The substitute

As a followup to the last off-topic post, please note that Veronika Part is dancing another (unscheduled) Swan Lake tonight with David Hallberg.

The awakening

(Another year, another post on this blog's official off-topic diversion.)

Tchaikovsky, Vsevolozhsky, and Petipa's Sleeping Beauty is, among other things, a girl's coming-of-age story: the trouble starts when she draws blood, and it's not until true love takes its step that shadows are banished and the couple can be grandly seen off into marriage by the (other) story-characters of childhood. The many young New Yorkers who took in ABT's performances (in a production much improved by editing) last week may or may not have been particularly receptive to the specifics, but I at least (since, as I've noted, I don't actually know anything about ballet) got to thinking on what characters these onstage princesses -- visions of future, past, or ideal youth and maturation, perhaps -- actually were revealing.

Monday's Princess Aurora: Gillian Murphy. She was the most teen-like of the bunch -- a happy and energetic youth, wonderfully decorative in her spirited elaborations, and remaining essentially such through trial and glory. The gravity in this particular show was offered by the Lilac Fairy, Veronika Part. If Aurora shows who a girl is and becomes, the Lilac Fairy -- who deflects and transforms Carabosse's curse and guides the Prince safely to the rescue -- shows what world we live in, by what arts happiness might be conjured. With Part's Lilac Fairy both grandeur and a certain grave wisdom make the joyful ending on which she insists all the more valuable.

On Wednesday night Part was Aurora, one full to overflowing with life and reverence: for the occasion(s), for the other participants, and most of all for the mystery and glory of the young womanhood newly shining from her in Act I, developed and deepened in the dream of Act II, and fulfilled to all promise in Act III. If the girls and boys who attended this show (even the ones who nearly wrecked later acts with poorly-timed whining) find encouragement to grow into such vivid spirits, the city will be a more interesting place.

Friday's Aurora was Paloma Herrera, another energetic youth of a princess -- perhaps (to be unsubtle) more the jock to Murphy's cheerleader/prom queen -- who again held to her basic underlying character in ups and downs. The lyrical but precise authority of Maria Riccetto's Lilac Fairy meanwhile suggested a more elegant salvation.

If Murphy and Herrera were noticeably-teenaged Auroras, Alina Cojocaru's Saturday matinee princess was very nearly a child. The poise and sweet delicacy of Cojocaru's dancing makes the first-act Rose Adagio a wonder, but after that there's nowhere else to go: her persona is not only wholesome but unblemishable and thoroughly virginal (even the offending spindle barely makes contact -- it wouldn't dare, would it?), and in the adult territory of the later acts she's got nothing to work with.

This was, in a sense, a fitting match to Stella Abrera's matinee Lilac Fairy: her victory via niceness and gently pretty dancing came perilously close to reducing the story to its Disney popularization. Abrera's earlier Lilac Fairy -- for Part on Wednesday night -- was a less happy match, with her character receding in the face of Part's huge personality.

Finally, Saturday evening brought Bolshoi star Natalia Osipova (yes, the one who got mugged earlier last week) for her first Aurora anywhere -- and despite the debut (and last-season's somewhat one-note Giselle), a more clear sense of Aurora's path than usual. This princess was the born, radiant belle of the ball -- and the town, and the kingdom -- who learned the wonder of desire in Act II before being overcome by its directed fulfillment in Act III. (Osipova here put her own personal star power to very fine use, taking it as the starting point for the character.) Her happiness was guided by the firm, minimal-nonsense wand of Michele Wiles, whose Lilac Fairy even Carabosse should have known better than to cross.

With two great and memorable danced characterizations by Part and Osipova, it was a better week than most at the Met.

One reason to leave the Met by the plaza side...

Osipova mugged last night after Sleeping Beauty

Surprised it happened, but not surprised that it was on the Amsterdam side (the back). She must have stayed a few hours after the performance, though, since it ended before 10:30PM and not "early Tuesday morning".

The big fish

The Philadelphia Orchestra finally got a young charismatic conductor to say "yes": Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who made such a great impression here leading Carmen, is its new Music Director as of 2012. Great for Philly -- if he enjoys the meat-and-potatoes programming the locals there want. As for us, it should keep him nearby for more stints at the Met...

Before I forget (guest edition): La Scala's Rheingold

Not too far in time but rather more distant than usual in place, a reader sent this guest review from Milan on last month's La Scala Rheingold.

As this appears to have been a trial run for Pape in Wotan, perhaps his vocal success in the part means we'll see him do it here in the not-too-distant future.

*     *     *
Das Rheingold, Teatro alla Scala, May 26, 2010

One good decision in Guy Cassiers' production of Das Rheingold at La Scala was to have Alberich just be an unkempt, ordinary middle aged guy. Without the usual troll costume, this Alberich, especially as well sung and as dynamically acted by Johannes Martin Kraenzle, was the most sympathetic and interesting depiction of that character I have seen and heard. He was buffo enough to get laughs from the audience and the Rhinemaidens, but not a cartoon-ish character. Renounce love for riches? Sure, if those are the kind of bitches one runs into at the Rheinhessen, why not?!

There were other nice touches such as a cynical and dandy-ish Loge dancing in the water as everyone ascends to Valhalla at the opera's end, but Cassiers is such a literal director that he ruins the night by having ballet dancers on-stage for most of the opera miming and gyrating next to the singers, even during Wagner's evocative subterranean music for the descent to the Nibelheim. It's like Cassiers and his choreographer, Sidi Libi Cherkaoui, read a bunch of opera books which say that Rheingold is the gloomiest and least lyrical chapter of the Ring, and they believed it and needed to overcompensate by treating it like an overwrought ballet.

The worst was Cassiers' concept of Wotan as a self-effacing dead-beat which only made me wish that Rene Pape's first outing in this role was at the Met's now retired Otto Schenk production, which has the rare virtue of letting Wotan be a god. It is hard to imagine Pape getting upstaged throughout the night, but in this production, he is. His actions on stage were stiff and static, and a semi-naked hairy male dancer shadows his moves while he is arguing with Fricka. I was hoping he would kill many of the dancers with his spear, but alas, no.

Dressed in a dirty suit, this Wotan was too mortal to command any authority or awe, and perhaps too cognizant that stealing the Ring is a bad decision. It's unfortunate because Pape's Wotan is beautifully sung, and a most bel canto treatment of the part, but if he's not allowed to be a god or even threatening, he might as well be singing Rigoletto.

The bass that stole the show was Kwangchul Youn as Fasolt, who sang forcefully and with real menace. A much more dignified fellow than Wotan, his was a Fasolt of brute elegance and authority. Unfortunately, Timo Riihonen as Fafner was too light for the role.

The tenors in this production were all good, especially Stephan Ruegamer's lyrical and charismatic Loge who moved around the stage like a demented pixie. He was lucky to have no dancer assigned to him. Anna Larsson's Erda makes her entrance like a tree sprouting up from the stage, and although she was good, I wished for more authority and steeliness in her singing of this role. I had last heard Anna Samuil as Musetta at the Met in 2006 and she was an appealing and dynamic Freia worth fighting over.

Daniel Barenboim and the La Scala Orchestra gave a mostly skillful rendition and sounded great during the last the ten minutes which made one almost forget all the bad direction of the show so far. Only the opening music seemed rushed and unmagical, like Barenboim wanted to get those notes over with. Maybe waiting for the protesting stagehands (lecturing the audience) to get off the stage made him antsy.

Before I forget: The class of 2005

The Magic Flute -- Metropolitan Opera, 9/30/2009
Phillips, Klink, Maltman, Miklosa, Zeppenfeld / Labadie

The Marriage of Figaro -- Metropolitan Opera, 11/30/2009
Oropesa, Pisaroni, Dasch, Leonard, Tezier / Luisi

I suppose that after the movie more people know about the 2007 Met Council Finals than any other iteration of the event, but to my mind it was less memorable than 2005's version. Two of the 2005 winners starred in the Met's Mozart revivals this fall, with generally happy results.

*     *     *
No longer new, Julie Taymor's production of the Magic Flute has worked through its early issues to become a well-functioning Mozartean machine, quite capable of entertaining the Flute crowd without any notable stars. That September's revival had a reasonably good and interesting cast was almost incidental.

Sonically, the night took a while to get on track. Though 2007 winner Jamie Barton blended nicely with veteran First and Third Ladies Wendy Bryn Harmer and Tamara Mumford, the prince they were rescuing wasn't such a prize. Matthew Klink, who made his debut earlier in this run, was certainly audible and professional, but he lacked grace and control -- basically a drag as Tamino. English baritone Christopher Maltman, on the other hand, sang well enough but was a glummer and less comically commanding Papageno than one would have wanted. Even veteran Queen of the Night Erika Miklosa was off her usual high standard in her first-act aria.

Things improved, however, for the latter part of the show. The Sarastro -- Georg Zeppenfeld -- was the best of the male singers by far, impressing in his own debut run with the company. (He's not yet up to Pape, Moll, or the like, but certainly deserves a return engagement.) Miklosa eventually reappeared and nailed the Queen's second aria. Meanwhile, Kathleen Kim was luxury-cast as Papagena and Susanna Phillips brought some heart to the show as Pamina.

Phillips, who has since won the Met's own Beverly Sills Artist Award, made her post-Met Council debut the season before as Musetta, but of course Pamina is a much different part. There's very little showiness: a lot goes on inside her, but there's not much actual action. Phillips here not only sang beautifully but brought an appealing (neither delicate nor fire-eating) and ever-visible interiority to the character in her woe and happiness.

After last season's poor efforts in Don Giovanni, Bernard Labadie's direct and well-breathed conducting was a relief. He showed well in both the opera's expression and its gravity, not allowing Sarastro or the crowd scenes to get bogged down in over-solemnity. A good evening -- despite the Tamino.

*     *     *
As well as Labadie did, however, Fabio Luisi's Mozart conducting a few months later put it and other recent non-Levine efforts (in Mozart, at least) seem pedestrian. From the overture onward, the stick of the now-Principal Guest Conductor (a position he was announced for only after Levine's spring injury -- interview here) brought not only energy and clear textures but a rare vitality to every phrase. Though I still wish Pierre Boulez could have been convinced to do Lulu (the Boulez-conducted Carnegie Hall concert just after the last spring performance had the Met Orchestra playing better than I've heard since Levine took the Boston job), Luisi's four productions in '09-'10 were all carried off pretty admirably.

The cast was a mixed affair, with the servants doing well and the aristocrats not. The latter first. Ludovic Tezier has been a fine Marcello, but as the Count he lacked the charisma -- either vocal or personal -- to make the character's sordid lechery count for much. His wife this time was the debuting German soprano Annette Dasch, whose apparent European success I can't understand. Yes, she is attractive, has a substantial enough sound, and was certainly game and responsive in acting the Countess, but she simply could not sing the arias (or her part of the Letter Duet) in tune, coming to grief in every exposed slow part (and yes, that's most of the role). Perhaps she'll turn into a decent Wagnerian or something, but as a Mozart singer she was a flop.

Luca Pisaroni and Lisette Oropesa made a much more pleasing pair, he an earthy but musical force as Figaro, she perkily charming and able to project her personality much more strongly than in her surprise Met Susanna two years earlier. It wasn't the revelation of Oropesa's Lucia last summer in Princeton, but it was a promising indication of her delicious light lyric voice's ability to carry a lead in the big house. (If Dessay's vocal trouble continues, the Met may need a substitute Lucia...)

Also very good was Isabel Leonard, a gangly but ardent Cherubino who didn't quite eclipse recent memories of Kate Lindsey and Joyce DiDonato. Luisi and the cast made the ensembles seem effortless, making for pure pleasure outside of the Count and Countess' solo struggles.

Before I forget (a series)

There are many reasons why impressions from the season's performances don't get posted at the time, and may never go up. But -- however it happened -- this week I'll be attempting to clear out my backlog of notes, fragmentary posts, etc. by finishing and posting reviews from the just-concluded New York season before the details fall entirely out of mind. First up, tomorrow: a show from the Met's very first week.

The Big Mac

Le Grand Macabre -- New York Philharmonic, 5/27/2010
Owens, Schowalter, Costanzo, Black, Tatum, Parks, Pauley, Tantsits, Bloom, Hannigan / Gilbert

"Le Grand Macabre" the character (Nekrotzar, played by Eric Owens) comes to announce the death of the world, but his namesake opera announces the death of the very modernist aesthetic in which it's written. A strange choice, which despite some good music leaves the listener with the impression of having wasted his time.

If modernism -- as exemplified brilliantly at the Met this spring in Shostakovich's The Nose and Berg's Lulu, the latter of which may be the exemplary modernist opera (not least for its current form's birth from musicological research) -- shrinks Romantic subjectivity, it takes very seriously its own axes of meaningful activity: compulsion (particularly sexual), science, formal repurposing, and of course the authority of the no-longer romantic but now (pseudo)scientific subject. So Lulu's characters are shown and described as beasts in a menagerie, pulled to doom by the inescapable compulsions of her sexual desirability and the need for money. Le Grand Macabre joins Lulu in finding new uses for old musical forms, but on stage it undercuts the modernist verities. We find sexual compulsion, science, authority (even the modern(ist) authoritarian state), and death itself -- shown as not only ridiculous but impotent.

What is left? Well, simple sex -- neither romantic nor compulsive -- and consumption (the food Prince Go-Go craves and the drink of which Piet and the others are so fond -- Nekrotzar excessively so). That is, the low "bourgeois" satisfactions with which modernism was at odds from the beginning. Without death or these other attention-demanders, neither Nekrotzar nor anyone else has the power to Savonarolistically turn people away from the easy feast of contemporary prosperous life, to make them feel guilty for not attending and giving allegiance to the high and not-quite-humane canon of modernism... like Le Grand Macabre itself. Oops.

It's a sort of postmodern message, but modernist icon Ligeti didn't recast himself as a postmodernist either. The score, for its references and joke orchestrations, is in his characteristic style, and -- except for the interludes, and the brilliant first half of scene three -- for all its interest too much portentous in the old modernist way: the way of Nekrotzar, who turns out to be a sham or impotent or simply irrelevant himself.

An opera about its own obsolescence may have been fun decades ago, when one could laugh off the possible fall of modernist prestige, but today the collapse has come and gone rather matter-of-factly, leaving one to wonder at the action's two hours of elaboration on the obvious. Perhaps an orchestral suite from Le Grand Macabre would now serve the piece best.

(In details, I mostly agree with Zerbinetta's review of the night at Likely Impossibilities.)

Lost rights

The oddest thing about this season's revival of Lulu is a cut in the subtitles: in the Countess Geschwitz's just-a-touch-too-late change of heart (right before she and Lulu are stabbed), her declaration that she will fight for women's rights (after going back to university, etc.) was quite intentionally chopped in both Wednesday's and yesterday's performances. As for why somebody decided to make this change? I have no idea.

UPDATE (5/17): To clarify, von Otter still sang the line -- it just wasn't registered in the translation.

Wotan versus the Earth Spirit

Lulu -- Metropolitan Opera, 5/12/2010
Petersen, Morris, Lehman, von Otter, Howell, Schade, Clark, Garvin / Luisi

In the essentially ideal cast the Met has assembled for Alban Berg's masterpiece, James Morris stands out. As embodied by him, Dr. Schön steps out of Lulu's lineup of more-or-less-pathetic husband-victims to be the other main character of the opera, the anti-Carmen who seduces Lulu (temporarily) out of her world and into a life of relative respectability. Yes, that analogy may be a bit much... In any case, Morris' force and presence (and delicious German diction) let us see what was in the piece all along: Schön is the one man Lulu desires, the one she pursues, marries (she tells him at Act 2's start that she wed him, not vice versa), and loves (as she says even after having shot him). Is it any surprise that at the end, having found no satisfaction outside the worlds Dr. Schön created for her (and note that he set up her previous marriages, enabled her stage success, and dealt with her husband's messy death without landing anyone in prison), she will not let "him" go once he reappears, even as Jack the Ripper?

The others were all impressive in more foreseeable ways. Marlis Petersen handles the title part with apparent ease: though her tone hardens for some of the most taxing notes, for the most part it maintains its sonic charm throughout Berg's obstacle course -- and there's a flutter in her vibrato that suggests Dawn Upshaw, which perfectly fits the character. At least as importantly, she well conveys -- again without too much effort -- the weightless not-quite-blank quality of a character who's both a dancer and a canvas for others' desires. (This is where her predecessor Christine Schäfer fell well short.) Gary Lehman both brings oft-lacking vocal force to Alwa and well suggests his moral weakness, etc. etc.

Perhaps the only thing short of a historically great performance here is Fabio Luisi's work in the pit. Not that it's not clear and balanced and beautiful and organized (the tricky ensembles, for one thing, all come off stunningly well), but Luisi's pursuit of balance forecloses thorough exploration of the score and story's desperation, violence, and overpowering sensuality (though Levine has perhaps too much chased the latter).

More after the matinee -- and if you have the choice to go, do so.

Actually, I suspect he's right

Via Intermezzo, an interview with Marcelo Alvarez:

His greatest vitriol is reserved for opera bloggers, whose continual criticism and sniping gossip, he says, damages singers. "Perhaps you sing one bad performance and these websites attack and blow it out of proportion. They always write: bad, bad, bad!" he rants, drowning out the translator in English. "Some artistic directors read these sites and a lot of contracts go." This hasn't happened to him, and he cannot give me a direct example but, he says: "I know it has happened. This is the real cancer of our opera world."

On the one hand: responsiveness to what actually happens is good.

On the other hand: if administrators are actually dumb enough to follow the groupthink and negative one-upsmanship that dominate most opera-talk communities, they're being mind-bogglingly irresponsible.

Addicted to love

Armida -- Metropolitan Opera, 4/27/2010
Fleming, Brownlee, Banks, Osborn, Volpe, Miller, van Rensburg / Frizza

A quick post to note the remarkable form of lead tenor Lawrence Brownlee in Tuesday night's performance: contra my misgivings last time, Brownlee offered clear and impressive singing from beginning to end, with a sound that occasionally recalled the young Ramon Vargas -- himself a supreme Rossini tenor before he moved on to become the most stylish lyric voice of our time. Brownlee's acting is still pretty simple, but the comparison to Juan Diego Florez was not necessarily fair. It has seemed to me that Florez's superiority in heartfelt lyricism has gone hand-in-hand with a reluctance to stray from the sensitive lover's persona. (Perhaps his darker, less sympathetic role in next season's Le Comte Ory will change this.) Brownlee shows less finesse but handles the disparate sides (heroic, proud, love-besotted, love-detoxing) of Rinaldo's character with aplomb.

On this night, Barry Banks sang two tenor roles, filling in for the ill Jose Manuel Zapata at the start before singing his original last-act character. Also impressive, though the latter part sounded more comfortable for him.

Bryn Terfel, superstar

Tosca -- Metropolitan Opera, 4/20/2010
Racette, Kaufmann, Terfel / Luisi

As I suspected on opening night, opera isn't necessarily that complicated: bring enough vocal star power and a so-so show will ignite -- never mind everything else. Bryn Terfel brings about that much star power all by himself: the cancellation dramas and all that shouldn't, when he actually performs, distract one from the monstrously impressive instrument he has. As Scarpia he just drops all the interesting characterization that his predecessor Gagnidze offered (is Terfel just too decent to really play a man of sociopathic appetite? -- his Don Giovanni was existentially daring, not a lech), which is unfortunate but somehow irrelevant, as sheer force of sound and personality sweeps other considerations away.

On top of that was tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who wasn't much less impressive. At the premiere Marcelo Alvarez was as usual strong and well-characterized, but Kaufmann showed a wild vocal-personal force that brought down the house. His sound is (still) dark and covered, but so mobile and freely expressive despite that... A thrill to hear.

Racette, too deserves credit. I suspect Karita Mattila -- if she'd not gotten injured -- would have done well playing with and off of these two, but Racette actually did succeed, and was in good voice herself. More important than sound here is character: Tosca's mix of grand artifice and self-pity is the classic Puccinian frame into which Racette has always slipped naturally, while Mattila made listeners, at least at the opening, see her contortions in getting there.

Fabio Luisi, filling in for James Levine (also out with a back injury), conducted brilliantly. Luisi is more associated with Verdi and Strauss, and though I'm sure he's done many Toscas, his account sounded a bit like that of a man speaking in a foreign language in which he's been well-schooled: a lot of touches interestingly apart from convention in the initial acts, though not as thoroughly re-imagined in the last as Levine.

I still believe those who booed to glorify the Zeffirelli production misunderstand opera, but now I think maybe it doesn't matter. Design is merely design, but the unamplified human voice remains at the center of things.

Duty's call

Armida -- Metropolitan Opera, 4/16/2010
Fleming, Brownlee, Osborn, Volpe, Zapata, Miller, van Rensburg, Banks / Frizza

Rossini's 1817 opera Armida, like Wagner's Tristan und Isolde nearly half-a-century later, kicks off with the second meeting of a war-divided couple. In each tale, love flares up again at the reunion, against all obligation, and -- well, the resemblance isn't complete. The reunion does not, in Armida, send us all the way down the infinite abyss of Romantic subjectivity the way Wagner's masterpiece so famously does: Rossini was not so thoroughly the 19th century man, and in his work an older virtue eventually wins out. Duty, which against all sense apologizes to Tristan (showing its complete overthrow), reappears in the form of Rinaldo's two comrades, who convince (and drag) him to follow the higher, more sober road and reject the decadent love of the sorceress Armida.

But Armida herself does go down that rabbit hole, and I suspect it was her third-act-long madness in the face of abandonment that most strongly drew superstar Renee Fleming to this rarity. It is a rare opportunity -- extremity of expression in Fleming's own characteristic emotional key (as Der Rosenkavalier and even La Traviata are not) -- and she seizes it well, doing exciting credit both to herself and the underappreciated non-comic side of Rossini.

Getting there, however, takes a while. Before her last-act misery Armida is the string-puller of the story, her florid music a display and a seduction. Years of Manon, Thais, and general stardom have made Fleming happily comfortable in this sort of vehicle, but the part doesn't sit perfectly in her current voice: the fioritura is admirable but not as precise and exciting as a Rossini specialist's, and much of the part (written for Isabella Colbran, later Rossini's wife) sits low, where Fleming's sound now gets a bit mushy. Perhaps only Fleming can sell the opera, but a mezzo like Joyce DiDonato (no stranger to operatic madness herself, and one who has recently released a Colbran CD) might have made more of the first two acts.

Tenor Lawrence Brownlee, too, takes a while to hit his stride. He seemed good but not quite star-quality in his debut run as Almaviva in 2007, and I'm not quite sure this has changed. His initial recitatives certainly impressed, but the rest of the first act's obstacle course (through alternately amorous and heroic music) was more well-negotiated than compellingly characterized. Also -- though this isn't particularly his fault -- Brownlee's precise sound doesn't naturally blend well with Fleming's richer timbre in their duets. On stage there's not much chemistry either: he's slimmed a bit and looks more the romantic lead, but is not yet the expressive actor that, say, Juan Diego Florez has become.

In any case, the lead pair did well enough in Act 2, but the highlights there weren't theirs. After bass-baritone Keith Miller nearly stole the entire show as the singing and dancing leader of the rat-looking demons (pale rats in flak jackets, actually), the act's second half was dominated by the production's one great success: the ballet by which Armida entertains Rinaldo in her pleasure palace. Whether dreamed up in broad outline by Mary Zimmerman or left in ideas as well as particulars to choreographer Graciela Daniele and associate choreographer Daniel Pelzig, this part of the staging was a treat for anyone receptive to dance. At first -- and for a while -- it's a lovely comic-pastoral treatment of sensual desire, but, in a re-imagination and recapitulation of Rinaldo's situation, the gross and sinister eventually arrives, so that... Well, you should see it.

In the end, of course, Rinaldo eventually finds himself again, and the next act's heroic music when he's finally dragged back to his senses brought Brownlee's finest singing of the evening. By this point we've heard four other notable tenors: Met debutee John Osborn (who's actually been singing Rossini's Arnold in Europe) impressively forceful for his fach, Jose Manuel Zapata a bit constricted but with a pleasant darker tone, Kobie van Rensberg as enjoyable as ever after a bit of warm-up, and Barry Banks -- whom I thought, at least until Brownlee showed his stuff in this last act, might have been the better pick for Rinaldo.

(The real coup, of course, would have been Florez, who's engaged for next season's Rossini rarity but isn't in this one. Though -- as the show itself proves -- we don't lack for quality Rossini tenors, none currently can make the notes count for so much as he. Listen to his recording with Kasarova of the famous Act 1 love duet -- which on Friday went for relatively little -- for a taste of what's missing.)

Riccardo Frizza conducts well and straightforwardly, with star-quality (as usual) instrumental solos by Rafael Figueroa and David Chan. If you can stick through a slow buildup, the latter acts of this show offer both excellent singing and real dramatic reward.

Wet eye, dry eye

La Traviata -- Metropolitan Opera, 4/13/2010
Hong, Valenti, Hampson / Abel

Tuesday was, for the most part, a "dry eye" Traviata night at the Met -- that is, despite much nice individual work, not wholly successful. Or perhaps I personally have been spoiled by the magnificence of Anja Harteros last season, for most of what I said in praise of Hei-Kyung Hong's Violetta three years ago still applies. She lacks force, but has the refinement and unforced, touching believability that more famous sopranos don't always have in full.

But this time it didn't add up to as much. Perhaps it was the unscheduled appearance, subbing for Angela Gheorghiu early in a run Hong was supposed to take over weeks after. Perhaps it was the further passage of time, eroding Hong's voice that small but decisive additional amount: her need to shepherd the voice through almost all of the first two acts is now quite evident. Or perhaps it was her fit (or lack thereof) with the night's colleagues. Whatever the ultimate reason(s), the show lacked the urgent energy that ignites and inflames audience emotions.

I suspect it was a combination of all these factors. Traviata needs a motor, and though that's often up to the soprano playing Violetta, a sufficiently ardent Alfredo or vigorous conductor can drive the show as effectively. Perhaps three years ago Hong's colleagues mattered less, but in her current lightened vocal state she needs assistance -- as Gheorghiu's spellbinding onstage energy does not -- and doesn't get it. Which isn't to say they're bad -- they just too much duplicate her virtues instead of complementing them.

James Valenti, one of the 2002 Met Council Finals winners, has matured into a musical bearer of the impressive liquid voice he showed eight years ago. He's perhaps a bit too musical, in fact -- or rather, perhaps too into his own musical control. Sometimes a bit of blunter, less exquisitely shaped singing would have been more effective. He's also extremely tall, which -- for the first time since John Hancock took over the Baron's part in 2006 -- took away the physical menace of Baron Douphol (whose immediate dislike of Alfredo one might take here to be the pique of a man used to towering over his rivals...).

Thomas Hampson has become a near-perfect Germont. There's something of the feminine in his virtues that doesn't quite work for Schumann's Dichterliebe (more on that later), but for this embodiment of upright society it adds an ideal touch. Hampson's Germont is a true believer, not just in the rightness of his plea (and in the order of things it represents) but in the later-proved-unfortunately-untrue assurances he offers Violetta in her renunciation. But it's the slightly smarmy Hampson manner that lets him convincingly marry this to real personal sympathy with the heroine -- and the lately-evident truthfulness of his suffering that gives his requests of her and his son real depth.

Yves Abel, the fourth conductor in this run, showed admirable refinement from the very first bars of the overture, but, while he was never quite lethargic, neither did he make up for the lack of any singer driving the onstage action (Hampson was closest, but Germont only appears for one act).

I missed this afternoon's broadcast, but it occurs to me that all the non-Hong cast might make perfect foils for Gheorghiu's opposite, un-passive approach to the Verdi classic.