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by Richard Wagner, directed by François Girard

Canadian Opera Company, Hummingbird Centre, Toronto

January 27-February 11, 2005

On January 27, 2005, the Canadian Opera Company unveiled its new production of Siegfried, the second instalment in the first-ever Canadian Ring Cycle.  United by the designs of Michael Levine, the Canadian Ring features a different stage director for each opera.  If last year Atom Egoyan’s Die Walküre emphasized the characters’ emotions, fellow filmmaker François Girard’s Siegfried centres on the mind.

The intellectually incisive production is dazzling.  Act I begins with Siegfried seated on a massive tree trunk with a huge cloud of branches above his head made up of fragments of a neoclassical building, religious artifacts, parts of the set of Die Walküre and people.  It is a psychological cyclone frozen in mid-swirl.  Girard visualizes the opera as Siegfried’s mental journey from innocence to maturity.  Siegfried and all the other characters, facets of Siegfried’s psyche, are clad in bright white pyjamas.  The one exception is Brünnhilde, the Other that Siegfried seeks, dressed as in Die Walküre in a black Victorian gown.  Levine’s imagery invites multiple interpretations.  Is the action Siegfried’s contemplation of what has happened, his dream of what he wishes to happen, or his hallucinations in a pajamaed asylum?

In a brilliant move Act II opens on the same vortex of Act I, but this time viewed from above.  The eye of the storm becomes Fafner’s cave and Fafner himself rises as a six-person human pyramid.  The black stage of Act III, empty save for extras the ring of fire, seemingly indicates a reality discovered beyond the whirl of fragmentation.

Levine’s and Girard’s concept is ideally suited to the Siegfried of Christian Franz, who looked more the sympathetic Everyman than a hero.  Franz’s clarion voice sometimes became a yell but was also capable of quiet beauty and clearly projected the nuance of every word.  Peteris Eglitis and Frances Ginzer were both in better form this year than last.  Eglitis displayed the vocal strength and roundness of tone Wotan requires, while Ginzer made Brünnhilde’s awakening to mortality thoroughly involving.

The finest performance came from Robert Künzli, whose fresh, clear tenor and detailed acting made Mime a richly equivocal comic character.  Pavlo Hunka (a forceful Alberich depicted as Wotan’s mirror image), Laura Whalen (a delightful Forest Bird), Mette Ejsing (a commanding Erda) and Phillip Ens (a resonant Fafner) all made sterling contributions.  Richard Bradshaw galvanized the COC orchestra in a sinewy, robust reading of the score.           

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Opera News 2005-04.

Photo: Christian Franz as Siegfried. ©Michael Cooper.