At the Met: 'Siegfried' Meets the Machine

NEW YORK -- At the end of “Die Walküre” in Robert Lepage’s production at the Metropolitan Opera last season, the stage depicted the sleeping Brünnhilde on a mountain summit as if seen from a bird’s-eye view, with a double of the character furthering the illusion by hanging from her feet.

This unpleasant gimmick, which diverted one’s thoughts from the opera to concern for the poor woman dangling above the stage, was happily absent from the start of the new production of “Siegfried,” which opened Oct. 27. Logically, the stage picture in which the fearless Siegfried reaches the sleeping Valkyrie ought to look just as it did at the end of “Die Walküre,” but deviations are not unusual. In some productions (Patrice Chéreau’s being one) Brünnhilde wakes up dressed differently. Here the departure is more radical, but no less welcome for that, since it typifies a more judicious use of special effects than prevails in Lepage’s “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walküre,” where they tend to interrupt the dramatic flow by calling attention to themselves.

In this third installment of the “Ring,” the by-now familiar planks that form the principal décor (designed by Carl Fillion), still distressingly audible as they go through their motions, are on comparatively subdued behavior. And no one is the worse for that. The most impressive visual movement comes during the transition between the two scenes of Act 3, when the planks align themselves to form a succession of giant X’s, like some military blockade, radiant with a fiery glow (thanks to Etienne Boucher’s lighting). It makes for the kind of forbidding sight Wotan must have had in mind when he conceived the Magic Fire to shield his sleeping daughter from mortals of less than Übermensch capabilities.

Earlier, during the orchestral introduction to Act 1, a brief, confusing dumb-show depicts (if I got it right) Mime in the presence of Sieglinde, mortally stricken upon giving birth to Siegfried -- as if the opera’s later dialogue were inadequate to explain how the young hero came to be raised by the unsavory dwarf. At the same time, “the machine,” as it has come to be called, goes through typical gyrations, at one point offering a delightfully creepy depiction of the forest floor alive with snakes and insects. This arresting image quickly gives way to others before the planks come to rest, as the action begins, with a simple representation of Mime’s hut and an open space to the right of it. And so the set remains configured for virtually the entire first act, probably the longest stretch of machine non-activity in this “Ring” so far.

Act 2 follows roughly the same pattern as Act 1, with shifting shapes and images during the prelude and little change thereafter. Yet the fact is that “Siegfried,” while an improvement over the earlier two productions, lays bare the flawed thinking behind the Lepage “Ring.” This is a “Ring” conceived to achieve a new level of technical sophistication, but in practice it works best when its technical capabilities are underutilized.

Even so, it still doesn’t work well enough, because of the unremarkable direction of the principals. Take away the purported technical wonders and there’s not a lot left to this “Ring.” More than once I was reminded of the routine staging that typically characterized performances of the previous Otto Schenk “Ring.” The similarity got closer in the lush forest scene of Act 2 when Fafner the dragon emerges from his cave, looking like the embodiment of a classic storybook dragon, even if we see only head and neck. And François St-Aubin’s costumes, essentially traditional but with a modern flair, are a kind of second-generation version of those from the Schenk production.

Happily, there were musical rewards, chief among them a vital, high-energy performance from the Met’s new Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi, who, as with the recent new “Don Giovanni,” has taken over the production from a convalescing James Levine. Luisi brought life to just about every phrase, and while an occasional orchestral climax might have benefited from a more imposing body of sound, he gave the singers solid support. It should be noted that this was a more satisfactory “Siegfried” than the overly slow, humorless performances Levine led during the early years of Schenk’s staging.

Jay Hunter Morris was the Met’s third choice for the title role after Ben Heppner, who decided (from all indications, correctly) that the role was not for him at this point in his career, and Gary Lehman, who has not yet fully recovered from a mysterious case of food poisoning. Morris did the job honorably. The basic tone is not all that ingratiating; in fact, there was a disconcertingly modest timbral difference between him and Gerhard Siegel’s Mime in their many scenes together. But Morris brought a measure of expressivity to the role and was above all consistent. At the end he sounded no more or less fresh than when he started. The production does nothing to temper the image of Siegfried as an overgrown adolescent prone to violence, but that’s what Wagner gave us.

Bryn Terfel sang the Wanderer for the first time in his career. The bass-baritone sounded dry in some of his more commanding pronouncements, but Wotan in this guise does more than pontificate. A real struggle goes on within him as he sometimes appears resigned to a transfer of power to a new order and elsewhere displays a gut determination to fight back. Terfel tellingly brought this all to the fore. Siegel’s outstanding Mime was sung in a voice of real substance, and Eric Owens’ powerful singing as Alberich ensured that the two scenes in which he appeared were the high points of Act 2 (part of this is Wagner’s doing). Patricia Bardon was a competent Erda but lacks the deep contralto tones the role needs, and Moica Erdmann sang charmingly as the Forest Bird. Hans Peter-König endowed Fafner with a rich, black bass voice, reverting to the character’s original form as a Giant after Siegfried administers the fatal wound.

Deborah Voigt, continuing her first assay of the role of Brünnhilde, had a rough night. There were enough notes to remind one of the singer’s past glories, but more that did not. Usually when the final duet rolls around the odds seem stacked against Siegfried, who has sung all evening, where Brünnhilde has not yet uttered a note. But as the duet progressed it was Voigt whom one worried about. It is hard to imagine her as the “Götterdämmerung” Brünnhilde (scheduled for January), a role with as much to sing as the “Walküre” and “Siegfried” Brünnhildes combined.