The third part of Daniel Barenboim’s Ring cycle at the Proms proved to be similarly successful to the first two operas of the cycle, leaving both audience and conductor apparently delighted at its conclusion.

The chief justification for “semi-staged” productions such as this is that they encourage greater focus on the music, and particularly on the orchestra. The Staatskapelle Berlin have met this challenge with ease so far, and tonight, where their playing was unfailingly superb, was no different. Two key factors in this are the strong viola and cello sections, seated centrally and capable of luxurious legato and incisive rhythmic clarity, and the beautifully mellow brass section, who give colour to so much of the music. Special mention must go to the tuba player, whose long solos captured every drop of menace in Act I. Siegfried’s famous horn call from Act II was played onstage by a guesting Stefan Dohr, principal horn of the Berliner Philharmoniker, who combined supremely confident playing with comic interaction with Siegfried. Barenboim had to drag him to his feet for a large cheer before Act III.

Canadian tenor Lance Ryan, singing the title role, gave a performance which will not suit all tastes. Until the very last scene, in which he wakes Brünnhilde, he was a distinctly dislikeable Siegfried, an arrogant, impetuous pup who earned little sympathy apart from briefly when musing on his mother. His hands-in-pockets, wide-open-collar appearance suggested similar. There were some brilliant moments, notably in his tormenting of Mime and obvious passion in reforging Nothung, and his stamina was unquestionable. The transformation in the last half hour was striking: as well as learning fear from his wife-to-be, he audibly seemed to learn love. His tone lost some of its coarseness, despite still being a little thin at the top of the range, and his final duet with Brünnhilde was suitably ecstatic, the auditorium lights coming up to a warm glow for this final scene.

Nina Stemme, reprising her title role from Die Walküre, was perhaps the catalyst for this change in Siegfried. Her awakening was slow, the intensity of her love taking time to develop and be explained, but once she got going, it was quite understandable that Siegfried should be mellowed. Anna Larsson’s Erda was similarly influential over the Wanderer. Though only a making brief appearance, she gave a pleasingly mystical account of their Act II meeting. Her full, motherly voice is well suited to the role, giving her an air of authority even over the chief of the Gods. Terje Stensvold, the third Wotan of the cycle, was outstanding in a dignified releasing of his grip on power.

Peter Bronder gave a superb performance as Mime, showing impressive tone throughout the vocal range and in quietly malicious plotting and outbursts of rage or terror. But for all his cringing, scheming villainy, Ryan’s obnoxious Siegfried and a straightforwardly evil Alberich (Johannes Martin Kränzle) cast an occasionally sympathetic light on Mime. Bronder rose to this too, seeming sadly pathetic after failing to answer the Wanderer’s third riddle.

Fafner (Eric Halfvarson) and the Woodbird (Rinnat Moriah) both sang superbly from daunting positions above the stage. Halfvarson’s opening lines were given from somewhere between the organ and the choir seats, and his projected power from here was amazingly full. Moriah, by contrast, sang airily from a vertiginous point at the very top of the the choir seats. The spatial separation between her and Siegfried and her clear diction made her convincingly bird-like.

In Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk ideal, poetry, music and scenery synergise to a transcendent whole. This opera, probably more than others in the cycle, is often said to be a fairy-tale, and in staged productions requires some bold dramatic action. Removing the scenery arm of this is risky, and requires the acting to be suggestive, but not self-consciously so. This production – and I think it can be called a production, rather than a mere concert performance &dndash; achieved this difficult feat, and credit must go to director Justin May for this. Furthermore, as well as guiding the audience’s imagination through the dragon scene, his direction and some good acting also set up some very pleasing inter-character relationships. The resentful, self-serving relationship between Siegfried and Mime and the psychology of the Act III exchange between Siegfried and Wotan were both well conveyed.

These sorts of performances also require orchestral playing of the highest calibre and brilliant directorship. The Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim obliged, and I can’t think of a more keenly anticipated musical event this year than his Götterdämmerung this Sunday.

Rohan Shotton | 29 Juli 2013

Siegfried is often considered the ‘difficult one’ of the Ring tetralogy, for a variety of reasons: the eponymous hero is an intolerable creation, given his distaste for authority and general childish behaviour. So much here worked to the opera’s favour, and Justin Way’s lucid stage-direction, which in the previous instalments had been much less intrusive, got to the heart of the music-drama. If Siegfried is the Ring’s ‘scherzo’, then there were laughs aplenty, such as during the hunting-horn calls (Stefan Dohr superb) with Lance Ryan’s Siegfried egging on the player to greater virtuosity. Placement of singers was well-judged: Rinnat Moriah gave her Woodbird from the back row of the Choir (very high up) and Eric Halfvarson sang Fafner in the area of organ console: both entirely audible.

Terje Stensvold, Daniel Barenboim and Anna Larsson in a performance of Wagner’s Siegfried at the BBC Proms. Photograph: BBC/Chris ChristodoulouA great pleasure of this Proms Ring Cycle thus far has been the ability to listen to the music without extraneous distractions from a production. This Siegfried went beyond expectations (already high because of the previous two evenings). Orchestral details, so often muffled when the players are hidden in a pit (Bayreuth aside!), abounded; typical of Daniel Barenboim’s superb conducting and the stunning response of Staatskapelle Berlin: the Act Three Prelude was stormy without being brash, portending the doomed and resigned encounters of the Wanderer; the high strings’ transition into the same Act’s third Scene (where Siegfried encounters Brünnhilde) was of such delicate beauty and transported us to a mystical world. Although, elsewhere, much power released, Barenboim’s unerring ability to keep upping the gears – dynamics controlled superbly – meant that the ‘big’ moments really counted, and made for a seamless performance.

Eric Halfvarson as Fafner in a performance of Wagner’s Siegfried at the BBC Proms. Photograph: BBC/Chris ChristodoulouThe characters in Siegfried are not all likeable: Siegfried himself is an impetuous youth who frustrates the adults; Mime, his guardian, is motivated purely by greed for Fafner’s hoard; and Alberich, like Mime, would sacrifice all for the same. The Wanderer (Wotan in disguise) is feeble, really. It is Fafner who is perhaps the most sympathetic: he just wants to while away his days in his cave undisturbed, looking after the gold that is now rightfully his. We got to understand these persons’ motivations and even appreciate their foibles. In what is a quite impossible part, Canadian Heldentenor Lance Ryan showed why he is the Siegfried of choice presently (he is about to take part in Bayreuth’s new production of The Ring). He gave a towering performance, and made the adolescent attractive and comprehensible. He was tentative at first, but his view was the ‘long’ one, knowing that he had to save himself. Not that he short-changed in Acts One or Two – a vigorous ‘Forging Song’ excited, and Act Two’s encounters had pent-up passion, but the Act Three encounter with Brünnhilde was on another level of command: he rose to notes of ridiculous difficulty with power and precision. Nina Stemme’s cameo as Brünnhilde was similarly electrifying. Required for the final scene only, her awakening and subsequent resistance to Siegfried’s entreaties was warm and heartfelt. She had the gauge of the long dialogues, and her succumbing to his cry of “Sie mein!” (Be mine!), and the ensuing outpouring of love, thrilled beyond measure. Their voices intertwined as though the bodies of lovers, to an ecstatic and orgiastic realisation.

Johannes Martin Kränzle as Alberich and Peter Bronder as Mime in Wagner’s Siegfried at the BBC Proms. Photograph: BBC/Chris ChristodoulouTerje Stensvold was an imposing Wanderer, but with a beating heart. He gave us a god who is of a previous world-order, of deference that is brushed aside (by Siegfried) all too easily. His Act One encounter with Mime was like a fire-side chat, Stensvold presenting the world-weary disguised Wotan’ dialogue amiably and with unforced authority, in full control against Mime’s agitation. Unruffled by Siegfried’s provocations, Stensvold maintained The Wanderer’s dignity with warm and calming tones, though his demise still shocked. Mime was made the spiteful creature he truly is by Peter Bronder, his delivery veered to the whiny and malevolent and was full of deceit. The ‘double-talk’ scene of Act Two was a particular delight; Mime’s exasperation at Siegfried’s understanding of his true nature was highlighted. With Johannes Martin Kränzle’s Alberich, the pair created a quite hateful duo without caricature. Halfvarson presented Fafner as a victim, the poor giant who was cheated by Wotan and suffers the curse of the Ring (he murdered his brother Fasolt for it) in solitude disguised as a dragon. Halfvarson’s bass boomed with malevolence and all the years of isolation, and with superb diction. Similarly, Moriah’s Woodbird soared, and was a reassuring guide for Siegfried. Anna Larsson’s Erda brooded on Wotan’s requests, her warnings conveyed in somnolent tones.

Kevin Rogers | 26 July, 2013

Proms setting enhances an opera that glories in the orchestra

The transformative power of the Royal Albert Hall at Proms-time never ceases to amaze me. Here is Siegfried, the third in Wagner’s Ring cycle, sprawling in length, not over-strong in characters, yet in the Proms setting the rather over-extended character scenes cede to the extraordinary scene-painting, the noise of Mime’s metal-working, the inky mystery of Erda’s cavern, the bloody terrors of Fafner’s cave, the forest full of birdsong. Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin made sure last night that five and a half hours very nearly sped by, so sumptuous and yet delicate was their dominance visually and aurally, and hence total absorption in this strange opera.

The eye luxuriated in the banks of golden harps, the curiously squashed Wagner tubas, the stereo timpani far left and top right, the fleets of violas. In front of this ever-changing tapestry of musical motion, the singers were nicely marshalled in a semi-staged fashion by Justin Way, fielding divertingly tiny props – a miniature anvil, a little stick, a minute ring representing the grand symbols of insuperable might over which everyone squabbles in petty fashion.

Yet what about the fire on Brünnhilde’s rock or the great dragon or the forging of Nothung? No problem, it all works excellently in Siegfried, as the absence of spectacular visual effects makes you concentrate on some of Wagner’s most ravishingly inventive orchestral writing. The Staatskapelle Berlin is an astounding band, and Barenboim can walk tightropes over chasms with them: he bonds the violins in almost inaudible pianissimi, he weighs out the volume from the brass in scruples, the dappling of some of the sound speaks of fervently detailed and united work.

This part of the Ring saga has an awkwardness caused entirely by the oddness of the central character, the intended hero Siegfried. For much of the opera he’s the equivalent of a surly, spotty adolescent who feels neither fear nor conscience, and treats his adoptive father Mime with abominable rudeness.

Yet we know that the hand-wringing Mime is an evil piece of work himself, intent on using the lad’s preternatural strength for his own ends, and the enormous attractiveness of Barenboim’s choice of performers (as actors as much as singers) was how comically sharp and realistic this relationship between Siegfried and Mime became.

The two high tenor voices faced off, acidly bickering – the little, brilliantly fierce Peter Bronder and the tall, vibrantly natural Canadian heldentenor Lance Ryan (see main picture), who is outstandingly convincing in this almost unplayable role. Without costume, he can home in on things psychological, not visual. The ambivalence he feels for Mime – hatred, yet also an inability to leave him – is very persuasive of a relationship where each is abusing the other (left, Bronder’s Mime at front, with Johannes Martin Kränzle’s Alberich).

Ryan’s voice is bright, high and clean; what it lacks in caramel edges it makes up for in how unaffectedly he produces it, almost conversationally, every word clear (he was a student of Carlo Bergonzi, a master of articulacy.) He persuaded absolutely of the callowness of Siegfried, and yet had the theatrical intelligence to show the lunkhead growing up very fast into dignity when finally making it to Brünnhilde’s rock, suddenly humbled by meeting this goddess, embarrassed by his own urgency.

Nina Stemme commands adulthood in her man, though. Vocally she combines both mellow warmth of tone and the exciting attacks with accurate power where it counts; as an actress she homes in on Brünnhilde’s sense of extreme vulnerability at being woken by a stranger who has already half undressed her. I loved the tentative nuances both singers brought to the climactic love duet, which is a bit of a trudge to a prescribed point. It finishes Siegfried slightly unsatisfactorily (tonight’s and tomorrow’s Proms, Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung, deliver the full emotional Monty).

Yet the interest in this opera isn’t the required love story, it’s yet more of those skewed familial relationships that Wagner writes so brilliantly, both in text and music: the dwarf brothers Mime and Alberich, bitterly at war over the Ring; Wotan and Erda, estranged parents of Brünnhilde, meeting up reluctantly; and of course Wotan and Siegfried, the grandson whose uncomplicated strength must put right all the god’s complicated wrongs.

Once again in this cycle the Wotan is different, this time in his Wanderer guise less a protagonist in the drama than an agent for Siegfried, which suited the casting of the veteran Norwegian baritone Terje Stensvold, beautifully autumnal in voice, dignified in demeanour. His scene with Erda had a pathos and heartfelt emotion not to be extracted from the younger lovers’ scene later, and he was much assisted by the terrific Anna Larsson (pictured right), tall and striking in a garnet fishtail dress, with a voice of veiled contralto depth. Barenboim and she held that scene in utter suspension, a most mysterious dream-place.

Johannes Martin Kränzle’s Alberich was eclipsed in character terms by Bronder as his brother Mime, though indeed his part here is much smaller. Rinnat Moriah warbled her Woodbird exultantly from the highest reaches of the Albert Hall, and Eric Halfvarson roared Fafner from obscurity behind Sir Henry Wood’s head in the organ loft. A tumultuous audience ovation at the end left Barenboim looking pleased as punch, as well he should be.

Ismene Brown | 27 July 2013

The Proms’ Ring has reached episode three: Siegfried, the one where a fearless beefcake falls in love with his aunt. After the incestuous passions of Die Walküre it doesn’t seem so risqué. Its five-hour span moves from darkest foreboding to love music intense almost to the point of insanity, which Justin Way’s semi-staging matched by flooding the whole auditorium with pinky-gold light.

Act 1 introduces our brawny hero – Wotan’s mortal grandson – as a petulant adolescent, tormenting the dwarf, Mime, who has brought him up. In Act 2 matters brighten in the famous Forest Murmurs scene, a modicum of comedy (yes, actual humour) and a spot of dragon-slaying. But 12 years went by before Wagner finished the opera – he was busy with small matters like Tristan und Isolde – and the final act inhabits another world as Siegfried breaks through Brünnhilde’s protective fire to win her, even if his first reaction to her slumbering body is to be scared witless.

Wagner manipulates his magic web of leitmotifs through textures, transformations and aural visions evoking everything from Mime’s description of what fear feels like (the Magic Fire music gone mad) to Siegfried’s reflections about his mother’s fate. Daniel Barenboim, masterful in his control of the huge structure and the ebb and flow of its transitions, extracted every drop of colour from dragon’s den to mountain sunrise; the Berlin Staatskapelle, with rich lower strings and silky brass, responded to him as one. Plaudit to the concertmaster, Wolfram Brandl, for a breathtakingly gorgeous violin solo.

But Siegfried belongs to its Heldentenor. The charismatic Lance Ryan, from Canada, who sings the role at the Bayreuth Festival this year, seemed in his element, meeting its gargantuan demands with only a hint of tiredness near the end. Nor was he above horsing about with the horn player who came forward to deliver Siegfried’s personal fanfare (“Got any others?” Ryan quipped).

Peter Bronder’s Mime offered a touch of genius, infusing each syllable with character; add the world-weary, smooth-toned Wanderer of Terje Stensvold, the glittering Woodbird of Rinnat Moriah at the top of the choir seats, the incomparable Eric Halfvarson as Fafner the dragon, Anna Larsson’s deep-set lava of an Erda and a brooding Alberich from Johannes Martin Kränzle, and the performance was a glory.

Yet Nina Stemme as the awakening Brünnhilde raised even this to new levels, for behind her open-hearted, strong-centred voice and apparently calm presence lay a fervour that matched the cool exterior with equal parts of fire. Another hot evening in the hall, but worth every second.

Jessica Duchen | 29 July 2013

It is to be hoped that those Londoners who do not travel much — though it remains unclear to me why they could not listen to the odd recording or broadcast — will finally be disabused by this Proms Ring of the strange claim that the sub-standard Wagner they have all too often been served up over the past decade represents anything but a pale shadow of the ‘real thing’.

That is crucial not from the standpoint of drawing up some variety of ghastly league table, but because Wagner deserves so much better, as, barring a few noisy miscreants, do audiences. A friend remarked acutely earlier in the week that so much of the chatter concerning last year’s Covent Garden Ring concerned the work as some sort of ‘ultimate challenge’ and congratulated the forces for having (just about) withstood that challenge. Art is not, however, a school sports day; to come anywhere near realising Wagner’s potential requires musicians who understand his (admittedly strenuous) demands, who are as comprehending of his world-view and its implications, historical and contemporary, as possible, and who are expert at communicating his message at as many of its multiple levels as they can. ‘Muddling through’ — or, to put it another way, a self-congratulatory celebration of English amateurism — should never be an option.

Barenboim once again had the measure of the score, his understanding of which has deepened considerably over the years, from the outset. The Prelude to Act I opened very slowly, but its hallmark was flexibility, not least when a mini-Furtwänglerian accelerando led us, as the most natural development in the world, into Wagner’s menacing treatment of the no-longer-dormant Nibelung motif. Lesser conductors would simply present one thing after another, perhaps with the odd ‘shock’ effect imposed upon the meaningless progression; Wagner’s drama needs to be simultaneously communicated and reinforced through a tightly woven web of motivic interconnection. As Carl Dahlhaus put it, ‘the decline in importance of the symphony as a genre represented the obverse of an inexorable expansion of the symphonic style in other genres.’ It is inconceivable that a great Wagnerian would not also be a great Beethovenian.

The dark orchestral phantasmagoria, inevitably bringing to mind Adorno’s Versuch ¸ber Wagner, conjured up by Barenboim and his orchestra as Mime initially struggled to forge the sword told of dark forces, dramatic and musical, at work; one was drawn into the drama in the very best way, by the score ‘itself’. And yet, there was plenty of life: Siegfried’s music quite rightly evoked the world of a Beethoven scherzo, transformed into musico-dramatic material. Barenboim showed that lightness does not preclude depth; indeed, it often relies upon it. And depth one certainly heard from the Staatskapelle’s strings, heart-rendingly when Siegfried casually knocked the food Mime had prepared out of his hands; we empathised with Mime and his misery through Wagner’s extraordinarily sympathetic portrayal. Likewise, in the third scene, Barenboim — and Wagner, of course — conjured up the sheer horror of Mime’s predicament just as truthfully as the other, unconscious, heroic side of the coin. Competition between soundworlds, distinct and yet dialectically related, was very much the stuff of this first act. The dark Staatskapelle brass, never brash in the way sections from Anglophone orchestras might often be, told during the Mime-Wanderer scene of the darkness still cast by Alberich’s Nibelheim curse — even when the Wanderer was ostensibly talking of himself. Schwarz- and Licht-Alberich continued their dialectical dance of death (even though we never discover quite what becomes of the former).

Act II opened in similarly magisterial fashion. Marking by kettledrums of that crucial tritone — the giants’ motif darkened, perverted, from its initially diatonic form — was effected to musico-dramatic perfection; that interval, that sound would hang over the act for at least as long as it took Siegfried to slay Fafner. A febrile undergrowth, scenic and harmonic, would soon find itself conjured up — that phantasmagorical phrase again — by composer, conductor, and orchestra together. The orchestra, moreover, gained a real spring to its step during those extraordinary exchanges between Mime and Siegfried, when the former, despite all his efforts, betrays his true intentions, Wagner’s sardonicism conveyed with the darkest of comedy. And that Feuerbachian moment of hope — love, revolution, love in revolution might yet emerge the victor — at the end of the act was captured to perfection, only to be contrasted, at the beginning of Act III, by a very different variety of dramatic urgency, the Wanderer’s dismissal of Erda (and thus of Fate itself) upon us.

Barenboim’s deceleration as Erda rose from the depths told of far more than mere handling of the score; this was an attempt to hold back history itself — likewise at the end of his confrontation with Siegfried in the following scene. The Wanderer’s urgency with Erda, rhythms buoyant and generative, would emerge victorious, but at what cost, and for how long? Questions rather than answers were proffered. His silence following ‘Weisst du, was Wotan will?’ was made to tell in a fashion not entirely unlike a silence in Bruckner, and yet, with its very particular musico-dramatic import, quite unlike it. By contrast, the transformation to the final scene was perhaps the most ecstatic I have heard, the orchestra revelling in Wagner’s wizardry, Barenboim ensuring that such revelry retained dramatic motivation. There were moments when one heard, for instance, the fresh air of Johannistag — ‘Ach! Wie schˆn!’ as Siegfried loosened Br¸nnhilde’s helmet — or delectable violin femininity, as Siegfried lifted the breastplate. But they never stood out, self-regarding, for their own sake; the drama was the thing.

Peter Bronder’s Mime was excellent. He wheedled without falling into caricature, projected a strong command of his line throughout, and even proved a dab hand pretty with his (small) hammer. There was real anger, moreover, as well as self-pity, when he dubbed Siegfried ‘dankbares, arges Kind!’ Lance Ryan is not possessed of a beautiful voice, but he showed the necessary tirelessness not simply to ‘get through’ the role, but also to shape its progress. If vocal lines were often less than mellifluous, one could hear pretty much every word. He had a nice — or rather nasty — line in cruelty of delivery, for instance when telling of how he longed to seize Mime’s neck, though there were undoubtedly occasions when he erred on the side of crudity, not least during the forging of Notung, and clowning around over the horn was probably overdone. Johannes Martin Kränzle once again contributed an attentive reading of Alberich’s part, words, music, stage manner welded into something considerably more than the sum of its parts. Eric Halfvarson’s Fafner (from the organ) was properly evocative of the rentier as dragon: what he lay on, he owned. One even felt a degree of sympathy at the moment of death. Terje Stensvold’s Wanderer was not as large of life as some, but his solemnity told its own tale; this was, after all, a Wotan two generations on from Das Rheingold, scarred by events, working his way towards renunciation of the Schopenhauerisn Will. Whether that were actually how Stensvold thought of it or no, one could certainly understand his portrayal that way. His Norwegian way with Wagner’s words harked back to the the old sagas: perhaps not ideal in abstract pronunciation terms, but again opening up other associations for those willing to listen. As in Berlin, Rinnat Moriah proved a bright-toned Woodbird, perfectly contrasted with the deep contralto of Anna Larsson’s wonderful Erda, her tiredness and fading powers conveyed musically rather than by default. Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde gave an excellent impression of awakening, and handled very well this difficult transition from Valkyrie to woman. She more than whetted the appetite for what is now to come.

Mark Berry | 29 July 2013

The Third Thrilling Instalment of The Ring at The Proms

The second day of the Ring – if one counts Rheingold as a “Vorabend” – a “preludial evening” – is given over to the youth, Siegfried. Siegfried is in some ways the most difficult part of the Ring – for listener as well as performers. Part comedy, it is nevertheless steeped in legend and thus takes on more of the character of a brothers Grimm tale. (Although the source for Siegfried is primarily the Edda, the fairytale element is unmistakable – a talking dragon, malevolent dwarves, a twittering but nevertheless understandable bird of the forest …). The Wanderer speaks of German Romanticism writ large, exploring the sub/unconscious (the symbol of the forest); the exultant, ecstatic finale brings about the (for now) fairytale happy ending when Siegfried couples with his (half) aunt, a mere whiff, of course, of the full-blown incest of Walküre. This heady mix is what makes Siegfried so unutterably, and eternally, fascinating. The trajectory of the music-drama is thus from the comedy of the opening scene (the boy who communes with a bear and torments Mime) via the philosophical explorations of the Wanderer through to the wild and unbridled exultation of the final scene (this latter in performance terms is one of the most unfair in opera: Siegfried has been singing his heart out for much of the evening and in walks Brünnhilde, fresh as a daisy).

The splendour, the glory, of this performance was the Staatskapelle Berlin, of which Barenboim was appointed conductor for life in 2000. The players seem to be an extension of Barenboim’s self, such is the rapport. Although I have never been a fan of Barenboim’s recorded Ring (which incidentally made it to Blu-Ray in March this year), there seems of late to be an interpretative blossoming. On the evidence of this Siegfried and the 2013 Proms Rheingold and Walküre, which I have been lucky enough to catch in broadcast, there is a new maturity to Barenboim. He thinks in large paragraphs, and yet the attention to detail is simply stunning. He is known to admire Furtwängler, a conductor who early on spotted the special in the young Barenboim, and at last he appears to have learnt from his master. The ability to think on the large scale imbues the music with its special sense of inevitability, while his attention to local detail was massively impressive. This was no ponderous Siegfried: Mime’s playfulness was beautifully done with the lightest of touches. The orchestral timbre shifted beautifully for the Wanderer’s lines and questions in the first act, deepening and becoming ever more burnished; Mime’s accompaniment, jumpy and agile in contrast, was similarly rendered with a feeling of complete truth. The whole first act seemed to move towards Siegfried’s answer to Mime’s question, “Was willst du noch heut mit dem Schwert?”/What would you do with the sword today? The two orchestral members who must surely be singled out though are the tuba player, Thomas Keller (magnificently malevolent) and the solo horn of Stefan Dohr, whose call was so memorable and delivered from the stage action area, where Siegfried could interact delightfully with him. It was nice of Barenboim to give Dohr a special round of applause at the beginning of the third act.

Lance Ryan’s Siegfried has already been considered on Seen & Heard, in a 2011 Frankfurt performance. He appears to be the Siegfried du jour, and he has the stamina, certainly. It is, perhaps, stage presence that he lacks, especially in comparison in the first act with his Mime, the excellent tenor, Peter Bronder. Mime is a difficult part to get right, and Bronder succeeded perfectly. Fussy and repellant, Bronder maintained a sort of hunched and bow-legged stance throughout that emphasised his wheedling aspect. The clipped vocal delivery was perfect. Bronder’s voice, shadings and grasp of the text – his diction exemplary – all supported a major assumption. He was not lacking in power when necessary, either (“O undankbares, arges Kind!”).

Ryan’s Forging Song was perhaps not the most Heldentenorisch, but it seemed to encapsulate the youthful innocence of the hero, and Barenboim was careful not to overwhelm him without losing any of the music’s power (Barenboim actually stopped conducting at one point), letting the music’s momentum carry itself forward). It was, really, in the second act when Ryan seemed to have warmed up, his reading perhaps reaching its climax in the forest scene around Waldweben (“Forest Murmurs”). The role of the Woodbird was superbly and freshly delivered by Rinnt Moriah who was positioned at the extreme top left of the auditorium and yet was instantly audible.

The vital role of the Wanderer was taken by baritone Terje Stensvold, impressively sonorous and yet a remarkably human god, one that we could sympathise with, and one that most definitely did not exude omnipotence. Stensvold’s movements were often rather stilted, though, which was a shame as the voice itself held plenty of dramatic awareness. His tormented Alberich was the superb baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle, miraculously dark of tone. Alberich’s meeting with the Wanderer found Stensvold’s responses somewhat wanting – more vocal gravitas perhaps should have been the order of the day; similarly, Stensvold’s exhortations to Fafner to awake were, well, rather weedy; in comparison, his final act “Weckruf” – Wotan’s alliterative response to Erda’s “Weiche, Wotan, Weiche” from Rheingold – was better. Fafner, offstage at first, was the brilliantly strong bass Eric Halfvarson, full of irritation and menace: as I say, where else would one find a petulant dragon but in a fairytale?. Anna Larsson was an impeccable wise-woman Erda, completely within the role.

As Brünnhilde, Nina Stemme was absolutely radiant of voice, powerful yet not shrill, impeccable of pitch, her open-throated “Heil euch, Götter” a true high point. It was clear that as she sang at full tilt, surely no orchestra on earth could drown her; and yet her tone did not break. Her rising ecstasy seemed to take Ryan to the top of his game. As the duet between Brünnhilde and Siegfried intensified, it was interesting to note Barenboim’s minimal gestures, as if to allow his vocalists full flight over the orchestra. As for the stage direction, bathing the auditorium in light is an old – and hackneyed – trick, but a forgivable one in context here, perhaps. A pity there was a slight aberration on Stemme’s final, crowning note, but in the context of the overall sweep of the performance this was a minor matter.

As far as the staging went, projections on the strip at the back of the stage changed from scene to scene, beginning with a green, forest-like aspect. Two tiny anvils graced the stage in Act 1, one on each side. A blue light shone onto the front of the stage for Alberich’s Second Act monologue (“Im Wald und Nacht”) – actually a Wagner stage direction after his first statement. The whole area of the stage and beyond was well used, as were the projections onto the back of the stage.

This was an astonishing evening in many respects. That this Ring is a major event is without doubt.

Colin Clarke | London, 26.7.2013