‘Lohengrin’ Review: Color-Coded Wagner at the Metropolitan Opera

In director François Girard’s production of the operatic fairy tale, powerful turns from Piotr Beczała and Christine Goerke compete with a series of questionable design choices.

A scene from Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’

PHOTO: MARTY SOHL/METROPOLITAN OPERA

By Heidi Waleson

New York

The Metropolitan Opera returned from its monthlong hiatus on Sunday afternoon with Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” last seen at the house 17 years ago. Director François Girard conceived this new production as a sequel to his revelatory 2013 “Parsifal”—the connection being that Lohengrin is Parsifal’s son—but while there were visual links, it lacked the consistent vision and devastating impact of the earlier show. Instead, Tim Yip’s sets and costumes rendered the opera dark, claustrophobic and occasionally cheesy.

Based on medieval sources, “Lohengrin” is a fairy tale and a morality play. The virtuous Elsa has been falsely accused by Telramund and his wife, Ortrud, of murdering Elsa’s young brother, the heir to the Duchy of Brabant. King Heinrich orders a trial by combat, and a mysterious knight arrives to fight for Elsa and marry her. She agrees to his condition—she must never ask his name. But after the knight’s victory, the malevolent Ortrud successfully sows doubts, pushing Elsa to ask the forbidden question. His identity as a knight of the Holy Grail revealed, Lohengrin must depart, though the supposedly murdered brother is magically restored.

Other production choices are similarly questionable. Lohengrin first appears at the lip of the oval, with the chorus in the dark below him. It’s a dramatic pose, but dressed in the white shirt and black pants that the Grail knights wore in “Parsifal,” he looks like a bistro waiter. Designer David Finn bathes both Lohengrin and Elsa in blazing white light, which at least provides a contrast with the otherwise sepulchral illumination. For Act 2, we see the cave as if from above—the root-twined ground is now a vertical wall, with the cave behind it—and all the action takes place outside it. Again, the initial image is arresting, but the cave interior is soon blacked out, and the wall is placed so far forward that the stage becomes uncomfortably cramped once the enormous chorus files in. The dispiritingly gloomy bridal chamber of Act 3 is two downstage rock walls; a small vertical opening between them offers only a glimpse of dancing starry galaxies behind. (Peter Flaherty’s projections are one of the show’s better visual elements.) Eight female dancers, awkwardly choreographed by Serge Bennathan, accompany Elsa.

As Lohengrin, Piotr Beczała does not have Heldentenor ping and power, but his delivery was dramatic, eloquent and, most of all, humane—one felt his pity for Elsa in Act 3. As Elsa, Tamara Wilson’s ample soprano alternated effectively between innocent spaciness, steely resolve, and moments of radiance, such as her expressions of absolute trust in her rescuer. The biggest, plushest voice onstage belonged to Christine Goerke, who turned Ortrud’s poisonous manipulations into the opera’s main event. Evgeny Nikitin(Telramund) was vocally colorless; Günther Groissböck (King Heinrich) sounded harsh and edgy; baritone Brian Mulligan brought a fluent ease to the Herald. The chorus often lacked cohesion, a serious flaw in this chorus-heavy opera; perhaps they were too focused on their complex color-switching. Four onstage trumpeters added flourish, while in the pit Yannick Nézet-Séguin was a sensitive accompanist—no drowning out of the singers—and effective orchestral sculptor. The ethereal pianissimos were a special pleasure.

Mr. Girard’s minimalist directing for the most part left the storytelling to the set and the music. He did, however, have Ms. Goerke skulk around the stage during Act 1 and, during the prelude to Act 3, perform some extra sorcery to make sure that Elsa would get the job done. Perhaps this was a way to mitigate the opera’s essentially sexist premise (Elsa’s weakness wrecks everything), and it certainly set up the bridal-chamber scene, which Ms. Wilson played like a zombie propelled by outside forces. However, neither the political motivations nor the Christian vs. pagan themes of the opera coalesced into a coherent narrative, and the treatment of the human story remained cursory at best, with only Mr. Beczała’s compassion and Ms. Goerke’s venom shining through the gloom.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).