Siegfried

by Richard Wagner

seen at the royal Festival Hall on 1 July 2016

Opera North's semi-staged semi-concert production of Der Ring des Niblungen is performed in one cycle in London this week. Richard Farnes conducts the Opera North Orchestra throughout the cycle which is staged and lit by Peter Mumford. For the 'second day' of Siegfried the cast comprised Richard Roberts as Mime, Lars Cleveman as Siegfried, Béla Perencz as the Wanderer, Jo Pohlheim as Alberich, Mats Almgren as Fafnir, Jeni Bern as the Woodbird, Ceri Williams as Erda and Kelly Cae Morgan as Brünnhilde.

Once again musically this was an extremely satisfying evening, with the orchestra continuing its high standards of performance and the soloists giving rich and powerful interpretations of their parts. Jo Pohlheim and Richard Roberts repeated their roles from Das Rheingold and confirmed their stature as respectively a power-hungry and a self-pitying pair of brothers; here Alberich once again had to contend with both his brother Mime and with Wotan now disguised as the Wanderer, but most of Mime's energies were spent on the intractable problem of bringing up Siegfried and forging a sword for him. Mats Almgrem was Fafnir once again, menacingly growling off-stage for much of the time, but returning onstage for his death scene.

Siegfried was a new character of course, and Lars Cleveman sang for the most part convincingly as an untamed adolescent, though it was noticeable that the demands of the role were telling visibly towards the end (perhaps only obvious at close quarters). Béla Perencz was the third Wotan singer of the cycle, and provided warm tones and a good mixture of wry amusement and weary resignation, goaded into a last spasm of anger when confronted with his obstreperous grandson. But, like the other singers of the role, he was not really a commanding presence, which further underlined the ambiguities of his position - the leader of the gods utterly trapped  by his own rules and the circumstances for which they were plainly not adequate. (The resonances with the political situation in Britain this weak were all too plain to see.)

Kelly Cae Hogan was a rapturous Brünnhilde. In order to manage the exposed nature of the semi-staged performance, she entered slowly and then the Wanderer turned to her in surprise and repeated the gesture of punishment from the end of Die Walküre at which point she fell asleep on the floor once more. But her subsequent awakening and return to life with all its complexities and apparent humiliations was very well done. The final ecstatic embrace of the two lovers brought the evening to a fitting conclusion.

The video screens were less effective through becoming slightly monotonous again. There was too much use of fire in a way which linked the forge of the first act too closely to the magic fire in the third; once again there was a stream waiting to run red with blood (Fafnir's), and the intimation of the dragon shape was too vague to be threatening. All in all, the projections fail to be immersive, though their presence does allow for some visual relief from staring at the concert stage. and they probably assist subliminally in the general style of presentation.