Read on to discover the 7 amazing and outrageous Wagner opera characters you should know...
Wagner opera characters... Brünnhilde
Brünnhilde has been part of my life for a long time but every time I sing this role, I find out new things about her. From the moment we meet her as this tomboy, a petulant teenager in Die Walküre (the second part of Wagner's Ring Cycle), to her final immolation scene at the end of Götterdämmerung (the fourth part of the Ring) she covers the breadth of emotional experience. And as a vocal workout, there’s nothing like this part, both in terms of the stamina it requires, and vocal tessitura: Götterdämmerung has everything from top C’s to bottom G’s. To go on that journey is shattering, but amazing.
Wagner characters... Isolde
Another marathon lady: Isolde hits the ground running. We see her at the beginning of Tristan und Isolde, raging about having to go to Cornwall and about the way she’s being treated by Tristan. She is tempestuous and emotional but also intelligent and loving. The moment when she’s standing there with Tristan, the man she really loves, while the man she’s married to, King Mark, is pouring his heart out about how much she means to him is heartbreaking. She is multifaceted and such a fantastic character to play.
Wagner opera characters... Wotan
As a father, Wotan is a hero to Brünnhilde, and there’s an underlying dignity and godlike strength to his music. Even though everyone is warning him against it, he can’t overcome his need for power that only the Ring will give him. Then he gets that power, and he watches everything disintegrate around him: when we see him in Die Walküre he is increasingly conflicted and no longer the person that we met in Das Rheingold (the first part of the Ring) The end of Die Walküre is especially emotional – parting from Brünnhilde is killing him. At that point in the show, there are always tears.
Wagner characters... Siegfried
What I love about Siegfried is his freshness. He’s a pure child of nature: in Act Three of Siegfried (the third part of the Ring), having already been singing for around five hours, he then has an amazing scene where he has to wake up Brünnhilde. He doesn’t know who she is, how to treat her, how to be with her. They spend that last hour dancing around each other and falling in love. For me that’s a real study in meeting the world – without fear, without any preconditioning. And there’s something incredibly moving about it.
Wagner opera characters... Sieglinde
To me, Sieglinde is all things woman: she’s emotional, feminine, open and intuitive. She immediately recognises something in Siegmund – and then it turns out that they are twins who fall in love. The music reflects these qualities, not least in the third act of Die Walküre after Brünnhilde has urged Sieglinde, who is pregnant with the future hero Siegfried, to escape with her. Before she leaves, Sieglinde sings the stunning ‘O hehrstes Wunder!’. It is so expansive, full of emotion and warmth.
Wagner characters... Tristan
When we first see Tristan in Tristan und Isolde, he’s very aloof. He’s trying to keep his distance, to save Isolde’s marriage to King Mark and to remain loyal to his king. He wrong foots Isolde so many times when she thinks she’s found a way in. And yet he’s an incredibly passionate, loving man, who sees in Isolde everything that he really wants. He is brave, complicated and enigmatic, and the audience really has to work to figure out who he is.
Wagner opera characters... Brangäne
I used to sing lot of Cio-Cio Sans and the relationship between Madam Butterfly and Suzuki reminds me of that between Isolde and Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde. Brangäne is loyalty, she’s dedication, and she only ever wants to do the right thing. When she gives Tristan and Isolde the love potion, instead of the death drink, it comes from a good place. She soon realises that she has unleashed a disastrous situation that can never be put back in the box. There’s something very poignant in that.
Who is Susan Bullock?
Susan Bullock has sung in opera houses all over the world. Attracted to roles of dramatic heft and complexity, she is closely associated with late-Romantic and 20th-century German repertoire, and has a particular affinity with the music of Richard Wagner: a marathon achievement was singing Brünnhilde in all the performances of The Ring at Covent Garden in the London Olympic year of 2012. Next summer she will play Cosima Wagner at the Longborough Festival in a new opera about the Wagner family by the Israeli-born composer Avner Dorman.