Siegfried moves between the mythic and the fairy-tale rather uncomfortably for some critics. Most of the first act, and much of the second, is an enormously enlarged enactment of a Grimm's fairy tale about a boy who goes into the forest to find out what fear is. Added to this, in the third act, is a grandiose version of Sleeping Beauty where a young prince enters a protective forest (replaced here, or succeeded by, a magic fire) to wake a sleeping maiden with a kiss. Intertwined with these is the continuation of the mythic tale about the end of the world resulting from Wotan's overreaching ambition, deception and the price to be paid for them.
      For the first fairy-tale Wagner has devised, for him, some relatively simple music and indulged in some almost ludicrous stage-action such as the killing of the dragon or the entry of the hero in the first act with a bear. Much of the first act is taken up with a repetitive rhythm at first associated with Mime's vain attempts to forge a sword suitable for Siegfried, and the sword with which Siegfried will slay Fafner. Between Mime's initial moaning and the triumphant forging of Nothung at either end of Act one the mythic tale returns with the arrival of Wotan in Mime's home to check on progress. This results in another of Wagner's recapitulatory narratives in the form of a set of questions asked by Mime and Wotan of each other.
      The chief problem Wagner poses to producers and performers is how to characterise Siegfried. Is he the hero-in-waiting, the hope of the ancient Wotan for the renewal of his teetering kingdom, or is he just a loutish boor who idles his time in the forest in between bouts of terrorising his guardian? As the former he has been hailed as a hero, even at times as an archetypal Aryan, as the latter he can only be regarded as a no-good lay-about. It could be argued the opera is about his rite of passage from naÔve bully-boy to hero-in-the-making and this is certainly compelling given the remarkable musical change that takes place in the third act. But this still does not quite answer the difficulty of how to play Siegfried in the first act.
      Richard Berkeley-Steele's performance seems to solve no issue. Consistent with the production he appears in anti-fit jeans and bedraggled hair and sings the part well enough. But it is not clear who this Siegfried is as his acting is cumbersome and unfocused and too often involves just lumbering around the stage. Given his overgrown schoolboy manner in the first act it is hard not to feel sympathy with his guardian, Mime, whose characterisation by John Graham Hall is the most gentlemanly I have heard. Though Hall enunciates his words perfectly and sings in a most controlled and artful way, he is no Mime. He exudes no menace, no threat to Siegfried, no sense of the long-term schemer. It seems improbable he could have planned to kill Siegfried all along and was only waiting for the moment when Siegfried could forge the sword, kill Fafner and die at Mime's hands so that he could seize the ring and the helmet and thus world-power. Mime should always seem a loser and very much weaker than Alberich, but he is usually played in a much more snivelling, down-trodden way than Hall does so that Siegfried's contempt can carry conviction. Instead, it was hard not to feel Mime had a point about Siegfried not helping around the house.
      The poor characterisation of the Siegfried/Mime parts of the first and second act are completely in contrast to Andrew Shore's magnificent Alberich. From the moment he appears at the beginning of the second act his vocal tones, gestures and movements all present an utterly compelling portrayal of menacing evil. Like Hall his diction is perfect, but here this is to some purpose. He can hold the attention of the audience with the smallest gesture as when he watches Mime and Siegfried and turns the page of the newspaper behind which he is apparently unconcerned. Alberich watches and waits all the time. He dominates Mime, despises and distrusts Wotan and bides his time till he can recover what he, with some justification, thinks is his. Andrew Shore pours himself into all Alberich's complexities as though the mould had been made for him. His performance makes galvinising theatre.
      Robert Hayward's Wotan is nearly as compelling and manages to move from the mysterious stranger met in Act One by Mime and in Act Three by Siegfried to the god who imagines his efforts have proved gloriously successful in the third act encounter with Erda, surely one of the most thrillingly brilliant scenes in all Wagner. Hayward's is a subtle and grand performance of the ambivalent initiator but would-be saviour of the end of his world.
      Patricia Bardon makes an excellent Erda with her sleep-filled, or rather awake-reluctant, dialogue with Wotan. She is the perfect 'downer' to his 'upper'. Later, Kathleen Broderick's Bržnnhilde raises the fairy-tale to the mythic level with her beautifully paced performance of the lengthy final scene with its copious metaphors and symbols all in preparation for her union with the hero who has rescued her.
      Phyllida Lloyd's production and Richard Hudson's designs are fascinating and mostly very intelligently conceived and realised. The kitchen-sink, Look-Back-In-Anger look of the first act neatly locates Siegfried as out of place (given his ancestry) in the working-class surroundings forced upon Mime. The domestic chaos represented by dirty dishes and a dishevelled sofa give the fairy-tale an additional quotidian reality that matches well this element in the large-scale dialogue between fairy-tale and myth in Wagner's scheme of things. However, the set is not always used entirely convincingly. Next to the kitchen-cum-bed-sitter is the forge. When Wotan arrives to question Mime he stands in the forge and Mime in the sitting-room. But much is made of the separation of the rooms in the first and third scene with the imaginary wall between being persuasively solid. So it looks as though Wotan and Mime are not acting on the existing set but simply standing rather stolidly on either side of the stage. And why is the forge submerged for the crucial repairing of Nothung which appears to happen under the stage?
      Later, however, there are some very telling uses of lighting, acting and production. Given the concept of juxtapositions it was not uncomfortable to see plastic chairs resembling a bleak waiting-room outside Fafner's door set against a back-projection of a most realistic forest. From the forest appears entirely enthrallingly the wood-bird (excellently sung by Sarah Tynan) scootering her way through the forest, but at first only as an ill-defined image. Her reality only appears later when Siegfried can understand her. Then her one-foot propelled speed appropriately makes Siegfried run towards the goal she has identified.
      Back-lighting is also tellingly used in the last act when Bržnnhilde, again a mystery to Siegfried, first appears as a kind of Buddhist mummy behind the screen; and then, when Siegfried goes behind the veil, their union seems like a mystic union, the kind of oneness emphasised in Wagner's text.
      Paul Daniel's conducting of the score is polished and attentive to detail. The balance between stage and pit is carefully regulated, mostly in favour of the stage. The ensemble is good and the individual instrumentalists who have solos, especially John Thurgood's horn-playing, would outshine many more prestigious orchestras. However, I sometimes wished that Paul Daniel would let go a bit more and let this well-drilled orchestra have its head. Only at the end of the first act does he allow it to exult in response to the forging of the sword. Disappointingly Daniel did not change the balance in the third act when Wagner puts so much more of the plot into the orchestral texture. Here on many occasions the singers should sound almost overwhelmed. I particularly missed in this sonic transformation in glorious scene between Erda and Wotan, when Wagner having taken his pen up after over a decade that included Tristan and Meistersinger found that he had shifted his dramatisation more towards the unconscious thoughts and intentions of his characters. Then the orchestra's richer and more symbolic textures, as well as kaleidoscopic colour changes should play a greater part in the action, and interweave more prominently with the vocal lines. Wagner moved here musically from the fairy-tale to the myth, but the musical direction does not always sound like it. Good balance like good manners is not always the best behaviour.
Roderick Swanston