The Wales Millennium Centre’s celebration of its first decade continued with this performance by its principal resident, Welsh National Opera, and its finest ambassador, bass-baritone Bryn Terfel. It may constitute the proverbial bleeding chunk of opera, torn from the whole, but the final act of Wagner’s Die Walküre with Terfel in his signature role, proved here to be viable and spine-tingling.

With the orchestra of WNO on stage and the act taken in a single sweep from the stirring opening Ride to the final lapping flames of Loge’s fire (implied in orange and red lighting of panels behind, but no other set trappings), the focus was entirely on the music. Conductor Lothar Koenigs seemed to conjure the drama from within its depths, with no sense being deprived of a staging – only of the luxury of the score. The Valkyries were a fearsome octet, some more screechy than others; with Madeleine Shaw’s Siegrune the most impressive and, as Ortlinde, Meeta Raval again signalling her talent.

Initially, Iréne Theorin’s Brünnhilde seemed just a bigger, better daughter of the god Wotan, but the emotional exchange with Rachel Nichols’s fine Sieglinde established her authority; left alone to face her father’s wrath, she moved into a higher gear again to confront Terfel, voice to massive voice. Every inch the warrior daughter cast in her father’s mould, she could still convey a touching vulnerability.

Terfel, both demonic and tender, nuancing words with the artistry that gives his every phrase and gesture a vibrant immediacy, was in commanding form. It was the intimacy of their duet, Brünnhilde’s persuasion of Wotan to compromise and his farewell, that created the greatest intensity – a short fix likely to introduce newcomers to Ring addiction.