At the 1976 premiere of the Bayreuth centenary production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, there came a moment when Donald McIntyre, playing the part of Wotan, ruler of the gods, turned, in the second act of Die Walküre, to look into a full-length drawing-room mirror. While he whispered his innermost thoughts to his reflection as though scrutinising his own soul, the stillness in the Festspielhaus was breathtaking.
It was one of the great coups de théâtre of the iconoclastic director Patrice Chéreau, and McIntyre carried it off with aplomb. With his leonine physique, commanding stage presence and renowned abilities as a singer-actor, he was able to realise Chéreau’s concept of Wotan as a fallible, compromised worldly ruler rather than a supernatural being worthy of glorification.
