Lyric Opera 2018-2019 Issue 4 Siegfried

O P E R A N O T E S | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O November 3 - 16, 2018 | 33 Siegfried is often referred to as the “Scherzo” of the Ring – and it is true that it fulfills the definition of a comedy in that it has a happy ending: the boy does indeed get the girl. Brünnhilde has waited long enough for the fulfilment of her fiery dreams, and at the end Siegfried is in that blissful state of not yet knowing just what he has found! It’s not so funny from Wotan’s point of view. He has been the victim of a very blatant Freudian encounter with his rampant grandson who, unaware of this relationship, shatters his spear in order to get the old fool out of the way. As it is the story of a child, it is also appropriate that Siegfried is a fairy tale. Its prelude delights in the rumblings and roarings of the dragon, the type of creature that children love to be scared by. And it glories in the apparatus of fairy tale – magic swords, dragons, talking birds, and a naïve child forging its way into the world. Innocence, then, is the primary subject and characteristic of Siegfried . This gives it its naïve coloring – and you will find color aplenty in this production which is, I think, a relief between the more somber worlds of Die Walküre and Götterdämerung . Innocence is, by contrast, surrounded on all sides by its opposite – the guilty residues of old complexities and corruptions. Protagonists from past intrigues lurk in the forest, awaiting developments and powerless to intervene, as the future lies in the hands of an innocent youth, far too preoccupied with the egotistical crises of adolescence to notice the dangers, and contemptuous of them when he does stumble over them. As the story progresses, the corpses of these players from the past litter the stage: Mime and Fafner the dragon fall victim to a child’s simplistic view of a universe explained to him in the workings of nature: “You’re bad, so I have to kill you!” And though he does not kill Wotan, the shattering of his spear leaves Wotan with nothing more to look forward to except death and the destruction of the gods. Of course, within this child’s coloring- book world we are still within the framework of our “visible theater” with all the tricks – and there are quite a few of these, as is proper for a fairy tale – created out in the open for you to see. But this time the visual language very much reflects the child’s viewpoint. We see the world very much as Siegfried himself might imagine it. And in so far as period matters at all – it doesn’t really – we seem to have crept forward into that postwar era that to many of us seems to define innocence. Riddles are a fundamental part of fairy tales – a good way of incorporating wisdom into a game – but in Siegfried this game is played out by two representatives of the corrupt old order: Mime and Wotan. Mime famously omits to ask Wotan the question to which he desperately needs the answer: “Who can re-forge the magic sword, Nothung?” But the answer, when he finally gets it, having forfeited his own head, is so gnomic that it probably would not have helped: “Only he who has not learnt fear can forge the sword.” Needless to say, Mime’s desperate attempts to teach Siegfried fear are doomed to failure, but when Siegfried meets Brünnhilde his awesome first encounter with the opposite sex teaches him fear in no uncertain terms. Fear and love, it seems, are closely linked and the great charm and perceptive insight of the final scene is that these two mighty heroes, Brünnhilde and Siegfried, are as nervous and shy as old-fashioned pre-sexting teenagers. Their crisis of adolescent discovery is of course deepened by their bizarre parenting, offering no role models for romantic bliss. Brünnhilde was brought up in a sort of girl’s military boarding school, by an ultra alpha male, Wotan, against whom she rebelled and who, as punishment, threatened her with abandonment to any passing male predator. This was a threat of astonishing coldness, immediately followed by a parting of great emotional as well as literal fire. Plunged from a position of extreme privilege to one of extreme submission to fate, it is no wonder that she finds the prospect of a normal relationship very difficult. Siegfried of course likewise has been grotesquely parented by Mime, who tries to pass himself off as a mother and father rolled into one. The touching quality of this mammoth children’s opera’s final scene is of two wounded, vulnerable, and lonely personalities reaching towards each other with a combination of ecstasy and terror. It completes this “Scherzo” in a blaze of happiness, coloured by great psychological insight into the developmental lives of Wagner’s favorite children. - David Pountney Director's Note During a technical rehearsal, David Pountney (right, foreground) tries out the prop forge equipment used by Siegfried. Pountney is grabbing the red-hot sword Nothung that is being forged. Lighting designer Fabrice Kebour (left) holds the other end of Nothung, since they are also testing how the forged sword lights up. KYLE FLUBACKER