The third opera in Wagner’s Ring Cycle is where the chinks in many a director’s armour can begin to show.

Like its eponymous hero, Siegfried proved to be a troubled child for Wagner, so much so that he abandoned the opera for 12 years and wrote Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg instead.

He returned to Siegfried in 1869, going on to compose one of the greatest love duets in the operatic repertoire, but more of that later.

Siegfried’s pitfalls are found well before the ecstatic finale. How do you represent the adolescent hero and the giant dragon Fafner on stage? And how do you find the right balance between tragedy and comedy as Wagner intended?

Over the years, the answers to these questions have been many and varied, and not always convincing. Director Chen Shi-Zheng boldly tackles them and triumphs, bringing the audience to its feet by the end.

Stefan Vinke and Andreas Conrad in Opera Australia’s Siegfried in Brisbane. Photo @ Opera Australia

To say we were rolling in the aisles would be an overstatement, however this production does not shy away from the humour in the libretto. Nor...