Wagner’s Siegfried ; Mahler’s Resurrection
I: The new Covent Garden “Siegfried”
Wagner’s “Siegfried”, third work of his “Ring” Cycle, can be considered an opera about boys with toys. The gold! The sword! The Ring! The Tarnhelm! The spear! Enough already of men and power? In “Siegfried”, even than in the three other operas of Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle, men – especially brothers – are at odds with one another, struggling for power, ultimately for world domination.
Barry Kosky’s marvellous new production at Covent Garden shows that there are women in “Siegfried”. A naked earth-mother figure, Erda, keeps returning in various guises to the stage, sometimes with an alter ego who sings for her. It also shows that this opera includes pathos and vulnerability, not least among its male characters. And it shows that at least three of the main characters – Siegfried himself, the Wanderer or the disguised god Wotan, and the awakened ex-Valkyrie Brünnhilde – keep asking questions that show their need to gain a fuller understanding of both themselves and the world.
Of the six “Siegfried” productions I’ve seen over fifty years, this is the finest. Although not perfect, it’s alive in many details. And, in wonderful ways, it’s musically responsive. Siegfried, the most abundantly energetic character, sometimes even dances to the music, as when he bursts into an exuberant waltz with a coat in Act One. The awakened Brűnnhilde, rejoicing in nature and the hero who has woken her, gambols impulsively in the meadow. In traditional productions, the Woodbird is heard but not seen; here she is visible (at least to us) – she, as one of the manifestations of Erda, is a feminine and natural presence whom the power-obsessed Alberich and Mime never see but whom the naturally sensitive Siegfried soon senses, sees, hears, and befriends.
Kosky’s whole production reminds me that, before I discovered the wonders of good or great theatrical dance, opera had already introduced me to how enchanting the correspondence between music and staged action can be. (Alas, I subsequently learned how many operas seem to have been staged by the deaf.) Rare among Wagner productions, this “Siegfried” is one where performers and music seem physically connected. This is true even when the characters remain motionless: you see how they listen to each other and to the world onstage, and how they take time to reflect.
The production lives, above all, in the central performance given by the Austrian tenor Andras Schager in the title role. This is his Covent Garden debut. His energy – vocal and physical – is exuberant; his voice is huge and handsome; his stamina is abundant;! his stage behaviour is open, expansive, and free.
My only cavil about him is one that applies to most of the cast. When singing sustained notes in the middle parts of their voices, they employ a slowish, spreading vibrato that somewhat spoils the musical line. As Brünnhilde, Elisabet Strid is the most tremulous of the cast, but even she never sounds or looks inhibited: her voice and her physical manners are bright. But every singer is so well supported by the conducting of Antonio Pappano that they all sound expressive, buoyant, varied. Diction is excellent: Peter Hoare as Mime, Christopher Maltman, Christopher Purves, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Soloman Howard as Fafner, Sarah Dufrensne as the Woodbird all combine striking vocal presence, admirable verbal clarity, and serious musical eloquence. Orchestral playing is intense, alert, full of varied colours.
In the wintry world of Act One – sets are designed by Rufus Didwiszus – the dwarf Mime is at odds with nature. He has constructed a feeble hut in the upper branches of a tree; his forge is hilariously Heath Robinson. In Act Two, the giant Fafner dwells on a hillside in a modern cottage. Its lack of windows and his own attire – as costumed by Victoria Behr, he’s encrusted with bling – show his complete indifference to the nature. But Siegfried, always at one with the larger world, has a beautiful sequence when he, outside Fafner’s home, stands still in the moonlight, at peace with the elements.
The opera’s action passes from winter (snow on the ground in Acts One and Two) to spring. The meadowful of bright wild flowers in the final scene is a stunning image of colour and bloom that enraptures both Siegfried and Brünnhilde.
The production has some obvious problems. Why, in particular, does the Wanderer have both his eyes and not use the brimmed hat that’s described? And surely his epic confrontation with his grandson Siegfried surely deserves to be staged as something more memorable than a scene-change. Even so, this is a gloriously vivid production, wonderfully alive at every moment.
II: Kent Nagano conducts Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony
The Indian young woman sitting beside me at the Royal Festival Hall on Thursday 19 was excited before the concert began. This was only her third experience of live classical music. She knew nothing of Mahler (Kent Nagano was about to conduct Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony), nothing of London’s orchestras (we spent some time disentangling the Philharmonia from the London Philharmonic), and nothing of Hildegard von Bingen, one of whose anthems (“O vis arternitatis”) was sung immediately before the symphony. But she listened and watched with a rapt fascination seldom to be found among connoisseurs. The concert was a sellout: she knew her luck in obtaining a ticket at short notice.
Such neighbours confer a special aura on a concert. She made me all the more keenly aware how Mahler builds music here from extreme opposites – from soloists playing pianissimo contrasted with the whole band playing full blast, from flowing evocations of the timeless sublime to the tightly rhythmic accentuation of marches and dances, from one human voice to many, from a few brass instruments playing offstage to the contributions of solo and massed singers. And Nagano maximised every contrast in Mahler’s score, in terms of speed as well as volume. This, though at moments verging on exaggeration, was an always exciting account of the symphony. Hildegard of Bingen’s twelfth-century anthem led straight into the symphony: it was remarkable to find Mahler seemed to continue its thoughts. There are works of art that make us keenly aware of different planes of existence and of thought: this performance showed how the Resurrection Symphony contains worlds within worlds.
@Alastair Macaulay 2026