Gunther

Gunther rules the Gibichungs and commands nothing — not his half-brother Hagen, who steers him; not Brünnhilde, won for him by another man's body wearing the Tarnhelm; not even his own name, which Siegfried borrows to ride through the fire. He is the weak man set among giants, and the part only works if you refuse to make him heroic. His tragedy is a loan: every strength he uses belongs to someone else, and the debt is called in with his life.

I sing him as appetite without nerve. He wants the standing, the bride, the blood-brotherhood oath sworn over the drinking horn — and he wants none of the cost. The trap of the role is to sing weakness weakly. Instead the line must stay full, warm, almost noble, so the hollowness shows through the tone rather than in it. He sounds like a king and means it; the audience hears what he cannot.

Vocally it sits in the lyric-dramatic centre, exposed against Wagner's largest orchestra, with no aria to hide behind — only ensemble, oath, and recoil. The challenge is presence without command: a voice that fills the hall yet never leads it. He is complicit in the murder and undone by it, and the singing has to carry both the borrowing and the reckoning.