Siegfried: Thoughts of a Novice Wagnerian

First of all, do you have any idea how hard it is to get from one side of Berlin to Potsdamer Platz? I was sprinting by the time I got there, hurtling across streets teeming with traffic, but so help me, I was not going to miss this because the public transportation sucked.

I am not by any stretch of the imagination a music scholar, nor is there anything I can't say that hasn't been said better by other bloggers here. So this review is that of one girl who was introduced to Wagner only in May and is completely bowled over.

It was amazing.

There, I said it. I thought the entire production, from beginning to end, questionable baby-snatching and recaltricent Machine aside, was simply unbelievable. Jay Hunter Morris was flat-out adorable as Siegfried. I'd never heard of Morris before, but I was impressed. He's a tall, huge, adorable Texan (that accent! It was so nice to hear someone twanging; you have no idea), and I found his Siegfried was the perfect mix of eagerness, ambition, crassness, loneliness, and youth. He was immature but full of bravado. He bounced and ran and flopped and grumbled, and was altogether a teenage boy on a mission. When he hid under the blanket, plugging his ears against Mime's lecture in Act One, I grinned. I chuckled when he sat on the table like a child, swinging his legs, right after threatening to kill Mime if he didn't surrender information on his parents. When he ran off after the bird at the end of Act Two and had to come back onstage for Nothung, I laughed out loud. Siegfried is not an easy character to like ("He's very young and he's very handsome and he's very strong, and he's very brave, and he's very stupid..."), but Morris won me over. His Siegfried is like that adorable meat head that we all knew and loved in high school. The one you want to punch half the time.

Bryn Terfel can do no wrong in my mind, so I'm probably not a reliable witness here. But I found his Wanderer to be wise, jaded, a little dangerous, even funny. I liked how he took his shoes off and stretched a little in Mime's forge, and how he conjured Erda in Act Three. His scene with Siegfried was also interesting, especially when you consider that he's the kid's grandfather. There's a weariness to the character that I find touching: He knows that he's given into the Ring's curse. He forsook love when he abandoned Siegmund and Brunnhilde, and he knows it. Now he wants it to be over. I found the spear-shattering scene very poignant. His wig was, admittedly, rather Saruman-esque, but I liked the black contact and eye make-up they gave him. It was also fun to read Bryn Terfel's Tweets during the intermissions: Time for a cup of t. R Flemming looking for interviews., and so on.

Hans Peter Koenig! I love you Hans Peter Koenig!

And now, I bring you to the scene that left me weak in the knees and stumbling like a drunk out of that theater: the great love duet. One of the interviewees described it as a "fight to the death", and I have to agree. A really, really gorgeous fight to the death. Siegfried was, again, adorable in his wide-eyed contemplation of Bruennhilde, and how he scampered away to the back of the stage when she began to wake up. I'll admit that my first thought, when Brunnhilde opened her eyes, stretched, and flopped over, was "Ooh, nap hangover! I hate those". And then I forgot all about it, because she was just so sweet and awed and happy to be awake, and thrilled that Siegfried was there, and feeling strange because she woke up human. Her music morphed into the duet, and her caution to treat her "carefully, I was once immortal and am not quite sure how to handle this". I found her uncertainty very touching. Deborah Voigt really played it well; I find her Brunnhilde very accessible and believable. The whole thing just got louder and louder and more and more passionate, until the only thing that could possibly happen was for it to end. And as I was at the end of Act One of Die Walkuere, I was weak in the knees and totally verklempt. This was exactly the kind of evening I needed after a long week.

Bottom line? I cannot freaking wait for Goettedaemerung. If I had the money, too, I would go see the complete cycle in the spring.