So did you ever wonder what Sondra Radvanovsky would sound like if she'd been born a full-on dramatic soprano (big Wagner, etc.) instead of the classic dramatic coloratura (Verdi from his beginning plus, you know, Norma) she in fact is?
Well, it turns out that the answer is basically "just like Amber Wagner". Or, rather, the felicitously-named Wagner sounds basically just like what you'd get if you put the soprano she covered (and, for last night's final performance, replaced) in Ballo into (baby) full-dramatic shape. There's slightly more chest-grounded fullness (something Radvanovsky, like most well-trained American non-dramatics, didn't use much at all while young) from the bottom, a slightly less-easy extension at the very top, and the top otherwise hits with a slightly more direct physical impact than Radvanovsky's astonishing and somewhat unsettling ringing of the whole house. (And, oh yes, she's built a bit more stoutly -- though not at all so that it's an issue, especially for a real dramatic.) But the basic, rippling quick-vibrato timbre is recognizably akin, as is Wagner's way with the text: in the rapid, dialogue-heavy parts of ensembles you could close your eyes and imagine Radvanovsky still there. And even the basic ballpark vocal size & volume!... though seeing Radvanovsky as Amelia again recently reminded me of just how easy it is to under-remember the thrilling scope and texture of her instrument.
But make no mistake: Wagner is her own singer with a prodigious gift of her own, and a pretty glorious performer already in her own right. On stage right now she's basically just a singer -- the action isn't unnatural but it's not at all what you notice -- but that is, if not yet as good as her predecessor on the whole, quite enough. She has, so far, turned out exactly as I hoped from her 2007 Met Council finals win -- where she lapped the field, including Angela Meade, on sound quality. She still does. See her in everything you can.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
The Luisi marathon
It occurred to me at the start of last night's Troyens that after the Saturday matinee moviecast of Aida, Fabio Luisi will have conducted four consecutive performances at the Met -- of three different operas, in the space of under four days.
This is, as I'll soon discuss, not good.
This is, as I'll soon discuss, not good.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
A significant passing
Lisa della Casa, the greatest of Strauss sopranos, died yesterday at the age of 93.
The appreciation I wrote for her 90th birthday has my thoughts, though the documentary video linked therein has now (sadly) been pulled from YouTube.
For those of you reading on a non-Firefox HTML5 browser, a bit of Der Rosenkavalier:
And, less well-known but in line with tonight's show at the Met, Donna Anna's arias from Don Giovanni (in German):
The appreciation I wrote for her 90th birthday has my thoughts, though the documentary video linked therein has now (sadly) been pulled from YouTube.
For those of you reading on a non-Firefox HTML5 browser, a bit of Der Rosenkavalier:
And, less well-known but in line with tonight's show at the Met, Donna Anna's arias from Don Giovanni (in German):
Monday, December 10, 2012
The week in NY opera (December 10-16)
Not much going on at other venues (if you're a Susanna Phillips or Elizabeth Futral fan, they're singing Phillip Lasser songs at the 92nd St Y Tribeca tonight), but it's an eventful week at the Met.
Metropolitan Opera
Clemenza (M), Don Giovanni (T/SE), Aida (W*/SM), Troyens (Th), Ballo (F)
Last call for Clemenza and Ballo this season, with the latter offering the house lead-role debut of big-voiced 2007 Met Council winner Amber Wagner. Meanwhile the moviecast streak continues with an Aida that surely anyone who's been to NYC in the past decades has seen... though perhaps not with Roberto Alagna, who's now in as Radames.
The biggest event, however, is the first revival of Francesca Zambello's great production of the Berlioz epic Les Troyens. A return with Susan Graham as Didon has been rumored on and off since the show's unforgettable 2003 premiere with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the part, and though the star power in the rest of the cast has been reduced (the original had Polenzani as Iopas!), it's great to see it -- and Graham -- finally back.
* Wednesday's (starred) Aida is the one just before this Saturday's matinee moviecast, which means that the camera equipment and lights will be out in force. Do not sit in side orchestra, front orchestra, or side parterre -- the house is not interested in optimizing patron experience on these nights, but in making the eventual broadcast go well.
Metropolitan Opera
Clemenza (M), Don Giovanni (T/SE), Aida (W*/SM), Troyens (Th), Ballo (F)
Last call for Clemenza and Ballo this season, with the latter offering the house lead-role debut of big-voiced 2007 Met Council winner Amber Wagner. Meanwhile the moviecast streak continues with an Aida that surely anyone who's been to NYC in the past decades has seen... though perhaps not with Roberto Alagna, who's now in as Radames.
The biggest event, however, is the first revival of Francesca Zambello's great production of the Berlioz epic Les Troyens. A return with Susan Graham as Didon has been rumored on and off since the show's unforgettable 2003 premiere with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the part, and though the star power in the rest of the cast has been reduced (the original had Polenzani as Iopas!), it's great to see it -- and Graham -- finally back.
* Wednesday's (starred) Aida is the one just before this Saturday's matinee moviecast, which means that the camera equipment and lights will be out in force. Do not sit in side orchestra, front orchestra, or side parterre -- the house is not interested in optimizing patron experience on these nights, but in making the eventual broadcast go well.
Monday, December 03, 2012
The week in NY opera (December 3-9)
Metropolitan Opera
Aida (M/F), Ballo (T*/SM), Don Giovanni (W/SE), Clemenza (Th)
It's Hui He's turn as Aida, a role she debuted in 2010. Borodina is in imperfect vocal state and Marco Berti has already been replaced by Carl Tanner, but... it's Aida. Ballo and Clemenza are pretty good, but Don Giovanni (see post immediately below) is the best show of the Met season.
* Tuesday's (starred) Ballo is the one just before this Saturday's matinee moviecast, which means that the camera equipment and lights will be out in force. Do not sit in side orchestra, front orchestra, or side parterre -- the house is not interested in optimizing patron experience on these nights, but in making the eventual broadcast go well.
Carnegie Hall
Collegiate Chorale Beatrice di Tenda (W 6pm)
This show (note early start time!) is largely a 2007 Met Council Finals reunion, with the most unjust loser (Nicholas Pallesen) and the most unjust winner (Jamie Barton) joining the singer most benefited by the win, no-longer-quite-immature dramatic coloratura Angela Meade. Throw in fearless American tenor Michael Spyres (remember Huguenots?) and you have the main cast.
Alice Tully Hall
Andreas Scholl recital (SE)
Scholl's voice was no match for the Met auditorium last year, but this much smaller venue may let him better show his musicality.
Morgan Library
George London Foundation recital (Sunday 4:30pm)
Mezzo Vivica Genaux and bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch offer a bunch of solo selections and one duet.
OT - BAM
The Nutcracker (F/SM/SE/SuM/SuE)
The last-act staging gets bogged down and ABT's top men aren't in this run, but seeing official off-topic diva Veronika Part do childlike joy (12/8 and 12/16) is worth it all.
Aida (M/F), Ballo (T*/SM), Don Giovanni (W/SE), Clemenza (Th)
It's Hui He's turn as Aida, a role she debuted in 2010. Borodina is in imperfect vocal state and Marco Berti has already been replaced by Carl Tanner, but... it's Aida. Ballo and Clemenza are pretty good, but Don Giovanni (see post immediately below) is the best show of the Met season.
* Tuesday's (starred) Ballo is the one just before this Saturday's matinee moviecast, which means that the camera equipment and lights will be out in force. Do not sit in side orchestra, front orchestra, or side parterre -- the house is not interested in optimizing patron experience on these nights, but in making the eventual broadcast go well.
Carnegie Hall
Collegiate Chorale Beatrice di Tenda (W 6pm)
This show (note early start time!) is largely a 2007 Met Council Finals reunion, with the most unjust loser (Nicholas Pallesen) and the most unjust winner (Jamie Barton) joining the singer most benefited by the win, no-longer-quite-immature dramatic coloratura Angela Meade. Throw in fearless American tenor Michael Spyres (remember Huguenots?) and you have the main cast.
Alice Tully Hall
Andreas Scholl recital (SE)
Scholl's voice was no match for the Met auditorium last year, but this much smaller venue may let him better show his musicality.
Morgan Library
George London Foundation recital (Sunday 4:30pm)
Mezzo Vivica Genaux and bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch offer a bunch of solo selections and one duet.
OT - BAM
The Nutcracker (F/SM/SE/SuM/SuE)
The last-act staging gets bogged down and ABT's top men aren't in this run, but seeing official off-topic diva Veronika Part do childlike joy (12/8 and 12/16) is worth it all.
High definition
Don Giovanni - Metropolitan Opera, 11/28/2012
Abdrazakov, Schrott, Phillips, Bell, Siurina, Castronovo, Soar (d) / Gardner
This is neither the most urgent, nor the grandest, nor the most starry Don Giovanni the Met has put together over the years, but it might still be the very best. What it is -- to be clear -- is the best, most precisely, and most satisfyingly delineated incarnation I can remember, successful in every way that last month's Figaro failed and more, and an unreservedly recommendable triumph.
It starts, as ever, in the pit. As in his Carmens here two years ago, ENO music director Edward Gardner provides precise, measured, almost chamber-textured conducting. If he does not provide the wild daemonic electricity that, say, Nezet-Seguin might have offered, he also does not step on and bludgeon his singers as David Robertson did. Instead Gardner gives them a framework, a well-delineated space for their own work -- and they take it.
That they do and did is to the great credit of each -- all the applause at curtain was well-deserved -- but the essential catalyst seems to have been one who did not get a bow: revival stage director Louisa Muller, whose first title-page-credited Met work this seems to be (she has assisted on other shows here in the past, including the original version of this production). Muller, against the coarsening tide of the time, has worked with the cast to bring forth a feast of humanizing detail, in tune with and making visible not only the individual characters of performer and role, but Mozart's music itself. From the very first Anna-Giovanni confrontation on the balcony, scenes that tradition has allowed to become homogenously just their "gist" have been more precisely opened up to show multiple and various relations and moods (simultaneously at times, successively at others) -- as emotions flash or slowly work their way across each player's body and musical line. (In the most extended and striking example, simple positioning shifts allow Phillips and Castronovo to play her solo "Non mi dir" as a wonderfully revealing and believable couples' fight/reconciliation.) Some of this may have been trying to appear in the original premiere, but, perhaps due to revolving casts, not much did. The work of original director Michael Grandage and designed Christopher Oram in providing the most detailed frame of the Gelb era remains as helpful as I thought it would be. (The one physical flaw -- the dead Commendatore's silver braiding that looks too much like a skeleton shirt -- has been nicely patched by the ghost's keeping his arms within his cloak until the fatal handshake.)
Some players, of course, need no particular frame of conductor and show. Ekaterina Siurina is always clearly who she is: a wonderfully uncomplicated -ina/-etta. Her Susanna was a significant part of the last great Mozart/Da Ponte revival (that fall 2007 Figaro), and, character-wise, Siurina's happily familiar (she does not, as Mojca Erdmann did, break ground -- but it doesn't matter) way with this -ina is, as one would predict, firm ground for the volatility around her. And yet, whether from long unjust absence or growth over time, it had not occurred to me that her sound would be so big, so clear, so quite as delicious as her nice-soubrette phrasing. There are limits: sometimes one wants complications. (Yes, it turns out that "Siurina" may be Russian for "Ruth Ann Swenson".) But the opera world in which Siurina isn't the obvious first-choice Russian Adina is a crazy one.
Opposite her, as Masetto, debuts British singer David Soar, who has a tenor's name but a lyric bass instrument, which he -- well in the spirit of this revival -- isn't afraid to use to whiny-toned effect. Is he basically a character singer? Though he's quite good at it, he showed flashes of a voice for more.
If this run does lose proportion and disintegrate, I fear it will be from Erwin Schrott loosening up too much and breaking the ensemble dynamic. But that didn't happen this first night, and unless&until it does his Leporello will be one of the show's amazing highlights. What served him so poorly in the title part -- the pile-on of tics that could not add up to a significant (anti)hero despite his lead-quality instrument -- is, within this role and context, the basis for his greatest night at the Met. Schrott does not, I should already note, merely tic: in accord with the rest of the show, everything has its place, including non-action and non-reaction. In fact it's the slackness of his default deadpan that is most and almost endlessly amusing, providing priceless contrast for an ever-imminent facility in plastique great and small, mild and jarring. If his voice -- which sounds great here -- goes the way of Netrebko's last beau's, Schrott may yet have a future in cinematic comedy.
His master is nearly as drastically transformed from his last Mozart appearance: where, in the just-closed Figaro, Ildar Abdrazakov looked pressed and harried all night, he seems now perfectly in his element, filling stage and ear with confident seduction and star shamelessness. Was it the conducting? An aversion to low comedy work analogous to Schrott's affinity for the same? A chemistry as harmful there as is obviously successful here? Hard to say, as an observer, but Abdrazakov is back to his impressive form.
Most bizarrely precise on stage is Emma Bell's Donna Elvira, who presents unmistakably as English. This isn't exactly in accord with the text, but does nicely pin down the never-quite-wholly desperate quality of Elvira's desperation. Bell lacks the moral-emotional force of predecessors Susan Graham and Dorothea Röschmann, but that didn't actually turn out to be essential here. Her actual singing and negotiation of Elvira's hurdles was above average and improved as the night went on.
Finally, the noble couple of Suanna Phillips' Donna Anna and Charles Castronovo's Don Ottavio benefitted much (perhaps most) from being presented precisely and seriously. Her trauma-victim Anna (the gut-punched reaction to both her father's death and her recognition of the killer is excellently done) is the more wounded of the ladies, and the more forceful. Phillips sings the part with a lovely even sound rarely managed by an Anna, and though it may actually be a bit lovelier than one would prototypically want, the physical cues here let her coherently present a hurt rather than vengeance-besotted woman.
Meanwhile Ottavio here is, for Castronovo's lovely laments (his wonderfully plaintive First Prisoner in Beethoven's Fidelio seems to have been the first and only time I've previously seen him at the Met) more personally closed than usual -- he is very much a man of his context, one in which the justice of humans is powerless and the supernatural must intervene -- until that really touching back-and-forth of this revival's "Non mi dir" (not changed musically -- it's in fact a complement). Appealing sound too, strongest in a warm midrange.
* * *
The Met usually succeeds with Don Giovanni by rolling out the star power -- and, in fact, it did so as recently as the spring (with Andrew Davis, Finley, Terfel, Polenzani, etc.). It rarely is able to transmute the parts into the ensemble magic that has come out so regularly in its Figaros. But -- not least due to the best revival direction I can recall, and some of the best "Personenregie" by anyone in the Gelb era -- this run is a terrific exception, and yet another reason to regret the preservation of last season's absurd moviecast cast. Don't miss it.
Abdrazakov, Schrott, Phillips, Bell, Siurina, Castronovo, Soar (d) / Gardner
This is neither the most urgent, nor the grandest, nor the most starry Don Giovanni the Met has put together over the years, but it might still be the very best. What it is -- to be clear -- is the best, most precisely, and most satisfyingly delineated incarnation I can remember, successful in every way that last month's Figaro failed and more, and an unreservedly recommendable triumph.
It starts, as ever, in the pit. As in his Carmens here two years ago, ENO music director Edward Gardner provides precise, measured, almost chamber-textured conducting. If he does not provide the wild daemonic electricity that, say, Nezet-Seguin might have offered, he also does not step on and bludgeon his singers as David Robertson did. Instead Gardner gives them a framework, a well-delineated space for their own work -- and they take it.
That they do and did is to the great credit of each -- all the applause at curtain was well-deserved -- but the essential catalyst seems to have been one who did not get a bow: revival stage director Louisa Muller, whose first title-page-credited Met work this seems to be (she has assisted on other shows here in the past, including the original version of this production). Muller, against the coarsening tide of the time, has worked with the cast to bring forth a feast of humanizing detail, in tune with and making visible not only the individual characters of performer and role, but Mozart's music itself. From the very first Anna-Giovanni confrontation on the balcony, scenes that tradition has allowed to become homogenously just their "gist" have been more precisely opened up to show multiple and various relations and moods (simultaneously at times, successively at others) -- as emotions flash or slowly work their way across each player's body and musical line. (In the most extended and striking example, simple positioning shifts allow Phillips and Castronovo to play her solo "Non mi dir" as a wonderfully revealing and believable couples' fight/reconciliation.) Some of this may have been trying to appear in the original premiere, but, perhaps due to revolving casts, not much did. The work of original director Michael Grandage and designed Christopher Oram in providing the most detailed frame of the Gelb era remains as helpful as I thought it would be. (The one physical flaw -- the dead Commendatore's silver braiding that looks too much like a skeleton shirt -- has been nicely patched by the ghost's keeping his arms within his cloak until the fatal handshake.)
Some players, of course, need no particular frame of conductor and show. Ekaterina Siurina is always clearly who she is: a wonderfully uncomplicated -ina/-etta. Her Susanna was a significant part of the last great Mozart/Da Ponte revival (that fall 2007 Figaro), and, character-wise, Siurina's happily familiar (she does not, as Mojca Erdmann did, break ground -- but it doesn't matter) way with this -ina is, as one would predict, firm ground for the volatility around her. And yet, whether from long unjust absence or growth over time, it had not occurred to me that her sound would be so big, so clear, so quite as delicious as her nice-soubrette phrasing. There are limits: sometimes one wants complications. (Yes, it turns out that "Siurina" may be Russian for "Ruth Ann Swenson".) But the opera world in which Siurina isn't the obvious first-choice Russian Adina is a crazy one.
Opposite her, as Masetto, debuts British singer David Soar, who has a tenor's name but a lyric bass instrument, which he -- well in the spirit of this revival -- isn't afraid to use to whiny-toned effect. Is he basically a character singer? Though he's quite good at it, he showed flashes of a voice for more.
If this run does lose proportion and disintegrate, I fear it will be from Erwin Schrott loosening up too much and breaking the ensemble dynamic. But that didn't happen this first night, and unless&until it does his Leporello will be one of the show's amazing highlights. What served him so poorly in the title part -- the pile-on of tics that could not add up to a significant (anti)hero despite his lead-quality instrument -- is, within this role and context, the basis for his greatest night at the Met. Schrott does not, I should already note, merely tic: in accord with the rest of the show, everything has its place, including non-action and non-reaction. In fact it's the slackness of his default deadpan that is most and almost endlessly amusing, providing priceless contrast for an ever-imminent facility in plastique great and small, mild and jarring. If his voice -- which sounds great here -- goes the way of Netrebko's last beau's, Schrott may yet have a future in cinematic comedy.
His master is nearly as drastically transformed from his last Mozart appearance: where, in the just-closed Figaro, Ildar Abdrazakov looked pressed and harried all night, he seems now perfectly in his element, filling stage and ear with confident seduction and star shamelessness. Was it the conducting? An aversion to low comedy work analogous to Schrott's affinity for the same? A chemistry as harmful there as is obviously successful here? Hard to say, as an observer, but Abdrazakov is back to his impressive form.
Most bizarrely precise on stage is Emma Bell's Donna Elvira, who presents unmistakably as English. This isn't exactly in accord with the text, but does nicely pin down the never-quite-wholly desperate quality of Elvira's desperation. Bell lacks the moral-emotional force of predecessors Susan Graham and Dorothea Röschmann, but that didn't actually turn out to be essential here. Her actual singing and negotiation of Elvira's hurdles was above average and improved as the night went on.
Finally, the noble couple of Suanna Phillips' Donna Anna and Charles Castronovo's Don Ottavio benefitted much (perhaps most) from being presented precisely and seriously. Her trauma-victim Anna (the gut-punched reaction to both her father's death and her recognition of the killer is excellently done) is the more wounded of the ladies, and the more forceful. Phillips sings the part with a lovely even sound rarely managed by an Anna, and though it may actually be a bit lovelier than one would prototypically want, the physical cues here let her coherently present a hurt rather than vengeance-besotted woman.
Meanwhile Ottavio here is, for Castronovo's lovely laments (his wonderfully plaintive First Prisoner in Beethoven's Fidelio seems to have been the first and only time I've previously seen him at the Met) more personally closed than usual -- he is very much a man of his context, one in which the justice of humans is powerless and the supernatural must intervene -- until that really touching back-and-forth of this revival's "Non mi dir" (not changed musically -- it's in fact a complement). Appealing sound too, strongest in a warm midrange.
The Met usually succeeds with Don Giovanni by rolling out the star power -- and, in fact, it did so as recently as the spring (with Andrew Davis, Finley, Terfel, Polenzani, etc.). It rarely is able to transmute the parts into the ensemble magic that has come out so regularly in its Figaros. But -- not least due to the best revival direction I can recall, and some of the best "Personenregie" by anyone in the Gelb era -- this run is a terrific exception, and yet another reason to regret the preservation of last season's absurd moviecast cast. Don't miss it.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
The artist is not present
La Clemenza di Tito - Metropolitan Opera, 11/16/2012
Filianoti, Garanča, Frittoli, Crowe (d), Lindsey, Gradus / Bicket
It's hard to dislike mezzo Elina Garanca, but it's hard to like her past a certain point either. The daughter of a prominent Latvian voice teacher, Garanca is every bit the coach's son: heady, impeccably schooled, and willing to work and try at most anything. Put at her disposal the full-scaled, even, adaptable voice she in fact possesses and stardom is a matter of course. And yet -- and yet the moment is not hers. For whatever reason, that last crucial indicium of a star fails to appear, and even the triumph of Garanca's musically impeccable "Deh, per questo istante sole" is one for the broadcast mikes only. In the house one listens in vain for the central, personal point of agony behind Sesto's outcries of stubbornly uninformative sincerity, the opera-house magic that made Susan Graham's incarnation a human revelation and event.
An unfair standard, perhaps, but the rest of the current cast presented their own characters in much sharper focus. I've knocked Barbara Frittoli in the past -- including in last season's Don Giovanni -- for iffy vocal state and occasional lack of focus, but she is remarkably in her element in the tricky part of Vitellia. Not only does she hurdle the technical obstacles while sounding again as good as in the first of her 2011 Amelias, but Frittoli embodies the monstrously self-involved villainess with an ease and elan that make not only Garanca but her predecessor Vitellias seem a bit monochrome. Meanwhile, for much of the first act and in her solo bits of the second, Lindemann grad Kate Lindsey was seriously threatening to steal the show as Annio, something I hadn't even imagined possible in Clemenza. In vocal size and physical impact the American mezzo can't compete with her Latvian colleague, but in an actual show I think I'd prefer to see Lindsey every time: she is not only the finest of the Met's pants-role players, but seizes the moment and presence of her time in the dangerous spotlight with abandon. And Giuseppe Filianoti -- well, he did start in a rather rough vocal state, but he too embraced rather than shied away from the title character's singleminded display of moral hygiene and wound up giving about as good a Mozart performance as one could ask from a veristically inclined lyric tenor.
Debuting soprano Lucy Crowe, as Servilia, didn't get the space to make this sort of impact, but she -- unlike, it seems, her more hyped countrywoman Kate Royal -- can actually sing well and beautifully. Nice traditional clear sound, more presence on the bottom than one might expect given her repertoire, and comfort with the emotional demands of the sincere soubrette part -- a good addition. Harry Bicket's airless pit work was the only drag on the 2008 revival's triumph, but he's significantly more relaxed and sympathetic this time around, actually one of the show's real strengths and allowing the Met winds to work their characteristic magic. And Ponelle's production! Like all pre-Gelb shows still extant, it shines brighter than ever surrounded by detail-stripped look-alikes.
It's a good show, but the early Gelb-era decision to fast-track Garanca while marginalizing Graham and ignoring Joyce DiDonato seems sillier than ever -- and moviecasting this incarnation instead of 2008's is a loss for those limited to such media. (But at least Graham is at last getting her Troyens revival this season, and DiDonato headlines the next big Donizetti.) Of course, from her early years one would hardly have pegged Karita Mattila as the great stage performer of our time... but from Garanca's history so far, I think it more likely that the mezzo learns to fake embodying the stage charge than that she actually does it.
Monday, November 26, 2012
The week in NY opera (Nov. 26-Dec. 2)
A very slow post-holiday week.
Metropolitan Opera
Aida (M/Th), Ballo (T/F), Don Giovanni (W/SE), Clemenza (SM)
Continuations except for Don Giovanni, which brings American soprano Susanna Phillips along with the return of Russian bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov, this time with (presumably) a more sympathetic Mozart conductor than David Robertson. Erwin Schrott is this time in the more character-appropriate part of Leporello.
Metropolitan Opera
Aida (M/Th), Ballo (T/F), Don Giovanni (W/SE), Clemenza (SM)
Continuations except for Don Giovanni, which brings American soprano Susanna Phillips along with the return of Russian bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov, this time with (presumably) a more sympathetic Mozart conductor than David Robertson. Erwin Schrott is this time in the more character-appropriate part of Leporello.
Monday, November 19, 2012
The week in NY opera (November 19-25)
Babar or Wozzeck? Your choice tonight to kick off this Thanksgiving week.
Metropolitan Opera
Ballo (M/SE), Clemenza (T/SM), Aida (F)
Clemenza is good, but not the revelatory experience it was in its previous incarnation. Radvanovsky's Act 3 aria still brings down the house in Ballo. Aida appears for the first time this season, with debuting Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska in the title part.
Avery Fisher Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra Wozzeck (M)
Concert performance with Esa-Pekka Salonen on the podium, Angela Denoke as Marie, and Simon Keenlyside as Wozzeck. What are you waiting for?
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
Juilliard Opera Cosi fan tutte
Last of three shows that began last week.
OT
Simone Dinnerstein recital (M)
The local pianist plays Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and (with some colleagues) Poulenc's "The Story of Babar the Elephant".
Metropolitan Opera
Ballo (M/SE), Clemenza (T/SM), Aida (F)
Clemenza is good, but not the revelatory experience it was in its previous incarnation. Radvanovsky's Act 3 aria still brings down the house in Ballo. Aida appears for the first time this season, with debuting Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska in the title part.
Avery Fisher Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra Wozzeck (M)
Concert performance with Esa-Pekka Salonen on the podium, Angela Denoke as Marie, and Simon Keenlyside as Wozzeck. What are you waiting for?
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
Juilliard Opera Cosi fan tutte
Last of three shows that began last week.
OT
Simone Dinnerstein recital (M)
The local pianist plays Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and (with some colleagues) Poulenc's "The Story of Babar the Elephant".
Monday, November 12, 2012
The week in NY opera (November 12-18)
Lots of things on this week as the concert schedule returns to normal.
Metropolitan Opera
Ballo (M/Th), Figaro (T/SE), Tempest (W/SM), Clemenza (F)
It's the final week for The Tempest and Figaro -- don't miss the former, if you haven't yet seen it. Hearing Radvanovsky and Hvorostovsky in Ballo is probably worth the non-production... probably. Meanwhile the Ponnelle production of Clemenza -- last seen with an amazing Susan Graham star performance four years ago -- returns with Elina Garanca as Sesto. Harry Bicket's conducting was the least impressive part of that run, but perhaps his sense of the piece has deepened since.
Carnegie Hall
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique Missa Solemnis (S)
Joyce DiDonato Drama Queens (Sunday 2pm)
The glibness of John Eliot Gardiner's overpraised recording decades back has me doubtful, but performances of this Beethoven landmark aren't common enough. The event of the week is probably Joyce DiDonato's Carnegie program the following afternoon. Her last NY baroque concert was in the smaller Zankel space, and a mesmerizing display of art at which her (excellent) studio album only hints. This time she's got a new album and the bigger Stern Auditorium in which to work her magic. There are, amazingly, still lots of tickets to be had.
Alice Tully Hall
Bernarda Fink recital (W)
The mezzo sings Schumann, Mahler, and Dvorak.
OT: Avery Fisher Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra Mahler 9 (Sunday 5pm)
If you have the endurance, you can probably walk from Carnegie to Lincoln Center in time to see both DiDonato's concert and Salonen conducting Mahler 9. I'm not sure how many concertgoers are excited by both prospects, though...
UPDATE --
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
Cosi fan tutte (W/SM)
Just on cue, as I put up this post I got an email reminder of this Juilliard/Lindemann co-production's opening. Like the 2011 Bartered Bride, this show features direction by Stephen Wadsworth and a star conductor. Back then it was Levine; this week it's NY Phil chief Alan Gilbert. He and the young cast are certainly promising, but Wadsworth has to date consistently failed to engage with the feminine and heterosexual-romance aspects of operas he's directed... and Cosi, though cynical and partly parodistic, mines almost no other ground.
Metropolitan Opera
Ballo (M/Th), Figaro (T/SE), Tempest (W/SM), Clemenza (F)
It's the final week for The Tempest and Figaro -- don't miss the former, if you haven't yet seen it. Hearing Radvanovsky and Hvorostovsky in Ballo is probably worth the non-production... probably. Meanwhile the Ponnelle production of Clemenza -- last seen with an amazing Susan Graham star performance four years ago -- returns with Elina Garanca as Sesto. Harry Bicket's conducting was the least impressive part of that run, but perhaps his sense of the piece has deepened since.
Carnegie Hall
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique Missa Solemnis (S)
Joyce DiDonato Drama Queens (Sunday 2pm)
The glibness of John Eliot Gardiner's overpraised recording decades back has me doubtful, but performances of this Beethoven landmark aren't common enough. The event of the week is probably Joyce DiDonato's Carnegie program the following afternoon. Her last NY baroque concert was in the smaller Zankel space, and a mesmerizing display of art at which her (excellent) studio album only hints. This time she's got a new album and the bigger Stern Auditorium in which to work her magic. There are, amazingly, still lots of tickets to be had.
Alice Tully Hall
Bernarda Fink recital (W)
The mezzo sings Schumann, Mahler, and Dvorak.
OT: Avery Fisher Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra Mahler 9 (Sunday 5pm)
If you have the endurance, you can probably walk from Carnegie to Lincoln Center in time to see both DiDonato's concert and Salonen conducting Mahler 9. I'm not sure how many concertgoers are excited by both prospects, though...
UPDATE --
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
Cosi fan tutte (W/SM)
Just on cue, as I put up this post I got an email reminder of this Juilliard/Lindemann co-production's opening. Like the 2011 Bartered Bride, this show features direction by Stephen Wadsworth and a star conductor. Back then it was Levine; this week it's NY Phil chief Alan Gilbert. He and the young cast are certainly promising, but Wadsworth has to date consistently failed to engage with the feminine and heterosexual-romance aspects of operas he's directed... and Cosi, though cynical and partly parodistic, mines almost no other ground.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
The dog ate my production
Un Ballo in Maschera - Metropolitan Opera, 11/8/2012
Radvanovsky, Alvarez, Hvorostovsky, Kim, Zajick / Luisi
So this production would, I think, be best explainable in two ways:
(1) The Met is running low on money and drastically cut the budget so that David Alden could only afford this shabby display.
(2) Alden had director's block, couldn't think of any staging ideas for months and months, and finally just decided to throw half-remembered bits of other recent Met productions together and call it a show.
If, as is sadly likely, neither of the above apply and this was seriously the considered work of Alden and his team, all the boos they got were well-deserved. And these weren't angry or offended boos at some conceit or idea. They were "are you kidding me!?" boos of disbelief that something so lame and half-baked could be presented as a finished, full-price product.
* * *
The worst part is, of course, that the cast showcased by this premiere is so good. Two of the three main principals -- Sondra Radvanovsky and Dmitri Hvorostovsky -- are the cream of today's crop, and they are both in very fine voice. Radvanovsky's instrument has filled and evened out from top to bottom with a true Verdian soprano sound, and as always she rings the whole house at any level of her vast dynamic range. Hvorostovsky was not quite convincing as Renato/Anckarström four-plus years ago, but he's really grown into the role: where in the 2010 concert he made the Ballo bits work with personal force, he now can use both personal and sonic; there's no lack of color or dynamic range even in declamation.
Marcelo Alvarez isn't quite the Gustavo/Riccardo of one's dreams -- is Calleja's May run in Frankfurt really his first!? -- but he's very good in this: precise in rhythm and ensembles, good at using word and dynamic accents, and with a pleasing and surprisingly firm lyric sound. Kathleen Kim is both audible and sprightly, something her predecessors haven't simultaneously managed in forever. Ulrica's initial aria sits poorly in Zajick's current voice but there's a lot of good stuff after that. And American bass-baritones Keith Miller and David Crawford as the conspirators bring some much-needed kick to the bottom end of the ensembles.
What's missing? That incandescence where spirit takes over from sound and detail-management. Perhaps it's Luisi (who has everything but that spark of genius), perhaps it's the weight of the lifeless new production, perhaps it's the start-of-run feeling out period after Sandy has hindered preparation. We'll see in the next month as the run continues.
* * *
The production did provide a bit of viewing fun: figuring out which bits were lifted from what. The basic stage configuration (the first two acts are on the exact same set) of bare tilted almost-converging floor/ceiling seems to be from Minghella's Butterfly; the surreal civil servants in hats from Lievi's Cenerentola; the women's chorus in the Ulrica scene taken wholesale from Noble's Macbeth; the color palette from Pelly's otherwise forgettable Manon; the ugly decorative wallpaper and use of uniformly-attired chorus in a threatening way from that Decker Traviata, the contemplation area downstage left from Sher's Hoffmann; the physical direction (particularly for Radvanovsky, who's sprawled on the floor a lot) from McVicar's Trovatore... and did Alden venture beyond the moviecast repertory to lift the mass of mirrors for the last scene from the high-point of Volpe's tenure, the too-long-absent Wernicke production of Frau? That's a nice thought. The rest is Generic Gelb Production, with its "near-doctrinaire avoidance/elimination of representational detail (as in Islamic art, words and abstract designs are permitted) in sets though not in costumes, and of course a general tilt to the crass and vulgar in stage direction." The Obligatory Gelb-Era Humping Scene occurs when the sailor requests Ulrica read his fortune.
It's not completely absent of good points: the stage layout does aid the singers' projection (though Radvanovsky doesn't need it), and the first scene of the final act finally provides a more intimate space for action than the full-stage emptiness that's endemic to Generic Gelb and the rest of this production. (It is, however, just a plain white room with tilted floor/ceiling.) But the bad predominates. Least helpful, perhaps, is the contribution of debuting choreographer Maxine Braham, who seemed determined to squash any potential outbreaks of elegance or elan by making not only the singers but the actual dancers look silly in... deconstructed square dances, or whatever that was. (Kim made her dance material at least amusing by throwing in some Olympia bits.) Or perhaps the nadir is the contribution of Alden himself, who apparently didn't bother figuring out how to block the final act: Gustavo, it turns out, is able not only to read a tiny note from halfway across the stage without opening it, but to carry on a private conversation with Amelia while the two are on opposite sides of the massive dance floor, looking away from each other.
As for the idea that the dark and macabre should predominate in a production of Ballo -- well, I think it's quite wrong, but this unserious production isn't much of an occasion to evaluate it. None but the performers come off well here -- including subtitler Cori Ellison, who coarsens (and thereby destroys) the sarcastic joke of the second act's closing laughing chorus.
Radvanovsky, Alvarez, Hvorostovsky, Kim, Zajick / Luisi
So this production would, I think, be best explainable in two ways:
(1) The Met is running low on money and drastically cut the budget so that David Alden could only afford this shabby display.
(2) Alden had director's block, couldn't think of any staging ideas for months and months, and finally just decided to throw half-remembered bits of other recent Met productions together and call it a show.
If, as is sadly likely, neither of the above apply and this was seriously the considered work of Alden and his team, all the boos they got were well-deserved. And these weren't angry or offended boos at some conceit or idea. They were "are you kidding me!?" boos of disbelief that something so lame and half-baked could be presented as a finished, full-price product.
The worst part is, of course, that the cast showcased by this premiere is so good. Two of the three main principals -- Sondra Radvanovsky and Dmitri Hvorostovsky -- are the cream of today's crop, and they are both in very fine voice. Radvanovsky's instrument has filled and evened out from top to bottom with a true Verdian soprano sound, and as always she rings the whole house at any level of her vast dynamic range. Hvorostovsky was not quite convincing as Renato/Anckarström four-plus years ago, but he's really grown into the role: where in the 2010 concert he made the Ballo bits work with personal force, he now can use both personal and sonic; there's no lack of color or dynamic range even in declamation.
Marcelo Alvarez isn't quite the Gustavo/Riccardo of one's dreams -- is Calleja's May run in Frankfurt really his first!? -- but he's very good in this: precise in rhythm and ensembles, good at using word and dynamic accents, and with a pleasing and surprisingly firm lyric sound. Kathleen Kim is both audible and sprightly, something her predecessors haven't simultaneously managed in forever. Ulrica's initial aria sits poorly in Zajick's current voice but there's a lot of good stuff after that. And American bass-baritones Keith Miller and David Crawford as the conspirators bring some much-needed kick to the bottom end of the ensembles.
What's missing? That incandescence where spirit takes over from sound and detail-management. Perhaps it's Luisi (who has everything but that spark of genius), perhaps it's the weight of the lifeless new production, perhaps it's the start-of-run feeling out period after Sandy has hindered preparation. We'll see in the next month as the run continues.
The production did provide a bit of viewing fun: figuring out which bits were lifted from what. The basic stage configuration (the first two acts are on the exact same set) of bare tilted almost-converging floor/ceiling seems to be from Minghella's Butterfly; the surreal civil servants in hats from Lievi's Cenerentola; the women's chorus in the Ulrica scene taken wholesale from Noble's Macbeth; the color palette from Pelly's otherwise forgettable Manon; the ugly decorative wallpaper and use of uniformly-attired chorus in a threatening way from that Decker Traviata, the contemplation area downstage left from Sher's Hoffmann; the physical direction (particularly for Radvanovsky, who's sprawled on the floor a lot) from McVicar's Trovatore... and did Alden venture beyond the moviecast repertory to lift the mass of mirrors for the last scene from the high-point of Volpe's tenure, the too-long-absent Wernicke production of Frau? That's a nice thought. The rest is Generic Gelb Production, with its "near-doctrinaire avoidance/elimination of representational detail (as in Islamic art, words and abstract designs are permitted) in sets though not in costumes, and of course a general tilt to the crass and vulgar in stage direction." The Obligatory Gelb-Era Humping Scene occurs when the sailor requests Ulrica read his fortune.
It's not completely absent of good points: the stage layout does aid the singers' projection (though Radvanovsky doesn't need it), and the first scene of the final act finally provides a more intimate space for action than the full-stage emptiness that's endemic to Generic Gelb and the rest of this production. (It is, however, just a plain white room with tilted floor/ceiling.) But the bad predominates. Least helpful, perhaps, is the contribution of debuting choreographer Maxine Braham, who seemed determined to squash any potential outbreaks of elegance or elan by making not only the singers but the actual dancers look silly in... deconstructed square dances, or whatever that was. (Kim made her dance material at least amusing by throwing in some Olympia bits.) Or perhaps the nadir is the contribution of Alden himself, who apparently didn't bother figuring out how to block the final act: Gustavo, it turns out, is able not only to read a tiny note from halfway across the stage without opening it, but to carry on a private conversation with Amelia while the two are on opposite sides of the massive dance floor, looking away from each other.
As for the idea that the dark and macabre should predominate in a production of Ballo -- well, I think it's quite wrong, but this unserious production isn't much of an occasion to evaluate it. None but the performers come off well here -- including subtitler Cori Ellison, who coarsens (and thereby destroys) the sarcastic joke of the second act's closing laughing chorus.
Thursday, November 08, 2012
The island
The Tempest - Metropolitan Opera, 11/6/2012
Keenlyside, Luna, Leonard, Shrader, Oke, Burden, Spence, Feigum, Del Carlo / Adès
Rich and strange it is, but not entirely in a good way. Wonderful music and an excellent libretto... that don't quite add up to great opera together.
Composer/conductor Thomas Ades has an remarkable musical gift, conjuring as varied and fluent a torrent of sound as Strauss or Berg. Meredith Oakes fashioned here a libretto of sound and interesting structure and much in the text and scenic setup to chew on. But they are not, perhaps, for each other. For the characters and their drama don't seem to engage Ades: he gives their expressions audible effect, to be sure, but they are mostly secondary elements in the show's broad aural course. Ariel's turns are brilliant, others more humanly plain, but none guide the whole flow of sound, even in the final act where Ades dials the orchestral stuff back for some intimacy. Indeed only once do music and text wholly engage and the great operatic moment appear, and that's in the middle of the middle act -- Caliban's dream invocation of the island.
This, along with the lovely and evocative finale in which Caliban appears like Capriccio's M. Taupe from the prompter's space to re-inherit the island (with Ariel) does suggest one sort of musical-dramatic unity, alluded to in the program note: the island itself as the central musical figure and, er, grounding presence in the proceedings, upon which the humans' troubles are a passing episode. But while this is interesting and enriches our picture of the two spirits, it puts to the side most of the stuff we're actually watching in the opera... and indeed, that's the experience.
Shakespeare's Tempest certainly has room for this kind of conceit, and perhaps someone else might radically rewrite it to really centralize these themes in the actual stage action, but Oakes did not do so. Instead she very cleverly and librettistically reassembled Shakespeare's story elements -- but still in a very human and human-focused manner. Ades dutifully and sympathetically set these human bits, but his brilliance is in all the sonic doodling he did over and around and between them.
It's an excellent show to see and hear: besides the libretto and music, every member of the cast is a pleasure (though Isabel Leonard's English diction could be more comprehensible), and Robert Lepage, it turns out, can actually turn out a nice production when his video toys are (mostly) left aside. (There is, of course, the obligatory multilayered scaffolding.) And it suggests even finer things in the future. But if Thomas Adès is Strauss, he has not yet found his Hofmannsthal.
Keenlyside, Luna, Leonard, Shrader, Oke, Burden, Spence, Feigum, Del Carlo / Adès
Rich and strange it is, but not entirely in a good way. Wonderful music and an excellent libretto... that don't quite add up to great opera together.
Composer/conductor Thomas Ades has an remarkable musical gift, conjuring as varied and fluent a torrent of sound as Strauss or Berg. Meredith Oakes fashioned here a libretto of sound and interesting structure and much in the text and scenic setup to chew on. But they are not, perhaps, for each other. For the characters and their drama don't seem to engage Ades: he gives their expressions audible effect, to be sure, but they are mostly secondary elements in the show's broad aural course. Ariel's turns are brilliant, others more humanly plain, but none guide the whole flow of sound, even in the final act where Ades dials the orchestral stuff back for some intimacy. Indeed only once do music and text wholly engage and the great operatic moment appear, and that's in the middle of the middle act -- Caliban's dream invocation of the island.
This, along with the lovely and evocative finale in which Caliban appears like Capriccio's M. Taupe from the prompter's space to re-inherit the island (with Ariel) does suggest one sort of musical-dramatic unity, alluded to in the program note: the island itself as the central musical figure and, er, grounding presence in the proceedings, upon which the humans' troubles are a passing episode. But while this is interesting and enriches our picture of the two spirits, it puts to the side most of the stuff we're actually watching in the opera... and indeed, that's the experience.
Shakespeare's Tempest certainly has room for this kind of conceit, and perhaps someone else might radically rewrite it to really centralize these themes in the actual stage action, but Oakes did not do so. Instead she very cleverly and librettistically reassembled Shakespeare's story elements -- but still in a very human and human-focused manner. Ades dutifully and sympathetically set these human bits, but his brilliance is in all the sonic doodling he did over and around and between them.
It's an excellent show to see and hear: besides the libretto and music, every member of the cast is a pleasure (though Isabel Leonard's English diction could be more comprehensible), and Robert Lepage, it turns out, can actually turn out a nice production when his video toys are (mostly) left aside. (There is, of course, the obligatory multilayered scaffolding.) And it suggests even finer things in the future. But if Thomas Adès is Strauss, he has not yet found his Hofmannsthal.
Monday, November 05, 2012
The week in NY opera (November 5-11)
The hurricane cancelled half of last week at the Met, but the dangling crane on 57th has forced a Carnegie Hall shutdown that's still ongoing. At least power and most of the subways are back in and around the venues...
Metropolitan Opera
Turandot (M/F), Tempest (T/SM), Figaro (W/SE), Ballo (Th)
David Alden's Ballo debuts, with an excellent cast and Luisi in the pit. You can see The Tempest on Election Day (and I may actually end up doing this) or at the moviecast this weekend. This incarnation of Turandot is pretty good for what it is; the Figaro isn't.
Avery Fisher Hall
Richard Tucker Gala (Sunday 6:30pm)
Along with this year's Tucker Award winner Ailyn Pérez (not yet much heard in the city), the lineup includes Abdrazakov & Borodina, Filianoti, Giordani, Finley, Hvorostovsky, and Schrott.
NYU Skirball Center
Vox 2012 (Th)
This year at the new opera showcase: bits of operas by John Zorn, Moto Osada, Christopher Weiss, Evan Meier, James Stepleton, and Osnat Netzer. Too bad it's up against the Ballo premiere!
UPDATE (misread my calendar last week...)
Frick Collection
Toby Spence recital (Sunday 5pm)
The British tenor makes his New York recital debut in a program of German lieder, capped off by Schumann's Dichterliebe.
Metropolitan Opera
Turandot (M/F), Tempest (T/SM), Figaro (W/SE), Ballo (Th)
David Alden's Ballo debuts, with an excellent cast and Luisi in the pit. You can see The Tempest on Election Day (and I may actually end up doing this) or at the moviecast this weekend. This incarnation of Turandot is pretty good for what it is; the Figaro isn't.
Avery Fisher Hall
Richard Tucker Gala (Sunday 6:30pm)
Along with this year's Tucker Award winner Ailyn Pérez (not yet much heard in the city), the lineup includes Abdrazakov & Borodina, Filianoti, Giordani, Finley, Hvorostovsky, and Schrott.
NYU Skirball Center
Vox 2012 (Th)
This year at the new opera showcase: bits of operas by John Zorn, Moto Osada, Christopher Weiss, Evan Meier, James Stepleton, and Osnat Netzer. Too bad it's up against the Ballo premiere!
UPDATE (misread my calendar last week...)
Frick Collection
Toby Spence recital (Sunday 5pm)
The British tenor makes his New York recital debut in a program of German lieder, capped off by Schumann's Dichterliebe.
Monday, October 29, 2012
The week in NY opera (Oct. 29-Nov. 4)
With Sandy approaching, who knows how many of these performances will actually take place?
Metropolitan Opera
Turandot (T/F), Tempest (W/SM), Figaro (SE)
Figaro (grossly mishandled by Robertson) was supposed to play tonight as well, but that's been cancelled. Turandot, whenever it manages to begin, will bring the company debut of this year's Met Council Finals sensation Janai Brugger. I meant to see The Tempest on Saturday, but Figaro left such a bad taste in my mouth that I skipped it. This week, perhaps, if the real-life tempest permits.
Carnegie Hall
Opera Lafayette L'invitation au Voyage (F)
Chamber vocal selections by this French-themed company based in DC; features soprano Emmanuelle de Negri, recently seen with William Christie's company in Atys and a Rameau double bill.
OT
Murray Perahia recital (F)
Classical/romantic program by the now-veteran classical/romantic pianist.
Metropolitan Opera
Turandot (T/F), Tempest (W/SM), Figaro (SE)
Figaro (grossly mishandled by Robertson) was supposed to play tonight as well, but that's been cancelled. Turandot, whenever it manages to begin, will bring the company debut of this year's Met Council Finals sensation Janai Brugger. I meant to see The Tempest on Saturday, but Figaro left such a bad taste in my mouth that I skipped it. This week, perhaps, if the real-life tempest permits.
Carnegie Hall
Opera Lafayette L'invitation au Voyage (F)
Chamber vocal selections by this French-themed company based in DC; features soprano Emmanuelle de Negri, recently seen with William Christie's company in Atys and a Rameau double bill.
OT
Murray Perahia recital (F)
Classical/romantic program by the now-veteran classical/romantic pianist.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
The replacement
Otello - Metropolitan Opera, 10/16/2012
Amonov, Fleming, Struckmann / Bychkov
After a dress rehearsal in which he was a bit cautious but in no particular distress, tenor Johan Botha fared poorly on Otello's opening night. His indisposition left him out of the remainder of the run -- except, perhaps, this afternoon's moviecast, surely a nerve-wracking return if it happens.
His replacement in the title role? A Russian from the Mariinsky: Avgust Amonov, who made his Met debut three days before this performance. Yes, he was pretty good. No, he's not the next _______. In fact, he (like Botha) is on the lyric side of the sing, with a nice basic sound in which one can hear the Bacchus he's sung elsewhere. But unlike Botha, Amonov doesn't have a big clarion ring to his lyric instrument, and the demands of Otello do restrict his colors and prevent big statements. Still, contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, it's a pleasant sound... or was on this night.
His other "unlike Botha"s may have been to his benefit. He's not a stand-and-sing paragraph phraser, but has some sense of dramatic character development even as a late cover. Definitely held up his end of the show, and an Otello I wouldn't mind seeing again given sufficiently good support.
Here Amonov had two amazing co-stars. Falk Struckmann seemed to me insufficiently menacing and impressive as Pizarro a dozen years back, but time has changed his capabilities. When he chews the scenery now as Iago, the vocal impact is as great as the dramatic -- and I'd love to hear his current incarnation as the Fidelio villain. Meanwhile Desdemona is still probably Renee Fleming's best operatic part, one in which she invariably finds her focus by Desdemona's great final double aria.
Bychkov's conducting depends on the moment: though he always seems to get the huge loud climaxes up, the material in between may be urgent or slack. This night, he was a bit of both, though the cast change may have thrown things off -- we'll see what happens this afternoon.
Elijah Moshinsky's revived production, like his Makropoulos Case last season and Queen of Spades the season before, brings into sharp relief the limitations of the current Gelb directorial stable.
Amonov, Fleming, Struckmann / Bychkov
After a dress rehearsal in which he was a bit cautious but in no particular distress, tenor Johan Botha fared poorly on Otello's opening night. His indisposition left him out of the remainder of the run -- except, perhaps, this afternoon's moviecast, surely a nerve-wracking return if it happens.
His replacement in the title role? A Russian from the Mariinsky: Avgust Amonov, who made his Met debut three days before this performance. Yes, he was pretty good. No, he's not the next _______. In fact, he (like Botha) is on the lyric side of the sing, with a nice basic sound in which one can hear the Bacchus he's sung elsewhere. But unlike Botha, Amonov doesn't have a big clarion ring to his lyric instrument, and the demands of Otello do restrict his colors and prevent big statements. Still, contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, it's a pleasant sound... or was on this night.
His other "unlike Botha"s may have been to his benefit. He's not a stand-and-sing paragraph phraser, but has some sense of dramatic character development even as a late cover. Definitely held up his end of the show, and an Otello I wouldn't mind seeing again given sufficiently good support.
Here Amonov had two amazing co-stars. Falk Struckmann seemed to me insufficiently menacing and impressive as Pizarro a dozen years back, but time has changed his capabilities. When he chews the scenery now as Iago, the vocal impact is as great as the dramatic -- and I'd love to hear his current incarnation as the Fidelio villain. Meanwhile Desdemona is still probably Renee Fleming's best operatic part, one in which she invariably finds her focus by Desdemona's great final double aria.
Bychkov's conducting depends on the moment: though he always seems to get the huge loud climaxes up, the material in between may be urgent or slack. This night, he was a bit of both, though the cast change may have thrown things off -- we'll see what happens this afternoon.
Elijah Moshinsky's revived production, like his Makropoulos Case last season and Queen of Spades the season before, brings into sharp relief the limitations of the current Gelb directorial stable.
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