Five hours of brilliance: This is opera at its biggest, boldest and dazzling best

3 hours ago 7

By Peter McCallum

November 17, 2025 — 12.49pm

MUSIC
Simone Young Conducts Siegfried
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Sydney Opera House, November 13
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★★

After splintering a sword, killing a dragon and scaling a fire-covered mountain, not to mention waging a stentorian battle against 100 instrumentalists for 5½ hours, Simon O’Neill, as Siegfried, rose quietly to a top E, the orchestra now silent, to tell us that Siegfried had finally learnt the meaning of fear.

You would not have guessed it from his pure pitch and tone, which was as radiant as in the great forging song he had sung in Act 1, where he had adorned the necessary lustiness that the rugged, folk-like lines demand with smooth strength and musical shape.

Warwick Fyfe’s voice as Alberich seems to grow in elemental wildness and stature.

This was a performance of astonishing stamina and commanding maturity that tempered power with lyricism, but, as the remaining half hour with Miina-Liisa Varela as Brunnhilde was to show, that was not all.

Varela’s awakening lines over the hauntingly still, simple chords Wagner writes after so much crazed chromaticism, glowed with resplendent warmth, and she retained that lustre in each moment of the duet that followed. With intertwining phrases of fiery exultance, she and O’Neill brought this superb performance of the third instalment of Simone Young and the SSO’s concert presentation over four years of Wagner’s Ring cycle to an overpowering close.

The quality of the singers Young has assembled has been an outstanding feature of the cycle to date, and Siegfried continued this with a cast that blended experience and freshness. Gerhard Siegel as Mime subtly burnished the edge of his voice towards malevolence, comedy, anger or oleaginous obsequiousness as needed, creating a mercurial gem out of the character’s sometimes tiresome peevishness.

Conductor Simone Young’s experience with Wagner was clear right from the opening prelude.

As the world-wearied Wanderer (Wotan), Wolfgang Koch conjured a rounded nobility of tone in Act 1, inscrutable control in his standoff with the dwarf Alberich in Act 2 and a fiercely impassioned edge in his two great valedictory scenes in Act 3.

Warwick Fyfe’s voice as Alberich seems to grow in elemental wildness and stature each time he appears in the role, and, with assistance of wonderfully dark, polished textures from the SSO brass, he and Koch created a formidable confrontation.

Wotan’s scene with Erda embraces resignation rather than confrontation, and Noa Beinart sang this role with statuesque reserve and a shrouded tone of unvoiced mystery. If there really is an earth-goddess, one would want her to sing like that.

As the slumbering dragon, Fafner, Teddy Tahu Rhodes created cavernous echoes from the back of the stage and, after being slain, disarming directness from the front. Samantha Clarke sang the part of the Woodbird, the voice of nature that directs the naive Siegfried, with richly coloured silken sound, a refreshing change from the bell-like quality often used for this part.

The other great glory of Young’s Ring presentations is to hear the orchestral part on full stage lavished with all the expertise, polish and care of the SSO under concertmaster Andrew Haveron. Horn player Samuel Jacobs delivered Siegfried’s dragon-wakening call from the high organ loft with a coloured velvety finish, and throughout the wind and brass created many-shaded timbral complexity with moments blazing brilliance and fleeting brightness.

Violas and lower strings brought even-toned depth to the important role Wagner gives these instruments in the opera’s darker textures, and the violins were both brilliantly energised in climaxes and admirably disciplined in quieter passages.

The percussion players contributed piercing anvil sounds offstage and ominous and thunderous timpani.

Young’s experience with this work was clear right from the opening prelude as she calibrated the pace to draw out tension and expressive moments, all the while maintaining magisterial continuity and flow. These Ring performances have been among the finest I have heard in the Opera House throughout its history.