You need a singer with almost super-human skill to bring off the title role in Siegfried. Wagner demands over four hours of singing time, much of that involving having to soar over heavy orchestration, and then throws into the job description the ability to convincingly melt, mould and temper steel, hammer in rhythm with semiquaver accuracy, walk through fire, oh yes and slay a dragon along the way. Trouble is the operatic super heroes who fit the bill are usually unsuited to the task of making Wagner’s ‘Ubermensch’ anything other than an unappealing bore who’s somewhat scary to be around for any length of time.

The miracle of this production is that Stefan Vinke, a tenor in a million whose voice indefatigably glows and cuts as powerfully and as dependably as his character’s mighty sword, manages under Neil Armfield’s direction to let a beautiful, if damaged, soul to shine through the heroics. I never imagined it possible to see a Siegfried that I felt for, laughed with and inwardly cheered on.

Not that it’s always thus. As the cuckoo in Mime’s seedy little nest he is a petulant, oversized adolescent, totally lacking in frontal lobe inhibitions. (Throughout the opera he is...