Riddle games. Sword-forging. Dragon-slaying. The set piece tropes in Siegfried are so familiar to us, like a comfortable old coat, that it’s easy to miss a more subtle theme: at this point of the Ring cycle, each of the main characters is forced into acceptance of the changes that will befall them. Mime accepts that he cannot forge the sword, Fafner accepts his death and the foolishness of his cupidity for the ring, Brünnhilde and Siegfried understand that their love changes everything.
Last night at Müpa, the outstanding set piece was the riddle game. When Mime makes the unfortunate choice of asking the Wanderer which race lives above the clouds, Tomasz Konieczny steps forward, plants his spear firmly on the stage and turns on the bass-baritone afterburners to declaim “the Gods”, revealing himself as Wotan in his full majesty; his tones power through the orchestral brass playing the Valhalla leitmotif. It was a thrill to remember, one of those enthralling moments that keep opera lovers hooked on their drug and coming back for more.
Gerhard Siegel can perform Mime in many ways. I’ve seen him do the hapless comic fall guy in Paris and a figure of tragic pathos at Covent Garden. Last night, he produced a synthesis of these two things that was nothing short of spellbinding, both as a piece of acting and in his use of the voice. Rattling semiquavers emphasised the comic aspects. He produced perfect legato and warmth of timbre for his despair at the impossibility of forging Nothung. When it came to the dwarf’s bombastic moments of hope for world domination, his power was not so far short of Konieczny’s.
The title role of Siegfried is the most difficult in the whole Ring cycle, partly because of its extreme vocal demands, but also because it’s so hard to make us view the man as anything other than a violent spoilt brat. Stefan Vinke solves the problem by simple dint of digging into boundless reserves of enthusiasm: he is an irresistible life force when set against the dark, brooding nature of the characters around him.
Dark and brooding, that is, until he awakens Brünnhilde from her rock in Act 3. Allison Oakes has received many plaudits in these pages as Gutrune and she excelled in the larger role: there is a depth and warmth to the middle register of her voice that makes her compelling in her outpouring of passion. In this very long duet, she gave a particularly fine exposition of the ebb and flow of her emotions as she veers from dazed and barely awake to passionately in love to blind terror at losing the divine authority that was once hers. The voice can harden up in the high notes, but there aren’t too many of those in Siegfried and they were safely negotiated.