There is an 11-year compositional hiatus in Siegfried. Having completed the first two works in his Ring cycle – Das Rheingold in 1854 and Die Walküre in 1856 – Wagner began composing the third part of his tetralogy in September of the same year. During the subsequent 11 months, he wrote the music for the first and second acts, but then abandoned the work. ‘I have led my young Siegfried into the beautiful forest solitude and there have left him under a linden tree and taken leave of him with heartfelt tears,’ he wrote to Franz Liszt.

The thinking behind this bold decision was intimately connected with the most important event in the composer’s life, namely his discovery, in 1854, of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. All of a sudden, some of Wagner’s most cherished ideas had become otiose. Politics no longer mattered. Love in general and erotic love in particular were incomparably more important. Music, not words, he now realised, was the truest expression of the forces that guided life – what Schopenhauer called ‘the Will’. He therefore laid the Ring aside and began working on new projects – Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg – that could reflect this revolution in his philosophy, before returning to Siegfried in 1869.

The ‘Schopenhauerian revolution’ in Wagner’s music occurred gradually. Yet from the opening bars of Siegfried, and especially from the prelude to Act III, it is apparent that we are in a different sound world to that which evoked the tale of the theft of the Rhine gold and the story of Siegmund and Sieglinde, in the first two parts of the cycle. Rich, complex and often extremely loud, the music drives the drama from the start, with the orchestra assuming the role of chief protagonist. At the opening night of a new production of Siegfried, the orchestra of London’s Royal Opera House, under the baton of Conductor Laureate Antonio Pappano, performed this part superbly – the orchestral playing justifying the price of admission alone.

Not that the singers were overshadowed or overwhelmed. Making his Covent Garden debut, Andreas Schager attacks the role of Siegfried with boundless energy and staggering volume. The demands Wagner makes of his leading tenor are as great as those Wotan makes of the Wälsungs. Yet Schager never tired, in voice or action, during the five hours. Part German Heracles, part impetuous teenager, his Siegfried is innocent and boisterous.

Peter Hoare’s Mime, the dwarf who has raised Siegfried in the hope that he will slay the dragon Fafner and gain the ring for him, is simultaneously repulsive and tragic, while Christopher Purves, Solomon Howard and Wiebke Lehmkuhl each gave exemplary performances as Alberich, Fafner and Erda respectively. Perhaps the standout performance of the night, however, was Christopher Maltman as ‘the Wanderer’, who, with estimable musicality and terrific acting, succeeds in conveying the inner-turmoil as well as the arrogance and bombast of the god. Only Elisabet Strid as Brünnhilde seemed somewhat underpowered and then only by comparison.

This is director Barrie Kosky’s third instalment of the Ring for the Royal Opera, and his most successful. Often described as the scherzo of the cycle – the macabre interlude between the ecstasy of Walküre and the drama of Götterdämmerung – its 300 minutes or so can drag. But Kovsky’s production is consistently dynamic, thought-provoking and humorous.

As previously, Rufus Didwiszus’ sets for the first two acts are bleak but powerful: a rickety tree-house atop the charred World Ash Tree for Mime’s workshop and a snow-capped landscape, illuminated by a single lamppost, for the forest. Act I – by some measure the least aesthetic and, arguably, interesting in the cycle – zips along, with Siegfried baiting the frustrated Mime and reforging his father’s sword with gusto. In Act II, Wotan teases Alberich on a park bench while munching crisps. Fafner the dragon is brilliantly realised in a gold stalagmite costume, while the ubiquitous Erda (again, played naked by the actress Illona Linthwaite) metamorphoses into the Woodbird.

At the start of Act III, we see the aged Erda giving birth to her younger self prior to her confrontation with Wotan and then a meadow of flowers for the awakening of Brünnhilde and the love duet between the fallen Valkyrie and Siegfried. The last 30 minutes include some of the most beautiful music Wagner ever wrote – a ravishing end to an exhilarating production.

Siegfried will be performed at the Royal Opera House in London until 6 April 2026.