Tamara Wilson (Brünnhilde) & Andreas Schager in the title role of Paris Opera’s Siegfried / Photo: Herwig Prammer

Next month, Paris Opera premieres the final installment of Calixto Bieito’s Ring Cycle which also marks the first complete Cycle for its Brünnhilde, Tamara Wilson. Ahead of the 5 October opening of Götterdämmerung and the complete Cycles which start in November, Parterre Box puts on offer the production’s Brünnhilde and Siegfried in the duet from the tetralogy’s third opera.

Wilson might be popular in Paris, but her debut as Brünnhilde seems to have been unusually rapturously received; Parterre Box critic Nigel Wilkinson, who has covered the premieres of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Siegfried, heaped praise on her in Siegfried, saying that “she’s on top of the role and surely must be one of the best Brünnhildes around at present.”

Her Siegfried, Andreas Schager, is a “Duracell-bunny sort of tenor, fearlessly and unflaggingly energetic, both vocally and physically, short on melting lyricism (he does what he can, only his voice isn’t cut out for it) but full of oomph,” Nigel also wrote. “Time and again you think he might tire and crack, but in the end you just marvel at his stamina.”

In January, Wilson will be back in Paris as the Trovatore Leonora before making her debut as the Marschallin in Houston next season opposite Samantha Hankey, featured here earlier this month, as Octavian. Schager, who was Rienzi at Bayreuth this summer, next heads to London to close out their new Ring Cycle as Siegfried in January before turning a Heldentenor hat trick this spring as Tannhaüser, Tristan, and Bacchus across Europe.

Wagner: Siegfried, “Heil dir, Sonne!” (Paris 2026)

Tamara Wilson
Andreas Schager

Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado
Opéra National de Paris
26 January 2026
Broadcast