Siegfried: A Review
Possibly the best film yet
The singing was, of course, superb.
The acting was performed magnificently.
Jay Hunter Morris as Siegfried was marvellous in the arguably most difficult role in all of opera. He played off Gerhard Siege’s Mime wonderfully. Mime was a riot. Jay Hunter Morris was the understudy for the Siegfried role but accepted playing the part for real when Gary Lehman who had been rehearsing for the role withdrew for health reasons only eight days before opening night, Gary replacing Ben Heppner eight months previously. Like in a film story, Jay “walks away” with the role, immediately becoming the definitive Siegfried. But Jay had previously played Siegfried for the San Francisco Opera beginning in June 2011.
“The machine” and other electronic gimmickry mostly worked perfectly. There were very few occasions where the overprojection was so strong as to appear obvious. Live projections of the singers’ faces were projected on the stage floor through a device which distorted the images to seem to be reflections in rippling water. The bird, which later sings, is an interactively animated bird with mouth movements that synchronize automatically with the live sounds of the singing. In one fantastic scene the bird appears projected onto Siegfried’s shirt for several minutes, interactively responding to Jay Hunter Morris.
Fafner the dragon was less successful, only a very large marionette capable of limited movement and not particularly terrifying. Then the dying Fafner vanishes for a moment and reappears in his original shape as a giant, giving realism to Fafner’s dying moments (when most of Fafner’s singing occurs) that otherwise would have been lacking.
Siegfried breaking through the flame barrier is done non-realistically but magnificently.
The comic moment near the beginning of the opera when Siegfried brings a live bear into Mime’s cave to terrify Mime is of course done with a human in a bear costume, but with the bear mostly hidden behind portions of the scenery.
The final part of the this version of the opera from Brünehilde’s awakening appears in audio at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI_3zh6bQUE .
I know that many of you won’t understand what the fuss is about. But understanding any kind of complex music, whether it be Wagner’s musical drama, Appalachian folk, Indonesian gamelan music, Hindu bhajan music, free jazz, and so forth needs attention over a period of time to understand and internalize the various tropes of that music.
Modern western rock is equally incomprehensible to those unexposed to it.