Edward A. Bortnichak and Paula M. Bortnichak, The ‘Missing Link’ in the Evolution of Wagner’s ‘Siegfried’

July 2016, Volume 10, Number 2, 4–17.

Anyone seeking to engage seriously with Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen must confront challenges in making sense of its complex characters, and none of these is more problematic than the central tenor role of Siegfried. This was recognised by Wagner during the gestation of the two music dramas in which he appears, and was confirmed as an issue from the beginning of the performance history of the cycle to the present day. Wagner led the chorus of worry over Siegfried that still continues as inferred from his fretting during rehearsals for the 1876 Bayreuth premiere that the young hero’s battery of Mime in Act I of Siegfried ran the danger of having the audience sympathise with the wrong tenor.