Siegfried RBO 2026 ©Monika Rittershaus
It was one of those Covent Garden evenings where the gods were clearly in attendance – though whether they approved is another matter.
On Tuesday 31 March 2026, the cinema relay crowd (and, by extension, the knowing regulars in the house) encountered Siegfried not as the awkward third child of the Ring, but as the unruly adolescent finally allowed to set fire to the furniture. And in Royal Ballet and Opera’s ongoing cycle under Barrie Kosky and Antonio Pappano, the match was very much struck.
Kosky’s staging – already much discussed since its premiere earlier in the run – leans heavily into a kind of eco-mythic theatre: a naked Erda, ever-present, silently observing mankind’s ecological vandalism, becomes less a character than an accusation. It is a device that should feel laboured but instead acquires an eerie inevitability, particularly in the long Act III where the world seems to teeter between regeneration and collapse. The writer has noted this environmental framing as central to the production’s concept, and on this particular evening it landed with unusual clarity.
If this all sounds terribly earnest, Kosky is too shrewd a theatre animal to let things bog down. Mime’s lair – part junkyard, part fever dream – buzzes with detail, while the forging scene remains the evening’s most brazen coup de théâtre: sparks, sweat, and a hint of music-hall vulgarity. One half expected Siegfried to break into a guitar solo; indeed, others have remarked on the almost rock-star swagger of the moment. It is ridiculous, exhilarating, and totally brilliant.
At the centre stands Andreas Schager, making a house debut that feels less like an arrival than a declaration of ownership. This is not a subtle Siegfried – nor should it be. Schager’s instrument is vast, tireless, and gleamingly metallic, capable of riding Wagner’s orchestra with disconcerting ease. But what marks him out is not merely stamina (though there is plenty of that) but a curious boyishness: a Siegfried who is less hero than overgrown child, impulsive to the point of danger. He is undoubtedly the production’s defining force.
Around him, a finely judged ensemble. Peter Hoare’s Mime is a twitching, vocally incisive study in neurotic desperation – less grotesque caricature, more recognisably human irritant. Christopher Maltman’s Wanderer, cool to the point of detachment, suggests a god already resigned to redundancy. And Elisabet Strid’s Brünnhilde, when she finally arrives, brings a welcome bloom of lyric warmth, even if the voice occasionally yields under pressure in the great duet.
Yet, as so often in this repertoire, the real protagonist may be the pit. Under Pappano, the orchestra of the Royal Ballet and Opera plays with a combination of muscle and translucency that keeps the long spans alive. There is fire when needed – those great surging climaxes – but also a chamber-like attentiveness to colour: the murmuring forest, the ominous brass, the sudden, almost shocking tenderness of the final pages. The balance, crucial in this work, is managed with rare intelligence, never drowning the singers yet never underplaying Wagner’s symphonic ambition.
And so, to the ending: that strange, radiant, faintly absurd apotheosis in which two people who have never met attempt to sing each other into existence. Kosky gives us flowers – literal ones, blooming across the stage – and while the symbolism is hardly subtle, it works. For a brief moment, the cycle allows itself hope.
Whether that hope survives the catastrophe to come is, of course, another question entirely.
For now, though, this Siegfried – on this Tuesday night – felt less like a problematic instalment and more like the Ring’s beating heart: noisy, unruly, occasionally exasperating, but gloriously, defiantly alive.
David Buchler, Opera Spy
