DCist Goes to the Opera: Siegfried

Just about everything that could have gone wrong with the production as planned did go wrong on Saturday. The company's music director, Heinz Fricke, whose experienced hand over the orchestra served the cycle so well, had to withdraw while recovering from bypass surgery. He was replaced quite effectively by Michael Güttler, a young German conductor who famously and successfully stepped in for Valery Gergiev during a Ring cycle in St. Petersburg a few years ago. Very much in the mold of Gergiev, Güttler left an incisive mark on the score, driving the music forward, not always with the full cooperation of the orchestra, especially the strings. The sound from the pit was at times forceful (excellent playing in general from the winds and from the low brass, especially the Wagner tubas and big tuba) but often clarified and pointedly active in a style reminiscent of Boulez.

The cast was as a whole good, but with several weak links. Pär Lindskog, who debuted as Siegfried in the Royal Swedish Opera's Ring Cycle, came down with bronchitis. The solution worked out for opening night was to have American tenor Scott MacAllister, who just performed his first Siegfried this spring, sing from a score at the edge of the stage, while Lindskog acted the role on stage. A few missed entrances and a rough start aside, MacAllister sounded quite good, and we hope to have the chance in the run to see him act the role as well as sing it. At the same time, Lindskog owned the role as an actor and was entirely believable as this headstrong, white trash Siegfried, who might appear on Jerry Springer to have a DNA test proving that Mime is not his dad. Alan Held reprised his powerhouse Wotan and was the shining jewel of the cast, embracing his character's transformation into a sort of wandering hobo, with a bandana pulled down over one eye and silver duct tape covering the holes in his tattered coat.

Gordon Hawkins returned as Alberich, too, and was also good, if not quite as stellar as Held, as a crazy homeless person hanging around the factory that serves as the dragon's lair (garage) with a shopping cart full of his stuff. German tenor Andreas Conrad was a conniving, slightly goofy Mime, along the lines of the ingenious Heinz Zednik in the Chéreau production, although he rushed ahead of the conductor's beat more often than he was with it. Gidon Saks was a stentorian Fafner, if not quite of the necessary booming vocal proportion, and the same goes for Nancy Maultsby's Erda, an improvement over a strangely underpowered Elena Zaremba in Das Rheingold but still hardly an Erda of molten lava. The Brünnhilde of Iréne Theorin was likewise more good than great, perhaps thrown slightly by having to interact vocally with MacAllister so far away. Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Micaëla Oeste was entrusted with the small part of the Woodbird and sounded light, flighty, and a little bit out of her element. She appeared in a brightly colored costume on the catwalk above the dragon's factory and then led Siegfried from the gloom of the industrial wasteland into a green forest. It was the only part of Zambello's production that left me wondering a bit. Was she a tree-hugging hippie? If so, groovy, dude.

Wagner's Siegfried continues at Washington National Opera with four more performances on May 5, 9, 14, and 17, in the Kennedy Center Opera House.