October 03 2011

Fervent and witty Siegfried

‘A Wagnerian drama’ is how one could summarize the lot of the National Reisopera: from 2013 it will receive 60 percent less subsidy and will cease to exist in its present form. The final chord will be a grand one, for at that moment the house will be presenting the final part of its first-class production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen – which, symbolically enough, is about the downfall of the world of the gods.

The first two parts of this ‘Ring of the East’ were textbook examples of what a small opera house can be great at: productions excelling in simplicity, in which the history of the gods is portrayed as the downfall of a family at the bottom of the ‘magic mountain’, Valhalla; Wagner meets Thomas Mann, you might say.

The third Ring opera, Siegfried, is the trickiest of the four because of its numerous monochromatic scenes without female voices and its ‘children’s story-book’ humour. But Antony McDonald (stage direction, costumes and scenery) just picks up the threads of sharp-edged simplicity again and forges all these obstacles into witty, intimate ‘total’ theatre.

The impressive ‘designer Ring’ in Amsterdam (due to be presented once more time at the Netherlands Opera in 2014) centred its attention on the myth. The Reisopera focuses on the man behind the myth: his motives, characteristics and slow-witted shortcomings.

The twilit opening scene is immediately memorable. The venomous dwarf, Mime (a character role played without cliché by Adrian Thompson), snatches the baby Siegfried from his cradle and brings him up in his smithy – portrayed here as a 1950s-style shed, stuffy with false family affection.

What Mime eventually wants is the Ring, and he brews a sleeping draught so that he can put his ‘boy hero’ to the sword. Betrayal! But here the intrigue mainly makes one want to laugh. The sound of the sleeping pills tinkling on the ground starts a dryly comical counterpoint to the fierce hammering of Siegfried, who at the same time is forging his heroic sword, Nothung, together.

Another high point is the death of the dragon/giant Fafner: at the moment suprême, his two illuminated, leering eyes prove to have the power of spectacle of an Efteling theme park attraction.

This Ring‘s musical excellence is down to the conductor Ed Spanjaard, who at the première was also met by a thunderous ovation of un-Dutch fervour. Quite right, too. Under Spanjaard’s careful direction, the Orkest van het Oosten, playing to its top capacity, realizes a warm, impassioned Wagner: rich in detail, great in the construction of tension, sharp in rhythmical points, and in volume and rhythmic elasticity always subservient to singers such as the fiery Judith Németh (Brünnhilde) and Harry Peeters, convincing as the slightly pitiable thunder-patriarch, Wotan/Wanderer.

The biggest problem of all with Siegfried is the title role, which is an extensive and extremely heavy one. The Reisopera’s tracking down of the excellent Estonian tenor, Mati Turi, for this purpose is yet another certification of its advanced knowledge of Wagner. Turi’s warm timbre lacks a fierce, heroic brilliance but it did ensure that he remained proudly on his vocal feet, up to and including his forty-five-minute love duet with Brünnhilde.

The Reisopera is not touring with the Ring but if there were a Michelin Guide for opera, it would say that the journey to Enschede is well worth making.