Siegfried at the Proms

Siegfried (concert performance) - Royal Albert Hall, 26 July 2013

Siegfried is an oddity. It's most people's least favourite Ring opera; the only one of Barenboim's Proms cycle not to sell out instantly. Yet most conductors seem to find it the easiest to realise musically, and it often turns out to be the best performance in any cycle.

Last night was the third time I've heard Barenboim conduct it this year. The Royal Albert Hall's atrocious acoustic makes comparisons with the Schiller Theatre and La Scala unfair, but the Staatskapelle Berlin - in full formal concert dress - did a magnificent job in the sweltering heat.

Barenboim took a while to get into his stride. The broad comedy of the first act perhaps comes less naturally to him. Perhaps the tremendous ovations helped - against the odds he seemed to get more and more invigorated as the night wore on.

A Siegfried needs a Siegfried of course. While Lance Ryan doesn't measure up to the superhuman demands of the role, it's fair to say nobody else does currently either. That's why he's so in demand all over Europe - next week Bayreuth.

His main asset is his tireless performance. It comes at the expense of tonal beauty. His voice is big, but not huge, and he projects it with a narrow, pinched tone that sounded too close for comfort to Peter Bronder's superb Mime. I've seen Ryan in a few stagings now, and he's able to adapt to any director's conception of the role. For this performance he was the sulky teenage bad boy of the Guy Cassiers Berlin/Milan production. Whatever the vocal quibbles, he's an indefatigable and inventive actor, and you never doubt for a moment Siegfried's youth and vitality.

In the staged version, he met his match in Irene Theorin's Brünnhilde.  At the Proms, Nina Stemme seemed temperamentally unable to conjure up the sheer excitement of Theorin's Amazon warrior. Every note was beautiful though, full and warm and feminine. Anna Larsson's deliciously plummy Erda was her only rival for vocal loveliness.  Terje Stensvold's Wanderer, Johannes Martin Kränzle's Alberich and Rinnat Moriah's Woodbird were all serviceable. But it was left to Eric Halfvarson (Fafner), booming balefully from the organ loft, to remind us what a truly great Wagnerian performance is all about.

 

Comments

[Tinkerbelle]

Thank you IM for all this Wagner news! I am listening to the Proms Ring on the radio, having just done the Paris and Longborough Rings, I am wrung out!

[Oroveso]

I've been seeing RINGS for close to 50 years and have never seen/heard a truly satisfactory Siegfried in SIEGFRIED. In the last century Melchior may have been the only one to easily manage (at least) the vocal demands. You are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, too often the line between how Siegfried and Mime sound is uncomfortable, similar & blurred.

[Tinkerbelle]

Daniel Brenna was marvellous in Siegfried at Longborough in 2011. Young and fresh, he sang out and had the advantage of a small, intimate space.

He is doing Siegfried in Gotterdammerung for Opera North in 2014. Will be interesting to see what has happened to his voice.

[Emil Archambault]

Stephen Gould was exemplary in the Bayerische Staatsoper Ring.

[SJT]

And Alberto Remedios was a tirelessly sung, beautiful-sounding Siegfried for ENO for many, many years, on whose performance I effectively learned the part.

Vickers never sang it, of course: and neither will Kaufmann. So the very people who could, don't: or at least might, but won't. So we're left with the "nothing-to-lose"rs, not an ideal situation. Wagner's own fault, of course, as he himself came to realise, too late to do anything about it (other than not repeat the same mistake in Parsifal).

[Edoardo]

Your reviewer states "At the Proms, Nina Stemme seemed temperamentally unable to conjure up the sheer excitement of Theorin's Amazon warrior. Every note was beautiful though, full and warm and feminine." I thought the whole point of Die Walkure Act 3 was that Wotan took away the warrior-like qualities of his daughter. She is put to sleep and awakes as a vulnerable, mortal woman. Yes, Stemme sang it that way, and wonderfully too.

[SJT]

Oh ho! You obviously never heard the hair-raising Gabriele Schnaut "sing" the role at the Met, sounding like a fishwife in a fury with throat cancer at having been woken.....

Or Eva Marton in Vienna, pretty much ditto.

[Oroveso]

@SJT: I thought I read an interview with Jonas Kaufmann (and of course I cannot now find any evidence of it online) that he WOULD be tackling (onstage) the heavier Wagner roles: both Siegfried’s, Tristan, and I believe Tannhauser. Maybe I’m having a vecchio moment but I’m pretty sure I read it. Of course announcing or talking about isn’t actually performing. Vickers dithered around with Tannhauser then opted out, never really seriously considered the Siegfrieds and took his sweet time getting to Tristan. The Tristan was worth the wait.

[SJT]

This would be the same Kaufmann speaking who signed up for Aeneas in London, Milan, San Francisco and Vienna. We're all still waiting....

[amac]

I can see myself in the picture of the arena ! Near where i am now waiting for Gotterdammerung to start!

[Oroveso]

I'm hip. And not holding my breath.

[Desdemona]

What an amazing silence at they'd of G! Why can't it always be like that?!

[Devil's Trill]

One of the great frustrations of the RAH is the variability of the acoustics. Sad to hear that it sounded poor from where you were, but on all four evenings my effort of standing through the whole bloody thing was rewarded with the most magnificent acoustic imaginable. I got pretty far forwards on three of the four evenings and the orchestra and singers sounded wonderful - far better tha I've ever heard the sound in a theatre. Admittedly, I've not been to that many opera houses. Knowing the RAH, though, had I taken a few steps to the left or the right, it would have sounded like a performance in a portaloo.

[amac]

Absolutely sublime -total silence. To be fair it does happen after other pieces but you do need a proper crowd in.

The thing was absolutely stunning - someone was trying to flog a Bayreuth Cycle outside the hall last night. Could not help thinking this Cycle was probably far superior !

[manou]

For those (like us) who left too early on Sunday, here is Barenboim

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01ddfdr

turn the volume up as much as possible!

[Jonnie Ash]

And of course Remedios' assumption of the role in both "Siegfried" and "Twilight" (and of course his wonderful Siegmund in "Walkure") and can still be heard on the Chandos recording of the Reginald Goodall Ring. A wonderful performance!

[Richard Carter]

Thank you for that, Manou, it's lovely to hear it again, including one or two things he said that I couldn't quite hear. And his thanks (and the applause) at the end for the orchestra's leader brought tears to the eyes. A great end to a truly wonderful occasion!

[Richard Carter]

It really was, almost half a minute of total, stunning silence - and then a terrific roar. I wish the audiences at the Met would be forced to listen to that ending before they're allowed to go to any more Wagner: their habit of applauding before the music ends is absolutely infuriating. I remember in the relay of Siegfried, the idiots ruined the last bit of the second act with its sublime orchestral ending by applauding far too early. I don't often feel like committing mass murder but I would have been prepared to make an exception in their case if I'd been there....

[STN]

Did you hear Ryan's ad-lib to the poor horn player during the Act 2 horn call? Tut tut.

And thanks for the link - I had to run for a train and missed the speech.

[manou]

Toot toot, surely...

[Desdemona]

Couldn't agree with you more! They do it every time. Is it that the curtain falls too soon? They can't all be dimwits..?

[SJT]

"Is it that the curtain falls too soon?"

O most certainly yes.

"They can't all be dimwits..?"

You'd think. However, I've been there a lot and all I can say is that, no matter how splendid the performance, I always wind up wishing for a London audience instead...