Siegfried at Deutsche Oper Berlin — the Brechtian detachment wears thin

Siegfried grinds the shards of his father’s sword with a cheese grater, and forges Notung in puffs of stage smoke and cartoonish fire. Mime, dressed up as Richard Wagner, hobbles around him grimacing and gesticulating. Their hovel is made from the suitcases of refugees. They also stand in for Fafner, with the addition of projected eyes and brass instruments as teeth.

Stefan Herheim’s Berlin Ring was completed last Friday with the second-last opera of the cycle; Covid had delayed its premiere, scheduled last year, until the first complete Ring cycle performance this autumn. That presented huge logistical challenges, and presumably some credit is due for the fact that it happened at all.

After last month’s Götterdämmerung there was little reason to hope for surprises in Siegfried. Herheim’s Ring has a basic premise: we all know that we are in the theatre, and since there is no reason to pretend that we believe in what we are seeing, we may as well have fun with wry commentary. Apart from the suitcases — apparently a reference to Wagner’s flight from Dresden but, along with the overused group of supernumeraries in various states of undress, a serious contender for the most gratuitous use of refugees on an opera stage this century — there is a grand piano on which characters take turns at miming the orchestral music, and a lot of white parachute silk, used in ways that recall a student drama class asked to improvise with a bedsheet. When they are not playing the score or singing from the score, singers act out raw parodies of Ring clichés while pages of the music are strewn around them.

This Brechtian pretending-to-pretend very soon wears thin. Yes, we do all know that we are in the theatre, and we know that the ideologically problematic nature of Wagner’s work requires some context, but surely the music also contains genuine human emotions? Is that not why we are here?

As Siegfried (the marvellous Clay Hilley) and Brünnhilde (Nina Stemme, her voice on the wane, is still enchanting) are forced to perform their final love duet inside the grand piano while supernumeraries form diverse pairs and feign copulation around them, the limitations of Herheim’s threadbare concept are more painfully blatant than ever.

There are bright spots. This is Hilley’s first Siegfried, and his performance is close to perfection — powerful, subtle, intelligent, every word crystal clear. It is Ya-Chung Huang’s first Mime, too, and he brings redeeming depth and subtlety to the role. If we sense no tenderness between the two men, the first act is sheer barbarity; it is good, at least, to be able to hear some.

Donald Runnicles and his orchestra fare better than they did in Götterdämmerung, perhaps warmed up by all this extra Wagner, and awoken by the international audience. There is a little more nuance, and things are more together.

With a handful of star stage directors now sharing the bulk of Europe’s major premieres, it is little wonder that many of them are reduced to vacuous self-reference. It is high time to limit the appearances of the big names and give competent but lesser-known directors a chance.

★★☆☆☆

Final performance January 7 2022; deutscheoperberlin.de