Review: Wagner: Siegfried, Leeds Town Hall

For his ‘Concert Staging’ Peter Mumford has decided that nothing is better than just something.

With back projections to set the scene, the audience were left to their own imagination. Musically it was another triumph for the company. Their concert hall presentation, which allows the use of a full-sized symphony orchestra, paid full dividends in the score’s highly charged moments.

Singing the name part, and one of the most challenging in the tenor repertoire, the sizable Estonian, Mati Turi, looks the part and has all of the resources required for the heroic moments, yet also possesses a lyric quality of great beauty.

But it was the German baritone, Jo Pohlheim, as Alberich, who upstaged everyone with a voice of weight and potency.

Michael Druiett, was the dignified Wanderer, while Richard Roberts did his best to breath life into the scheming Mime, but without props it was a difficult task. Annalena Persson returned as Brunnhilde.

There is a further Town Hall performance on July 13.