Germany Wagner, Siegfried: Soloists and Movement Chorus of Saarländisches Staatstheater, Saarländisches Staatsorchester / Stefan Neubert (conductor), Saarbrücken, Germany, 18.4.2025. (DM-D)
Production:
Direction, Stage and Costume design – Alexandra Szemerédy, Magdolna Parditka
Lighting design – Thomas Roscher
Video – Leonard Koch
Dramaturgy – Benjamin Wäntig
Assistant director, Choreography – Gaetano Franzese
Cast:
Siegfried – Tilmann Unger
Mime – Paul McNamara
The Wanderer – Simon Bailey
Alberich – Werner van Mechelen
Fafner – Hiroshi Matsui
Erda – Melissa Zgouridi
Brünnhilde – Aile Asszonyi
Woodbird – Bettina Maria Bauer
This production brought the laboratory setting of Das Rheingold und Die Walküre (reviewed here) to the continuation of the Ring cycle with Siegfried. The production team again presented the laboratory with floor and walls covered with black and white tiles, like a chess board. Wotan, now the Wanderer, retained his position as head of the lab, with Alberich as a mad and increasingly irritable researcher. Minor female lab assistants were cloned one-a-minute in a different section of the facility, sometimes revealed to view by raising or lowering the curtain or the floor levels of the set. The costumes of all characters reflected the black and white (yin and yang?) floor and wall pattern. A panel of monitor screens usually hung from the ceiling, revealing computer code, graphs, DNA models and other representations of what lab screens might typically show. Siegfried and Brünnhilde were the scientist’s latest creations: Siegfried newly created and Brünnhilde re-awakened as version 2.0. When the two united at the end of the opera, the screens suggested a restart of the entire process with Siegfried 2.0 and Brünnhilde 3.0.
Against the background of memories of Die Walküre, the novelty aspect was limited. Within this broad known and expected frame, many nuances found their individual spaces, which gave rise to an additional chuckle here, an insight there, or an occasional raised eyebrow. Certainly, it was altogether very entertaining, intriguing, imaginative and allowed time to fly.
Tilmann Unger has established himself as a heldentenor predominantly as a guest performer of the relevant roles in small to mid-sized opera houses in Germany, working with institutions who cannot cast a singer from within their resident companies for such demanding roles. To start with, he had the stamina required and did not have to hold back noticeably at first to get through to the end, and his voice sounded particularly – and appropriately – fresh and radiant in the final minutes of the duet with Brünnhilde. It was easy to understand the words he sang without having to rely on guesswork or the surtitles. He was clearly at ease with the directorial approach. At its best, his voice was clear, bright, not too baritonal, and balanced across different shades of volume. At some particularly exposed moments, the top of the voice could become a little tense and narrow, which should disappear as he sings this role more often.
Paul McNamara clearly relished the part of Mime as the lab assistant tasked with taking care of Siegfried. He had been announced to be suffering with vocal problems due to a cold – such announcements always make me listen up, but I did not detect anything here. For a character tenor, his voice was surprisingly baritonal, and lyrically rounded in the top register, creating an intriguing vocal relationship with Unger’s Siegfried. McNamara clearly would not be miscast in the youthful or heavier heldentenor roles which he has indeed sung from time to time!
Simon Bailey was superb as the Wanderer, making full use of the opportunities the role offers within the context prescribed by the directorial concept. He has taken his laboratory to a level where the experiments and the creatures resulting from them take on lives of their own, outgrowing their creator. As with his Walküre-Wotan (review here), his vocal nuances were particularly outstanding, ranging from very movingly quiet, reflective passages all the way to tremendous outbursts.
Werner von Mechelen contrasted well with Bailey as the mad scientist Alberich. Here, Alberich was still of importance to Wotan’s overall plans and ideas, because he was capable of adding a component to it that Wotan could not deliver himself. Wotan hated him even more for that. Alberich was too far gone into madness, however, to realise anything beyond the obsession with his creation, inhabiting a lab where there was not a single space on the whiteboards and walls which was not filled with scribbles of chemical formulae, which he wiped off and changed with manic energy. Von Mechelen was able to convey that state of mind not only through his acting but also vocally, for example much snarling. His art was in his ability to allow his voice to flow smoothly and to produce beautiful sound, never needing to resort to barking, bellowing or shouting for characterisation.
Aile Asszonyi impressed with the sheer richness of her soprano as Brünnhilde. Erda was confined to a very small space and was irritated by the claustrophobic environment from which she could not escape. Melissa Zgouridi was very powerful as Erda, a genuine alto rather than a mezzo-soprano with good lower notes.
Hiroshi Matsui represented Fafner as a zombie-like creature held in one of the laboratory spaces. He sang with noble emphasis. Bettina Maria Bauer was vocally delightful as the Woodbird. Stefan Neubert achieved a fine balance of music and voices, proved very attentive to the needs of the singers and guided the orchestra through an evening of Wagner at its best.
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe