Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (2) - Götterdämmerung, 6 July 2009

(Images copyright: Elisabeth Carecchio)

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Siegfried – Ben Heppner
Gunther – Gerd Grochowski
Hagen – Mikhail Petrenko
Alberich – Dale Duesing
Brünnhilde – Katarina Dalayman
Gutrune – Emma Vetter
Waltraute – Anne Sofie von Otter
First Norn – Maria Radner
Second Norn – Lilli Paasikivi
Third Norn – Miranda Keys
Woglinde – Anna Siminska
Wellgunde – Eva Vogel
Flosshilde – Maria Radner

Stéphane Braunschweig (director, designs, video)
Thibault Vancraenenbroeck (costumes, video)
Marion Hewlett (lighting)

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

And so, this Ring, a co-production between the Aix Festival and the Salzburg Easter Festival, has reached its conclusion. I have not seen the Rheingold yet, but have seen Die Walküre on DVD and Siegfried in the theatre. As with those previous dramas, the greatest signal achievement proved to be that of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Luxury casting seems something of an understatement when one hears so virtuosic an orchestra in the pit. There were very occasional slips, almost inevitable from the horns, but barely a handful, which really only served to remind one that these were human beings – not such a bad thing when it comes to Wagner’s tale of the twilight of the gods. There remains a degree of loss in terms of ‘old German’ orchestral sound: Karajan’s work is perhaps now more than complete. However, if one takes the internationalisation of the Berlin orchestra as a given, there were aspects of this performance that bade fair to create new standards for technical excellence. I have certainly never heard the low brass play with such dramatic force in those passages later in the first act and during the second, in which Wagner creates sounds of instrumental and harmonic ugliness wholly new, and yet entirely necessary for his drama. The trombones and Wagner tubas had to be heard to be believed. Hagen’s call to the vassals and their response registered as truly terrifying, on the basis of the voice of Wagner’ orchestral Greek chorus, at least as important in this respect as that of the excellent actual chorus.

Sir Simon Rattle continued his good work in the pit. Again, I had the impression that his interpretation would deepen with further immersion in the score, but there could be no doubt that he had the measure of its structural import and its orchestral detail. Even the BPO cannot play Göttterdämmerung by itself. Wagner conductors whom we rightly praise to the skies, for instance Hans Knappertsbusch, could often prove surprisingly casual with matters of colour, but not Rattle. His experience and that of his orchestra in French music – take the previous night’s Ravel and Boulez, concucted by Boulez himself, or Rattle’s own recent L’Enfant et les sortilèges – is put to excellent use in back-projection of a sometimes undervalued aspect of Wagner’s compositional legacy. My only real reservation was an occasional tendency to press too hard, not so much in terms of tempo, although there were one or two instances of that, as of orchestral sound. There were, especially during the first act, just a few instances of a brutalisation of sound that did not always tally with dramatic purpose. This was reminiscent not so much of Karajan’s Wagner – the Ring in particular often exhibited a chamber-like delicacy under the Austrian conductor’s baton – as some of his 1970s Beethoven.

Ben Heppner would doubtless be many listeners’ Siegfried of choice today. He certainly has the vocal resources to bring off a near-impossible role, though the results are accomplished rather than exciting. It might seem churlish, given some of the horrors to which we have been subjected, to withhold fuller appreciation but, on stage, this Siegfried cuts a less than heroic, indeed a less than convincing, figure – and this is not a dramatic strategy. There is something a little awry when Hagen exudes charismatic leadership whilst Siegfried appears to be unsuccessfully auditioning for the title role in an am-dram assault upon Peter Grimes. The lumberjack shirt did not help. In Wagner’s words, ‘The Greeks’ tragic hero stepped forward from the Chorus and, turning back towards it, said: “Behold, thus does a man act; that which you celebrate in commentaries and adages, I depict to you as irrefutable and necessary.”’ This cannot be said to have been accomplished, despite a surer command of the vocal line than one otherwise might experience. Mikhail Petrenko’s Hagen, as I have hinted, was another matter altogether. Strikingly different from the typical portrayal, this was a Hagen whose personal and political skills might well have persuaded rather than bludgeoned one into following him. I did not think him as black of tone as when he essayed Hunding, let alone when compared to other Hagens. Though not an unduly light reading, there were chilling moments of almost whispered – yet still sung – menace, ably supported by the orchestra, as well as a terrifying, partly because understated, Jekyll and Hyde routine. Confident and unabashedly sexy – when did one last think that of a Hagen? – when pulling the strings, whether with the vassals or his half-siblings, there were signs of deformity, in physical and other senses, and of potential unravelling in more private moments. This was a superb revisionist performance, in terms of stage and voice.

Katarina Dalayman’s Brünnhilde had a few wayward moments but was otherwise a strong presence. She drew upon a varied vocal palette with great discrimination, rendering her characterisation unusually credible. When she strode on stage following Siegfried’s return, there was an almost Hollywood sense of star quality, heightened, I think, by Rattle’s handling of the BPO strings. Yet the aura added to rather than distracted from her final deeds as Brünnhilde. Gerd Grochowski’s Gunther resembled his Telramund, seen recently in two productions in Berlin and in London. This is not an especially powerful voice, but Grochowski made a dramatic virtue out of a vocal necessity, with a detailed portrait of political vacillation, aided by his stage demeanour of aristocratic distraction. Emma Vetter’s Gutrune was made to resemble a cross between Linda Evans in Dynasty and the late Diana Dors, not the only occasion when Thibault Vancraenenbroeck’s costumes seemed at odds with Stéphane Braunschweig’s generally non-interventionist – some might say Konzeptlos – production (more on the latter below). This might not especially have mattered, had we been treated to a more than adequate vocal performance. I was also disappointed, surprisingly so, by Anne Sofie von Otter’s Waltraute. There was, as one might have expected, detailed attention to the words, but this remained a strangely earthbound portrayal in vocal terms. Dale Duesing’s Alberich again impressed as an example – appropriate, considering his son – of a lighter-toned, word-sensitive approach to the role. I shall be interested to see him in Das Rheingold. The Norns and Rhinemaidens were cast from strength and did not disappoint.

I am at a loss when it comes to Braunschweig’s production. There is nothing to which one could, with reason, vehemently object, but nor could I discern any insights, let alone revelations. According to a programme interview, what Braunschweig ‘likes’ in Götterdämmerung is that here, following ‘the development of great philosophical and psychological’ questions in the preceding dramas, ‘one returns to a more trivial level, to an almost bourgeois drama.’ It is a point of view, I suppose: not entirely unrelated to George Bernard Shaw’s writing off the Ring’s final drama as succumbing to the love panacea, and perhaps not entirely unrelated to the parallels with Ibsen some commentators have discovered. Yet, wrongheaded though I might have thought Braunschweig’s almost complete disavowal of Wagner’s political for the director’s – and to a certain extent Wagner’s – psychoanalytical concerns earlier in the cycle, it might have been more rewarding to have carried the latter through into the final instalment. It was now not at all clear why the characters, despite some very strong individual performances, notably those of Petrenko and Dalayman, should be of any greater significance. If Götterdämmerung takes place on a relatively ‘trivial level,’ then I hardly dare think what might qualify as profound, as world-historical. Even Alberich’s re-appearance to observe, Wanderer-like, the Immolation Scene – to start with, I thought he might be Wotan, though I have no idea whether the resemblance were deliberate – somehow seemed shorn of significance. Perhaps this nihilism was the ultimate in Wagner domesticated.

For, whereas what I had previously seen had led me to wonder whether this might turn out to be a culmination inspired by Robert Donington, it now seemed nihilist, not in a sense that Nietzsche would have understood, but simply because the ideas had run out. Even in its own terms, the production did not seem to have the Ibsen-like quality at which Braunschewig appeared to hint in the quoted programme note. Attention-seeking touches such as a final, apparently ‘amusing’ bobbing up from the Rhine of the Rhinemaidens, seemed just that. I have no especial regrets at a lack of staging for Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, but I could not help suspecting that the fall of the curtain suggested lack of interest rather than a positive decision. If it were not for the stylishly minimalist sets – yet to what end? – or the technically accomplished, if oddly reticent video projection of the Rhine in the opening scene of the third act, it is difficult to imagine what would have been lost in a concert performance. Considered almost as such, however, there was a great deal to praise.

DVD Review: Die Walküre, Festival d'Aix en Provence, BPO/Rattle

Bel Air Classiques BAC034. Filmed live in high definition at the Festival d'Aix en Provence, July 2007.

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Siegmund – Robert Gambill

Hunding – Mikhail Petrenko

Wotan – Sir Willard White

Sieglinde – Eva-Maria Westbroek

Brünnhilde – Eva Johansson

Fricka – Lilli Paasikivi

Gerhilde – Joanna Porackova

Ortlinde – Elaine McKrill

Waltraute – Julianne Young

Schwertleite – Andrea Baker

Helmwige – Erika Sunnegårdh

Siegrune – Heike Grötzinger

Grimgerde – Eva Vogel

Rossweisse – Anette Bod

Stéphane Braunschweig (director and designer)

Thibault Vancranenbroeck (costumes)

Marion Hewlett (lighting)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

The star of this Walküre is, without a shadow of doubt, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. I doubt that the music can ever have been played better than it is here. Every section of the orchestra has an opportunity to shine and takes it; the blend is equally impressive. Astonishing immediacy of sound in the storm-Prelude to Act One, for which Bel Air's recording must take credit, enables us to hear and to feel bows flying off 'cello strings and the richness of tone really must be heard to be believed. The same may be said of the celebrated 'cello solo at the beginning of the act: full of hope, promise, potential. In much of this act there is a sense of chamber music, albeit on a grand scale, recalling Karajan’s Wagner. This does not preclude weight of orchestral tone, for instance at Siegmund’s cries of ‘Wälse, Wälse,’ yet such tone was differentiated, never monolithic. Kettledrums punctuate ominously whilst the woodwind are simply delectable. When Wotan tells Brünnhilde of the Nibelung host threatening Valhalla, it is in the orchestra – Wagner’s modern-day Greek chorus – that terror truly registers. The orchestral thunder as Wotan arrives in Act Three is not only splendid on its own terms; it ensures that even a Ride of the Valkyries as spirited as we have just heard does not overshadow what is to come: keen strategy on the part of Sir Simon Rattle. And by far the most moving parts of the final scene were those in which the orchestra truly spoke, unhindered by voices.

Rattle’s direction is generally reliable and often more than that. He certainly knows how to secure the sounds he desires from his orchestra and rarely indulges in the micromanagement that characterised some of his earlier work in Berlin. (Conductor and orchestra’s triumphant Tristan-excerpts and Turangalîla-Symphonie at this year’s Proms were indicative of a greater naturalness than had sometimes previously been the case.) If the long line does not sound quite so inevitable, quite so symphonically conceived, as in the work of the greatest Wagner conductors, they have all benefited from greater experience with the Ring. Rattle’s reading remains worlds away from the unstructured choppiness that has so bedevilled Antonio Pappano’s London Ring. My only real reservation lies with the conclusion to the first act. For all the extraordinary beauty of the Berlin Philharmonic’s playing, the direction during this scene sometimes wants greater forward propulsion. At times, it sounds oddly held back: almost defensible when we thereby revel in ravishing woodwind detail, not so otherwise, when it merely sounds arbitrary. There is no competition here for the all-consuming passion of the Boulez-Chéreau Ring on DVD – having Peter Hofmann and Jeannine Altmeyer enhances visual credibility, of course – nor indeed for many audio recordings. Karajan, with Jon Vickers and Gundula Janowitz, remains a favourite of mine in this respect. Furtwängler naturally remains in a class of his own.

The cast is generally of a high, if not overwhelming standard. Mikhail Petrenko and Eva-Maria Westbroek seemed to me strongest. Petrenko’s Hunding arrives looking and sounding every inch the brutal bourgeois: black of tone, yet never unmodulated. This Hunding is no mere caricature, however; he is possessed of a dark, gangsterish attraction. Despite the odd instance of spread at the top of her range earlier on, Westbroek’s Sieglinde develops into a stronger character than we often see and hear. If I remain wedded to the silvery beauty of Gundula Janowitz as the examplar for how this part should sound, that is no reason to dismiss other approaches, especially when conceived so intelligently as here. In the third act, ‘O hehrstes Wunder! Herrlichster Maid’ sounds as expectantly radiant as I can recall, quite outshining Eva Johannson’s Brünnhilde, the weakest link in the cast. Johansson can ‘do’ youthfully impetuous, although camera close-ups do her no favours. More seriously, her diction and intonation leave a great deal to be desired. Much of her third act music is sharp, shrill, and wobbly. Moreover, she comes to sound and look somewhat deranged; it is difficult to ascertain whether this were intended.

Robert Gambill’s Siegmund is ardent if occasionally a little strained – ‘Winterstürme’ would be a case in point. It may be unfair but one inevitably compares him with his predecessors and the voice is not always at the level of the best of them. Still, he can act well – which cannot truthfully be said of all of them – and he looks the part of an outlaw. His tenor is often baritonal in heft yet remains unmistakeably a tenor. Sir Willard White is a good Wotan, although once again, when one considers his predecessors, one realises that this is no John Tomlinson, let alone Hans Hotter. One can see the anguish in White’s face and often hear it in his voice. His second act monologue was commanding, if some way short of unforgettable.

Rattle, according to a booklet interview, entertains a strange conception of Fricka. It is fair enough to recoil from portraying her as a shrew but ‘the most sympathetic and reasonable figure in the entire opera’? As ‘the orchestra makes ... clear’? What of the rapturous evocation of the Volsungs’ mutual love as Wotan speaks of them? Wagner, in a letter to Theodor Uhlig, refers to Wotan’s ‘struggle with his own inclination and with custom (Fricka)’. The incestuous union of Siegmund and Sieglinde entails no crime against nature; like that of Œdipus and Jocasta, it produces healthy offspring. Such unions merely offend against what Wagner, in Opera and Drama, called the ‘wonted relations’ of familial society, a society whose revenge was without mercy. ‘The old storm, the old trouble,’ is Wotan’s weary remark upon Fricka’s furious approach, indicating not merely a hen-pecked husband but also a clash between the new, developmental side to his ‘inclination’ and ‘custom’, set in stone as hard and unalterable as the Law of the Medes and the Persians. Thankfully, there is little in Lilli Paasikivi’s Fricka that bears witness to Rattle’s idea, other perhaps than the twinge of sympathy one feels as she laments her marital neglect. This is movingly accomplished and all the better for it.

What of Stéphane Braunschweig’s production? There is not much to obect to in it, although some aspects may irritate. However, I cannot discern any guiding principle behind it; there is little to suggest that we should have lost out by hearing a concert performance. ‘Little’, but perhaps not nothing, for there are a few nice touches. I liked the opening of the second act, in which we witness Wotan playing a chess-like war-game. He puts the pieces away as Fricka arrives and she tosses them aside when she sees them. There is an interesting likeness to an Ibsen family-drama during this confrontation, followed as it is by having Brünnhilde sit at Wotan’s feet as an obedient daughter in the nursery. The bodysnatching Valkyries impressed too. It is confusing, however, to have Siegmund and Sieglinde appear in the very same location in which the earlier parts of the second act have taken place, a confusion that put me in mind of similar loose ends in Keith Warner’s Royal Opera production. If relative location does not matter, then it is better to give no sense of location at all. How very different are Chéreau and indeed Harry Kupfer in this respect. Moreover, whilst we are treated to a grave Todesverkündigung, especially from the orchestra but also from Gambill’s well-acted response, it is not at all clear why Brünnhilde should kiss Siegmund as she does. This was not a hint in any sense prefigured or followed up. I was also confused by Marion Hewlett’s lighting in the first act. The orange lighting to accompany the glistening of the sword seems wildly excessive, more suggestive of fire. Spring’s entrance thereafter resembles a return of winter moonlight. Having said that, I welcomed the video-projection of fire in the third act, even as I puzzled at the point of the chairs – familiar from Act Two’s Valhalla – on which Brünnhilde is put to sleep. She would hardly awake refreshed.

There is, then, certainly no production challenge to Chéreau or Kupfer, though it is not difficult to imagine, or indeed to witness, worse: far better this than the prettified non-drama of Otto Schenk’s would-be exhumation for the Metropolitan Opera. The most pressing reason to acquaint oneself with the present Walküre remains the superlative performance from the orchestra. However, it is unforgivably philistine to have placed a disc-break during the second act.

Festival d'Aix en Provence: Siegfried, 7 July 2008

(Images - copyright: Elisabeth Carecchio)

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Siegfried – Ben Heppner
Mime – Burkhard Ulrich
The Wanderer – Sir Willard White
Alberich – Dale Duesing
Fafner – Alfred Reiter
Erda – Anna Larsson
Brünnhilde – Katarina Dalayman
Woodbird – Mojca Erdmann

Stéphane Braunschweig (director, designs, and video)
Thibault Vancraenenbroeck (costumes)
Marion Hewlett (lighting)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

I was at something of a disadvantage in seeing this, the third instalment of the Aix Ring, without having seen the first two parts. (The dramas are being staged in turn year by year, repeated at the following year’s Salzburg Easter Festival.) Siegfried is arguably the least well-suited of the four dramas to viewing in isolation. There may also have been visual references on which I failed to pick up, although I tried to do a bit of homework beforehand. However, I suspect that there were not many such references, given the minimalist quality of the staging.

Stéphane Braunschweig’s designs provided a stylish frame for the action within, although little appeared to be said about the natural and (un-)social environment in which that action was taking place. This need not be portrayed naturalistically, but the forest is crucial to understanding of the drama in many ways. Siegfried’s home should remind the musician of Der Freischütz, the German Romantic opera par excellence. More broadly, there is any number of cultural references, which might fruitfully here be played with. As Simon Schama observed, in his book, Landscape and memory, it is ‘virtually impossible … to think of the Grimm tales without immediately conjuring up a forest’. It was in 1813, the year of Wagner’s birth in Leipzig – and of that city’s eponymous battle, in which Napoleon was roundly defeated – that the Brothers Grimm had begun to publish their collection of tales, poetry, proverbs, songs, and so forth, entitled Altdeutsche Wälder (‘Old German forests’). Moreover, the forest, writes Schama, is a world in which ‘Roman rules do not apply’. In the aftermath of the Wars of Liberation, one might justly have substituted French for Roman, echoing Caspar David Friedrich’s celebrated painting of a French chasseur lost in the German forest. Wotan’s spear of (Roman) law has made little headway in this fearful, uncivilised, world. It is no coincidence that Fafner has settled in a forest cave in order to protect the Nibelung hoard, nor that the Brünnhilde in Die Walküre has had Sieglinde hurry eastward to the forest, that she and her child might escape Wotan’s wrath. It is certainly no coincidence that Siegfried is thereby born and raised in the forest, a lawless and fearless child of Nature, unaffected by Mime’s attempts to ‘civilise’ him Since Braunschweig, by his own testimony, wished to present a psychoanalytical fairy-tale, I should have expected him to pick up at least upon the aspect of the forest as a space of magic, menace, and primitive redress, even if the political implications were largely to be eschewed. Not that I think they should be: a Siegfried in which the importance of a charismatic hero coming from nowhere to strike down Wotan’s spear of law is minimised seems to me fundamentally flawed. It is no coincidence that the young Engels would describe himself as a ‘first-class mythologist,’ and long for ‘Siegfried’s sons’ to be shown those ‘heroic deeds reserved for the nineteenth century’. The video-projection of fire worked very well; something along such lines for the forest – and perhaps its inhabitants too? – might have made an important contribution on many interpretative levels.

But what else of Brausnchweig’s fairy-tale? If it declined to be political, as Wagner and many of his contemporaries – not to mention successors – would have wished, was it convincingly psychoanalytical? The Personenregie on its own terms seemed to work quite well; there were no embarrassments of inept acting here, although some of the cast undoubtedly impressed more than others. Yet, apart from presenting the drama as Brünnhilde’s dream – we witnessed her asleep at the opening, to be awakened in more than one sense by Siegfried at the end – there was not a huge amount to go on. Mime’s attempt to teach Siegfried fear with a toy dragon presumably fell into this category, but it did not really seem integrated into the greater Konzept. Indeed, this did not seem properly thought through on its own terms; even if it had been, it would probably have begged more questions than it answered. Notung’s shattering of the spear could doubtless work in terms of an attack upon a father figure’s authority, but some aspects of the drama – those involving Alberich, for example – would have been extremely difficult to integrate, and there was little success in that respect here. Whilst I appreciate that any one production must make choices, decide upon aspects to be emphasised and so forth, it seems to me that, on the whole, the more successful productions will highlight at least some of the tensions between various aspects of the drama, rather than press too single-mindedly upon a single idea. Patrice Chéreau remains a gold standard in this regard, without any sacrifice to the guiding line of his – or Pierre Boulez’s – interpretation.

This brings me to the music. I did not feel especially convinced that Sir Simon Rattle’s interpretation was closely allied to Braunschweig’s. Considered on its own terms, however, there was much to enjoy. The Berlin Philharmonic provided a richly upholstered, deluxe account of the score. One may regret – and I certainly do – the loss of what was once its characteristically ‘German’ sound; for that, one must visit the Staatskapelle Berlin or indeed Wagner’s own orchestra in Dresden. That said, the orchestra remains a truly virtuoso international ensemble. My only real cavil would have been the surprising harshness of the brass at some of the climaxes, especially at the end of the final act. One might have feared that from an American orchestra but one does not expect that from Berlin. The section’s contribution elsewhere, however, was magnificent, not least during the strange preludes to the first two acts. The combination of Wagner tuba, bassoons, and kettledrums at the very opening was never ugly but was certainly spooky, invoking a good deal of the atmosphere that the staging would lack. Rattle’s daringly slow yet controlled speed here – perhaps contravening Wagner’s marking, Mässig bewegt, yet if so, fruitfully – certainly contributed to the impression of Freischütz-meets-Schoenberg. The woodwind, not least in the ‘Forest Murmurs’, sounded truly delectable, whilst the warm, if less individual, strings rarely put a foot – or rather, finger – wrong. One would not necessarily expect a ‘great’ interpretation from a conductor tackling Siegfried for the first time. Rattle, however, has by now considerable experience in terms of Parsifal and Tristan and certainly knows his way around Mahler. He provided as good as account of the score I can recall hearing since Bernard Haitink for the Royal Opera, which is praise indeed. There was a compelling sense of line for most of the work and there was certainly none of the frustratingly unstructured, stop-go quality to Antonio Pappano’s Covent Garden Ring. (That said, Pappano seemed stronger the last time round in Siegfried than in the other dramas of the cycle.) Unsurprisingly for one expert in the music of Debussy, Rattle was alert to the colouristic potential of the score, for instance in the balance between orchestral blend and characteristic solo quality in the first act Prelude as cited above, likewise for the unrelieved lugubriousness of that to the second act.

The undoubted star on stage was Burkhard Ulrich’s Mime: perhaps the most complete portrayal I have heard, let alone seen. There was, as Wagner insisted, nothing of the caricature to him. His horizons were fatally limited but it was not difficult to imagine him as the master craftsman who had invented the Tarnhelm. He was mellifluous of line, expressing the tragedy of Mime’s position and the wickedness of his will to power through the text and through musical inflection, but not through exaggerated screaming. Indeed, Mime often sounded stronger than Siegfried during the first act. Ben Heppner’s first Siegfried appeared – understandably yet still disappointingly – to be saving himself for what was to come. He was certainly superior to the catastrophic assumptions of the role we must generally endure, but his vocal heft did not sound to be what it once was: a worrying sign. If his tone rarely sounded truly heroic, his stage presence was anything but. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far: one could not credit this Siegfried as the bringer of revolution or the German Apollo. Sir Willard White proved an intermittently impressive Wanderer. Had I not recently been treated to Sir John Tomlinson’s towering portrayal at Covent Garden, I might have been more enthusiastic. White nevertheless paid considerable attention to word and line, although his diction was variable (and occasionally, as during his scene with Erda, just incorrect). He possessed a certain nobility, but the requisite impression of world-weary experience was not so apparent. Erdas rarely disappoint, yet Anna Larsson was outstanding in her imaginative attention to the score. Hers was a true contralto, of the kind one despairs of hearing nowadays. If her all-too-elegant costume somewhat detracted from a sense of the primæval, that was not her fault. Dale Duesing was a fine Alberich: ever alert to the possibilities of the text, malevolent yet once again never caricatured. I should like to hear him in the rest of the cycle. Alfred Reiter proved an excellent Fafner, stentorian in his possession and moving in his mortality. The Woodbird, Mojca Erdmann, was perfectly good, without making a great impression. Meanwhile, Katarina Dalayman sounded in good voice as Brünnhilde, despite her notoriously lengthy wait to appear on stage (bar her brief presence at the beginning, in this case). She evinced a brilliant yet flexible tone, which sadly overshadowed some of Heppner’s contribution. Musically then, this was as good a Siegfried as one is likely to hear today and I am sure that Rattle’s already commendable understanding will deepen.