When Music and Staging Click

LONDON—Like his stagings of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, Barrie Kosky's new Royal Ballet and Opera Siegfried is rooted in the natural world. But this third instalment—seen at its March 17 premiere—was different. A lightness of touch, in both Kosky’s direction and Antonio Pappano’s featherlight way with the music, saw a newfound sense of joy creeping into Wagner’s tetralogy, with more than a hint of make-believe. Only some spotty singing here and there marred an otherwise outstanding evening.

Presiding over it all, as previously, was the Earth goddess, Erda, played with hypnotic presence by Illona Linthwaite. A frail old woman, she was both vulnerable in her nakedness yet somehow comforting as she watched over Siegfried, himself a child of nature. Rufus Didwiszus’s charred trees were inspired by the devastating effects of the Australian bush fire season, but though Erda was still struggling to make sense of what has happened to her planet, Kosky signaled a change of mood from the outset. As the curtain rose, we saw the old lady’s feet dangling in midair before the rest appeared, carelessly rocking on a swing.

Andreas Schager as Siegfried, forging his sword 

In this children’s playground, Mime and his foster charge live in a tree house. The grizzle-haired dwarf appeared clad in tin hat and dressing gown over a tatty old dress that looked ominously as if it might have been stripped from the body of Sieglinde. Yes, as he grumbles, he is Siegfried’s “father and mother in one.” Kosky, always sharp at comedy, brought a touch of Laurel and Hardy slapstick to their relationship, with Siegfried less violent and more playful towards the old scamp than usual. It was an effective way to take the unpleasant edge off the young boy’s hectoring behavior. Act one culminated in a glorious Rube Goldberg contraption complete with moving parts that facilitated a forging scene where theatrical sparks flew left, right, and center.

Victoria Behr’s costumes embraced a kind of timeless grunge, with Mime, Siegfried, and the Wanderer looking as if they had limited access to laundry (which, of course is the case). Later, Alberich appeared in a coal-black hoodie, Fafner—in a coup-de-théâtre—wore a dazzling, multi-spined gold suit, and Brünhilde a simple floral-patterned summery dress in pale blue. Alessandro Carletti’s lighting was wonderfully atmospheric throughout.

Act two was set in a snowy landscape with the air of an Edward Hopper painting about it. There was a bench, a lamppost, and Fafner’s house lit up in the background. Siegfried, of course, saw it simply as another playground, making angels in the snow and filling Mime’s helmet with handfuls of the white stuff. Instead of a mountaintop, the final scene took place around the burnt-out tree familiar from Die Walküre. The earth was carpeted in a lush field of flowers from beneath which Brünnhilde emerged limb by limb: a striking visual, suggesting nature’s endless power of renewal.

Solomon Howard as Fafner and Schager as Siegfried duelling in the snowy landscape

The cast was dominated by the indefatigable Siegfried of Andreas Schager. Singing with superhuman strength and stamina, his bronzed tenor rang out over forging scene and magic fire alike with plenty to spare for the gruelling final love scene. Physically irrepressible, he managed to be both naïve and endearing, a scatterbrained boy hurtling towards his destiny who never walks when he can run or skip. Given that Schager has turned 50, the convincing portrayal of an adolescent was a credit to both himself and Kosky.

Peter Hoare’s weaselly toned Mime was a fine foil, cunning, bumbling, and deadly all at once. The comedy was nicely finessed, whether belaboring himself about the head for being unable to re-forge the sword or squeezing whatever juice he could get out of a rat into his poisonous stew pot. Occasionally hard to hear, he tended to overemphasise words and notes to compensate.

As the Wanderer, Christopher Maltman crowned what must be counted the cycle’s standout performance to date. Dressed in a shabby coat with lank hair, he nevertheless gave off an air of always being one step ahead of everyone else, until, of course, it all goes pear-shaped. Casually offering Alberich a bag of crisps, he seemed at times to be channelling Gary Oldman in the TV series Slow Horses. Vocally, his chocolate baritone rode the mighty swells of Act three. Not only was his singing refreshingly lyrical, his attention to text was exceptional, especially in the deftly played conversations with Christopher Purves’s Alberich.

For his part, Purves offered a convincing portrait of a twitchy, restless man eaten up with bitterness and clearly still a threat to the world’s future. Snapping and snarling, he got away with a great deal but there was no ignoring the fact that the top notes were hoarse.

As in Die Walküre, Elisabet Strid did much that was right as Brünnhilde, capturing her awakening joy and sudden realization of defenselessness. Vocally she was secure, with a bright top and fine diction. The voice, however, lacks amplitude, and although she was always audible, Schager’s tenor felt several sizes bigger.

In the smaller roles, Solomon Howard was a sonorous Fafner, a gilded, skull-faced hulk in a bling-encrusted suit who countered Siegfried’s sword with a pair of golden walking sticks. Wiebke Lehmkuhl’s Erda, a younger Earth mother birthed from under the voluminous skirts of her older self, sang with considerable heft and a deliciously warm contralto. Scattering a handful of feathers, the elderly Erda also acted the wood bird, though sung with pristine diction from offstage by former Musical America new artist Sarah Dufresne.

In the pit, Pappano led a detailed, organic reading of the score that inevitably felt just right while paying scrupulous attention to his singers’ needs. Whether conjuring the brooding evil of Acts one and two, or the heady joy of Act three, he coaxed a fine performance from the Royal Ballet and Opera Orchestra. Best of all was the sense of musical direction going hand-in-hand with stage direction, not always the case in modern Ring cycles. It’s another reason this Kosky production stands out, whetting the appetite for next season’s Götterdämmerung.

Above: Elisabet Strid Brünnhilde

_{Photos by Monika Rittershaus}