Part 3! Siegfried can be a tricky opera for any company to pull off for there are many issues and pre-conceptions to surmount: huge demands on the singer of the title role, the male-voice dominance in the first 2 acts, how one manages the sword forging, a dragon, a chattery bird, the change in compositional style between Act 2 and 3, a god arguing with a primeval goddess, fire surrounded rocks, and an extended ‘sleeping beauty’-like awakening of the heroine is just for starters.
When the performance starts with announcement that your eponymous hero is suffering from a cold you have even more expectations to exceed. For a company with limited resource this is more than a demanding wish-list – replacement Siegfrieds don’t grow on trees, certainly not in Wagnerian forests. Such it was here. We need not have worried. With a staging full of further interesting ideas and theatrical daring and a ‘go for it’ attitude within the performing ensemble the presentation was again full of thrill.
Peter Furlong’s energy as Siegfried was seemingly inexhaustible. He slayed it – as his ‘Slayer’ T-shirt promised he would. The voice is pleasantly baritonal, its heroic upper register suitably heroic, and all is coupled with a strong dramatic sense. This Siegfried isn’t always likeable, but the characterisation was keen, illuminative and, in the final assessment, very impressive. Siegfried’s curious mix of emotional simplicity and strong convictions is well enacted. In Act 1 it is the Mime who interacts with the other two characters. Throughout the performance Holden Madagame’s Mime skilfully acted and implied the character’s split-personality traits well. This Mime is devious, malign, possibly lonely, power-hungry yet absurd. To keep the audience with you on that path is a skill! Vocally Madagame used a light, whiny tone that cleverly toed the line between interesting and annoying. He seemed to tire vocally at the end of the first act but rallied well thereafter. Ralf Lukas’s Wanderer (Wotan) was surprising and a total contrast to his appearances in the previous two operas. His initial entry as an itinerant electrician come to fix Mime’s malfunctioning standard lamp provides an amusing and witty touch. He sings with suavity and grandeur; and his portrayal of the meddlesome god, now mostly at genial ease with his impending demise is compelling. Yet the final act encounters with Erda and then Siegfried showed more than vestigial desire to assert his former authority over events. At curtain-call his performance was greeted with a much-deserved ovation.
Oliver Gibbs’ Alberich was a good foil to Lukas in Act 2. The Nibelung’s latent anger, greed and sense of betrayal was palpable in Gibbs’ trenchant singing. Craig Lemont Walters was a terrific Fafner. Dressed in a golden sequin suit (Fafner wearing his hoard) he oozed malevolence and hunger for flesh with his leering and drooling. He emerged from his grotto singing with ample cavernous tone. In this staging Fafner uses the Tarnhelm to emerge as a Sieglinde-like mother figure to entrap Siegfried in the fight, and then when stabbed morphed into a nappied neonate dying in Siegfried’s cradling arms. There’s inventiveness.
The art-gallery theme continued obviously in Act 2. We were at a private view, the Woodbird as a professionally welcoming hostess (she clearly didn’t think Mime should have been admitted!). Invitees have a glass of wine or two and look at the exhibits on screen whilst conversing….
The title of the exhibition seems to be ‘Alles ist nach seiner Art’ (loose translation: All things go their appointed way); the words that Wotan sings to Alberich as they finally part in the act. The screens display slo-mo films of fruits decaying and then perhaps going through their life cycle again. Curiously images of Sieglinde make an appearance in the flow of clips. The fire-extinguisher reappeared too. Of course, Fafner’s death has been predicted by the curse on the ring – and so it proves. When finally given words and a vocal line Corinne Hart sang the woodbird’s advice and cautions with delicate aplomb.
Act 3 was momentous, taking the performance to another level. Mae Heydorn’s lavishly sung Erda, with impressively powerful servings of chest voice below the stave, was as oracular an Earth-Goddess as one could hope for making the Wotan Erda encounter compelling. At this juncture Wagner’s orchestration inhabits his post-Tristan and Mesitersinger phase and is more fulsome and complex than hitherto. Ben Woodward’s orchestration and conducting meet this pivotal moment head on in terms of richness and dynamic. His players once again gave of their all – woodwind contributions through the evening were full of exuberance and the horns were having a field day.
The final scene finds Siegfried in an untied straitjacket being led to a white enclosure, with gauze curtains surrounding and within it to release Brünnhilde and an off-stage Grane from their magical sleeps. The Siegfried Brünnhilde part is the highest set of her three appearances in the ring operas and Catharine Woodward’s awoke/arose to the occasion radiantly. The now mortal ex-Valkyrie expresses the emotions of renewal, anxiety, remorse, fear, love and finally abandon in this scene; all were evinced with sincere conviction. Peter Furlong’s tireless Siegfried was still fresh and as his high notes glinted Woodward’s gleamed right to the exhilarating end.
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