What a happy time this is for Wagnerians, with a memorable Ring cycle last year from Melbourne Opera in Bendigo, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg to look forward to in February 2025 from that enterprising company. Opera Australia – unable to program Wagner in the miniscule Joan Sutherland Theatre after the embarrassments of its incomplete Ring of the early 1980s (notwithstanding some memorable casts, with the likes of Rita Hunter, Alberto Remedios, Lauris Elms, and Marilyn Richardson) – has presented the Ring thrice over the past decade, twice in Melbourne, once in Brisbane.

Anton Bruckner, dismally, may be a bridge too far for Australian audiences, but his hero, Richard Wagner, poses no such challenge. On Friday, the Concert Hall was excitedly and expectantly full for the first of two concert performances of Die Walküre at the Sydney Opera House, the second instalment in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Der Ring des Nibelungen 2023-26, following Das Rheingold in November 2023.

Walküre – twice as long as Rheingold – is grander and more dramatically complex in every sense (though I recall a conversation with Peter Porter and Roger Covell, who declared Rheingold their favourite opera in the Ring because of its alleviating concision).

Simone Young – Chief Conductor of the SSO – returns to Sydney after what can only be described as her annus mirabilis. Young is no stranger to the Ring, having conducted complete cycles in Vienna, Berlin, and Hamburg. In August, she conducted it at the Bayreuth Festival, her début there. Soon after, she conducted Rheingold at La Scala, before heading to Vienna last month to conduct György Kurtág’s Fin de Partie (based on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame), a highlight of the recent ABR Vienna tour.

Young’s rapport with the orchestra – as with the audience (which greeted her warmly) – is evident. The sound in the refurbished Concert Hall, much lauded since its reopening in 2022, suits this music well. The Concert Hall must now rank as the finest venue for concert versions of this type, always such a fine way to revisit orchestrally rich operas, especially when played by a symphony orchestra in opulent form, as was the SSO on this occasion.

From the brisk, driven orchestral opening – before Siegmund seeks shelter in Hunding’s hut, only to recognise his lost twin sister and ultimate love, Sieglinde – the SSO was superb. It was notable how Young tempered and refined the sound, accentuating the lyrical qualities of Act One and rarely allowing Wagner’s score to overwhelm the singers. Fitting it is to emphasise the orchestra at the head of this review. The overall playing was so consistently good it seems almost unfair to single out individual players or passages, though here are a few: a solo cello passage in Act One (Kaori Yamagami); a wind ensemble in Act Three as Brünnhilde prepares to beseech Wotan; the unerring horns at the start of Wotan’s Narrative; and the resolute brass at the end. The score, as ever, was the real hero in this greatest of Wagner operas. Not once, from where I was sitting, in a box to the left, did the orchestra do it less than justice.

Simone Young conducts Die Walküre (photograph by Jay Patel and courtesy of Sydney Symphony Orchestra)

Often in a work of such massivity and relentlessness, Walküre casts are uneven, but this one was memorably good. Vida Miknevičiūtė, a sensational Sieglinde, almost stole the show. We have enjoyed Miknevičiūtė’s singing before, as Salome in 2020 and as the Countess in Capriccio (both for Victorian Opera). Here the Lithuanian soprano was magnetic both dramatically and vocally, filling the hall with sound, especially in Act Three when Sieglinde, on realising that she bears the slain Siegfried’s child, soars above the orchestra in the radiant, ecstatic ‘O herstes Wunder’ – greatest of musical themes in Der Ring.

Like Miknevičiūtė, Stuart Skelton – her Siegmund – sang without a score, and what a difference it makes. This was a masterclass in how scoreless performances can transform a concert version of a great opera. The other principals could not match them.

Skelton, now in his mid-fifties, was at his best and deserved his huge ovation. His rich chest notes, thrilling timing, and superlative diction brought back memories of his legendary Siegmund in the second Adelaide Ring twenty years ago, opposite the much-lamented Deborah Riedel as Sieglinde.

Alexandra Ionis was an incisive and authoritative Fricka, that pious defender of marriage and architect of Siegmund’s doom. (Ionis doubled as Rossweisse in Act Three.)

Of the women, Anja Kampe was the least impressive as Brünnhilde, especially in the second act. She hit the fiendish notes in the ‘Hojotohos’ that introduces Wotan’s favourite Valkyrie, but something was missing in the Todesverkündigung, when Brünnhilde tells Siegmund of his impending death and summons him to Valhalla. This poignant scene felt oddly flat, the message not quite delivered as was intended.

Mention must be made of the eight Valkyries in Act Three. This was a case of deluxe casting, with singers such as Natalie Aroyan as Ortlinde, Deborah Humble as Waltraute (such a fine role for her in the Bendigo Ring), Liane Keegan as Schwertleite, and Helena Dix as a ringing, authoritative Helmwige.

So much depends on Wotan, and Finnish baritone Tommi Hakala (winner of the 2003 BBC Singer of the World at Cardiff and now in his early fifties) never disappointed. In fact, he got better and better, despite the huge demands of this role. After Wotan’s Act Two scene with the unforgiving Fricka comes his long monologue – interminable to some but really, in the right hands, the dramatic highlight of Der Ring. Here, Wotan was compelling, whispering the opening lines, which only made his gravitas at the end more overwhelming, when Wotan, denouncing lordly splendour and divine pomp, abandons his life’s work and dreams of only one thing – ‘das Ende, das Ende!’ (the end, the end). It was a shattering moment. Young accentuated the drama with a telling silence before resuming.

Hakala – with Kampe in better form, more engaged – was similarly charismatic at the end, as Wotan finally acquiesces to Brünnhilde’s pleas and embraces her. The Farewell was immensely stirring. Done well – timing is everything here – this is one of the most moving moments in all opera, Richard Wagner, as ever, the master manipulator of emotions, filial or not. The feeling and simplicity with which Wotan quietly kissed away Brunnhilde’s godhead before putting her to sleep on her sofa-rock were unforgettable. In the end, great art, having stilled us (even quelling the notorious Sydney Cough that marred Act One), puts aways artifice and contrivance and relaxes into pure meaning.

How beautifully Hakala conveyed Wotan’s humiliation and moral exhaustion. He seemed to age ten years on the spot. Then he rallied for one last stentorian outcry before Simone Young brought this memorable performance to a resigned yet premonitory conclusion.

Now we must wait until November 2025 to see who will venture along to waken Brünnhilde. After this phenomenal performance from orchestra and singers alike, what an unmissable occasion it promises to be.

Die Walküre (Sydney Symphony Orchestra) was performed in the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House on 15 and 17 November 2024. Performance attended: November 15.