The Teatro alla Scala has quickly reached the third chapter of Wagner’s Ring cycle: Siegfried. Sir David McVicar’s production follows the aesthetic and conceptual continuity of the first two episodes, embracing a more traditional fantasy storytelling approach, which perhaps fits this opera more than the two preceding ones. The palette is dominated by oppressive charcoal greys, with large, literalist structures that closely follow the libretto, free from ideological reinterpretation.
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The opera opens in Mime’s cave, where he has raised Siegfried since birth. A massive furnace dominates the space, used for both forging and cooking. The scene is dark and ominous, with Mime portrayed ambiguously – sometimes in drag (“I am your father and mother at once,” he declares), his bright red hair perpetually disheveled. The forging of the sword is rendered literally, Siegfried hammering at the anvil with vigorous realism.
Act 2’s forest is a cluster of contorted, humanoid trees that split apart to reveal Fafner’s cave. The dragon manifests as an enormous scorpion-like skeleton, manipulated by stagehands, its form incorporating human hands and a skull, possibly the same enormous skull from Das Rheingold, symbolising gold’s corrosive greed. The allusion fits. Fafner is wholly consumed by his lust for the ring and the treasure.
The beginning of the third act delivers the production’s most striking image: an empty stage shrouded in mist; a colossal sphere (the world) at its centre, beneath which Erda sleeps. Simple yet unsettling, the tableau lingers in the mind.
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Conductor Alexander Soddy emphasised the orchestra’s role, masterfully expressing all of Wagner’s colours and weaving his Leitmotifs (we are thankful to Raffaele Mellace for his colour-coded annotations in the libretto). Soddy embraced the opera’s comedic undertones without restraint, prioritising narrative momentum. Although the singers occasionally struggled against the dense orchestration, the balance held. Soddy's brisk tempi drove the action with good pace, keeping the running time under five hours with two intervals.
Klaus Florian Vogt performed the title role despite being announced as ill, demonstrating both courage and technical mastery. His interpretation of this notoriously demanding role while not at his top was genuinely heroic. His silvery, luminous tenor differs from the traditional Heldentenor sound, being lighter in weight and beautifully bright in colour. In the forging scene, particularly, his voice lacked the brute, metallic force one associates with Heldentenors. His impeccable projection, however, especially in the upper register, and his impressive hammer-work, proved entirely convincing. Though perhaps not the conventional Siegfried some might expect, his youthful timbre perfectly captured the character's brash arrogance and naive innocence. His acting likewise excelled, convincingly portraying an insufferable teenager.
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Michael Volle’s Wotan (The Wanderer) surpassed even his stellar performances in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. His beautiful baritone managed to express his authority and world-weary bitterness for his inexorable fate, cementing Volle as the definitive Wotan of his generation.
Camilla Nylund’s Brünnhilde was a great success. Her laser-bright soprano pierced the orchestra, and her awakening – “Heil dir, Sonne!” – burst with radiant joy. In the ensuing duet, she embodied the torment of a soul torn between her lost divinity and human love. Vogt perfectly portrayed the youth paralised between passion and fear of the unknown, his vocal colouring making Siegfrid’s hesitation sweet and moving. The staging heightened the tension: Siegfried and Brünnhilde repeatedly drew close only to recoil – he from fear, she from dread of losing her virginity (and thus her power). The music’s sensuality pulled them together with such force, that their final embrace was a cathartic release.
Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s Mime was a masterclass in malice. His mercurial tenor flickered through fear, deceit and self-pity, every gesture meticulously honed. His showdown with Ólafur Sigurdarson’s Alberich was electric. Sigurdarson, reprising his Rheingold role, played the fallen king with seething intensity, clad in a tattered red-and-gold coat and paper crown.
Erda was Christa Mayer, an expert in this role. She impressed with her deep, bronzed mezzo which added gravitas to the powerful and mysterious duet with Volle. Ain Anger's Fafner had his voice electronically amplified from offstage, an understandable choice to achieve a dragon-like resonance. When Siegfried deals the mortal wound, the magic helm falls away: Anger emerged in his original Rheingold costume, now singing without amplification in his natural, remarkably smooth bass.
The sole Italian singer in the cast, Francesca Aspromonte, charmed as the Woodbird. McVicar’s whimsical staging had her darting across the stage with a dancer carrying a pole-mounted bird, her head, donning a Mohican crest, mimicking the movements of a bird. Her silvery soprano and playful physicality were enchanting.