Friday night's Seattle debut of Elliot Palay as Siegfried
will be long remembered among Seattle Wagner fans.
Young, trim and imposingly handsome, the 32-year-old
Palay showed an astonished opera house audience that you don't have to
be twenty ax handles across and five decades old to sing Siegfried. Palay's
portrayal of the title role in Wagner's Siegfried was among the most dramatically
credible performances to hit the Seattle stage.
His total conviction and involvement in the role made
Siegfried far from the brash, boring boy depicted by most singers. Palay
moves well; his face and body register his response to the music even before
he sings. The result is unusually convincing.
Palay's voice is attractively produced and appropriately
heroic, and his enunciation is splendid. Toward the end of the grueling
opera, Palay showed he's got guts: Palay went for and hung onto a high
C at the conclusion, a note so impossible, Wagner didn't even write it
as optional. After that, the audience was just about ready to carry him
out of the opera house on their shoulders.