SIEGFRIED • OPÉRA BASTILLE PARIS
★★★★★☆
Photo: Herwig Prammer
REVIEW SIEGFRIED AT OPÉRA BASTILLE: PRELUDE TO A WAGNERIAN BLAST
Since the beginning of his Ring cycle at Opéra Bastille, Calixto Bieito has attempted to create a techno-universe that rewrites Wagner’s mythology into a modern tale of technology and humanity’s loss of control. It began promisingly. Siegfried, currently playing at the Bastille, balances the AI vision a little differently – but it is too early to say whether it is losing its direction or simply warming up for a proper Wagnerian extravaganza when Götterdämmerung premieres later this year.
The Rhinegold was a conceptually daring production that gave loyal Wagnerians something to think about. Here, the controversial Spanish director unfolded an idea that still stands razor sharp: that the Ring is not a physical treasure, but a form of data, code or energy – a proto-AI that can be manipulated and abused. An updated interpretation that gave the work unexpected relevance.
Valkyrie continued as an intense expansion of the concept with dark psychological weight and a wealth of psychedelic visual effects. The focus shifted more to Wotan’s incipient loss of power, Siegmund/Sieglinde’s impossible love and Brünnhilde’s rebellion. The dystopian aesthetic was maintained as an undercurrent in the narrative of a system collapsing from within.
Photo: Herwig Prammer
In Siegfried, we meet Mime among the trees in a dark forest, hanging upside down. He struggles in vain to gather the pieces of Siegmund’s sword, which was shattered in Valkyrie. The impossible task has turned him into a drug addict who constantly has to shoot new doses into his veins or swallow pills from a large suitcase to find renewed strength.
Photo: Herwig Prammer
The image of Mime as a dependent, exhausted loser is successful and makes him less of a comical trickster and more of a human being who has been crushed by the system.
Everything revolves around reconstructing the sword so that Siegfried, the “foundling” who knows no fear, can kill the dragon Fafner and thus give Mime access to the Ring of the Nibelung and world domination.
Photo: Herwig Prammer
The large, inverted trees that dominate the stage move up and down like a symbolic backdrop, reinforced by psychedelic video projections that hallucinate a total ecological collapse.
An image of a world that is falling apart. Through runaway technology, humans have disrupted the fundamental structures of the world – including the law of gravity.
Photo: Herwig Prammer
Siegfried is carried by a fabulous vocal performance by Andreas Schager, who sings the title role with a mixture of raw energy and vocal authority to wild audience cheers, carried by full-blooded orchestral playing under Pablo Heras-Casado’s acclaimed direction.
Foto: Herwig Prammer
Musically, this Siegfried stands strong – many even believe that the musical side outshines the staging.
The forest motifs, where Siegfried’s mother appears as a bird and leads her son to Brünnhilde on the cliff top, have rarely been heard more beautifully. What poetry, what composition.
In a key scene at the end, Siegfried chops Brünnhilde out of a block of ice in an original interpretation with milky plastic tarpaulins and a burst of orchestral power.
Calixto Bieito’s Ring is forged as a bold and modern idea, where Wagner’s work is read as a tale of the power of technology and humanity’s loss of control.
The inverted trees are one of the strongest images in the performance. They serve as a kind of visual warning: the order of nature has been turned upside down. When technology runs amok, the world loses its direction.
This Siegfried eases off the accelerator a little in its pursuit of the overall concept.
You can sense that the idea is still there, but that it is no longer quite so firmly anchored in the stage design. At times, the staging seems like a sketch for something bigger.
GOT TO SEE THIS rewards the courage to innovate with five stars and looks forward to the finale in November.
