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The “Cougar” and the Puppy Bayreuth
Festspielhaus
07/29/2025 - & August 18, 2025
Richard Wagner: Siegfried
Klaus Florian Vogt (Siegfried), Ya-Chung Huang (Mime), Tomasz Konieczny (Der Wanderer), Olafur Sigurdarson (Alberich), Tobias Kehrer (Fafner), Anna Kissjudit (Erda), Catherine Foster (Brünnhilde), Victoria Randem (Das Waldvöglein), Branko Buchberger (Der junge Hagen), Igor Schwab (Grane)
Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele, Simone Young (conductor)
Valentin Schwarz (Stage Director) Andrea Cozzi (Sets), Andy Besuch (Costumes), Reinhard Taub, Nicol Hungsberg (Lighting), Luis August Krawen (Videography), Konrad Kuhn (Dramaturgy)
V. Randem, K. F. Vogt, Y.‑C. Huang, Statisterie der Bayreuther Festspiele (© Enrico Nawrath)
Though much was offensive in director Valentin Schwarz’s take on the Ring as experienced in the first two episodes of his Netflix‑style adaptation, one could not help but be curious as to how Siegfried would be handled. In this third episode, there are more offensive moments, but also some interesting ideas.
Mime seems to have taken over Hunding’s hut, though the conniving dwarf has much more taste than Hunding and Sieglinde combined. The modest dwelling is more pleasant (imagine a child’s fairytale cottage), though at this stage Siegfried is already a young man.
Schwarz made the blacksmith Mime into a dollmaker and the cottage a doll’s house, with various playthings seated in a celebration of Siegfried’s birthday. The party might be enchanting for a five‑year‑old, but Siegfried is almost four times that. Given his age, it’s a creepy setting for a pedophile rearing a minor in a secluded setup in which he intends to stop time, while conditioning the youngster to remain a child, relying on dolls for companions. Not the most virile of upbringings, and this in hillbilly territory, no less.
Such a scenario, even if Mime were not a sexual deviant, but a kind single man raising a child, would likely ensure the boy would mature with stunted intellectual development. He’d be an “innocent” as required when the moment arrives to confront Fafner and seize the ring and dragon’s treasure.
Siegfried is a monstrous child, utterly abusive of his adoptive parent. Mime walks with a crutch and Wotan comes to visit with two mafia‑style goons, breaking Mime’s crutch. Wotan, who is both the child’s father and grandfather in Schwarz’s incest‑rich production, is at the cottage on the occasion of the boy’s birthday. This is one of Schwarz’s few good ideas. He brings a gift, a long box which contains a sword, or more likely a rifle.
Siegfried breaks Mime’s other crutch, only to find Nothung hidden at its base. Though the doll’s house is not equipped with a forge, Siegfried somehow manages to cast the sword, which was whole and not in pieces to start with, into its operative stage. This was both unconvincing and visually ineffective.
Act II of Siegfried was so far the most imaginative segment of Schwarz’s Ring adaptation: Fafner no longer dwells in a dragon’s lair, but rather is a debilitated senior in a high‑end nursing home. The fancy Poltrona Frau sofa from Wotan’s home in Die Walküre has been astutely requisitioned for the reception area of the nursing home. Both Alberich and Wotan, twins in Schwarz’s adaptation, visit the old man at the nursing home to socialize over whiskey. Wotan, now the Wanderer, is less powerful, no longer the disparaging richer twin. The two remain seated by the fireplace long beyond their short scene.
Fafner is now aged and ailing in hospital, with nurses and an auxiliary tending to him round the clock. High on a wall, in front of Fafner’s bed, is a portrait of younger Fafner and the child Hagen, who represents the ring and who was kidnapped by Alberich and later Wotan and Loge. The child was given to Fafner and Fasolt as payment for having built Walhalla. We conclude the boy Hagen has grown up with Fafner and is now an auxiliary in the nursing home. Either due to the trauma of Fafner’s abuse or from prolonged isolation, the once energetic child has now become mute.
One of two female nurses is Waldvöglein, the forest bird. She befriends Siegfried, who too has come to visit Fafner with his foster‑father Mime. Siegfried shares Chinese take‑out with the pretty nurse and uses chopsticks in lieu of reeds to try to imitate the chirping of birds (a trick I have yet to learn).
Fafner leaves his bed and uses his walker to speak with Siegfried, but the latter pushes the ailing senior, who then falls to the ground and suffers a heart attack from the shock. In the end, Nothung was not of much use after all. The entire nursing staff rejoices at the old man’s death. Nurse Waldvöglein grabs Fafner’s coat and finds a diamond bracelet (the ring in a new form), and gives it to Siegfried, who in turn gives it to the mute Hagen.
Mime joins Siegfried, Hagen and Nurse Waldvöglein in their celebration in an attempt to seize the ring and poison Siegfried. In this non‑magical production, where Siegfried doesn’t taste the dragon Fafner’s blood, it’s a mystery how he reads Mime’s thoughts. An irate Siegfried stabs Mime, who, being his nagging self, takes his time to expire. Hagen, perhaps in recognition of Siegfried’s killing of Fafner, smothers Mime to death. Thus, Schwarz pays homage to Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), where psychopaths swap murders. To further tighten the bond between the two abused young men, they climb a ladder and Siegfried uses Nothung to tear up the painting of young Hagen with Fafner. The two exit through the torn portrait, signifying the two men’s liberation from the tyranny of their abusers/subjugators, or if we want to be proper and eschew the production’s obvious pedophile thread, we could chalk it up to simple patriarchy.
Despite being the opera’s most vocally appealing act, Act III was a dramatic disappointment. Good old Erda, the opera’s most wholesome character, also keeps a young woman, though this one isn’t under age. I guess it’s Schwarz’s attempt at being non‑sexist.
Brünnhilde had not been magically put to sleep at the end of Die Walküre but had simply walked away dismissively from Wotan with her beau, rather than her horse, Grane. Instead of an extended beauty sleep, Brünnhilde has faced the ravages of time. This may explain why she followed her sisters in the previous episode in falling under the scalpel. Instead of being awakened, she’s seen leaving a cosmetic surgery clinic in the shape of a Masonic pyramid, this time styled after the Louvre’s pyramids rather than Gizeh’s. With her head fully bandaged, the scene evoked Claude Rains in The Invisible Man (1933) rather than the celebrated romantic scene.
Both Siegfried and the mute Hagen, who’d tagged along, observe the weird bandaged woman with trepidation, which is understandable, as it looked like a scene from a horror film. Grane, no longer a boy toy but a graying middle‑aged man, watches Siegfried’s approach apprehensively. Siegfried removes Brünnhilde’s bandages and rejoices at seeing her new self in the mirror. Siegfried absurdly exclaims “Das ist kein Mann” at seeing Brünnhilde’s long blond hair, though both he and Grane have equally long tresses. Moreover, having cavorted with Nurse Waldvöglein in the previous act, this is not his first encounter with a woman.
Brünnhilde’s extreme joy is not that of becoming mortal to be the spouse of a valiant hero, but more the joy of an older woman looking younger thanks to plastic surgery and of having replaced her older boy toy with a younger edition. At the end of the opera, she eagerly jumps on young Siegfried, ravishing him. At least Schwarz is faithful to his theme of older needing younger flesh, legal or not.
Fortunately, from a vocal point of view, the performance was superb. As in Das Rheingold a few days earlier, the greatest voice was Anna Kissjudit, as Erda. Heard a few weeks earlier in the same role in both Milan and Vienna, and again in Das Rheingold in Vienna and Bayreuth, twenty-nine-year-old Kissjudit is a phenomenon, reminiscent of Marilyn Horne in her prime. Experiencing Kissjudit in her brief role was well worth enduring Schwarz’s demented ravings. Watch out for this young lady, she’ll soon be the decade’s leading mezzo/contralto.
It’s a pity that Brünnhilde’s role is so brief in Siegfried, as Britain’s Catherine Foster is a true dramatic soprano endowed with a powerful and incisive voice. Heard earlier this season as Barak’s wife (Die Färberin) in Die Frau ohne Schatten in Berlin, she impressed us with her understanding of the role, as well as her vocal prowess, as she had days earlier in Die Walküre.
As in both Die Walküre and Siegfried La Scala productions earlier this season, the singer that impressed most was German tenor Klaus Florian Vogt. For once, Siegfried had le physique du role. Vogt is not a typical dramatic tenor, but rather a powerful lyric one. Nonetheless, he projected sufficiently to reach the furthest seat without forcing. His German elocution was a masterclass in itself; one felt he was singing Schubert Lieder, so clear was his diction. To sing Wagner so beautifully, with such apparent ease is nothing short of miraculous. Despite the odd staging, Vogt played the role as conceived by Schwarz, i.e. an impudent imbecile, aptly and convincingly. Due to no fault of his own, one could hardly identify with this sociopathic rather than “innocent” Siegfried.
Taiwanese tenor Ya-Chung Huang does not have the typical small voice typical of character tenors. His is a more hefty instrument that he manages to adjust to properly portray the perfidious Mime, unctuous and sweet talking. At times, his voice was bigger than one would like, likely the result of Bayreuth’s amazing acoustics, favourable to voices.
Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny is one of today’s leading Wotans. He managed to downscale both his voice and demeanour as the Wanderer, a kind of diminished Wotan somewhat fallen from grace. Given Schwarz’s sordid depiction of the character, it was a relief. He was especially moving in his scene with Erda.
Admired as a particularly cruel Alberich in David McVicar’s Ring for Milan’s La Scala in Das Rheingold and Siegfried, Icelandic baritone Olafur Sigurdarson showed his versatility in playing a completely different Alberich here. In Schwarz’s staging of Das Rheingold, he’s from a trashy branch of the family and must cope with his lot, being outsmarted by “twin brother” Wotan and Loge from the more posh branch of the family. He aptly manifested his rage in that first instalment. Here, he seemed more a mellowed Hells’ Angels biker, relaxed about life. His casual exchange with his “twin” brother Wotan was well‑acted. His dry rather unpleasing baritone was ideally suited for the role.
Tobias Kehrer was a different kind of Fafner, no longer a mighty dragon but a sickly old man. He had his back to the audience in the first part of Act II. Though his voice is still the same imposing one heard in Das Rheingold, the visuals affected one’s perception. Earlier this season, Kehrer was an impressive Orest in Elektra in Berlin. In addition to possessing a warm basso, he is a remarkable actor, as convincing as the Ancient Greek hero, a mighty gangster a few days earlier in Das Rheingold and a frail old man in the present performance.
Nicaraguan-Norwegian soprano Victoria Randem was a charming forest bird. At least, here is one character who greatly benefited from Schwarz’s adaptation. As a nurse, she had personality, and a pleasant one at that. Her voice is richer than the usual coloraturas who sing this role. My one reproach would be her muddled diction, rendering her lines incomprehensible.
Australian conductor Simone Young continued to improve. After a tepid Das Rheingold, her Siegfried was as high octane as her Die Walküre. She masterfully revealed the textures and colours of the score. She was especially effective in Brünnhilde’s awakening and the glorious love duet as she was in the forging of Nothung in Act I.
Despite disappointing plot twists, not for lack of interest in a new vision, but for Schwarz’s debilitating work that removed not only the magic, but the innocent passion from the work, I enjoyed this opera.
Brünnhilde’s awakening as a mortal should give any half‑creative director plenty of fodder to fuel their vision. Making Brünnhilde an aging “cougar” eager to devour a young puppy is overly cynical. As there were some nuggets in Schwarz’s Netflix‑style saga, such as the nursing home in Act II, I will continue to be optimistic regarding the series’s final episode.
Ossama el Naggar
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