It’s the understudy’s job to save the show, and that’s just what Jay Hunter Morris did Thursday at the Met in the daunting title role of Wagner’s “Siegfried.”
The part had already defeated two scheduled contenders: Ben Heppner dropped it from his roster last spring, and his standby, Gary Lehman, called in sick last week.
The youthful hero Siegfried doesn’t show up until the third installment of the four-part, 16-hour “Ring” cycle, but when he does, it’s for one of opera’s longest and most strenuous roles, onstage and singing for most of the epic’s five hours.
Morris brandished a bright, lyric voice that pierced Wagner’s massive orchestrations. Tall, blond and broad-shouldered, the tenor — who started on Broadway in 1995’s “Master Class” — even looked the part of a Teutonic dragon slayer.
Also fine was Bryn Terfel as the god Wotan, traveling incognito as the Wanderer. His radiant bass-baritone and supersize personality supplied a tragic grandeur that has been mostly AWOL from this “Ring.”
His able antagonists were Eric Owens, boasting a granite-dark bass-baritone as the sinister dwarf Alberich, and Gerhard Siegel as Alberich’s brother Mime, flexing a tenor muscular enough for Siegfried himself.
Less happily cast was Deborah Voigt as the spellbound Valkyrie Brunnhilde, her voluptuous soprano turning ungainly as she lurched at high notes. That’s a shame, because she played the subtle transformation from virgin goddess to passionate woman exquisitely, with by far the best acting in her 20-year Met career.
If the long evening dragged, blame Robert Lepage’s scatterbrained production, which lacked any intellectual point of view. Breathtaking visuals — a moonlit lake that magically congealed into a jagged glacier — left the singers stranded on a narrow ledge downstage. The worst misfire was the dragon Fafner, who was about as terrifying as a balloon from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
Lepage’s main scenic unit, the cranky 45-ton “machine” set, didn’t delay the show as it did for last season’s HD telecast of “Die Walkà 1/4re,” but it did drown out the ethereal orchestra prelude to the final scene with enough clanking for a demolition derby.
That didn’t faze conductor Fabio Luisi, who rejuvenated the score with brisk, transparent sound. After decades of James Levine’s ponderous approach, it was like seeing a great painting stripped of encrusted grime. The standing ovation at his curtain call sounded like a real hero’s welcome.
He’ll helm the epic next Saturday at noon, a performance that will be telecast in HD to movie theaters.