltraute).”

Les interprètes réunis ne sont peut-être pas les plus célèbres titulaires des rôles de La Walkyrie : plusieurs d'entre eux sont encore peu -ou pas- connus du public français. Mais ils s'élèvent pour le moins à la hauteur de la tâche et surtout le plateau, dans son ensemble, est d'une grande homogénéité. Les parcours de certains chanteurs sont parfois (d)étonnants, ainsi celui d'Ingela Brimberg qui débuta en tant que mezzo léger (en Rosine ou Chérubin), et qui affronte depuis une quinzaine d’années certains rôles parmi les plus lourds du répertoire de soprano : Tosca, Lady Macbeth, Salomé, et offre de Brünnhilde a portrait commensurate with the complexity of the role. Vocally, the performance impresses the audience: she shows great endurance (she arrives at the end of the work in a state of rare vocal freshness), the high Cs are proudly darted, the power allows her to cross the orchestral mass easily, even in its most extreme bursts, the breath is long, and especially the legato in the cantabile passages and the nuances are there, contributing to make Brünnhilde a character of flesh and blood particularly moving. Especially since Ingela Brimberg offers an accomplished acting performance: her lively and dynamic gestures make her almost a teenager, especially when she comes on stage, withHojotoho! of astonishing freshness and youthfulness, while his particularly expressive physiognomy makes it possible to account for the emotions experienced by the character. Wotan is played by bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin , whose role is quite recent (October 2017 in Saint-Petersburg). The timbre is surprisingly clear for the role. This adds clarity, intelligibility, incisiveness in the rendering of the text, especially as the singer takes care to give expressive colors to the words he wishes to highlight (striking contrast between the two das Ende! in the second act ). On the other hand, the most lyrical passages, and in particular Wotan's farewell to his daughter, would accommodate a little more warmth and velvet in the timbre. In addition, the last act sees Evgeny Nikitin somewhat tested: the breath in particular is made shorter, which obliges him to accelerate the tempo wanted by the leader in the tender farewell to Brünnhilde and to catch his breath no less than three times in the final curse. Sarah Cambidge demonstrates an easy projection in Sieglinde, the quality of her tone is preserved throughout the range (except for a few slightly strident highs), the femininity conferred on the character is quivering. More roundness and velvet in the tone (especially for the strong nuance ) would however bring an increase in emotion to the character, in particular in the lyrical flights, but the singer does not receive less one of the most beautiful ovations of the evening. Issachah Savage possesses the exact means of the role of Siegmund: tenderness and softness of timbre, power, chastened and nuanced singing line, all at the service of constant emotion. Stefan Kocan, black timbre, abyssal bass, is a Hunding disturbing by its wild and racy song, but also by its silhouette, surprisingly elegant, offering an almost distressing contrast with the darkness of the character. For her second excursion to Wagnerian lands (after Venus in the Parisian version of Tannhäuser in Monte Carlo ), Aude Extrémo achieved great success in Fricka. The voice is full, resonant, skilfully projected even in the highest notes of the role and the character, skilfully characterized, escapes the caricatural interpretations which sometimes reduce Fricka to a simple jealous and hysterical wife. Finally, the public does not hesitate to address its praises to the extremely involved team of "choiseuses de Morts", (etymological meaning of the word "Valkyries"), within which are found several artists often heard on the Bordeaux scene ( Adriana Bignagni Lesca , Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur, Cyrielle Ndjiki Nya , Léa Frouté ). Scenically and vocally, they all manage to give their character their own identity. The scenic production ( Julia Burbach and Tal Rosner ) gives pride of place to the videos (designed by Tal Rosner). Are thus projected in the background, sometimes figurative images (a wolf, mountains, fir trees), sometimes colorful geometric shapes, sometimes more or less psychedelic visions appearing and disappearing according to the music. Interactions with the set are quite limited, and the contrast is sometimes awkward between the images that follow one another on the screen at a frantic pace and what is seen on the stage, which is necessarily much wiser. The actors, whose acting has obviously been the subject of quite extensive work, alternate fairly traditional postures and gestures with beautiful finds (the hands of Siegmund and Sieglinde who meet during the exchange of the cup in the first act , with the Valkyries unable to bring themselves to leave their sister in the last act). Finally, the show is carried by the Orchester National Bordeaux Aquitaine whose abundance of colors is at the height of its precision and instrumental virtuosity. The conductor , Paul Daniel , gives meaning to the drama and the poetry is unstoppable (he sometimes –reasonably– slows down the tempo on such and such a motif, such as that known as the “misfortune of the Wälsungen”, to better highlight it). This Valkyrie , of which the Opéra National de Bordeaux can rightly be proud, is welcomed at the final curtain by thunderous applause!

Second episode of this ancestor of Game of throne that is Der Ring des Nibelungen , Die Walküre wants to accomplish its cathartic office a conjunction of artistic parameters so improbable that the equation seems at first sight impossible to solve. And yet... Bordeaux uses its auditorium as a pretext to undertake the ascent of this lyrical Everest. The Wagnerian orchestra, too large for the pit of the Grand Théâtre, was one of the arguments in favor of the construction of the building in 2013. The constraints are known. The absence of hangers and clearance, lateral and rear, imposes scenic representations flat, as if deprived of 3rd dimension. Failing to push the walls, Julia Burbach instructs a giant screen, duplicated by a set of mirrors, to introduce a fictional depth. It is feared that the use of videos will become invasive. It is not so. The image, which became abstract in the 2nd and 3rd acts after being frozen for a long time on a tree whose magical twinkling seems borrowed from the World of Narmia, places itself at the service of the action. Eye of Wotan? X-ray of his unconscious? Tal Rosner , the videographer, throws colors on Wagner's music. Key element of the show too often neglected in our analyses, the costumes imagined by Clémence Pernoud between heroic fantasy and Star Wars , stick as closely as possible to the characters and contribute to their characterization. These Valkyries, in thigh-high boots and a fitted dress, this Fricka punkette dressed in red leather, this Wotan with his shoulders covered in a heavy coat of black feathers have the clothes for the job. As if shattered by a telluric tremor, the stage is a battlefield whose relief encourages movement, thought out in close relation to the libretto and the score. The Wagnerian quest for total art finds its culmination when this multi-artistic scenic device is added to a musical flow dominated by a sweeping gesture by Paul Daniel. The ninety-seven instrumentalists in the pit, installed in optimal conditions according to the musical director of the National Orchestra Bordeaux-Aquitaine, with space but " close enough to each other to be able to hear each other and play together " benefit from an acoustic favorable to nuances and dynamics. In a skilful management of sound volumes, no intention escapes the ear of the attentive spectator without this reading turning into a demonstration or an overstatement of effects. So this Winterstürmeof a delicate lyricism, such as this Ride where the brass do not crush the strings, and this final conflagration from which the eardrum emerges unscathed. Thus these river duets, these uninterrupted soliloquies which never seem long to us because animated by an orchestral eloquence in symbiosis with the vocal performance. We must indeed speak of performance when singers thus manage to overcome the tensions of extreme writing. They are for the most part preparing their first weapons in their role. Faced with the police Hunding of Stefan Kocàn , Sarah Cambidge and Issachah Savageare Wälsung just out of the cradle, or almost. The soprano is currently in her second year of the Adler Fellow program at San Francisco Opera. The tenor's career began less than ten years ago. It's young for Siegmund but so close to a form of ideal when the tone as here is not affected by any wound, when the line unfolds in a continuous thread on steep crests, when the treble springs without effort, that valor prevails over strength. Just like his partner, he still has to better manage the emotional rise of the first act so that the acme point intervenes in the duet of spring and not in “Walse” with comfortable length. To this youthful Siegmund, Sarah Cambidge offers the exact reply: Sieglinde enthusiastic, ardent, What promises also in the proud mezzo-soprano of Aude Extrémo . Fricka remains a secondary job but the domestic scene, so often considered a tunnel by many commentators, becomes Homeric when it is thus gripped by a voice of such substance and a temperament of such presence. Even the solid Wotan of Evgeny Nikitinwave the white flag. The loss of voice in this same role at the Philharmonie last year, due to gastric reflux, is only a bad memory. The Master of Valhalla exercises here a power that one would qualify elsewhere as Jupiterian. The song is black like the blindfold that crosses his eye. There is Klingsor in this peremptory Wotan whose power or brilliance are never faulted. Few questions, including in the monologue, but on the contrary an authority of implacable violence. The contrast with the final scene where, overwhelmed by his emotions, the God accepts the whisper, is all the more striking. The father lulls the daughter to sleep with a chaste kiss, exhausted by a fight from which he emerges defeated again, a magnificent loser in the face of an incandescent Brünnhilde. Ingela Brimbergis not just a helmeted maiden whose highest notes strike like arrows of light. The soprano, after having sung Sieglinde in concert, throws herself body and soul into the role of The Valkyrie, which she had previously only interpreted in an abbreviated version at the Theater An Der Wien. What a mastery already of the slightest psychological and vocal contours, if only of “Hojotoho! “preliminaries over which so many stumble. The duet with Siegmund would like more sepulchral grave but all the rest is carried out with a confusing intelligence. Finally, a word on the eight Valkyries in tuned voices and in flower, contrary to the cliché of the thunderous warrior with blond braids and an elephantine chest size.