Siegfried

Premiere on 29. October 2026

Composer Richard Wagner. Text by Richard Wagner.

Second day of the stage festival Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876)

recommended for ages 14 and up

In German. With surtitles in German and English. New Production.

Co-production with the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona

Introductions (in German) take place one hour before the start of each performance (except on opening night) in the Capriccio-Saal. Seating is limited, duration approx. 20 minutes.

The premiere will be broadcast live on BR Klassik. Following the performance, the “Kritische Trio” will discuss the premiere live on BR Klassik. The discussion will be available to watch on Staatsoper.tv the following day.

>>> To the introductory matinee

Medienpartner

Several years have passed since the events and happenings in Die Walküre. Siegfried, son of Siegmund and Sieglinde and now an orphan, is raised in seclusion by Mime. Increasingly he is plagued by thoughts of his origin and identity. Mime intends to exploit Siegfried. Strong beyond belief, Siegfried must kill Fafner, who has the Ring and has withdrawn entirely, with the legendary sword, Nothung. Siegfried kills Fafner and seizes the ring and the magic helmet. Wotan, father of the gods, wanders incognito, constantly worried about Siegfried, whose task is to ensure the survival of the gods. But his power is dwindling. Fearlessly Siegfried passes through the wall of fire protecting Wotan's sleeping daughter, Brünnhilde. Siegfried and Brünnhilde are engulfed with love for one another – Wotan's plan appears to be working.

Siegfried, which celebrated its world premiere at the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, can be considered the centrepiece of the Ring Cycle. It was Siegfried’s story that piqued Wagner’s interest in the Nibelungen cycle of materials and whose text he composed first. He interspersed the saga’s text with fairytale motifs and created one of the most original opera librettos ever. With its darkly shimmering, steely timbres and its, now tender, now monumental portrayals of nature, musically Siegfried is a seamless work, despite a composition break of over ten years. It is also striking how heavily dialogical and thus antithetical the piece is structured. The many enthralling scenes for two therefore represent something like the opera’s “brand essence”, while also proving that Siegfried, for all its “fairytaleness”, is a profoundly philosophical work.

With the third part of Richard Wagner’s epochal Ring Cycle, together with his team, director Tobias Kratzer further develops his very own vision of the Nibelungen saga, so rich in dramatic twists and turns. While Das Rheingold and Die Walküre were about the reinvigoration of the gods and its consequences, Kratzer now takes Siegfried’s fate as an opportunity to combine psychological depths of field with new interpretations and translations of the myth. In Siegfried's story Kratzer certainly doesn’t see the so often as “scherzo” labelled, humorously veneered intermezzo of the Ring tetralogy. For him, Siegfried is far more a “coming-of-age thriller”, which in turn takes aim at the break with the ancestors, and therefore already points ahead to Götterdämmerung. Following on from Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, General Music Director Vladimir Jurowski now also conducts the third part of the Ring.