The Wagnerian flame burns brightly in unexpected places
Wagner said that the artist of the future would have to be the community of all artists. I can't think of any company that takes this ambition more seriously than TUNDI Productions , Hugh Keelan's and Jenna Rae's project in the small city of Brattleboro, Vermont. There's no stage director. Instead, the singers develop their characters and the staging together, and that openness to each other makes for performances of great intensity and emotional directness. It helps, too, that TUNDI works with a core of regulars, almost like a repertory theater; in this season, for example, King Mark in Tristan and Daland in The Flying Dutchman were sung by the same person. The trust the singer-actors have built over years of working together allows them to perform with a high degree of spontaneity. None of that would matter if the musical side were slipshod or amateur, but it does matter because everyone, from Hugh as conductor to the singers to the ever improving orchestra are fully up to Wagner's demands. Perhaps it's groups like TUNDI that are really carrying on the Wagnerian tradition.