SIEGFRIED • TEATRO ALLA SCALA MILANO
★★★★★☆
Photo: Brescia/Amisano Teatro alla Scala
REVIEW SIEGFRIED: REFRESHING CLARITY WITHOUT CREATIVE PROVOCATION AT LA SCALA
Wagner’s Ring continues in David McVicar’s stylish production at La Scala in Milan, where the audience is treated to an admirable cast with Klaus Florian Vogt, Michael Volle and Camilla Nylund in the lead roles.
Photo: Brescia/Amisano Teatro alla Scala
The production focuses heavily on presenting the plot without too many frills in an adventurous but simple stage design that leaves room to enjoy Wagner’s magnificent music, served with emotional depth and careful balance, allowing the singers to shine.
McVicar’s approach is one of clarity, which on the one hand is refreshing, but on the other leaves discerning opera-goers with a sense of unfulfilled potential.
The orchestra plays lively from the start under Simone Young, who flew in after conducting Salome at the Zurich Opera the night before in Andreas Homoki’s trippy, modernist staging, which I had the pleasure of reviewing myself.
Photo: Brescia/Amisano Teatro alla Scala
Here in Milan, the director is more faithful to the original, where Mime’s smithy in an underground cave forms the setting for the efforts to recreate the enchanted sword Notung from the splintered remains that survived the end of Die Walküre.
Photo: Brescia/Amisano Teatro alla Scala
Soon after, one of the key scenes of the Ring, the third coup de theatre, occurs shortly into the second act, where the fearless hero tenor Siegfried meets the giant Fafner in a decisive showdown.
Fafner guards the gold in a cave, now transformed into a surreal dragon in the form of a giant skeleton, invisibly animated by black-clad stage technicians in an effective set design of dead trees in contorted, human-like positions.
The battle never really becomes a battle but ends up as something of an anticlimax, after which the energy strangely ebbs out of the staging.
Enveloped in his leitmotif, the beautiful horn fanfare in superior artistic delivery, Siegfried continues into the forest, where we follow his journey to the mountain top, guided by his mother in the form of a bird, whose language he suddenly understands after getting dragon blood on his lips.
On a cliff ledge, Brünnhilde (powerfully but also lyrically interpreted by Camilla Nylund) awaits, whom Siegfried awakens from her eternal sleep so that the love between the two can blossom. Wotan’s grand plan seems to be succeeding, but let’s see what happens when the fourth and final part of the Ring, Götterdämmerung, hits La Scala on 1 February 2026.
Photo: Brescia/Amisano Teatro alla Scala
In line with my colleagues in the international opera press, I ask myself what is missing in this Siegfried production, which does everything right but somehow lacks that extra gear that makes the evening unforgettable despite the definitely high level of technical and artistic execution.
As was the case in both Rhinguldet and Valkyrien, the staging of Siegfried seems a little too conventional in the absence of the creative provocations one expects from a modern opera production of this calibre.
However, less than five stars from Got to see this would still be inappropriate.
