Skirting the sensational

I only very recently began going to live Met relays in the cinema, but if you can get in it’s very well worthwhile. In Cambridge, where the sound is so-so, as I discovered going to Siegfried, there is no hope of getting in except on the day booking starts. In Huntingdon, where the sound is fantastic, there was just a handful of oldsters for Die Walküre in May, who were rewarded with the best Act I that I have ever seen, thanks to the electrifying conducting of James Levine and the amazing Siegmund of Jonas Kaufmann; and the rest of the performance was of a high standard.

Siegfried
skirted the sensational, thanks to the last-minute replacement in the title role, Jay Hunter Morris. Remember that name. I Googled him and he has been around for some time, singing mainly in the United States, but his appearance in this most taxing of all operatic roles will clearly mark his breakthrough. I remarked to my companion that he looked more like a Tristan than a Siegfried, and was thrilled to discover that he is to sing Tristan with Welsh National Opera early next year. Of all the singers in Siegfried he was the one who emerged from the relentless close-ups with most credit. He is an excellent actor, he is handsome with a good figure, he sings strongly — so far as one can judge from loudspeakers — he is sensitive to words and, perhaps most remarkably of all, he stayed the course as very few Siegfrieds do, seeming to have voice to spare. It is decades since I have heard the role performed as well as this.

Fortunately, he had the full support of the Met’s magnificent orchestra under Fabio Luisi, an absurdly underrated conductor, who explained in an interval interview that he wanted a light-textured Siegfried, though he also did justice to the movement throughout the work from the orchestral growlings of the first two acts to the radiant single high line of violins as Siegfried arrives at the mountain top.