The problem with Siegfried

There’s one big problem with Wagner’s Siegfried, and the clue’s in the name. None of Wagner’s mature works hangs so completely upon a single individual. The character himself isn’t really the issue either, however troublesome he might superficially appear (a ‘randy overgrown schoolboy’, if you believe the misguided programme note for this Usher Hall performance). As so often, confusion falls away once you assume that Wagner — who, after all, wasn’t a complete amateur — knew what he was doing, and take Siegfried as the life-force his creator intended.

Someone’s still got to sing the damn role, though, and that’s an Olympian challenge. ‘Most people have never heard a really fine Siegfried in the flesh — probably only a couple have ever existed,’ suggests Michael Tanner, and I wish I could have heard his thoughts on Simon O’Neill’s performance. Anyone who can sing Siegfried deserves respect, and it’s possible that I’ve simply never caught O’Neill on a good day. It’s equally possible that my response to the sound he made — tight, monochrome, hard-edged — was a matter of personal taste. He phrased articulately, and when he pushed himself over the orchestra’s climaxes, there was a tingling brightness to his voice that was undeniably impressive.

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But the fact remained that this wasa Siegfried without a really convincing Siegfried — which, however you slice it, is problematic. It didn’t help that the staging of this concert performance seemed to have been thrown together on a ‘come as you like’ basis. Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde and Clive Bayley as Fafner wore variants on evening dress, while in his short-sleeved check shirt Mime (Gerhard Siegel) looked like a harassed dad dressed for a spot of DIY. And although Siegfried famously disregards the conventions of gods and men, it’s still hard to credit that the Hope of the World would wear flip-flops.