Michael Hendrick acquitted himself honorably… in this punishingly high role.

By HEIDI WALESON

New York

The Metropolitan Opera mounted Strauss’s “Die Ägyptische Helena” (1928), a new production that opened on March 15, for Deborah Voigt, its reigning Strauss soprano. Splendid though she was in the richly scored title role — Helen of Troy, the world’s most beautiful woman — Ms. Voigt had serious competition from Diana Damrau. As the sorceress Aithra, Ms. Damrau demonstrated not only the silvery high notes and flexibility required for a Strauss seconda donna (she made a stunning Met debut as Zerbinetta in “Ariadne” in 2005), but also ringing power, total commitment, and even some Martha Graham-like moves.

These two ladies, and volcanic, insightful conducting from Fabio Luisi, made the evening. “Helena” is a tough opera to stage. The Hugo von Hofmannsthal libretto, inspired by a Euripides play in which Helen didn’t actually elope with Paris, but was in Egypt the whole time, works on multiple levels. Following the Trojan War, Menelas, bringing his wife home, is so furious at her infidelity that he tries to kill her. The sorceress Aithra, in a burst of feminine solidarity, gives him a potion of forgetfulness and persuades him that the real Helena awaits him innocently on Mount Atlas; the faithless Helena is merely an apparition. However, Helena realizes that true forgiveness must come from understanding, not ignorance, and manages their reconciliation on those terms. The opera is thus mythic, domestic and Freudian at the same time.

Diana Damrau and Deborah Voigt in Strauss’s ‘Die Ägyptische Helena.’

Director and designer David Fielding, making his Met debut, tried to explore all those levels. His raked set, a vast empty room with tipped walls, oversized doors and beds, intense lighting (by Mimi Jordan Sherin) and various heavenly bodies, suggested the painful uncertainties of its characters’ inner and outer lives. Less clear was the purpose of “shadow” figures, black in the first act, white in the second, who mirrored the singers. Each character’s costume was a single color, except for Helena’s shimmery blue-green mermaid gown, a reminder that there is more to even the most beautiful woman than meets the eye.

However, Mr. Fielding’s direction, like his set, was also more about abstraction than human interaction, and Ms. Damrau’s Aithra, despite her Graham-like undulations (Linda Dobell was the choreographer), seemed more real than the unhappy couple. Perhaps she dreamed the whole thing.

The super-caloric Strauss score, reminiscent of Act II of “Ariadne,” filled in the blanks, with seething orchestration and ecstatic vocal writing. Ms. Voigt’s creamy, radiant soprano, fortified with some necessary steel, made for a potent Helena. Her first Menelas, Torsten Kerl, withdrew due to illness after the first act, and was replaced by Michael Hendrick, who acquitted himself honorably if not beautifully in this punishingly high role. Mezzo Jill Grove was warm and intense as the Omniscent Mussel (yes, really), Wolfgang Brendel was properly menacing as a prince who courts and then threatens Helena; Garrett Sorenson was fine as his son, whom Menelas kills by mistake. A dozen female elves, all in white with silvery wigs and sunglasses, conjured by Aithra to confuse Menelas, lightened the tone in Act I.

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by Heidi Waleson

The Wall Street Journal