Singing fine, staging not in Metropolitan Opera's "Götterdämmerung"

NEW YORK - This is how the Metropolitan Opera's new Ring cycle production ended - not with a scenic blowout characterizing the end of the world, but with some red lights and white statues of the god-like characters, their heads exploding with a wan pop.

The singing at the Friday opening of Götterdämmerung (scheduled to be simulcast in local movie theaters Feb. 11) was not always great but more than did the job, which is saying a lot for an opera that unfolds over six hours. The Met orchestra's horn section had a bad night though the overall ensemble played with customary charisma. Principal conductor Fabio Luisi delivered an undercooked interpretation of Richard Wagner's wonderfully eventful score but still reminded you what a fine artist he is.

But in the end it was a grand night for booing when the production's stage wizard, Robert Lepage, took his bow. The first three installments in this ultra-high-tech Ring were uneven: Das Rheingold was tentative, Die Walküre was more suitably atmospheric, and Siegfried showed what a vivid theater artist Lepage can be. But Götterdämmerung, which is all about power-mongering for world domination, felt unfinished and hastily assembled.

Images that appeared on the set's gyrating video screens were too vague to resonate much with the Ring's endlessly interpretable Norse mythology. A giant cross-section of a log, for example, referred to the symbolic ash tree mentioned in the libretto, but it looked quite mundane. Or very IKEA. The Rhein maidens were dressed in form-fitting black, glittery outfits and large stove-pipe-ish hats suggesting Dr. Seuss at Studio 54. The actual staging was plain and awkward.

Though the cast rarely had the stentorian vocalism of Wagner casts in past generations, the singers successfully re-imagined their roles in accordance with their vocal resources. Deborah Voigt, for example: At this point in Wagner's saga, the warrior Brunnhilde has lost superhuman powers and become a true woman. And though Act 2 requires rage as she is betrayed by her lover Siegfried, Voigt projected the role's rhetoric even when lacking the vocal amplitude she once commanded. Though she sometimes could not be heard in her early scenes, the final immolation scene was successfully projected as a character who hadn't lost her femininity.

The more authoritative Siegfried that young-ish Jay Hunter Morris may well become was presaged in his final scene with the Rhine maidens. The mid-weight voice melded easily with Wagner's vocal lines and the text was meaningfully projected. Among the Gibichungs (the family trying to wrangle the all-powerful ring out of Siegfried), the only strong impression was made by granite-voiced Hans-Peter Konig (Hagen). In his brief Act 2 appearance, Eric Owens (Alberich) sang with mastery that would be at home in any Wagnerian golden age.

Same thing with Waltraud Meier, whose single Act 1 scene as the renegade valkyrie Waltraute was so great that she raised the performance level of those around her (Voigt and Luisi). Every movement, word and vocal color felt right, spontaneous and deep, representing the cumulation of her decades of artistry. Meier was the goddess who stood above all other gods.