Three years into Chief Conductor Simone Young’s multi-year Ring Cycle with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the star rating for this concert was never really in doubt.

Now the go-to conductor at Bayreuth, Young’s command of Wagner’s score is second to none, her motivic clarity ensuring that the musical storytelling reads loud and clear.

Simon O’Neill in Siegfried with SSO. Photo © Dan Boud

She ceaselessly builds momentum over the course of the music drama, building up to the thunderous prelude to the Third Act, in which nine Leitmotifs are played in glorious counterpoint.

Along the way, Young draws out recurring themes like the ‘Magic Fire Music’ and ‘Magic Sleep/Oblivion’, first heard in Die Walküre, to clearly signpost Siegfried’s journey to find the sleeping Brünnhilde, all without the bells and whistles of a fully staged production.

Indeed, as this concert proves, Siegfried may well be better off without the kinds of directorial excesses that can sometimes make its first two acts an arduous task to sit through.

In sharp contrast to the epic set pieces of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre before it, Siegfried comprises a series of two-handed scenes, riddled in riddles and reliant on the acting prowess of its singers.

Thank goodness, then, that Young has employed arguably the finest Mime in the business, tenor Gerhard Siegel, who elevates the role and leaves the audience begging for more.

From the moment he sits on his piano stool and starts tapping his forehead in time to the beat of the orchestral introduction that harks back to Nibelheim in Das Rheingold, it is clear that Siegel is about to deliver a performance that is truly extraordinary.

Off book, he inhabits the entire stage, wholly absorbed in his character with facial expressions and gesticulations that elicit joyous laughter not only from the audience but from Young herself.

Indeed, there is a great deal of joy to be derived from seeing Young enjoying herself as much as she does. But who wouldn’t? It’s like watching Olivier or Gielgud deliver Shakespeare.

Gerhard Siegel in Siegfried with SSO. Photo © Dan Boud

Siegel’s might be a hard act to follow, but baritone Warwick Fyfe more than rises to the challenge as Mime’s brother Alberich.

Here we have two of the world’s best Nibelung, and like Siegel, Fyfe has made his role his own (including during all three stagings of the Ring Cycle by Opera Australia in 2013, 2016 and 2023). Both enunciate perfectly, extracting every ounce of textual information Wagner embedded in his libretto.

And most importantly, they rid the Nibelung of the farcical and antisemitic traits often imposed on them, restoring a gravitas that befits the race after which Wagner’s tetralogy is named. It is, after all, Alberich’s curse that propels the Ring Cycle to its inevitable conclusion.

Of course, Siegel and Fyfe are not alone.

As Siegfried, Simon O’Neill puts his clarion heldentenor to excellent use. He starts off with a brighter, youthful sounding voice to match the dim-witted teenager, imbuing it with more colour as Siegfried grows. Then, with Siegfried’s sexual awakening in the third act, he unleashes his fully matured yet spry voice – a brilliant example of vocal characterisation and pacing.

The biggest surprise of all, however, is soprano Miina-Liisa Värelä’s role debut as Brünnhilde in the final act.

With the benchmark set so high by the rest of the company and much of the weight of the opera now resting on her shoulders, she exceeds all expectations in a performance that is sure to be talked about for years to come.

Warwick Fyfe in Siegfried with SSO. Photo © Dan Boud

Värelä first sang the part of Brünnhilde in Die Walküre in Rome last month, but the 40-minute scene on the rock in the final act of Siegfried is something else altogether.

With its final orgasmic high C – the antidote to the coitus interruptus of Tristan und Isolde which Wagner composed between writing Acts 2 and 3 of Siegfried – it is the true test of a Wagnerian soprano’s artistry and endurance, and Värelä passes with flying colours.

Her experience as a seasoned Sieglinde and Isolde puts her in good stead for this most challenging of roles. Her rich, even tone is coupled with textbook Wagnerian top notes reminiscent of the great Birgit Nilsson, and the surety of her attack is remarkable.

Värelä and O’Neill are no strangers, having starred together in Glyndebourne’s semi-staged Tristan und Isolde in 2021, and their voices blend beautifully.

The remaining performances are equally accomplished, with dramatic baritone Wolfgang Koch relishing every moment as the Machiavellian Wotan – now disguised as the Wanderer and both father of Brünnhilde and grandfather of Siegfried.

Guiding Siegfried to his incestuous fate, Samantha Clarke is utterly delightful as Waldvogel (the woodbird), her radiant soprano shimmering above the orchestra, while the velvety-voiced contralto Noa Beinart goes head-to-head with Koch’s Wotan as the sombre, scene-stealing earth goddess Erda – Brünnhilde’s mother.

Miina-Liisa Värelä in Siegfried with SSO. Photo © Dan Boud

Singing through a fire-engine-red Sengerphone, bass-baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes enjoys a particularly ominous turn as the giant-turned-dragon Fafner. The SSO sets the scene brilliantly during the Prelude to Act Two, the dragon Leitmotif expertly rendered by Guest Principal Nick Mooney on Wagner Tuba.

One can almost imagine Young studying the lumbering gait of an alligator at the zoo to finesse the timing – it’s so authentic. And full marks to the uncredited lighting designer who projects what looks like the slithering scales of a dragon onto the walls of the Concert Hall. Coupled with the score, it really does feel as though a gigantic reptile were slinking past.

Special mention must also go to Guest Principal Horn David Evans, who delivers a bright and heroic rendition of Siegfried’s horn call from the organ loft, and percussionist Rebecca Lagos, who plays the anvil part offstage while Siegfried reforges the magic sword Nothung. (The anvil part is normally played by the tenor, and it was musically typeset for this concert under SSO’s Head of Library Alistair McKean.)

For some, Siegfried is the least liked of the Ring Cycle operas (largely because it’s so difficult to get right), but in this wonderfully textured reading by Young and the SSO, it may just be the most satisfying of them all.

The audience certainly seems to thinks so, if the rapturous standing ovation is anything to go by.

Simone Young conducts Siegfried with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House on 16 August.