Thus far, the production concept in Opera Australia’s new Ring cycle from Chen Shi-Zheng has become less and less overt with each passing opera. There is little sign of any Asian cultural influences in Siegfried: no Chinese lions or gigantic bonsai tree. Even the much-vaunted virtual screens are here used with restraint: the first scene takes place with only two coloured panels acting as walls for Mime’s forge while the rest of the stage is plunged in darkness. When the occasion calls for it in Siegfried’s forging song, digital sparks do fly, shooting around projections of a giant sword. This scene is notable also for the brief appearance of acrobatic dancers with ribbons, whom one could choose to imagine as Loge’s minions, personifications of fire itself.
The backdrop to Act 2 is a gorgeous kaleidoscope of pulsating patterns, somewhere between a star constellation and a Pollock drip painting. The trees on forward-placed screens are touched with luminous green, with beautiful moving wisps of red representing the flight of the Woodbird, here an aerialist, dipping balletically across the stage and vanishing when her voice double (the invisible but excellent Celeste Lazarenko) takes over. The giant Fafner, now a dragon, is rendered as coiling scales and a gigantic digital head; once Siegfried gives him his comeuppance, in a macabre but effective analogue touch a huge bag dripping with blood is lowered from the ceiling.
Colour is a key storytelling element in this cycle, and so when Siegfried and Wotan square up to each other in Act 3, each is appropriately backed by panels (red and blue respectively), with the smashing of Wotan’s spear resulting in complicated geometric shapes. Throughout the love duet, new events cause new accents in the patina of the stylised lava waves, and their final embrace triggers supernovas to break out in erotic celebration.
It is a long evening (even seasoned Wagnerians squirmed a little in the run-up to the 11pm finish), though not on account of any noticeably slow tempi from Philippe Auguin. Understandably, some fatigue was detectable among the musicians, even early on: the brass players on either side of the pit got comically out of sync with each other in one passage. Mostly, though, things were fine; the cor anglais hammed it up superbly as Siegfried tries to play birdsong on his improvised pipe (here a folded leaf), and the famous horn solos were played with panache.
Siegfried is supposed to be the comic part of the cycle, and Andreas Conrad was amusing in his role as the bumbling plotter and would-be assassin Mime. Such was his frustration with his rebellious charge that he yelled and screeched rather than sang a high proportion of his lines, a decision that seemed dramatically justifiable. Daniel Sumegi was particularly fine in his role as the Wanderer; now grey-haired and clad in black, he blended dignity and power (and more than a touch of malice in his dealings with the two dwarfs). Doffing his hat to Siegfried after the shattering of his spear was an interesting choice, slightly undercutting the power of this moment.
Warwick Fyfe again brought bug-eyed intensity and pipes of steel to his appearance as Alberich, and Liane Keegan’s Erda made up in clarity of diction for what she lacked in sonic heft. Andrea Silvestrelli was never seen, but his voice (with added reverb) conveyed the requisite menace as Fafner. After her multi-year sleep, Lise Lindstrom's Brünnhilde resumed as strongly as she had finished Walküre, her mixture of elation and distress at her new circumstances palpable.
But in the end, the success or otherwise of this opera comes down to the tenor, and Stefan Vinke, who was Siegfried in both the 2013 and 2016 cycles here in Australia, once again showed that he can monster this most demanding of parts. Although he has played Wagner’s brutal man-child all over the world since making his 2006 role debut, his voice shows virtually no signs of nearly two decades of punishment, and he was as strong in the closing stages of the Act 3 love duet last night as he was when tormenting Mime at the start. His may not be the most beautiful of voices, but there are few who can match his vigour and ebullience. One could even forgive his lackadaisical swordplay in the fight with Fafner, since he was so clearly victorious where it mattered.
David's travel to Brisbane was funded by Opera Australia
