MET Siegfried

I attended the performance of Siegfried on May 9th. Unfortunately I arrived late and had to watch Act 1 on a TV in Liszt Hall. Although I had a decent recollection of the dialogue, it would have been nice to have subtitles. The speaker sound was terribly 1-dimensional; I wondered if it was in mono. I had previously watched the HD Live performance in the autumn of 2011.

• Siegfried (Stephen Gould). Jay Hunter Morris sang this in the HD Live performance. Morris has a brighter timbre but Gould's was still very pleasing. For such a difficult role, Gould made it sound easy.
  
• The Wanderer (Bryn Terfel). I have to give Terfel credit. He has sung so reliably in all three operas. He and Hans-Peter König were the pillars for this Ring Cycle.
  
• Mime (Robert Brubaker). Gerhard Siegel sang this in the HD Liver performance. I liked Brubaker in Das Rheingold and I liked him here. His big voice matches Siegfried's.
  
• Alberich (Richard Paul Fink). Eric Owens sang this in the HD Live performance. Fink does a good job but Owens has a darker timbre.
  
• Fafner (Hans-Peter König). I wished that during his fight scene with Siegfried that he would growl. Otherwise it's just seems plain silly with all that silence. It's a monster! It's supposed to growl while fighting.
  
• Woodbird (Erin Morley). She did a fine job though I wish she sounded sweeter.
  
• Erda (Patricia Bardon). Wagner is a bit cruel here with this role. Erda spends most of her time singing at the bottom of the clef including a bunch of B3, A3, and G3s. Then he forces her to sing a naked A♭-5. She managed to sing all these notes with respectable volume. In the theatre, her dress shimmered beautifully; however in the opera house, it was mostly dull and black with only occasional shimmer.
  
• Brünnhilde (Katarina Dalayman). Deborah Voigt sang this in the HD Live performance. Dalayman certainly has a bigger voice than Voigt. But those top notes do not come easily. And that constant giant wobble became tiresome after the first minute. However when the tempo quickened 1.5 minutes before the end, the wobble was reined in and suddenly the smog cleared. She opted for the C5 instead of the opera-ending money shot C6 but that's forgivable. Compared to Voigt's, Dalayman's performance was definitely better but still it was rather unsatisfying.
  

The conductor was Derrick Inouye. I felt the performance Inouye conjured up from the orchestra was the best that I've heard these three nights.

The scenery in Act 1 was just beautiful. The projection of water onto the skirt of the stage was pretty cool. But starting in Act 2, the production value started to drop a bit. Fafner's dragon looked like a larger version of the snake in a can. In Act 3, the rotisserie fire is less than magical. When Siegfried releases Brünnhilde from her sleep, I expected some more special effects. I think here more than any place, something special should happen. But nothing changes; the sky is still almost pitch black yet the sun is supposed to be shining. They seriously need to lighten up the scenery here and in Götterdämmerung.

For me, the last 30 minutes of Siegfried should be the climax of our 4 hour journey: the sound of Brünnhilde's voice piercing the male dominated soundscape like the sun after a storm. It wouldn't be so bad if the Siegfrieds weren't so good. But Dalayman and Voigt's Brünnhilde stand in stark contrast to Morris and Gould's Siegfried: the men have clear tones and display control over the technical demands of their roles, while the females have persistent ugly wobbles and struggle with the technical demands. I refrain from thinking about the magical Brünnhildes of Birgit Nilsson and Kirsten Flagstad because doing so would make me more angry. I vow never to attend another Siegfried or Götterdämmerung ever again until a Brünnhilde emerges who can sing the role at a level close to the men who sing Wotan and Siegfried.