Tochter aus Elysium: Richard Laing is captivated by the third instalment of Barrie Kosky’s beguiling ‘Ring’

Review of Siegfried, directed Kosky, conducted Pappano, Royal Opera House, London, 2026.

July 2026, Volume 20, Number 2, 69–72.

The first act of Siegfried can sometimes be – dare we say it? – a rather tiresome affair. A selfish dwarf and an arrogant man-boy, equally unappealing characters, bicker and squabble, interrupted only by a haughty stranger who gives us the rather superfluous ‘previously, in the Ring cycle’ backstory. Barrie Kosky, however, manages to keep his audience engaged, not by making the protagonists more likeable than we are accustomed to seeing, as directors such as Andreas Homoki have done, but by making them more three-dimensional.