Nina Stemme’s rage burns bright in a gutsy, emotional Ring
Siegfried/ Götterdämmerung Royal Opera, Covent Garden
After a faintly lacklustre Rheingold and Walküre, the Royal Opera’s Ring cycle powers up for Siegfried. Several factors contribute to the increased heat, principally that the conductor, Antonio Pappano, seems more comfortable with the black comedy and romantic lyricism of this third episode than he was with the intensities and majesties of the first two.
The production is enjoyable enough too, in its eclectic, opportunistic way, with terrific representations of the dragon Fafner (Brindley Sherratt) and the Woodbird (an impishly acrobatic Heather Engebretson). But the staging’s major strength remains the interplay of the characters, most evident in the wonderfully sensitive way that the emotional subtleties of the first encounter between Brünnhilde and Siegfried are charted: how lucky Warner is to have actors as responsive as Nina Stemme and Stefan Vinke in these roles.
Vinke has an unlovely tenor and often sings flat, but he knows the part inside out and presented the most horribly engaging and visually plausible of mindless hooligans; Stemme made a touchingly ardent and impetuous Valkyrie, always alert to the implications of the text. Equally impressive was John Lundgren’s Wotan the Wanderer, radiating a world-weary scepticism that makes him cousin to Meistersinger Hans Sachs. Gerhard Siegel captured the snivelling Mime to a tee, and my only significant reservation is that Johannes Martin Kränzle seemed miscast – too much a nutty professor, and insufficiently bullish – as Alberich.
Pappano provided an even stronger lead come Götterdämmerung, hitting a note of grandeur in the Norns’ narration and masterfully spanning the entirety of the massive first act. Keith Warner’s staging is less persuasive – a drop-curtain swimming with mathematical theorems and an apotheosis worthy of Las Vegas bookends an interpretation that remains glitzy but incoherent.
Vinke’s Siegfried disappointed vocally in this final episode: too much of his singing verged on shouting. Stemme, however, got better and better – quite simply, she makes Brünnhilde real, with every phrase expressively alive and dramatically cogent. Perhaps she lacks the ideal Wagnerian amplitude that the hugely promising neophyte Lise Davidsen shows as the Third Norn, but her rage in betrayal was enthrallingly painted and her immolation a supremely moving peroration.
Elsewhere, Stephen Milling made an imposing Hagen, summoning the Gibichung with fearsome urgency, and Karen Cargill was a noble Waltraute. Markus Butter and Emily Magee fared less well as Gunther and Gutrune – rotten roles, in truth, unlovable characters with nothing much to sing.
Until Nov 2. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk