A fine cast, superbly conducted – just don’t overthink the production: Royal Opera’s Lohengrin reviewed

To be a Wagnerite is to enter the theatre in a state of paranoia. Mainstream culture has decided that Wagner was uniquely wicked; that’s just how it is, and it’s futile to retort that we seem comparatively relaxed about, say, Richard Strauss’s membership of the Reichsmusikkammer, or Stravinsky’s post-1945 anti-Semitism. Or that within recent memory Prokofiev’s October Cantata was presented in the UK as a bit of kitschy fun. (Never mind the dead kulaks: enjoy those accordions!) True, Wagner was an immeasurably greater artist, so he should be held to higher standards. No quarrel with that, at least not here and not now. But it does mean that in any given production of a Wagner opera, you sit waiting to be clobbered with totalitarian symbolism as the director reaffirms that the man who created this artwork was Literally Hitler.

So, the swan monument that towers over Act Two of David Alden’s production of Lohengrin – is that simply generic neoclassical bombast? Because it does look awfully like Albert Speer.