“Siegfried doesn’t know any fear, and I think this is the key for doing this role,” said tenor Andreas Schager, who will make his Metropolitan Opera debut in “Götterdämmerung,” the four-opera cycle’s finale, on April 27.
During the past few years, this 48-year-old Austrian singer has emerged as one of the world’s leading heldentenors, singing the most challenging Wagner roles to acclaim across Europe. In endurance-test parts like Siegfried, Tannhäuser, Parsifal and Tristan, his full, ringing voice seems indefatigable. He can channel a character’s wild desperation, ardor or impetuousness with steely yet easygoing assurance.
“I don’t know anyone who can sing Siegfried and Tristan like him,” said eminent conductor Daniel Barenboim, one of Schager’s champions. “For me, he is one of the very few real Wagner tenors today.”
But his path to singing Siegfried at the Met — he also sings in “Siegfried,” the third “Ring” opera, on May 2 and another “Götterdämmerung” on May 4 — was unusual. Schager, who was born Andreas Schagerl in the small town of Rohrbach an der Gölsen, started his career in operetta (precursors to modern musical comedies) and lighter tenor roles.
“Austrian tenors are always going for operetta,” he said. “For 12 or 13 years, I sang works like ‘Der Zigeunerbaron’ sometimes twice a day.”
When he took his first stab at Wagner in 2009 — as David, a relatively lyrical part in “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” — Schager dropped the final letter of his last name on the advice of a colleague.
“It’s difficult if you want to start an international career as a heldentenor with the name Andreas Schagerl,” he recalled the colleague telling him. “Because if you type it into Google, you only find operetta. Many opera directors will see this and won’t even invite you to audition.”
But little else about his vocal transition was calculated.
“I always took the roles that I was given and always made them as good as I was able,” he said. “And so when I got this offer to sing my first Wagner, I said: ‘Why not? I’ll try it.’ I didn’t know anything about Wagner or his music at this time and I began to study, and very soon I recognized that this is very good for my voice. I was very excited and my voice didn’t get tired, so I could go on and go on singing, and I felt my voice get stronger every day I trained.”
In April 2013, he became an overnight heldentenor sensation when he jumped in to sing the first act of “Siegfried” at the Berlin State Opera, a sold-out performance conducted by Barenboim, after another tenor failed to show up on time. Schager happened to be in the house to rehearse “Götterdämmerung” but was scheduled to sing a bit role in a concert version of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” across town later that evening.
“At 10 minutes before show time,” he recalled, “the opera director came in and said, ‘Mr. Schager, can you please help us?’”
By the end of the first act, the other tenor had materialized, and Schager could rush to his other performance. “It was a busy day for me,” he said with a laugh.
“For me, of course, it was very good luck,” he said. “This story went immediately around the world. Everyone was talking about it; everybody knew my name as this new Siegfried in combination with Daniel Barenboim.”
Barenboim became a crucial collaborator. “I was already quite old when I started singing Wagner,” Schager said. “I was 39 years old and had mostly sung operetta before. But he didn’t care. He told me, ‘I know you can do it.’ It was for me fantastic to find a great maestro who believed in me this way.”
Barenboim said that Schager “has many unusual qualities. He has a very impressive voice, lots of musical intelligence, and he’s a bundle of energy. I think it was very useful for him to start his professional life as an operetta singer, which can be quite hectic. And it strengthened his stamina.”
He has become the go-to Siegfried for high-profile coming “Ring” cycles, including at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany in the summer of 2020; at the Paris Opera that fall (led by Philippe Jordan, his conductor at the Met); and at the Berlin State Opera starting in 2022.
Barenboim brushed away concerns that so many grueling performances would take a toll of Schager’s voice. “There are no rules for this thing,” he said. “For most people, yes, but he’s an exceptional case.”
While Schager said that he doesn’t rank his roles in terms of their difficulty, Siegfried has few rivals in terms of length.
“Yes, the Siegfried in ‘Siegfried’ is very long,” he said. “You have to sing for 4-1/2 hours and always be on stage. But I would much rather speak about the energy that is in it. When you go for it, you don’t feel that it is difficult. The next day when you wake up, you see that it was a difficult, long evening. But when you’re in the middle doing it, it’s pure vitality.”
“At the end of a performance,” he added, “I’m so full of energy. I always have the feeling: Come on, let’s do it again!”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.