Five stars for Lohengrin — outstanding singing and indelible images in new Met production

Lohengrin, Wagner’s opera of the holy knight come to save the people of Brabant from invasion, has an important recent history at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1998. Robert Wilson’s radical production, one that angered many patrons, was an enormous and necessary step for the house into modern drama.

That production — and Lohengrin itself — has not been on stage at the Met for 17 years. That ended on Sunday afternoon with the premiere of a new staging, produced by François Girard, who previously brought a new Parsifal to the house. It is tremendous.

It came alive through performances that were almost uniformly excellent, full of thrilling moments. Tenor Piotr Beczała was Lohengrin, who arrives by swan and must keep his identity secret even as he earns the love of Elsa von Brabant, Christian heir of the ruling family. His voice has a natural warmth yet he found unexpected darkness in his middle register, and had plenty of projection and stamina. Along with these heldentenor qualities, he sang the way each moment demanded, heroic in act one, with dignified calm in act two and with driving anguish in the final act.

Soprano Tamara Wilson was his betrothed, Elsa, soprano Christine Goerke the villainous Ortrud, who is threatened by Lohengrin’s presence. The contrast between Wilson’s light and Goerke’s dark colours was a dramatic strength, especially in their long, gripping act two dialogue. Wilson captured Elsa’s naive sincerity and her need to know Lohengrin’s true nature — the dramatic key — and her own anguish in act three was balanced with substantial sonic beauty. Goerke is perhaps the great contemporary Wagnerian soprano, and she was exciting to hear throughout. Her entrance in act three was explosive.

Bass Günther Groissböck sang King Heinrich with power, fine articulation and a natural, near-chummy expression. The one weak performance came, surprisingly, from veteran Wagnerian bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin as Telramund. In act one, his intonation was off and his phrases ended abruptly. His singing was much more supple at the start of act two, but after a long pause offstage he returned, again sounding tight, as if he was suffering some vocal trouble.

Met music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the orchestra. The instrumental colours, especially the woodwinds, were superb, and everything about the conductor’s shaping seemed ideal. With the chorus singing with blistering fire, the musical climaxes at the end of the first two acts were breathtaking.

Girard’s production was realised through the set and costume designs of Tim Yip, Academy Award-winning art director on the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The main set element is a dilapidated stone slab with a large portal, which serves as a wall and something of a roof through which Girard shows a ravishing palette of the moon rising and turning, the stars spinning in the sky. Moments of visual cataclysm and transformation are timed to the music to stunning effect.

The chorus members’ robes open into three colours that represent the dramatic factions, and the colours move through the production like waves, following the ebb and flow of the drama. There is white for Lohengrin and Elsa, crimson for Ortrud and Telramund, and the moon and stars themselves shift colours to follow Wagner’s underlying theme of paganism and Christianity in conflict. Lohengrin himself seems to descend from eternity, and return to it. The final image was indelible.

★★★★★

To April 1, metopera.org