Mime        Graham Clark
Siegfried   Stig Andersen
Traveller   John Tomlinson
Alberich    Ekkehard Wlasicha
Fafner      Mattias Hoelle
Woodbird    Rosemary Joshua
Erde        Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Bruennhilde Anne Evans

Conductor   Bernard Haitink

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

I suspect that Siegfried justifies in detail everything negative you could
say about Wagner. It's the Bildung of a not very bright but conventionally
unconventional hero who develops from naive dependency on an evil dwarf to
total liberation in ecstatic love, in about five hours of real time. And
it's meant to be sublime.

This performance (again, I assume, based on Richard Jones' production)
brought out the comic aspects of the first two acts in particular.
Siegfried and Mime in act one were more of an odd couple than an allegory
of racial degeneration. Graham Clark as Mime ran away with the evening,
literally as well, considerably beating John Tomlinson's exit speed in
Walkuere on Tuesday. His Mime was a detailed, slightly Disneyish, prissy
librarian, with spectacles and manic hopping and skipping, turned into Mrs
Portnoy by the demands of quasi-parenthood. Stig Andersen's Siegfried was
the normal big, sweet guy, but obviously stupid with it. He didn't see that
Mime is exactly like a real mother.

Mime's anvil was a clerk's desk, and his struggle with Siegfried was one
familiar to every teacher who tries to persuade students to understand the
essentials of a subject before charging off after new ideas. (This is not a
conspiracy by petty minded degenerates, it's the basis of civilization.
Wagner, Nietzche and pals have a lot to answer for.) The result was very
funny indeed, and Clark and Andersen were clearly having a great time.
Clark also has a very beautiful voice and amazingly clear diction. I don't
think more than a word or two got lost in the hall.

Andersen's voice isn't quite on a heroic scale, but he made up for it in
other ways. He was equally funny in act two, which made the most of his
fearlessness and also his gaucheness, for example in his attempts to play
the reed pipe. In the end he gave up and handed it over to Bernard Haitink.
I was less impressed with Andersen in act three. He wasn't really a match
for John Tomlinson's Wotan, and his gauche puppy adoration of Bruenhilde
wasn't quite the grand passion it's supposed to be, though his singing
became grander. The ending was, again, quite beautifully played by the
Royal Opera orchestra.

Matthias Hoelle (appropriately named) sang offstage for as long as possible
as Fafner, sounding superbly sinister and heavy. Anne Evans was a slightly
horsey Bruennhilde, with a good large voice. And Ekkehard Wlasicha was
again a formidable Alberich, nose to nose with Wotan for vocal heft and
physical presence.

Before the performance, members of the orchestra were handing out leaflets
with addresses of people to lobby about the Royal Opera closure. The
leaflets say that they expect compulsory redundancies, and possibly the
disbandment of the orchestra from January. While this may be fearing the
worst, it does seem likely that the break will harm the orchestra
enormously, because it will almost certainly lead to some members taking
alternative permanent positions and perhaps others opting out of
performance altogether. These Ring performances have shown what an
essential part of the company's artistic success the orchestra is. There
simply won't be much of a company without the orchestra and the chorus.

If you want to write, the addresses are:

Sir Colin Southgate, Chairman, The Royal Opera House,
45 Floral Street,
London WC2E 9DD

Gerry Robinson, Chairman, The Arts Council of England,
14 Great Peter Street,
London SW1P 3NQ

Chris Smith MP,
Department for Culture, Media and Sport,
2-4 Cockspur Street,
London SW1Y 5DH

If you are in the UK, you can also write to your own MP.