On a bad day, Wagner’s Siegfried can degenerate into a series of overly wordy dialogues between characters in whom one fails to become emotionally invested. At Covent Garden last night, Barrie Kosky, Sir Antonio Pappano and their forces were not having a bad day.
It’s a measure of the acting qualities of the singers and Kosky’s ability to direct them that not only was every interaction gripping, but that each revealed the psychology between its two protagonists in new and interesting ways. Starting with Peter Hoare as Mime and Andreas Schager as Siegfried and Mime: although the pair heartily loathe each other, the loathing is mixed with an intimacy born of their years together that their mutual hatred can’t quite erase. Hoare was the very incarnation of incompetent malice, but for all that, we know how the dwarf became what he is and we cannot suppress a level of empathy. Schager, for his part, plays Siegfried neither as the brute nor the simpleton that we often see, but as an unstoppable force of optimism that never falters through the whole opera.
More telling still, in the context of the Ring cycle as a whole, are Wotan’s (aka the Wanderer’s) dialogues with the Nibelungs. Christopher Maltman’s Wotan is going to seed (as Victoria Behr’s costume cleverly emphasises) but he is in desperate denial of this and Maltman deploys the full force and nuance of a superb bass-baritone to bluster and project authority – he thrills in his ability to trick the dwarves, neither of whom, unlike Fricka in Die Walküre, can call him out – and then becomes a sad and lost figure indeed when the bluster hopelessly fails with Siegfried. Christopher Purves projected obdurate evil as Alberich, unable to get the better of Wotan but confident that he can bide his time and win in the end. Only the Act 3 duet between Maltman and Wiebke Lehmkuhl’s Erda didn’t quite fire on all cylinders, with us being informed that Lehmkuhl was singing in spite of being unwell.
The same feeling of discovering new things in the opera was engendered by Pappano and an Orchestra of the Royal Opera House at the very top of their game. Among many individual highlights, I was taken aback by the depth of orchestral anguish when Mime realises that Siegfried is about to return to find Nothung still unmade. In the relation of Sieglinde’s death in childbirth, both the music and Hoare’s miming of the event were harrowing. Pappano’s balance and timing was perfection: instruments could be heard as brightly and colourfully as you could wish for, and yet we had no difficulty in hearing the singers, even with heavy brass interventions nearby. Tempi never felt rushed even when passages like the preludes to Acts 1 and 3 were building up to enormous climaxes.
Unlike previous episodes, Kosky and set designer Rufus Didwizus opt for very different sets in each act. Mime’s hut is worthy of Baba Yaga, on stilts high above the stage: his steel forgemaster’s helmet serves as anvil for that famous Nibelung pounding rhythm. The forge is a magnificent concoction of pulleys, wheels and steam boilers: Heath Robinson with added steampunk. In a proper coup de théâtre, when Schager pulls Nothung triumphantly from the forge, one gets the distinct impression that the sword has grown since Walküre – it’s now a fully fledged shining medieval broadsword (although I do wish that opera singers would stop grasping magic weapons by their supposedly razor-sharp edges).
Fafner’s lair is in a dark snowbound landscape, Soloman Howard’s costume dazzling with spikes and gold. In Act 3, Brünnhilde’s rock has turned into a dazzling meadow, evoking Wotan’s hope that Siegfried and Brünnhilde’s love will bring redemption and regeneration to the world, the first point of sunlit brilliance so far in the cycle. Five hours into the opera, Schager’s energy levels were undimmed, and Elisabeth Strid gave us gorgeous, peaches-and-cream tone while giving the most sympathetic and credible rendering I’ve ever heard of Brünnhilde’s joy at waking up to her beloved inseparably mixed with horror at the loss of the immortal powers of which she has been stripped. This is a Brünnhilde as wonderfully far as you can get from the stereotypical Brünnhilde with over-stretched voice and horned helmet.
Not everything worked. The fight direction between Siegfried and Fafner was mundane, and Kosky’s use of “Old Erda”, the constant presence of an elderly, naked woman (actor Illona Linthwaite), felt forced and not as consequential as earlier in the cycle, although it allowed for another coup de théâtre as Lehmkuhl emerged from the voluminous folds of the (briefly non-naked) Old Erda’s gown.
But cavils aside, the revelatory orchestral performance and in the characterisation of the singers make this a Siegfried for the record books. There aren’t many tickets, but try and bag a return.
