by Paul J. Pelkonen
Anvil, no chorus: Stefan Vinke makes his debut in Wagner's Siegfried.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2019 The Metropolitan Opera.
Before getting to the dragons, dwarves and gods, let's start with the house debut of Stefan Vinke in the title role. His performance had beauty, tone and endurance without once resorting to shouting or bark. In short, this was the tenor that this opera--and this production of the Ring Cycle has been waiting for. He sang with full-throated and burnished tone, charging over the orchestra in his entrance and singing a stunning high C. He was very good indeed in the arduous Forging Song, playing the role with a kind of goofy Chris Hemsworth energy that brought you along on the hero's path to manhood. Mr. Vinke sang with sensitive, pensive tone in the second act before the heroics with the dragon, and he got that rarest reaction from Wagner devotees--welcome and joyous laughter.
He was helped by having a superb foil (for two acts, anyway) in Gerhard Siegel's portrayal of the dwarf Mime. Mr. Siegel gave this little person a king-sized voice, injecting character notes but never bleating or turning shrill. Moments such as the "sparrow-song" (a lullaby that Mime sings to Siegfried) had a tenderness, and little anachronistic touches (like the unaccountable flask of whisky that Mime keeps hidden in his workbench) lent this Nibelung a welcome, human touch. The two tenors tried to outdo each other at the end of the forging scene and were superb in the Act II sequence where Mime embarks on his ill-advised plan to lull Siegfried to sleep and then chop off his head. It doesn't work out well for Mime.
The role of the Wanderer is written a bit lower than Wotan in the earlier operas, and Mr. Volle was a perfect fit. He sang with and gravitas in his scenes as he meddled again and again with the opera's events. Mr. Volle was a warm and almost genial quiz show host in his riddle-game with Mime, and was excellent in his confrontation with Alberich (Thomas Konieczny) in Act II. The latter has the role of Wotan in his future, and had the bigger of the two voices. In the third act, Mr. Volle got to make the best entrance in this Ring, rising above a frozen lake to reveal the sleeping goddess Erda: Brunnhilde's mother. She was played with sonorous beauty by Karen Cargill. (Fashion note: her obsidian ballgown that is hands-down the best costume in this Ring.) Their cosmic conversation can drag, but it was conducted in a taut and supple manner with Mr. Volle finding his higher register for a key, climactic moment.
Mr. Vinke, Mr. Siegel and Mr. Volle found themselves in a Wagner world that has been technically tweaked for the better since the last run of this opera. Among the improvements: the projections of blowing leaves and the forests looked less computer-generated than they did in the past. The planks of the Machine Set serve a dual function thanks to a little CGI waterfall that appears to flow out of the great contraption. Fafner the dragon has also gotten an upgrade, with more feathery scales that make the huge puppet look less like a big snake and more like an actual dragon. The big Würm was sung by bass Dmitry Belosselskiy, projected through a sound system initially, and then appearing in his Das rheingold Fafner costume for his death scene. From offstage, Erin Morley was a convincing Forest Bird, taking her bow with a yellow feather on her dress to indicate to the audience who she was.
The third act progresses to a lofty mountaintop where Mr. Vinke faced two tests: a confrontation with the Wanderer (Wotan in disguise, played here by Michael Volle) and waking up a fresh-voiced Brunnhilde (Christine Goerke.) In this long and punishing love duet, most Siegfrieds run out of gas and squawk along hoping that the soprano's volume and the thundering orchestra can cover their vocal exhaustion. Not Mr. Vinke though: he somehow had enough energy and voice left after four and a half hours of difficult singing to let off another high C as he wooed Brunnhilde. In other words, the hero saved best notes for when they were needed at the end of this very long opera.
As Brunnhilde, Ms. Goerke made her entrance with a tone that grew and flowered into brilliance. From her awakening forward, she simply dominated the opera, singing the tender passages ("Ewig war ich") with the same wide-eyed innocence that she brought to the role in Die Walküre. This was an involved and sensitive portrayal, with the soprano rising admirably in this short but challenging part. There was an actual chemistry and sense of wild romantic abandon between the two leads, and the overall happiness of this scene made one wish, however briefly, that this was the point at which the story of the Ring ended.
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