Opera review: ‘Die Walküre’ rounds out top-notch season

With its first-ever staging of Die Walküre, the Santa Fe Opera has assembled a season with five first-rate productions.

That’s no small feat under any circumstances, and it’s especially impressive given the musical and production demands of the second opera in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

At its heart, the opera is a coming-of-age story about Brünnhilde and her deeply loving but increasingly complex relationship with her father, Wotan, ruler of the gods. Brünnhilde is one of the Valkyries, Wotan’s contingent of ferocious female warriors.

When she defies a direct military order, he banishes her to a deep sleep atop a mountain, where she can be awakened and claimed by the first male passerby, regardless of his nature or station.

Brünnhilde justifies her disloyalty by saying, in essence, “I obeyed your heart and disobeyed your command,” and pleads with Wotan to make her rescue much more difficult. He agrees to surround her with a magic fire that can only be pierced by one extraordinarily worthy man.

The demanding score was extremely well played by the 88-member opera orchestra under conductor James Gaffigan. Balance problems with the singers were few indeed, with Gaffigan achieving one of his key goals — a much wider range of orchestral and vocal dynamics than is often heard in this opera.

Some of it had to do with Wagner’s highly varied orchestration, but the combined result was a kind of chamber-orchestra clarity during much of the evening, with big fortes rolling out only when genuinely called for.

Melly Still’s stage direction excelled in matters large and small.

One of the most notable and most effective was getting the cast members to connect with each other visually during the opera’s many long dialogue scenes. The result was a great deal of subtlety, energy and variety in the portrayals of their attitudes and relationships. It was a far cry from the often-encountered stand-still-and-singout technique and helped draw this attendee much more deeply into the characters’ dilemmas.

Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s scenic and costume designs and Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting created many striking visual images, including the powers unleashed when Siegmund pulls a magic sword out of a tree trunk in the first act and the stunning final tableau of a large glass “fire cube” atop which Brünnhilde lies as the opera ends.

As Brünnhilde, soprano Tamara Wilson brought the same gleaming vocal tone and superb musicality that characterized her Isolde here in 2022, along with the opportunity to demonstrate more of her range as an actress.

She was impetuous, charming and occasionally gawky, particularly striking in the variety of moods and colors she brought to portraying her relationship with Wotan.

Bass-baritone Ryan Speed Green matched the quality of her portrayal in his physically commanding Wotan. He seemed to grow in vocal power and security as the evening progressed, and he convincingly inhabited the character’s desperate sense of being trapped in an inescapable quagmire of his own devising.

The biggest and most delightful surprise of the evening was the performance of Lithuanian soprano Vida Mikneviciute as Sieglinde.

She has a voice of exceptional range and power, uses it with great musicality, and is an extremely convincing actress. As Sieglinde, the young woman who initiates an incestuous relationship with her long-lost brother Siegmund, she was fully the same league as Wilson and Green.

Jamez McCorkle’s Siegmund was notable especially for the vocal subtlety and variety he brought to the role, and the delight he took in the glorious spring night that surrounds Siegmund and Sieglinde after their declaration of love.

As Fricka, the goddess of marriage as well as Wotan’s wife, mezzo-soprano Sarah Saturnino engaged in a first-rate nuptial donnybrook with her spouse, furious he sanctioned incestuous infidelity instead of trying to preserve the Sieglinde and Hunding marriage.

Saturnino was Green’s equal when it came to vocal power and strength of character, in a role that’s less fully rounded than the others.

As the warrior Hunding, whose family and that of Sigmund and Sieglinde are mortal enemies, Soloman Howard was a glowering, elemental presence, wolfing down food and deploying his powerful bass as a weapon.

It’s a far cry from his thoughtful, gentle portrayal of Colline in La Bohème and a reminder of the delights of the repertory company approach to casting that used to be more common here.

The eight additional Valkyries were impressive in their brief appearance during the beginning of Act 3 and its famous “Ride of the Valkyries” sequence.

For the record, and without their convoluted character names, they were Jennifer Johnson Cano (who doubles as Mrs. Grose in The Turn of the Screw), Deanna Ray Eberhart, Jessica Faselt, Wendy Bryn Harmer (Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw), Gretchen Krupp, Aubrey Odle, Lauren Randolph and Jasmin Ward.

An impressive group of what were billed as supernumeraries got a major workout in the production.

Supernumeraries has the wrong connotation; they’re very active in functions ranging from moving scenery and properties (clad in the head-to-toe black garb of kabuki theater stagehands) to stylized dancing to portraying characters from Das Rheingold (the first opera in the Ring Cycle) who don’t appear in Die Walküre but significantly influence its plot and character relationships.

There were a few times when Tinovimbanashe Sibanda’s choreography for them distracted from key moments onstage, but overall, it added greatly to the production’s energy and narrative.

Die Walküre is highly recommended, with two caveats relating to the opera itself, not the production.

It’s a long evening — even with the earlier-than-usual starting time of 8 p.m., the performance ended just a few minutes shy of 12:30 a.m.

The opera works through its cumulative impact over the long time span, and some will find the storytelling to move at what feels like a glacial pace.