Wagner in the logic hole: "Siegfried" at the Bayreuth Festival

Created: 2022-08-04 2:39 p.m

By: Markus Thiel

All at the same hairdresser?

Siegfried (Andreas Schager, left) meets Brünnhilde (Daniela Köhler), watched by Grane (Igor Schwab) - who is not her horse here, but her bodyguard.

© Enrico Nawrath

Fafner as a sick clan boss, Siegfried as a murderous role model for Hagen: The new Bayreuth "Siegfried" also has a few surprises in store.

Director Valentin Schwarz also gets caught up in his own ideas.

But Cornelius Meister is getting better and better.

A well-mannered little fellow could have turned out of him.

With understanding parents, nice friends, a place in the football team, optionally in the school orchestra.

But Hagen has bad company, and his name is Siegfried.

Two buddies, kind of like brothers.

And eventually Hagen learns how to kill.

When Siegfried first stabs his foster father Mime and then presses the pillow on his face, he will remember that.

His experiences, Bayreuth visitors know well, will turn against the teacher Siegfried himself on the next “Ring” day, in the “Götterdämmerung”.

Showing Hagen's background, his youth, his attitudes and actions motivate him, that's part of the plus side of this "Siegfried" premiere.

Wagner nerds also have to be concerned about other things.

Nobody expected director Valentin Schwarz to bring up a hissing dragon in act two.

But also not that it is a ailing clan godfather who fondles his nurse – who Wagner actually intended as a forest bird (Alexandra Steiner).

Wotan, who is known as Wanderer in "Siegfried", feigningly brings flowers.

Everyone is waiting for the disgusting package to end because they want to get rich.

When Siegfried pushes his crutch away and Fafner rattles on the ground, nobody helps.

The first act falls flat in a fatal way

So it stays that way in this new “Ring des Nibelungen”.

Director Valentin Schwarz is traveling as two people.

One wants to enrich the huge four-parter with surprising byways, ideas and character re-evaluations.

And the others often stand by and shrug their shoulders because they can hardly implement a lot of things technically.

The first act fizzles out in a fatal way, with two excited tenors including smith's songs in almost every "Siegfried".

Suddenly there is a sword after all (in the “Valkyrie” the miracle weapon was still a pistol), and other props also show: Black cannot completely avoid the insignia of the tetralogy.

Some of the byways he cheerfully treads turn out to be dead ends.

Also because Wagner's text cannot be ignored 90 percent - no matter how hard Wotan tries.

Tomasz Konieczny is back after his stage accident in Die Walküre.

The long legato slurs were not yet known from him, rather the swollen diction and the monochrome design.

Arnold Bezuyen approaches his game from the opposite side.

With him, mime rarely goes beyond declaiming in self-defense, a drastically meant singing that avoids correct pitches.

Andreas Schager has to get up to operating temperature first.

His Siegfried gets infected by mime in act one, but gets better and better as the evening goes on.

A pleasure singer who enjoys his tireless tenor organ and throws sounds into the room - simply because he can do it.

Daniela Köhler is allowed to enter the scene as a mysterious mummy and be unwrapped by the title hero.

Her high, shimmering soprano fits the extremely pitched "Siegfried" Brünnhilde, in the other "Ring" parts one would miss physical forms and broad timbre.

Anyone looking for excellent, well-controlled, yet expressive Wagner singing will find it mainly in smaller roles, with Okka von der Damerau (Erda), Olafur Sigurdarson (Alberich) and Wilhelm Schwinghammer (Fafner).

Cornelius Meister's conducting becomes more vivid and offensive

In “Siegfried”, conductor Cornelius Meister and the festival orchestra come to close approximations – apart from the swimming festival in the first act, which is unusual for the location.

More plastic emerges from the ditch, the interpretation becomes more comprehensible, more offensive, more powerful in the application of paint.

This is necessary when Black simply puts his pieces down.

The music now conquers space all the more unhindered and more effectively.

There is enough space for this, the chic villa by stage designer Andrea Cozzi has been available in ever new variations, twists and perspectives since "Rheingold".

Siegfried and Mime live in the basement, formerly Hunding's realm.

Brünnhilde, who has matured into a human woman, appears on the upper floor.

Otherwise you drink your fate nicely, especially young Siegfried is already a case for the Betty Ford Clinic.

These are lively anecdotes that Schwarz strings together and – apart from the helpless retrieval of dusty gestures – definitely provide entertainment.

But sometimes a trail is laid that Schwarz (lack of time? inability?) doesn't follow any further.

For example, Grane is not Brünnhilde's horse, but a bodyguard.

When she gets between him and Siegfried, others would have staged a subtle jealousy number.

Here they both pull the maiden like a rope, promptly laughed at by the audience.

In general, the hero's existential first encounter with a woman comes to nothing: one act earlier, he had already flirted heavily with Fafner's nurse.

There are many of these logic traps from which Black can hardly escape.

Supposedly in the “Götterdämmerung” something is to be solved and unraveled.

Six hours would be enough time for that.