'Siegfried' at the movies.

Barry Kosky’s production of Wagner’s ‘Siegfried’ at the Royal Opera House has received such a long series of adulatory reviews that it has become the hottest opera ticket in Britain, if not in Europe. Sadly, our budget did not stretch to forking out £500 a ticket to experience this in the flesh so my wife and I braved the dubious pleasures of central Croydon on an early Tuesday evening and headed to Grants Vue Cinema for a live relay. These tickets (£22.99 a pop) proved less than sought after. After a gloomy fifteen minutes alone in ‘Film 3’, we were joined by seven other opera lovers. The friendly duty manager distributed programmes, checked the sound level suited us, and we were off on out five hour Wagnerfest.

It is important to stress that we were watching a production conceived for the stage. This was directed for the screen by Peter Jones but his options were plainly limited, so if I express reservations (which I shall), these should be taken in context.

One overwhelming positive element was the wonderful sound quality and the fantastic orchestral performance conducted by Antonio Pappano. It was also exciting to see this big screen performance. We were really close to the action, even if this has its drawbacks. These drawbacks mainly centred around the use of close-ups. I suppose these were inevitable, although I’d like to attend another cinema performance where we had a view of the entire stage, as would be the case if we attended in person. The issue with close-ups is that these singers were acting on stage in a large auditorium and this exposure on the big screen could be merciless. The chief victim here was German tenor Andreas Shager as Siegfried. This is, in many ways an impossible role. Vocally it is extraordinarily taxing and very few tenors can last the course. In addition, Siegfried is supposed to be a young man, still a teenager, and you just don’t get helden-tenors of that age. Shager started singing Wagner roles when he was in his early thirties and he is now fifty one. From a distance, to misquote the Judge from ‘Trial By Jury’, ‘he might very well pass for forty three, in the dusk with the light behind him’ but close up he was distinctly unconvincing, not least because he bore a passing resemblance to Ken Dodd.This is not to say he was lacking in commitment but he is not a subtle enough actor to make the faux naif antics he was required to perform seem other than risible. Now, of course, from the ROH audience point of view his acting performance would have been far more acceptable, and anyway, it’s his singing that is the crucial element here. Shager certainly sang all of Siegfried’s notes (no mean feat in itself) and he did so tirelessly, with mainly ringing tone, but at this stage of his career he can no longer command the pianissimo sweetness required for his musings about his mother in the ‘Forest Murmurs’ scene of Act 2. This seems to me a fairly major flaw, but it is only fair to report he received a rapturous reception at his curtain call and audience members have told me the effect of his singing in the theatre was overwhelming. In any event, Herr Shager is singing Wagner roles all over the world in major theatres for huge fees, so is unlikely to worry about what I think.

Having said that, three of his colleagues demonstrated that it is possible to give total performances that satisfy the demands of stage and screen. The foremost of these was Peter Hoare as Mime. Resembling the older Steptoe in ‘Steptoe and Son’, Hoare was wonderfully repellent, scratching himself, spitting, urinating and gurning, sometimes all at the same time. This was a consummate characterisation, incisively and pungently sung. Christopher Maltman was also fully inside his character, clearly embodying the mixture of arrogance, fatalism and great heartedness that gives the Wotan Wanderer his special appeal. He sang beautifully, with rich, firm tone, powerful and lyrical by turns. Elisabet Strid was an assured Brunnhilde, but lacked individuality. Christopher Purves is always a compelling stage presence and his Alberich was a dynamic but subtle portrayal. Unfortunately, he is also vocally idiosyncratic and I found his raw, very ‘open’ tone far from ideal. I feel that a darker, more grounded voice is required. Soloman Howard was suitably saturnine as Fafner, Wiebke Lehmkuhl a rich voiced Erda and Sarah Dufresne an ideal Woodbird.

Which leaves the vexed question of Illona Linthwaite as the naked, silent Erda. At least, that is one of her roles. She also becomes the Woodbird, lip-syncing (none too successfully) with Dufresne singing off stage, and, in an arresting dramatic moment, a literal Earth Mother, giving birth to the singing version of herself. Much has been made of the fact that this octogenarian actor is naked throughout. Close-ups reinforced admiration for Linthwaite’s selfless dignity, but also increased my bemusement as to what her purpose was meant to be. She is certainly part of the action, but her reaction to this is often muted, her expression benign but bland, as cataclysmic events unfold.

Her presence was one of several aspects of this production which troubled me. To begin with, why replace the ring of fire surrounding Brunnhilde with a flower meadow? Siegfried’s removal of Brunnhilde’s helmet and breastplate is represented by his picking some of these flowers, which just looked silly. In Act 1, when Siegfried considers whom his parents might be, he mimes a curvy female shape – but he’s never seen a woman, so how does he know what they look like? His discovery of the difference between men and women in Act 3 when he wakes Brunnhilde (to begin with, women have breasts which prompts the astonished and appalled cry ‘Das ist kein mann!’ –‘That’s not a man!’) is one of the reasons he learns to fear. Act 2 is set by Wagner in the depths of a forest. The song of the Woodbird, the linden tree and ‘forest murmurs’ suggests it’s spring or early summer. Kosky and his designer Rufus Didwiszus set this Act in a desolate, snowy landscape. Fafner’s cave is a bungalow. Neither change is revelatory, and while getting snow to fall for eighty minutes without pause is an impressive technical feat this particular biodegradable snow doesn’t make snowballs, so Siegfried attempting to throw a couple is risible. On a more general level, Kosky’s direction of stage movement can be clumsy. When the Wanderer confronts Siegfried in Act 3 there is a good deal of aimless criss-crossing of the stage by both characters to no clear purpose, while in their final duet, Siegfried and Brunnhilde rely a lot on child-like spinning and gesticulating, which is simply embarrassing. The close-up of Brunnhilde's French manicure as she wakes from her long sleep was unfortunate.

To be fair, there are some really impressive moments. I have mentioned Erda’s ‘birth’, and in Act 1, Mime’s visceral depiction of Sieglinde’s birth pangs with Siegfried sitting between his legs is even more powerful. There is another wonderful moment in Act 1 where Wanderer/Wotan, visiting Mime, licks some spilled soup from his fingers. Maltman suggests superbly the god’s nostalgic yearning for a human existence he once shared with Sieglinde, Siegmund and their mother. I was also extremely moved by the very end of the opera where the fifty year old Strid gamely races towards fifty-one-year-old Schager, leaps into his arms and wraps her legs around his waist. Go girl!!

These are my thoughts. I must again stress they are reaction to a ‘filmed for cinema’ version of a stage production of the least eventful opera in ‘The Ring’ cycle. Despite my reservations, I was gripped over the entire five hours, and send sincere thanks and admiration to all concerned.…