Ahead of Radio 3’s broadcast of all four operas, our writers on which moments of the epic they love the most – and which they hope to never hear again
The list of operas I’d happily never sit through again grows longer by the year, but Siegfried has been very near the top of it for a long time. I’m not a perfect Wagnerite by any means (another of his greatest works would also be on my blacklist), but nor am I a Wagner-phobe: I find Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung totally compelling parts of The Ring. Yet the galumphing comedy of Siegfried leaves me utterly cold, and even the glorious scene between Erda and The Wanderer that opens the third act can’t begin to redeem the whole work.
