The dragon remains tricky. Truly terrifying you never get him, of course, but what looked like a cross between a storage tank and an underground tube was laughable even before kitchy claws emerged from the wall. No wonder young Siegfried had the forchten does not learn and stands there smiling.
We are then well into the second act of Wagner's Siegfried, the third opera of Der Ring des Nibelungen. The Nationale Reisopera emphatically did not want to bring a dead dramatised staging, and succeeded wonderfully in doing so in the first parts. In Das Rheingold the Realm of the Nibelungen turned out to be a dark textile factory, while the gods waited for the mountain boom to Valhalla - a kind of amusement park in the clouds. Die Walküre showed chief god Wotan's country home as a log cabin in the mountains, and using video projections and tight choreography, the Walkürenrit was visually overwhelming.
Responsible for all this is director, costume and set designer Antony McDonald: he signs for a strikingly light and playful Ring. A breath of fresh air, as Wagner's 15-hour masterpiece virtually succumbs to what directors try to make of it. There are Marxist (property is the root of capitalism and all evil), feminist (anyone who undercuts women's love is cursed), ecological (stealing the gold from the Rhine is symbolic of raping nature), fantastical (the Ring as a kind of space fairy tale) and Freudian interpretations and McDonald seems especially keen to debunk them all.
McDonald couples simplicity with a great urge to "just tell the story": a sword is a sword, a spear a spear and a dragon an er... storage tank with claws. In the first two acts of Siegfried he strikes out, however, by, apart from some lugging a pram, adhering so faithfully to age-old stage directions that the result looks childish. In fairness, this is also due to Wagner itself. In the first few hours, we mainly hear Sprechgesang, we see mere men bickering, we get a detailed summary of the two previous operas and for dessert, indeed, a dragon and a singing bird.
Financial reasons forced Wagner to abandon work on the Ring interrupting, just after he finished the second act of Siegfried had completed. Artistic problems certainly seem to have contributed to this. It was not until 15 years later that Wagner resumed the work and the difference in the orchestral sound, fuelled by the experience Wagner had by now gained from the pioneering Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger, is immense. It is like having listened to the first three hours severely cold and the ears suddenly plop open. And it helps when with that, too, that the act gains momentum and female voices are added to the palette - even if the final duet lasts well over half an hour.
The break in style in the orchestral sound follows McDonald on stage. Part takes place in front of closed curtains, part in Erda's boudoir, where the three Norns we only see in Götterdämmerung be told are already present, and the rock on which Brünnhilde lying asleep has been transformed into a mausoleum. Suddenly, the staging is as exciting as what sounds from the orchestra pit. And that is where the true miracle of the Enschede Ring venue. Led by veteran Ed Spanjaard Not a single detail is lost, the sound balance is almost perfect even at the most complex moments and it never drowns out the soloists - all of them excellent, by the way - which is no mean feat with 110 people in the pit, who all have to play as loudly as possible from time to time.
In this third movement, Spanjaard thus gives the orchestra the role Wagner had in mind: that of omniscient narrator. We'll take the dragon for granted.
The National Touring Opera, Orchestra of the East led by Ed Spanjaard: Richard Wagner - Siegfried. Wilminktheatre Enschede, 25 September to 11 October.
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