Paul Carey Jones / Arvostelut

Paul Carey Jones moves with immense presence as the Wanderer, rolling out his phrases with shining majesty and generally reaffirming that he's well along the path to being one of the towering Wotans of our time.

There was brilliance, too, both in Anthony Negus' majestic account of the score with a Longborough Festival Orchestra of unreasonably high quality, and in Carey Jones' formidable Wanderer. The Welsh bass-baritone's beauty of tone and unwavering delivery of each note, no matter where it fell in his register, were as remarkable as his depiction of a broken god with feet of human clay. This Wotan willed Siegfried to destroy his staff, an admission that he was exhausted by life, eternal or otherwise.