Free Opera of the Week – original and exclusive from England’s Bayreuth

Slippedisc courtesy of OperaVision streams live from the Longborough Festival Opera, known  as the British Bayreuth.  This is the bucolic backdrop for this new production by Amy Lane which celebrates the natural world. Renowned Wagnerian Anthony Negus conducts a cast of the UK’s leading Wagnerian singers.

Siegfried is the third opera in Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.  Wagner broke off composition at the end of Act II of Siegfried to write Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, returning to Siegfried seven years later.  Elements of these two operas feed into Siegfried.   Like Tristan, it has an ecstatic love duet, as Brünnhilde and Siegfried discover each other. There is also comedy, a quality not typically associated with Wagner. The opera’s lighter moments take many forms, from physical comedy (Mime’s reaction to Siegfried’s superhuman anvil-hammering), character flaws (Mime’s joy at riddle-solving, which almost tips into self-sabotage), and the hero’s revelation of Brünnhilde at the end of the opera (‘That is no man!’) which raises a laugh from audiences in some parts of the world.  Listen out for Wagner’s wonderful evocation of the forest in Act II.

Radley Daley sings Siegfried, Adrian Dwyer as Mime, Paul Carey Jones as The Wanderer and Mark Stone as Alberich.

The Plot:  The hero Siegfried reforges his father’s shattered sword, embarking on a quest for the greatest prize of all – the love of the valkyrie Brünnhilde, who lies trapped in a ring of fire.

 Available on 19 August 2022 from 1900 CET/ 1800 London, 1300 NY