Siegfried review - invigorating staging and outstanding Schager

The curtain rises on Siegfried to reveal a pair of swaying feet: their owner sits on a swing in a gnarled tree beside the treehouse where the dwarf Mime has been raising the hero-in-waiting. They belong to Erda, the earth goddess, a silent but mesmerising presence played by the octogenarian actor Illona Linthwaite, who is on stage naked for most of the opera’s four-and-a-half hours.

She smiles at Siegfried as sparks fly from the sword he’s reforging and serenely tends the flowers that carpet the meadow where he awakens Brünnhilde. In her scene with Wotan – an aggressive confrontation, the tension reinforced by the orchestral turmoil Antonio Pappano whips up in the pit – Erda births a younger, singing version of herself.

There is a suggestion she is not merely witnessing events but actively directing them, a thread that may be picked up in Götterdämmerung.

siegfried, erda, illona linthwaite, mime, brünnhilde, wotan, antonio pappano, götterdämmerung, sword reforging, opera staging