The Boston Symphony Orchestra offered a lesson in simple, effective storytelling when they presented the third act of Götterdämmerung at Tanglewood this past weekend. As Hagen plunged his knife into Siegfried’s back, ending the valiant but cursed hero’s life, the stage lights inside the Koussevitzky Shed turned from tranquil blue to sinister red. Without a single prop or set piece in view, and just the foreboding underscoring of Wagner’s music conducted menacingly by Andris Nelsons, the moment held all the drama a viewer would expect from a production of this most theatrical composer’s work. Wagner packed as much action into the final 80 minutes of his Ring cycle as others do in their entire operas, and time and again throughout this performance, the BSO and its first-rate soloists delivered the goods.
Vocally and dramatically, the evening belonged to the young bass David Leigh, a late replacement in the role of Hagen. A tall, arresting figure in a sleek navy suit, he communicated an air of mounting danger from the moment he stepped onstage, with a cavernous instrument that colored every phrase with a deep sense of disquietude. Hagen’s role in Act 3 might be small compared to Siegfried or Brünnhilde, but his actions drive the denouement, and Leigh’s performance showed a keen awareness of this fact. He proved riveting up through the opera’s final moments, when with just a stark expression of terror, he showed the fear in Hagen’s eyes as the Rhinemaidens dragged him beneath the icy waters to his doom. A recent graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, his is a name to watch.
Although Leigh was the news, the veterans on hand didn’t slouch. Christine Goerke remains the reigning Brünnhilde in the United States, and here she showed why, with unflagging stamina and emotional engagement throughout the Immolation. She charted a character journey in just a few short minutes, transitioning from the hauteur with which Brünnhilde dismisses Gutrune to the lovelorn young woman who ecstatically rides her steed into her husband’s funeral pyre. Goerke sang the Immolation Scene with a luxurious, almost mezzo-like tone, and although some register leaps produced a squally note here and there, it’s hard to imagine anyone bringing more authority or connection to this music today.
Tenor Michael Weinius deployed a bright, penetrating tone as Siegfried, his youthful voice and demeanor betraying the hero’s vainglorious persona. His superb diction rendered the supertitles superfluous. Amanda Majeski was a gleaming Gutrune, fervent with anguish at the news of Siegfried’s death. Diana Newman, Renée Tatum and Annie Rosen blended beautifully together as the Rhinemaidens, and a small male chorus of vassals handled their duties well, singing mostly from the sides of the Shed. Only James Rutherford, Wotan in Tanglewood’s 2019 performance of Die Walküre, sounded parched as Gunther – though the character has little to do in this act.
Nelsons led an exciting and muscular reading of the score. His approach was not without some missteps – as he often does, he allowed the brass forces to overpower other sections of the orchestra, and some timpani passages drowned out subtler playing, even with the venue’s mild amplification. Yet he showed a great attention to detail throughout, from the double basses that built great tension in the approach of Siegfried’s death to the melodious harps – all six of them! – that intoned his final cry of “Brünnhilde”. The Funeral March alternated organically between reverence and bombast, and the Immolation was a true cleansing fire, a wall of sound that seemed to envelop the audience and cover every inch of Tanglewood’s vast campus.
The evening also featured a classic “Only at Tanglewood” moment. Just as Goerke finished singing the line “Kinder hört ich greinen nach der Mutter, da süsse Milch sie verschüttet”, a toddler let out a perfectly timed yawp from the lawn.
