Twice briefly (without Vargas)

Simon Boccanegra -- Metropolitan Opera, 1/20/2011
Hvorostovsky, Frittoli, De Biasio, Alaimo, Furlanetto / Levine

Half the success of this show was made in advance when the cast was assembled. But while Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ferruccio Furlanetto, and James Levine were predictable successes, the other leads weren't. Scheduled tenor Ramon Vargas was ill, and replaced by Met debutant Roberto de Biasio. And soprano Barbara Frittoli, after an auspicious start in the house in the '90s, has never really satisfied since.

That an emergency replacement tenor can be as good as de Biasio is a happy sign of the times. The Sicilian tenor not only has a strong and pleasant voice but showed a fairly well-developed musical sense despite the likely lack of rehearsal. I did miss Vargas' recently unerring sense of character (again, no knock of de Biasio, who had little chance to develop a rapport with the rest of the cast), but most of the crowd seemed to be buzzing about the need to see the new guy again. I agree, though the field these days is strong.

Frittoli, meanwhile, sounded much refreshed after her poor vocal showing a year ago as Micaela -- which, at the time, seemed to be part of a larger and more disturbing vocal trend. I'm not sure where her voice will go from here (and reports since this revival debut seem to be mixed), but her clearly produced and phrased performance here was a most welcome surprise.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang the eponymous former corsair beautifully, but I'm not convinced that Boccanegra plays to his real strengths. For all his exquisite shape of phrase, Hvorostovsky is most compelling when some dangerously strong emotion (usually rage) explodes from his usual civilized surface -- witness his Onegin, or di Luna, or Renato. Boccanegra, for all his pride and checkered past, spends most of his onstage time conciliating passions, not indulging them, and only his reminiscence of the sea near the end seems to engage Hvorostovsky in full.

An excellent night for Verdi singing and playing.

*     *     *
La Boheme -- Metropolitan Opera, 1/31/2011
Kovalevska, Phillips, Beczala, Mattei, Scheunemann, Shenyang / Armiliato

What a relief to be in the reliable hands of Marco Armiliato after Roberto Rizzi Brignoli's misguided overconducting! Not to say that Puccini is obvious or easy or does not reward refined conductorial touches: Nicola Luisotti's runs of Boheme and Fanciulla showed the power of a great baton. But though the ever-solid Armiliato doesn't make the show (as Luisotti did), he doesn't ruin it either (as Rizzi Brignoli was coming all too close to doing). The change in the pit is for all remaining performances, so perhaps Gelb (or the musicians) had had enough.

Piotr Beczala's Rodolfo is new to me. He lacks refinement here but sings with the familiar middle-European tenorial ardor that makes for a fairly appealing character . Like remarkable debutant Yonghoon Lee (in Don Carlo), Beczala is strong in shaping the full span of a phrase to where it should go -- though he doesn't, of course, have the Korean's overpowering spinto ring.

Peter Mattei is as excellent a Marcello as one would expect, mellifluous and personable but with flashes of his Don Giovanni darkness. Sopranos Maija Kovalevska and Susanna Phillips are (also expectedly) good, though without yet finding the complete magic of their last Bohemes together.

I may end up catching another of Beczala's performances, but I expect the Vargas shows at the end will be the more interesting -- if he stays healthy.

Meet and greet

Having recently posted about Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Sondra Radvanovsky's duo concert here last year, I should note that the two will be signing the new CD of their Verdi (plus non-Verdi encores) at the Met Opera Shop this Thursday (1/27) at 2pm.

The disc -- apparently recorded live near the beginning of the pair's world tour -- is one I'd thought long-ago released, but I guess not. Definitely worth hearing: the close miking of Met broadcasts is about the worst way to learn how these singers (particularly Radvanovsky) actually sound.

Moment, stay

Rigoletto -- Metropolitan Opera, 1/18/2011
Machaidze, Chávez, Calleja, Meoni, Kocán / Arrivabeni

The Met finally has two baritones who can actually sing Rigoletto: Giovanni Meoni has followed up the promise of last season's debut Ezio with this musically impressive account of Verdi's baritone star turn. Nevertheless, Meoni is one of the main reasons why this feast of good singing adds up to less than it should.

Upsides first. Tenor Joseph Calleja is, as he was his debut season, a golden-voiced, sonically authoritative Duke -- this time strengthening act-by-act to spellbinding versions of "La donna e mobile" and the quartet intro. I've praised him enough on these pages, I think.

Calleja and Meoni have sung Verdi well here already, but Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze made her debut just earlier in the run. She's a very good singer, though not a classic Gilda: her voice has the part's whole range, but instead of chirpy sweetness there's a dark individuality (particularly in the middle) that may -- until she's known and famous and valued for it -- be taken as part-time sourness. In fact Machaidze's sound reminds me rather a lot of Angela Gheorghiu's, and I suspect her future is more in heavier stuff (where the darker character will show well) than today's chirpy -inas and -ettas.

Machaidze's Gilda, then, was less about the first act's youth and rapture than the latter acts' more painful storms -- which she both sang and acted with stronger conviction. Again, I saw echoes of Gheorghiu in dramatic temperament and even specific body language. One could do much worse, and I'm excited to see the young Georgian in a meatier role.

Also impressive (and again, with a nice sonic character) was relatively new Slovak bass Stefan Kocan as Sparafucile.

What didn't work, then? Well, Meoni is an unusually... upright Rigoletto: neither body nor spirit show more than the baseline minimum of warp from his life and environment. (In fact, this iteration of the court seems, for all the vice and cruelty, rather jolly -- which, mind you, may well be true to life.) That's a legitimate starting point, but though it's nice to see the him catch a moment of relaxation with his daughter after a rough day at the office, Meoni's jester never bodily reflects his later travails. He sings them well, but again without the full measure of horror. (I'd love to see Meoni as Miller, though, perhaps with Machaidze as Luisa.)

The other letdown was Paolo Arrivabeni, who debuted in the pit with this show in the fall. He actually does well in the broader things, pacing each number with well-judged energy, giving singers their space when necessary, and playing up dynamic contrasts in the score. But on the micro-level his sense of time seems to conflict with Verdi's: Arrivabeni's conducting, particularly in the rapid passages, tends to dissolve rather than emphasize the underlying beat/rhythm, undoing the contrast of forward motion and indelible time that gives Verdi's music -- even the melodies -- its characteristic charge. It recalled Adrianne Pieczonka's shortfall in last year's Boccanegra, but Arrivabeni made the whole cast sound like that -- except, thankfully, in the quartet.

This revival used, rather jarringly, an alternate configuration of the court and Rigoletto-home sets, not used here for two decades. The former was interesting, but the latter was shifted over so as to show much less of Rigoletto's home courtyard -- so the staging this time had Gilda wandering outside the gates to sing most of "Caro nome", a bit that made little sense.

Perhaps, if careers continue to flower, we'll look back at the names here decades later and wonder how great the combination must have been... But it's rarely so simple. Sounds great, though.

Opening the vault

Perhaps this has already been all around the net, but I got a press release this morning that four famous Met broadcasts were being released next Tuesday... on Sony Classical.

FIRST OFFICIAL, REMASTERED CD AND DIGITAL RELEASE: These historic performances originally broadcast via the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday afternoon radio series have never before been available internationally in authorized versions from original sources. Now, Sony Classical is presenting the first commercial releases of this material, newly remastered from the original sources and with the imprimatur of the Met.

ROSSINI: IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA, December 16, 1950 (two CDs). This live broadcast from the Met of the Rossini favorite features the legendary Lily Pons in the role of Rosina, with the sterling young tenor Giuseppe di Stefano as Count Almaviva, a role he never recorded commercially, and baritone Giuseppe Valdengo, well known for his recordings with Toscanini, as Figaro. Alberto Erede conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, with the cast also including Salvatore Baccaloni as Don Bartolo and Jerome Hines as Don Basilio.

PUCCINI: LA BOHÈME, February 15, 1958 (two CDs). This classic performance of one of the repertory’s most popular operas stars the passionate singing of two paragons of Italian style, soprano Licia Albanese as the doomed seamstress Mimi and tenor Carlo Bergonzi as the poet Rodolfo. The conductor is Thomas Schippers, with the cast also including Mario Sereni as Marcello and Laurel Hurley as Musetta.

GOUNOD: ROMEO ET JULIETTE, February 1, 1947 (two CDs). The star-crossed lovers in this version of Shakespeare's tale are the celebrated Swedish tenor Jussi Björling and the sweet-voiced Brazilian soprano Bidú Sayão, both in roles they never recorded commercially. Emil Cooper conducts, with the cast also including John Brownlee as Mercutio and Nicola Moscona as Frère Laurent.

PUCCINI: TOSCA, April 7, 1962 (two CDs). Live from the Met, Leontyne Price sings Puccini's tragic title heroine – in the prime of her career, opposite the thrilling tenor of Franco Corelli as Cavaradossi. Baritone Cornell MacNeil sings the evil Scarpia, one of his most famed portrayals. Kurt Adler conducts the Met Orchestra and Chorus.

There have been previous releases of this stuff -- mostly in pirate editions -- but a commercial release is a very big step. Whatever you might say about his administration, Peter Gelb (himself, of course, the former head of Sony Classical) has certainly done well to solve the apparently intractable rights issues involved in freeing the Met's amazing archive for general consumption.

The show-stopper

Tosca -- Metropolitan Opera, 1/10/2011
Radvanovsky, Alagna, Struckmann / Armiliato

If the whole of Sondra Radvanovsky's Met-first Tosca had been as exquisite as the thunderously received "Vissi d'arte", it would already be one of the outstanding accounts. But not quite yet: it's good, and she has more of the appropriate raw material than decades of predecessors (including, I think, Mattila), but the rest of the part isn't yet natural to her.

Part of it is Puccini, whose music -- after some early Musettas -- hasn't been Radvanovsky's material for a while. His ebb-and-flow melodic lines simply don't seem to complement the vibrato-driven texture of her voice the way Verdi's arcing, rhythmically-precise ones do. And in trying to produce a consistently strong, more classic spinto sound (vs. the dramatic coloratura she more familiarly is), Radvanovsky seems at times to pressure the voice rather than trust her natural carrying power. We shall see how she adapts to this repertoire over time.

But the aria -- as it was last spring -- is already glorious show of vocalism that has me, writing about it now, thinking of stopping by the house tonight for a repeat.

*     *     *
With fully-equipped Toscas rare in this age, the piece has been of late more about the men, as Bryn Terfel and Jonas Kaufmann showed in the spring. In that spirit came tenor Roberto Alagna -- in town for Carmen -- as an emergency substitute for the ill Marcelo Alvarez. Alagna had sounded a bit off himself in the Carmen five days previous, but though he still didn't have quite the free sound he in the season's first months, his Cavaradossi was a good one, and in better voice than his Jose. His relative unfamiliarity with the production -- he almost tipped over his painting scaffold in Act I, and a chess game with a guard had (I think) to be substituted for their scripted Act III opening interaction -- caused no harm, and in fact nicely highlighted the turns into spontaneous happy playfulness of the central couple.

Falk Struckmann doesn't have the powerful physical or vocal presence of his immediate predecessor Terfel, but returns to the psychologically gross manner of George Gagnidze in the production premiere. Struckmann's Scarpia actually may carry it further than Gagnidze's, drawing an unmistakable and pervertedly exquisite pleasure from lashing Tosca's psyche. Both he and Radvanovsky seemed to be feeling out their voices in the first act, but there were no complaints for the second (and, in her case, third).

As ever, Marco Armiliato shaped Puccini's lines straightforwardly but well.

The last seduction / Old school

Carmen -- Metropolitan Opera, 12/9/2010
Vizin, Hong, Jovanovich, Relyea / Gardner
Carmen -- Metropolitan Opera, 1/5/2011
Rachvelishvili, Hong, Alagna, Croft / Gardner

It's not entirely true that you can't fake sex appeal: Elina Garanca did a pretty good job of it last season in this production's debut. But there's no true substitute for the real thing, and Hungarian mezzo Viktoria Vizin offered more of it last month than, well, any Carmen here in at least a generation.

There are other sides, of course, and other Carmens have shown her well as a man-eating, tragic, musical, or temperamental character. But Vizin showed what these interesting and even hypnotic Carmens have had us overlooking -- the power of basic seductiveness. It helps that she looks terrific on stage, but that's just the beginning. Vizin's Carmen has a certain lightness to her shifting moods, making each of her advances more delectable caprice than heavyhanded play. With this comes a delight and engagement in the moment, so that -- despite the obligatory and mildly ridiculous Gelb-era interpolated humping -- her in-jail seduction of Brandon Jovanovich's Jose is, for the first time in long memory, actually hot. It's a seduction, not a browbeating -- and again in Act II. There, for example, as she sings of the joys of the open road and "la liberte", Vizin's Carmen isn't lecturing Jose, but really trying to get him to share her anticipated pleasure. Jose, then, isn't necessarily chasing some disaster: lust, this time, explains things well enough.

The particular Jose in December was Brandon Jovanovich, who despite an announced indisposition was again a more interesting spinto than one might have expected. The contrast with Alagna was also interesting: both show Jose's inner torment, but Jovanovich seems more a decent soldier dragged fatally off the straight and narrow, while Alagna (as ever, it seems) is aware of the doom within him from the beginning. Micaela, for the latter, is an impossible evasion, and there's a periodic resignation in his downward journey that's terrifying.

This month's performances returned (from last season's premiere cast) Alagna, and though he sounded less fresh than his recent standard, he again made the finale almost too believable. His Carmen, this time, was a hitherto unheard mezzo named Anita Rachvelishvili, who apparently got a mixed reception last season at La Scala. Rachvelishvili, debuting here because of Kate Aldrich's pregnancy, has from the first some resemblance to the previous-century stars one may spot in the Met's concourse-level picture gallery. But her dark prominent eyes and retro figure aren't the extent of the time warp: Rachvelishvili (do I really have to keep spelling this out?) sings with a rich sound and commanding, not-quite-tasteful individuality of colors and phrasing that, in itself, makes for as effective a Carmen as any of her predecessors'. And while she's not one for the up-to-date engagement of Garanca or the pure seductive appeal of Vizin, the Georgian mezzo moves gamely around, not at all at odds with the production's demands as Borodina was.

*     *     *
The star of both shows, though, may have been local favorite Hei-Kyung Hong. Last season's Traviata showed her as a still-intelligent but audibly aging soprano, but these Micaelas were rather more flattering. If Hong is aging, she is doing so gracefully -- at least in a part that doesn't foreground virtuosity -- and the audible limitations seem to frame ever the more interesting artist. Direct youthful appeal doesn't, it turns out, require an obviously youthful voice.

Both Escamillos sang and acted their parts well, with Dwayne Croft (substituting for an ill Paulo Szot) a much more expressively smitten toreador than usual. Meanwhile British conductor Edward Gardner took, intentionally or not, sort of the ideal approach in following Nezet-Seguin's electrifying debut. Where the French-Canadian was almost wild in scope and tempi, Gardner takes a measured and almost chamber view of Bizet's opera -- everything in its place -- until the deadly climax. With therefore no question of direct comparison, the thought of the previous conductor didn't impinge too much on enjoyment of these well-led evenings.

2010

The past year brought some impressive triumphs of star power from the Met stage (none greater than Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel in Tosca) and pit (the arrival of French-Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Carmen and Don Carlo is, I think, more momentous than Fabio Luisi's Principal Guest Conductor appointment), but the vocal highlight may have been an event on a different stage altogether. I didn't finish blogging it at the time, so let me elaborate now.

It was a National Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall on April 1, but no one was there to see DC's "other" orchestra, even conducted by Marco Armiliato. Instead, it was the pairing of two singers who have in recent years often appeared together: Sondra Radvanovsky and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who will return to the triumphant David McVicar Trovatore this spring.

The frequent pairing of soprano and baritone is no coincidence, for the two simply complement each other in both voice and temperament. Radvanovsky's instrument is disconcertingly like air: the sound rings towards you from everywhere, as spacious as the house itself, and whether whisper or roar there's little sense of personal strain. (The emotional channel is her vibrato, which again defies the expectations of some listeners.) Hvorostovsky's sound, meanwhile, comes in a single dark piece from his person, and when he drives it full blast it can seem to overpower its origin. But I'm back to appreciating this as just his way.

Hvorostovsky's mastery is, in any case, not of sonic force but personal, and the spell he cast on this occasion was perhaps the strongest I've witnessed from him. (So much so that I left wondering if he wasn't, in the right context, the greatest singer in the world -- though I also thought that later that month about Terfel.) Sharing the stage with the amazing American soprano seemed to inspire not direct competition in vocal climax and ease but the desire to excel as much in his mastery -- communicative intensity -- as his partner was in hers.

But as she pushed him also to charged pure vocalism of his own, Hvorostovsky brought out more dramatic and personal intensity than Radvanovsky is accustomed to show in his absence. It's not that she lacks these qualities, but they are not instinctual -- so engagement with a partner like Hvorostovsky (and a director like McVicar) makes her actually more interesting in herself.

Radvanovsky also, mind you, showed a grander and more luxuriant vocalism than even her usual, including barrages of well-integrated but gloriously long-held high notes that are sadly absent from the all-too-tasteful (and studioish) recordings these two have done of this material.

About the only downside was the orchestra, which acquitted itself quite well in tutti portions (and credit to Armiliato here) but was unable to provide the distinguished solo accompaniments one would have gotten at the Met in, e.g., the Ballo scene.
*     *     *
As well as the pair did in the concluding Onegin finale, it was Verdi that best showed their complementary talents, and Verdi that dominated the evening. We'll see the matchup again soon enough when the Trovatore production premiere cast reunites under Levine's baton this spring.

But Radvanovsky's encore gave a taste of next week's house role debut: singing Tosca's "Vissi d'arte", she showed the impressive-but-soft character (and, of course, Puccinian vocal ease) that should make for a near-ideal run in the part. I'd be surprised if this Tosca were the highlight of 2011, but it should certainly be better sold than it is.

The question

The question of the week (or month, or decade): does New York really want a neo-modernist, reductive, deliberately graceless and anti-humane Eurotrash production of La Traviata, one that replaces all of Verdi's moods and relationships with cartoonish brutality and compulsion?

The Met has done Willy Decker et al. a favor by improving on the original Salzburg cast, and -- as it did for Richard Eyre's Carmen last season (a differently-flavored and quite good show) -- protected the premiere by giving it the audience most inclined to react favorably or at least politely: Friday's New Year's Eve gala.

But the question remains. One would hope that the impulse that (wrongly, I think) rained boos upon a more appropriate and psychologically acute revision of Tosca would here put itself to good use in laughing or booing Decker's one-dimensional travesty off the stage, but perhaps some will be cowed by the show's famous European success.

We'll see soon enough.

Year six in posts

I admit, when I reread posts from more than a year ago I sometimes wonder that I had such interesting and clear thoughts. When I read more recent writings, I more often bore of my own current tics and tropes. But since, dear readers, you don't have to live inside my head, I offer some of the highlights here since last December:

Review -- Carmen
On Riccardo Muti and Verdi's Attila
On Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet
Review -- Rossini's Armida
On the April revival of Tosca
On Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre
OT: a week of Sleeping Beauty at ABT
Review -- Robert LePage's Opening Night Rheingold
On OONY's Mascagni/Massenet double-bill
On Verdi's Il Trovatore in revival
On Strauss' Intermezzo at City Opera
On debuting tenor Yonghoon Lee as Don Carlo

Guilty

Pelléas et Mélisande -- Metropolitan Opera, 12/17/2010
Kožená, Degout, Finley, White, Palmer / Rattle

I hate to turn away from the thorough musical triumph of Friday night (and last week's roster of guest conductors was stupendous, perhaps unprecedentedly so), but my pleasure in listening was offset by dissatisfaction with the eponymous couple's characterization.

What Stephane Degout (Pelleas) and Magdalena Kozena (Melisande) -- who both sang well -- lacked was innocence. Degout is a more red-blooded Pelleas than usual, and there's something hinky from the first about his presence around Melisande. Kozena, meanwhile, sounds beautiful but is visibly sulky and all-too-evidently engaged in a silent war with her spouse and/or the world. Together with a more-morally-forceful-than-usual Golaud (Gerald Finley, magnificent here), they tell the story that's the shortest distance between their three points: Pelleas and Melisande are getting it on (or something), Melisande is miserable with her marriage and lies ever-intentionally to Golaud, and Golaud does the obvious thing by finally running his rival half-brother through with a sword.

This reading is psychologically coherent and even sensible, and if it was stage director Paula Williams who encouraged it of the cast (Jonathan Miller, I assume, was out of the question for this revival of his original) she showed some insight. Nevertheless, it (perhaps from being too sensible) squashes the interest out of Maeterlinck and Debussy's story, which has rather different occupations than its verisimo contemporaries. For Golaud's scene at her window is not a Philip-II-finds-Carlo's-picture moment (though I still think Don Carlo[s] an interestingly similar opera to Pelleas): it's a rejection of the possibility of having that moment at all. The distance between people is too great, in this space, for the revelatory truth certain to be seized like that -- whether it's of betrayal or love. So it comes out in the fourth act that Pelleas has never, to that moment, spoken love to Melisande... It's not exactly coincidence that he's killed soon after.

Together with the suggestions of guilt is a repeated thread of innocence: Golaud dismisses the hair business as childish; Arkel goes on about Melisande's essential innocence; and after the killing Golaud himself again seems (at least partially) of that view. The current revival laughs it off (or inspires the audience to, at least in the middle acts), but the thread is prominent in the performance history. At the Met, for example, casting of Melisande from the first (Lucrezia Bori, who monopolized the part for a decade) has been largely the province of great delicate and charming singers -- e.g. Sayao, Blegen, von Stade, and, surprisingly ideally in 2000, the suggestive blankness of Dawn Upshaw. And so we've seen Melisandes who are not merely indeterminately guilty/innocent -- Schrödinger's soprano -- but actually, to the limit of their strength and life, beyond those categories altogether. This, too, is a psychological type, and not merely among sociopaths or the self-serving.

This alternate pre-lapsarian dimension, like the mystery of the ultimate truth -- both shortchanged this go-round -- is no accidental feature of Pelleas. The playwright and composer felt the call of the coming modernist Zeitgeist as strongly as any verist, but went the other way (even though their musical and dramatic techniques were themselves innovative): less "real", less straight-line, less psychological, with the subjective individuals -- no longer fit to be subjects themselves in the plain -- adapted for the new age with an enfolding, elaborated wrap of opaque mystery impenetrable even (and especially) to the classic modernist trope, sexual compulsion. To strip the characters of this rare symbolist wrap and show them as, well, sexually-compelled figures of modern psychology misses the point. (And now that modernism itself has become boring, it's stale.)

But again, the musical side is fantastic. I've never been Simon Rattle's biggest fan, but he, the singers, and the orchestra deserve a thorough listen.

Anniversary

While the notable birthday of the weekend was Fanciulla's 100th, this blog did complete its sixth year of posting on Sunday. I've actually been too tied up in operagoing to compile the usual "year of posts" -- which should follow soon -- but I did wish to thank my readers without further delay.

So my thanks to all of you who continue to read the impressions and meditations I have at the opera. I hope they remain as interesting reading for you as the process continues to be for me.

Because a friend asked for ten words...

Modernism is authority.  Postmodernism is anti-authority.  Each has its absurdities.

My California

La Fanciulla del West -- Metropolitan Opera, 12/6/2010
Voigt, Giordani, Gallo / Luisotti

It's a success that might have pleased Arturo Toscanini, conductor of the world premiere a century ago this Friday: not the greatest cast, not a showy production, but a conductor's triumph in summoning not only the sound but the spirit of a Puccini masterpiece -- here, the underappreciated Fanciulla del West (Girl of the Golden West). SFO Music Director Nicola Luisotti has made this undersold revival an event to equal or better the season's big-name extravaganzas.

That's not to knock the cast, who all come through to find the story's heart. The singing is all good enough, sometimes better, but that's almost beside the point. Forget that Deborah Voigt's post-fat voice still has its issues -- Minnie is a role she was born to play, the first big character that really seems to fit her own. She's so naturally fresh and bright even as she handles a barful of hard-drinking men, and there's nothing overwrought in her outburst at the newly-revealed Ramerrez: it's the wounded cry of love's first deep hurt. Marcello Giordani is in fine sonic form, but more impressive is the desperate sincerity his sturdy character shows in the solo moments. Even Lucio Gallo was decent vocally (less good on high notes), and managed to catch the not-quite-villainous menace of Rance. The miners were strongly cast, not least Dwayne Croft as Sonora and recent rat-king Keith Miller as Ashby, and forged a convincing communal space for the opera.

But everywhere and in everything was the incredible tapestry of sound Luisotti wove from this score. He got, as in his last appearance (a more famous Puccini -- Boheme), amazingly sensitive playing and texturing from the Met Orchestra, but this time outdid himself in a proportioned control of phrase, line, and ensemble that seemed to hold every performer infallibly in the flow of Puccini's magic. So supported, "good enough" from each was more than enough for the music to shine and the story to tell.

It is, of course, on the whole a tale about redemption -- the motif for which is the first tune to materialize in the prelude -- but for the principals there is first transgression. Sheriff Rance and Minnie between them hold the camp's destinies in hand: he protects the miners' worldly existence, while she ensures their civilized and moral aspect. But neither sticks to the part. Rance tries to use his mastery of what is (he commands law, guns, and money...) to buy what's not properly for sale or mastery -- Minnie's favor. And when Ramerrez/Johnson (whose initial intention to rob the camp sets off the crisis) arrives, Minnie not only minimizes and begins to abdicate her moral guardianship (talking down her place in life and falling in love with the outsider who will take her off), she outright cheats Rance to save Johnson's life -- and avoid having to marry Rance.

But while Minnie first brings redemption into the opera proper -- its music plays as she gives her early Bible lesson, that no one is beyond it -- Johnson's the one who precipitates the resolution as well. The redemption tune appears again as he changes his mind and vows to protect the miners' gold at Act I's end, and yet again as he agonizedly confesses himself to Minnie in Act II. The latter plea doesn't win her over immediately, but when he's subsequently shot Minnie begins to protect him from Rance despite knowing what Ramerrez/Johnson has done.

And she's perhaps right, if you look at the thing: having reformed, Johnson's no longer a worldly threat to the miners but a moral one -- the agent of their mine community's potential dissolution -- and therefore of Minnie's jurisdiction and not Rance's. But her first method can't be right... And at last, in Act III, Minnie (and Puccini -- Belasco does it differently, at least in his post-hoc story version) hits upon the masterstroke: appealing to their better natures, she offers the miners in lieu of herself -- no longer able to guide them in any case -- the opportunity to participate in a great and indelible moment of forgiveness and humanity. When Sonora takes it up, Johnson calls the men his brothers, and Minnie (with Puccini) makes a full invocation of redemption and love, it's as overpowering a finale as there is in opera, recalling the not-entirely-dissimilar end of Jenůfa. And, in fact, Jiri Belohlavek's 2007 work in that opera may have been the last guest effort to equal Luisotti's last night.

I feel sad for anyone who comes out of this remarkable revival with little but knocks on the score, vocalism, or whatever. My only knock is that the Met can't force Luisotti to stay in town and perfect the run of La Boheme.

The prince

Don Carlo -- Metropolitan Opera, 12/3/2010
Lee, Poplavskaya, Smirnova, Keenlyside, Furlanetto, Halfvarson / Nézet-Séguin

Alexei Tanovitsky (the friar/ghost) this time struggled through his Act II opener, but otherwise Friday's performance was rather similar to the production's opening night... Except, of course, for an entirely different leading tenor.

One difference between Yonghoon Lee and the other Carlo, Roberto Alagna (the two are alternating through the run), was apparent before the Korean newcomer, in his second night at the Met, opened his mouth: Lee is much taller (he's also, the ladies seemed to think, fairly handsome). But the sound is even more different. For while there are certainly other qualities (generally appealing) to it, the initial impression (also appealing) of Lee's voice is that it's nothing but squillo. There's a base of dark (but neither baritonal nor Jonas-Kaufmann-super-dark) tenor sound at the core, but it's the ringing emanation that hits the ear on pretty much every note. Those starved for a real spinto tenor in this great lyric tenor era should be thrilled -- and, judging by a curtain call that outdid even Furlanetto's, they are.

The squillo also, unfortunately, swallows most of Lee's diction, and the near-conversational musical eloquence that Alagna commands here in both large and small touches is also lost. In fact, though Lee certainly can sing softly and even has a trill, the less all-out parts of Carlo's role are hit-and-miss: conversational exchanges went for nothing, the bottom of the voice could disappear, and though he handled Act V's closing duet with Elisabetta with wonderful softly-sung concentration, Lee was unable to sustain the long lines of Act III's (mistaken) serenade of the veiled Eboli. But that's mostly just to say that Lee doesn't also have the virtues of a lyric tenor. He does, in full measure, have the essential trait of any worthy spinto: the ability to shape and hold the grand phrase, to feel where and how Verdi put his tenors' impassioned climaxes -- and to deliver them.

*     *     *
Lee's acting was equally distinct. His starts a vainer prince than Alagna's, one spoiled by the admiring unrealities of a court. Alagna's Carlo waits sincerely for Elisabetta's reaction on first revealing his portrait, but Lee's indulges a pleased flourish of "here I am!" before she looks. And so it seems that the disappointment of Fontainebleau (where the ladies' outfits look more and more ghastly each time out) was the first real thwarted inclination of this prince's life, and he accordingly takes it at first with petulance and hurt vanity -- not the existential angst with which the trauma hits Alagna's prince.

But we see it ripen and take root into something real. The scene with Keenlyside is again (as for Alagna) strong, but the dynamic is interestingly different: Alagna is eloquent but ever about to spiral inside himself, while Lee is just as nervous as his baritone -- making the contrast now one of a man who has mastered his neuroses (Rodrigo/Posa) vs. a man who is at last feeling their true sting (Lee's Carlos). By the time Lee reappears in the next scene to confront Poplavskaya (Elisabetta), he's a pretty convincing wreck, with his (characteristic, and therefore never-quite-gone) note of self-regard now supplemented by a bitter, desperate, and somehow still-noble self-pity.

By this point Lee's bodily movement has picked up as well... Though he's a tall man and doesn't try to duplicate the amount of activity of a small one, Lee isn't afraid to fly and stumble across or off the stage as his character's emotional state seems to demand. As with his singing, when he's not animated by full passion the body stuff doesn't always click and can be a bit stiff, but when Lee is so charged it all works.

*     *     *
Everything written last time about the production, conductor, and remaining cast still applies. As for the tenor options, both deliver excellent performances of different types: you can't go wrong unless you've a blind spot for one sort of singing or the other.

The bohemians

La Boheme -- Metropolitan Opera, 12/1/2010
Stoyanova, Calleja, Dehn, Capitanucci, Tiliakos, Groissböck, Plishka / Rizzi Brignoli

This second of four La Boheme casts this season is what the previous was not: a beautiful and convincing telling of Puccini's ensemble piece. Much credit to two supporting members of the ensemble -- debuting singers Dimitris Tiliakos (Schaunard) and Günther Groissböck (Colline) -- whose characters were clear, distinct, and lively from the moment each stepped on stage. That they don't necessarily better their predecessors vocally (I found Tiliakos appealingly mellifluous, but Groissböck's coat aria wasn't the highlight Shenyang's was), doesn't matter: they make the show work.

Against this more telling backdrop I saw Fabio Capitanucci -- who debuted with the previous cast -- more clearly. Here what was general dissatisfaction last time has revealed itself to be a specific complaint: Capitanucci's Marcello is all good-nature, without even a bit of the darkness that should make his fiery romance with Musetta go. His way is appealing enough, but it's not clear what the two see in each other. One might make a bit of the same complaint against Ellie Dehn's Musetta, but the 2005 Met Council Finalist used her looks, her quick manner, and her now nicely-polished soprano instrument to sell the familiar character well.

The leads are no surprise: Joseph Calleja has, as ever, his magnificent sound, diction, and sense of line, and fits in very well with the boys in their antics. His classicist sense of proportion (despite, unfortunately, taking the high note for Act I's finish) seems to apply to his role, as well, and he doesn't try to take over the entire ensemble show. Nevertheless he does some pretty good agonized acting in Act IV...

Puccini's show is properly Mimi's, and Krassimira Stoyanova does strongly -- even better, in snowy Act III: she gets Mimi in extremis wonderfully & movingly well. The outer acts weren't quite at that level, but very good. Stoyanova sings with real understanding and feeling throughout, but too often here it's overlaid with a set of more conventional emotive and fidgety gestures that tell a less interesting story.

Rizzi Brignoli now has the Met Orchestra and a surprising amount of the new cast on the same page as his conducting, but I still think his constant shifts of time and tempo are doing more harm than good. No, it doesn't get in the way of long concentration in the slow meditations of Acts III and IV, but the more extroverted exchanges need a firmer, more consistent base, and touches like holding off on Mimi's death chord for ages seem just needlessly cutesy.

*     *     *
Despite the successfully tear-jerking performance, what many will remember from Wednesday's show is the extra half-intermission. At first, the pause between Acts I and II dragged long... and then a woman came out to explain that there was some technical issue and they'd be continuing soon. Time dragged on again... and she came out again, with another call for patience. Time dragged on yet again... and she popped out again, the lights came up, and something about "having the intermission now" was announced.

Of course, the Act II/III and Act III/IV transitions are really too elaborate to do without further intermissions, so after less than 10 minutes (probably the amount of time it took to fix whatever needed fixing) the intermission-end-warning chimes (there are two at the Met, usually at 8 and 4 minutes before time) began to sound. As the Grand Tier restaurant had not, apparently, been warned of this, however, a bunch of people had just been brought their intermission meal/dessert. A torrent of chimes and usher requests did not (as you can imagine) manage to get these people into their seats before something like the full 25/30 minutes had passed. (So why did the house bother to try cutting the intermission short? No idea.)

In any case, Act II went on, none of the singers were too thrown from having to warm up some extra times, and the night -- after two subsequent scheduled intermissions -- simply ended rather later than it was supposed to.


UPDATE (2:45PM): I forgot to mention the audience, which is even more full of tourists and opera newbies than the usual Boheme. I must admit I take nearly as much pleasure in the harumphing of the (insufficiently) scandalized Eurosophisticates at Zeffirelli's literalistic masterpiece as I get displeasure from the shocking amount of flash photography at the start of the first two acts.