Asking the Right Questions: Barry Millington enjoys a new Bayreuth ‘Lohengrin’ that sides with Elsa

Reviews of Lohengrin, directed Sharon, conducted Thielemann, Bayreuth, 2018; Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, directed Kosky, conducted Jordan, Bayreuth, 2018.

November 2018, Volume 12, Number 3, 77–81.

Often regarded as a problem work on account of the subservient position supposedly accorded Elsa, Lohengrin more properly expresses a progressive view of the role of women: Elsa ‘made a complete revolutionary of me’, Wagner wrote shortly after completing the opera. Yuval Sharon’s stimulating new production is one level an anatomisation of a bourgeois marriage, but it situates that dissection within the context of Wagner’s discovery of the revolutionary philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. Also under scrutiny is an unjust society in which the ruler and ruled alike seek redemption in a charismatic new leader who, however, threatens to perpetuate reactionary patriarchal values.