The 2013-14 Met season announcement, annotated

There are a lot of really strange choices throughout (the solo recital -- not listed -- is probably the strangest), but any season with three Strauss shows including a revival of Wernicke's FroSch is one to look forward to. And, oh yes, James Levine returns. We hope.

Shows are listed, as ever, in order of first appearance. Single-show casts are omitted, though some are mentioned in the text. Moviecast casts are highlighted in bold.

Eugene Onegin (new Deborah Warner production)
Kwiecien, Netrebko, Volkova, Beczala, Kwiecien, Tanovitsky / Gergiev (September-October)
Kwiecien, Netrebko, Volkova, Beczala, Tanovitsky / Smelkov (October)
Mattei, Poplavskaya, Maximova, Villazón, Kocán / Vedernikov (November)
This opening night, a real director! Though Robert Carsen's great production will be missed, it did sort of reach its apex in its last incarnations. I'm not sure who in the administration keeps erroneously headlining Mariusz Kwiecien instead of Peter Mattei, but the former is perhaps a more plausible cold fish. I find it hard to believe that the patchwork voice I heard in October is going to sing much of a Lensky this November, but I'm sure there's some sort of backup plan.

Cosi fan Tutte
Phillips, Leonard, de Niese, Polenzani, Pogossov, Muraro / Levine (September-October, April)
Yu, Leonard, de Niese, Polenzani, Pogossov, Muraro / Levine (May)
No pressure, folks, but the last Levine run (with Polenzani!) of this may have been his best performances at the Met -- ever. Excellent youthful cast: Leonard and de Neise impressed even in the less intensely sincere revival a few seasons back.

The Nose
Szot, Popov, Lewis / Gergiev (September-October)
Szot, Popov, Lewis / Smelkov (October)
What a great show this was. Szot, Popov, and the conductors return from the first time.

Norma
Radvanovsky, Aldrich, Antonenko, Morris / Frizza (September-November)
Meade, Barton, Antonenko, Orlov/Morris (October 24/28)
No, seriously, when's the last season that opened with four really promising shows? Sondra Radvanovsky finally scales Mt. Norma -- with a pretty good supporting cast, though a new production would have been good for her on the dramatic stuff. In the alternate cast, Angela Meade goes for it as well... with a rather shorter career run-up. Meade's Adalgisa is fellow 2007 Met Council Finals winner (and "The Audition" co-star) Jamie Barton. I was really unimpressed by Barton on the day, but she seems to have turned into a heck of a no-holds-barred mezzo honker in the classic American style. This is, unfortunately, exactly the wrong casting for the lyric-soprano ingenue role of Adalgisa, but given that Dolora Zajick is the only Adalgisa this production has seen, it's also the exact mistake the Met loves making.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Kim, Wall, DeShong, Davies, Kaiser, Simpson, Rose / Conlon (October)
Nice cast, though as far as this story goes I prefer the brevity of Ashton's dance version...

Two Boys (new Nico Muhly opera)
Zetlan, Lynch, Coote, Eddy, Forst, Appleby, Bolduc, Miller / Robertson (October-November)
After an apparently-succesful out-of-town tryout at ENO two seasons ago, Muhly and librettist Craig Lucas' opera hits the Met stage. Bart Sher and his usual crew are doing the production... for better or worse. I assume conductor David Robertson will be in the good form he showed in 2012's Billy Budd, not the very, very bad form he demonstrated in (on) Figaro.

Tosca
Racette, Alagna, Gagnidze / Frizza (October-November)
Radvanovsky, Giordani, Gagnidze / Armiliato (December)
Would you believe a second moviecast of this originally-reviled show? Alagna and Gagnidze aren't quite Kaufmann and Terfel, but they're good in this, as is Racette the natural Puccinian. I'm not sure I'm ready to go see Marcelo Giordani again, but it's a nice regular run for Radvanovsky after Norma. Three one-off casts: TBA as Tosca November 16, Ricardo Tamura making his Met debut as Cavaradossi December 17 and Elisabete Matos as Tosca December 20.

Die Frau ohne Schatten
Schwanewilms, Goerke, Komlósi, Kerl, Reuter / Jurowski (November)
Meagan Miller (who sang Danae pretty well at Bard) has one performance as the Empress (November 16). The cast isn't really one to conjure with, but frankly, who cares? Vladimir Jurowski has a magnificent score in a magnificently sincere production and oh, that orchestra and its soloists (which his characteristic lyrical approach has, in the past, empowered)... The opportunity for huge success is all in his hands -- good decision not to entrust Luisi with this.
The bad news, for the public: no moviecast. The good news, for the public at the house: none of the moviecast-accomodating lighting changes that damaged Carsen's Onegin (in that show they were never reverted after the moviecast season). And yes, beg borrow or steal to be at the house for one or more of these -- especially if you haven't seen Herbert Wernicke's production masterpiece yet (though a lot of the striking stuff has since been cribbed by lesser shows).

Rigoletto
Hvorostovsky, Kurzak, Polenzani, Volkova, Kocan / Heras-Casado (November-December)
The Met debut of young Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, who already has a NYC connection as principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke's. The title part is a bit of a stretch for Hvoro... especially with the ugly sweater he'll have to wear in this production. Between Aleksandra Kurzak and Polenzani, this revival will also feature probably the nicest Gilda and Duke combo ever.

Der Rosenkavalier
Serafin, Garanca, Erdmann, Cutler, Ketelsen, Rose / Gardner (November)
Serafin, Sindram, Erdmann, Cutler, Ketelsen, Rose / Gardner (December)
Two one-off casts: Erin Morley as Sophie and Mario Chang as the Italian Singer on December 3, and TBA as Octavian on December 13. But more to the point... are Martina Serafin and Daniela Sindram going to carry off the show? (Serafin being Viennese is nice but hardly sufficient.) I suppose we'll get some hint when the former debuts as Sieglinde in this spring's Ring. Mojca Erdmann was good as Zerlina and not good as Susanna, but finally gets more of a high chirper's part to chew on (though yes, Sophie doesn't actually go that high).

Falstaff (new Robert Carsen production)
Maestri, Oropesa, Meade, Blythe, Johnson Cano, Fanale, Vassallo / Levine (December-January)
Alaimo, Oropesa, Meade, Blythe, Johnson Cano, Fanale, Vassallo / Levine (December)
One Carsen show (Onegin) departs, another appears... this time replacing an old Zef show. (Will there be protest booing? How about we just skip that this time...) This is pretty significant given how underappreciated that Onegin was to start.
The musical story is, if things go well (knock on wood), another re-visit by Levine to his 2005 glory. Of course, he had Bryn Terfel then, and neither Ambrogio Maestri nor Nicola Alaimo are likely to provide that scale of presence in the title role. Still, the female side of the cast is quite strong, and it's Levine... we hope.

The Magic Flute (holiday version)
Stober, Shagimuratova, Shrader, Gunn, Shenyang, Owens / Glover (December)
Stober, Lewek, Shrader, Gunn, Shenyang, Owens / Glover (December-January)
Jane Glover in the pit for this holiday kids' version in English.

Die Fledermaus (new Jeremy Sams production)
Phillips, Schäfer, Maltman, Fabiano, Szot, Costanzo / Fischer (New Year's Eve-January)
Phillips, Archibald, Maltman, Lewis, Szot, Costanzo / Fischer (February)
Phillips, Archibald, Maltman, Fabiano, Szot, Costanzo / Fischer (February)
The long, leaden, wit-free, barely-literate hash of politically correct tropes that was "The Enchanted Island" should have ended the Met careers of every person involved on its production (note: I don't mean the singers, who did what they could). Jeremy Sams -- the writer and principal offender in that wreck -- unfortunately managed to fail upward into directing this new Fledermaus. (Well, at least it isn't Shakespeare.) The cast -- featuring, for the second show of this season, Susanna Phillips -- is pretty good, though I fear Christine Schäfer plans to play Adele as bizarrely glumly as she did Cherubino, in which case she should be run out of town during rehearsals. I'm sure her alternate, Canadian soprano Jane Archibald, can do chirpy maid.

L'Elisir d'Amore
Netrebko, Vargas, Alaimo, Schrott / Benini (January-February 1)
One would have hoped that Netrebko's season-opening Tatyana could signal the end of the pretense that she's a bel canto soprano these days. Unfortunately not. Though if she must... this is pretty good company to do it in.

La Boheme
Kovalevska, Lungu, Calleja, Markov, Hopkins, Van Horn, Maxwell / Ranzani (January)
Hartig, Rowley, Grigolo, Cavalletti, Carfizzi, Testé, Cokorinos / Ranzani (March)
Hartig, Phillips, Grigolo, Cavalletti, Carfizzi, Testé, Cokorinos / Ranzani (April)
Frittoli, Rowley, Grigolo, Cavalletti, Carfizzi, Gradus, Maxwell / Ranzani (April)
So on the one hand you have the greatest lyric tenor in the world. On the other you have a former pop singer who fizzled badly in his first go at this long-perfected show. Which one do you put on the air?
Yeah, that's what I'd have thought too. Perhaps debuting soprano Anita Hartig is as great a Mimi as Maija Kovalevska was in 2008... perhaps Grigolo has even learned to phrase and engage with his peers. I'm certainly curious about Hartig, but -- especially since these are the only Joseph Calleja appearances of the season -- it's the first cast that holds the most interest. Conductor Stefano Ranzani has done pretty well here with Puccini, so he at least shouldn't wreck the show.

Madama Butterfly
Echalaz, DeShong, Hymel, Hendricks / Auguin (January-February)
Opolais, Zifchak, Valenti, Croft / Armiliato (April)
He, Zifchak, Hughes Jones, Croft / Luisi (May)
I don't suggest seeing Butterfly for the Pinkerton, but look, a Bryan Hymel sighting! Gwyn Hughes Jones, too. This is the debut of South-African-by-way-of-England soprano Amanda Echalaz. Also, not that it matters as much as, say, FroSch (in the first revival of which, incidentally, Philippe Auguin didn't impress), but the conducting lineup for this is really sort of bizarre.

Rusalka
Fleming, Zajick, Beczala, Relyea, Magee / Nézet-Séguin (January-February)
Yup, "Yannick"'s Met show this season is the Dvorak masterpiece. Renee Fleming showed some vocal decline in the 2009 revival, though the standard of her 2004 shows was ridiculously high. Love the production, and of course hearing Nézet-Séguin's pit work should be a treat.

Prince Igor (new Dmitri Tcherniakov production)
Abdrazakov, Rachvelishvili, Dyka, Semishkur, Petrenko, Kocán / Noseda (February-March)
The Met again taps its east-European cornucopia to cast the Borodin opera that hasn't been done by the company in nearly a hundred years. It has been done in the house, though, by the visiting Kirov/Mariinsky in 1998 (back when Anna Netrebko was a great young bel canto singer -- read the Betrothal in a Monastery and Ruslan & Lyudmila notices from then). That show, in a rather odd production of what was presumably the cutting-edge in musicological restoration then, was supposed to feature Ildar Abdrazakov's now-wife (Olga Borodina) as Konchakovna (she withdrew, but Larissa Diadkova impressed) and did feature his elder brother (Askar) as Konchak. This time the younger Abdrazakov has the title part, Met Carmen-for-life Anita Rachvelishvili gets the big mezzo aria, and the edition is yet a new recutting/restoration by the hands of the director Tcherniakov and the conductors (both Gergiev proteges) Gianandrea Noseda and Pavel Smelkov (who's in the pit February 21).

Werther (new Richard Eyre production)
Kaufmann, Garanca, Oropesa, Bizic, Summers / Altinoglu (February-March)
Eyre, the director of one of the current administration's rare unequivocal successes, returns with a rather different French piece. I have my doubts that Garanca will be a convincing object of domestic desire, but after Parsifal I'm certain a good director can shape Kaufmann's fragmentary seeking into a heck of a wounded tenor hero.

The Enchanted Island
de Niese, Chuchman, Graham, Daniels, Costanzo, Domingo, Pisaroni / Summers (February-March)
I'll repeat what I wrote above:

The long, leaden, wit-free, barely-literate hash of politically correct tropes that was "The Enchanted Island" should have ended the Met careers of every person involved on its production (note: I don't mean the singers, who did what they could).

DiDonato couldn't save the show the first time, and Graham isn't going to do it now. Avoid like crazy, especially if you like Shakespeare.

Wozzeck
Hampson, Voigt, O'Neill, Hoare / Levine (March)
The third of Levine's planned return engagements. Thomas Hampson as Wozzeck!? The strange thing is that it's not a completely mind-boggling idea now. (But it mostly still is.)

La Sonnambula
Damrau, Camarena, Pertusi / Armiliato (March-April)
Too much to hope for a major recut of the offensive up-yours finale? Though the whole show is, thanks perhaps to Dessay's veto of a traditional setting, half-baked. In any case, what's missing in Diana Damrau's Gilda is also a fatal absence for an Amina: goodness.

Andrea Chenier
Álvarez, Racette, Lucic / Noseda (March-April)
Marcelo Alvarez -- despite good singing -- was rather too clever/committed for his own good this season in making his Gustavo so thoroughly unkingly, but this show and production should present no such off-the-rails temptations.

Arabella
Byström, Kühmeier, Saccà, Volle, Del Carlo / Auguin (April)
The third Strauss revival of the season features Swedish sort-of-a-soprano Malin Byström and Austrian really-a-soprano Genia Kühmeier as the lead sisters, with debuting tenor Roberto Saccà as Matteo and debuting baritone Michael Volle as Waldner. I have the least faith in this Strauss offering: it takes more from the conductor than one might think, and Auguin has never at the Met shown himself able/willing to carry things along. But if Byström and Volle get the moral side of it, that should be something.

I Puritani
Peretyatko, Brownlee, Kwiecien, Pertusi / Mariotti (April-May)
I'm irrationally thrilled at the prospect of this revival. I have no idea whether debuting Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko will be any good (she's married to Mariotti, who of course is conducting) and the production will remain as bland as ever, but I somehow suspect that an actual bel canto soprano (which she may be) and a barnstorming tenor (which I'm pretty sure Brownlee is) can make much of this show in a way their predecessors certainly did not.

La Cenerentola
DiDonato, Flórez, Spagnoli, Corbelli, Pisaroni / Luisi
An all-star group is brought together for another moviecast. Only appearances for DiDonato and Florez this season.

The week in NY opera (February 25-March 3)

Parsifal is on the air, rumors are in the air... we'll see about both.

Metropolitan Opera
Don Carlo (M/Th), Carmen (T/F), Parsifal (W*/SM)
No Saturday night performance as the Parsifal moviecast consumes the whole day's resources. Carmen wraps its run this Friday. Official season announcement is tomorrow.

* Wednesday's (starred) Parsifal 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.

Brooklyn Academy of Music
New York City Opera The Turn of the Screw (Th/SE)
Second and final week of the run.

Morgan Library
George London Foundation competition finals (Friday 4pm)
The event is currently sold out, but significant. The Met's competition finals is nine days later.

OT
New York Philharmonic Carousel (W/Th/F/SM/SE)
I'm not much for musicals-as-opera, but opposite Broadway's Kelli O'Hara in this are Nathan Gunn and Stephanie Blythe (!!!).

The hero

Les Troyens - Metropolitan Opera, 12/13/2012 & 1/5/2013
Giordani/Hymel, Voigt, Graham, Bernstein, Croft, Boulianne, Cargill, Cutler, Appleby, Youn / Luisi

Everyone who ended up seeing this show with Marcelo Giordani as Enee (Aeneas) instead of Bryan Hymel deserves a refund. From the former one expected solid if not particularly fluid vocalism and a decent enough stock presence... unfortunately neither delivered here. The singing, on opening night, ranged from strained to -- in, unfortunately, the final climactic scene -- dire, but the real damage was done phrase by phrase. All the curves and turns of Berlioz's music were turned into dead straight lines, with particularly devastating effect in the climactic Act IV love duet. Here Aeneas has finally been seduced into accord with Dido's endless dilation of the moment: Giordani's inability, even at this height of his character's rapture, to trace the satisfied full course of his line made their relationship, Dido's love, and indeed the audience's engagement in the above sadly implausible. There must be some piece of Aeneas that shares Dido's desire to ignore (or at least put off) fate... not only does the libretto say as much, it's the echo of Virgil's own contribution to epic -- that inner hesitation and doubt of a melancholic pastoral poet put in harness as apologist for fate's (probably, for the time) least-worst but nevertheless hard & bloody outcome (the triumph of Rome over the world and Augustus over Rome). Stock Italian tenor-heroisms (Giordani's physical presentation was basically the same as for his Calaf in November) encompass none of this.

In truth, of course, the dramatic tenor with true poetic sensibility, lurking or overt, is very much the exception -- for which Ben Heppner got too little credit in the premiere run of this production. And in fact Bryan Hymel isn't Heppner or Klaus Florian Vogt or anyone in that vein.

In fact there's really nothing easy about Hymel's singing: the irreducible baseline effort one notices is, I suspect, why he wasn't the first choice Enee to begin with. But as the part moves from conversation to declamation and passion, Hymel's singing follows easily, the effortful part of it becoming both insignificant and (in any case) in accord with the moment. The huge long cries of "Italie" that capped off both his final solo and, perhaps even more impressively, the ensemble finale thereafter (for which he could well have receded into the massed sound) were thrills perhaps unmatched in the Met's history of the opera. And if his stage presence wasn't a poet's, it was complementary to his full-dynamic presentation, energetic and responsive to all the bewildering things around him.

This alone improved the effect of Susan Graham's performance. Where Giordani was basically a wall, Hymel provided a real partner in their arc of stolen time and doomed love, and so the personal arc was well and movingly carried off. As a queen, though... Graham's Dido seemed to make no distinction from the start between public and private, appearing in her personal free self at the ceremonies kicking off Part II as naturally as in her grief-wracked incarnation at the end. It's a legitimate interpretation, and certainly her singing was beautiful and moving, but Graham's downplaying of Dido's regal side and role -- her burden, parallel to Aeneas' -- left something important out. This part was, as many will remember, the first and last great triumph of Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson's Met career -- the opening night of this production a validation that few singers experience in such concentrated form -- and so perhaps it's unfair to invoke the comparison (not least because the subsequent performances in the run were very good but not at the same level)... but it's irresistible nonetheless. LHL as Dido contrasted stillness with motion, outer firmness (composed for her people and position) with inner pure feeling, and when the latter of each broke the former, at first tenderly in the love sequence and then in the violence of her footlight soliliquy the effect was overpowering. For Graham there was no such contrasting compulsion to measure and highlight her Dido's flow of feeling.

But Graham didn't architect the entire evening. In a rather strange turn, Francesca Zambello's revival stage direction of her own production actually seemed to have sabotaged what had in its original incarnation been a brilliantly-directed whole. Perhaps it was Giordani's presence through these new rehearsals, perhaps simply the passage of time, but for some reason the deft and well-proportioned bits of direction then became, at every turn -- the overwrought Andromache, the bizarre apparent consummation of the romance before the Royal Hunt, the jarringly violent anger of Narbal in Act IV -- overdirected cliche now. So it's hard to blame even Karen Cargill's overly earthy wink-wink-nudge-nudge panderer of an Anna on the debuting mezzo herself... but she didn't help things either.

*     *     *
The other principal reprise -- Deborah Voigt, Cassandra again as in 2003 -- and conductor Fabio Luisi had, I thought, surprisingly analogous flaws and virtues. For Voigt it was a huge reversal: 2003's Troyens was one of the last appearances of that original "fat Voigt", full and luxuriant of sound but similarly un-angular in character, the stimmdiva par excellence. Her Cassandra then was all wrong in its basics -- alienation, hysteria and desperation come out full blast in the score, but found no outlets in Voigt's fate-favored, well-grounded person or voice. Now, she can almost no longer sing the part -- the tone isn't great, and bottom notes are particularly lacking -- but is nevertheless a much better Cassandra. Harassed in her way by fate, having ended the long original cooperation with her body's size and glorious strength, and having run headlong and repeatedly into the limitations of her new form and voice, 2013's Voigt can show desperate, can look ruin in the face, lose patience with her fiancee, and generally get the basic moment-to-moment expression of Cassandra's dramatic position right... but the sonic limitations kick in and limit the force of what should be climactic expression.

Luisi's orchestra sounds good -- which I'd thought would always be the case, but Aida showed otherwise. And his constant characteristic attention to texture and detail and shape in the moment is basically just what the essential time-defying expansiveness of Berlioz in this opera demands. But, even if this achieved and thematized neo-classical courtly patience is the unique feature of the piece, it's not the exclusive one: in the end, Troy burns, Carthage sees its doom, and the lovers' idyll is broken. None of these climactic outcomes quite get their due from Luisi, who as we'll recall found ways to be coolly classical even in Forza, Elektra, and Lulu... It's not (unlike for Voigt) physical limitation that hampers these climaxes, but Luisi's choice.

Still, the basic fit between these roles and their players counted for much, and with Hymel's fire the whole show worked.

*     *     *
The supporting cast was, as usual for the Met, strong. Grossly under-appreciated American bass-baritone Richard Bernstein was probably the most impressive (as Panthus), though Julie Boulianne (Ascanius) and Paul Appleby (Hylas) also made for a strong Trojan contingent. Among the Cartheginians Youn (Narbal), despite the jarring character direction/portrayal, was the strongest vocally, though it's probably unfair to tenor Eric Cutler that his predecessor Matthew Polenzani was a perfect Iopas. For what's a court without an official dreamer?

The week in NY opera (February 18-24)

Pardon the holiday delay.

Metropolitan Opera
Parsifal (M/Th), Rigoletto (T/SE), Carmen (W/SM), Don Carlo (F)
A week after the premiere of the stupendously-cast and mostly successful new Parsifal (more posts to follow) comes the return of 2010's Hytner Don Carlo. As in its first run, the cast is more interesting than the serviceable if garish production, though this time wunderkind Yannick Nezet-Seguin has been replaced in the pit by moral midget Lorin Maazel. Saturday's Rigoletto is the last with the current cast.

Brooklyn Academy of Music
New York City Opera Powder Her Face (Th/SE)
New York City Opera The Turn of the Screw (Su)
City-Opera-in-exile turns from one British chamber opera to another over the weekend.

Carnegie Hall
Magdalena Kožená recital (SE)
English Concert Radamisto (Sunday 2pm)
Yefim Bronfman is Kozena's celebrity accompanist. David Daniels stars in the Handel opera-in-concert. The Nathan Gunn recital scheduled for tonight has been postponed.

A short post on Parsifal

Wow, that was great. Unbelievably so.

There are many, many things I could say in elaboration and clarification, but instead of -- as has been my practice -- trying to put them all into one long post, I'll write just one now:

The fragmentary way in which Jonas Kaufmann's singing presents also appears to be characteristic of his stage person in general. Valkyrie didn't tap into that element, so his success therein was limited. Faust even more so. But Parsifal, this Parsifal, is so thoroughly built around the fragmentary, incomplete, striving-towards-(without realizing)-coherence quality in Kaufmann that it shows him -- and perhaps the opera -- in a blazing new light. The purity in his fool isn't that straightforward or even eerie positive quality of goodness one might have seen in others: it's an absence, usually straightforwardly an absence of the impure & the ground therefor, but occasionally and memorably an absence that speaks with sacred command. In accord is not only the amazing personal direction, but the visual language for the redemption this Parsifal brings.

In other words, nothing like Schenk's glorious field of flowers appears, for better and for worse -- but for Kaufmann, it's better, much better.

And he's not even the greatest star of the show! But that's for next time.

The week in NY opera (February 11-17)

Good Friday comes early this year, or something. UPDATE (9pm): meanwhile, an opera company that hopes everyone else in NYC isn't as forgetful as I am kicks off its season.

Metropolitan Opera
Rigoletto (T/SM), Carmen (W/SE), Parsifal (F)
Elisir has left the building, but the season's most anticipated new show arrives with Francois Girard's Parsifal. On the one hand, the last Quebecois director in Wagner (Lepage) blew a huge sum of money for not much; on the other hand, the last film director to debut (Minghella) had a great success. So... the cast, of course, is remarkable.

Brooklyn Academy of Music
New York City Opera Power Her Face (F/SuM)
If you didn't get enough Thomas Ades this season with his Met premiere Tempest, City-Opera-in-exile revives his first operatic attempt.

Peter Jay Sharp Theater
Juilliard Opera Don Pasquale (W/F/SuM)
Stars soprano Deanna Breiwick, who was a Met Council Finalist in 2011 (when I couldn't go myself).

OT
Endellion Quartet (F/SE/SuM)
The English group offers the first half of their full Beethoven cycle at the Met Museum. Second half is next week.

The week in NY opera (February 4-10)

Pardon this week's delay. As I said last time, I'm on opera hiatus for a few weeks (yes, yes, Parsifal soon).

Metropolitan Opera
Rigoletto (M/F), Comte Ory (T), Elisir (W/SM), Carmen (S)
Comte Ory closes tomorrow, so it's your last chance to catch Pretty Yende this season. Saturday's Carmen brings the debuts of Ekaterina Scherbachenko (Micaela) and Nikolai Schukoff (Don Jose), along with Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Escamillo and Michele Mariotti on the two-shows-at-once schedule.

Carnegie Hall
Susanna Phillips recital (F)
The American soprano (last seen as Donna Anna) essays German, French, Spanish, and English songs in one event in Carnegie's smallest space.

The week in NY opera (January 28-February 3)

Metropolitan Opera
Rigoletto (M/Th), Comte Ory (T/SM), Elisir (W/SE)
The new Rigoletto offers an interesting choice: this first cast with a very good Duke (Piotr Beczala) and temperamentally miscast though vocally impressive Rig&Gilda (Zeljko Lucic too inclined to slip into his characteristic lyric mild-manneredness, Diana Damrau too clever and insufficiently wise), or the spring cast with a dead-on baritone and soprano (George Gagnidze and Lisette Oropesa) and a dicey tenor (the previously-unimpressive Vittorio Grigolo). If Friday's dress rehearsal was any indication, the (mostly!) refreshing maximalism of the new production will sort of distract from Lucic's lack of a cruel streak, while its constraints will force Damrau to abandon the schemer of her previous appearances and play... well, maybe not Gilda proper, but at least Mary Katherine Gallagher playing Gilda, which is in fact an improvement.
Personally I might skip the Met for the next few weeks... although Erwin Schrott (though less humane than the original Dulcamara here, Maestri) is an incredible comedian when properly called to it.

Alice Tully Hall
Kirchschlager/Bostridge duo recital (Sunday 5pm)
Julius Drake accompanies for this all-Wolf program (from the Spanisches Liederbuch).

Carnegie Hall
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (Sunday 2pm)
As do-gooding I find Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan project a non-sequitur at best (though he does have the wisdom to work within his field), and he's never been the most natural with Beethoven from the podium, but having Diana Damrau, Kate Lindsey, Piotr Beczala, and Rene Pape as the soloists for Beethoven's Ninth makes up for much.

The week in NY opera (January 21-27)

One of those New York choices this Wednesday night.

Metropolitan Opera
Comte Ory (M/F), Rondine (T/SM), Maria Stuarda (W/SE), Trovatore (Th)
By many accounts the last weeks' truly significant soprano debut was young South African Pretty Yende in the otherwise pointless revival of Comte Ory. If that doesn't appeal, two great displays of singing -- Maria Stuarda and Trovatore -- close for the season this week. (Incidentally, they're both staged by the only successful Gelb-era director, David McVicar. How about he does all the Italian stuff from now on?) Rondine, eh -- more soon along with Troyens and Turandot writeups.

Carnegie Hall
Dorothea Röschmann recital (W)
Fleming/Graham duo recital (Su)
It's been far too long since master liederist Dorothea Röschmann has done a solo recital here, making Wednesday's show even less to be missed. She arrives this time with Malcolm Martineau and a program of core Schubert, Strauss, Liszt, and Wolf.
Megastars Renee Fleming and Susan Graham's duo show on the big stage, on the other hand, is French themed, which suits the latter terrifically.

OT
Nic Hodges and Radu Lupu on the ivories this week at Carnegie.

The queen

Recital - Carnegie Hall, 11/18/2012
DiDonato / Il Complesso Barocco
Maria Stuarda - Metropolitan Opera, 1/8/2013
DiDonato, van den Heever, Polenzani, Rose, Hopkins, Zifchak / Benini

A funny thing happened while I was preparing to review Joyce DiDonato's fall Carnegie Hall recital: she did it herself. Unsurprisingly, she pinpointed the two complementary joys of her own recital arsenal here highlighted. First, the slow --

the hushed, still, immobile moments that thrill us performers the most

-- is delivered by DiDonato as well and as intimately as by anyone. Second, the fast --

when we rip into the Orlandini or Handel "dance numbers" and smiles are contagiously spread over the attendees, and shoulders are bopping, heads are beating – people caught up in the euphoria of the pulse, the melody, the centuries old sentiment

-- is indeed just as electric as she herself puts it, at least as much for her own evident grasp of the moment as for her polished vocal virtuosity.

The makeup of this particular program showed the American mezzo's current status as much as anything: yes, she can now be expected to assemble a program of mostly-unknown baroque stuff, and sell it not only in her own person but on CD as well. The very cleverly dressed "Drama Queens" program she was (and will, after the final Stuarda, resume) touring presents interesting material, sometimes excellent, in both modes.

Of the slow there's more wealth: from the spare early cries of Monteverdi's Ottavia to the stately, wistful, resigned, and agonized variants of her early-18th-century counterparts, long breath and phrase are given every sort of exposure to show DiDonato's talents terrifically. The fast doesn't quite cover all the bases, at least for a live show: the non-Handel stuff falls between the full-climactic poles of ecstasy and tragic madness, making them not-quite-natural counterbalances to the extendedly-built-up emotions of the slow. Yes, it's fast & quick-rhythmic and not slow, but there's only so much the simply physical contrast can satisfy for a close-following audience. And... using pieces of defiance and even fury (the second Orlandini, done as the second encore, in particular) as "dance numbers" doesn't quite make the best sense of them.

I'm not sure how this could have been improved, though, without going further off-mandate by throwing in more Handel, whose genuinely ecstatic "Brilla nell'alma" did nice double duty as the close of both the regular program and the encore set. I suspect we don't remember those between Monteverdi and Handel in part because they weren't as good at joyful or tragic climaxes. That is to say, if this wasn't as unforgettable, epochal, or whatever as DiDonato's 2009 recital at Zankel, it's because of the higher Handel masterpiece percentage on that night's set.

Like its all-Handel predecessor, the CD itself is good, enjoyable, and well-recorded, but suffers by having been done before the tour and not at one or more of its stops. This makes perfect commercial sense (better to be able to sell and promote the product as you go along!) but is still artistically unfortunate. Live performance is, as DiDonato herself writes, a "mystical chain reaction", and there's no substitute -- or, as of yet, full audio document.

*     *     *
If November's event showed how many sides of the "slow" DiDonato commands, Maria Stuarda shows at what stunning length she commands it. After the brief Elizabeth scene at its start, the second Act is one extended display/test of the Mary's concentration and intimate singing as she moves from one encounter and aspect to the next while remaining ever exposedly central. And here DiDonato carries it off magnificently, maintaining focus and proportion through the whole stretch from confrontation (with Cecil) to remorse (with Talbot), guiding her supporters, and (in odd reversal) consoling Leicester before her death, so that the passage of Mary from uncertainty to death comes as in one long breath of spirit. The consequent hush lingers long in the audience thereafter, well through the thunderous applause at curtain.

DiDonato was the main known quantity in this very first Met production of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda. The unknowns turned out mixed. Very much a success was this third Met production of David McVicar, whose previous drab Anna Bolena disappointed as a follow-up to his astonishing Trovatore. Here he and set/costume designer John Mcfarlane present a wonderful series of contrasting pictures: first a stark red (the place) and white (the occupants) clean- and many-lined interior for Elizabeth's court, then a Romantic swirling-sky backdrop to the trees of Mary's short freedom, into which the variegated outfits and appearances of the court hunting party appear for a glorious visual tableau in the act-ending confrontation. Elizabeth's scene in the second act occurs before an immense and full-detailed seal that takes up the whole rear space; with the transition to Mary's cell there is blackness cut only by shafts of light and black-and-white bits of her handwriting until, for Mary's final scene, black-and-white empty space is transformed not by color but by the play of outside light on the black-clad figures of the crowd. (Color appears only at the end, with Mary's headlining red dress.) For the characters, his choices don't seem strictly necessary in their particular form, but the fact that they have been made seems to guide and anchor the singers' presentation. So Elizabeth is graceless, almost lumbering and bowlegged in moving about, and this almost masculine contrast to Mary's much-discussed feminine appeal makes what she sees in Mary (and the impossibility of her transcending this) very clear, while the involuntary head-tremor Mary acquires between the acts speaks as well as any narration of the years and lost hopes that the story has elided.

Less triumphant was debuting South African soprano Elza van den Heever. As Elizabeth she's not at all called upon to be charming or prettily appealing, which is fortunate because those don't seem to be her strengths. Her sound is, I think, rather hard to like -- it's certainly there, and the notes all sound, but there's a certain harsh quality to the tone that's offset neither by great resonant volume/scale nor by a brilliant flexibility. Everything fits and works in this part of this production, but how many other such are there?

The men, on the other hand, were all terrific. Matthew Polenzani's familiar combination of natural earnestness and lovely tone makes Leicester's appeal to both queens understandable despite all naivete, bass Matthew Rose is strong and firm as Talbot -- his duet with Mary in the second act perhaps the highlight of the evening -- and baritone Joshua Hopkins does much in the small but significant part of Cecil. In the pit Maurizio Benini surely deserves dual credit with DiDonato for the show's extended coherence -- it's significantly better work than I'd have expected from his middling first shows here. Donizetti and Giuseppe Bardari's slow-motion, almost chamber account of Mary Stuart's doom and death is a marvel that probably should have succeeded on the Met stage before... but it's appropriate that our Golden Age of Mezzos (Blythe's Azucena was the night after this, though she's out of tonight's Trovatore) premiered this great Maliban part here.

Time regained

For all the significance that the genre and its institutions had in the 19th century opera world, French Grand Opera turned out to have only two enduring representatives: Don Carlos and Les Troyens, neither of which were particular successes at the time. (Troyens actually never got a full staging during the composer's life.) In fact each, while sticking to the formal requirements of the genre -- five acts, ballets, big crowd scenes with chorus, etc. -- transforms the characteristic aesthetic experience thereof wholesale. One understands why upon actually seeing the then-popular stuff, which one might call the Hollywood summer blockbusters of their day... if one were willing to be slightly unfair to summer blockbusters. Spectacle! Wish-fulfilment in and adoration of the hero! Climax upon climax! More spectacle! In place of these Verdi gives us his characteristic tragic drama -- with true feeling substituted everywhere for the genre's fake stuff -- and Berlioz, well...

Verdi's Don Carlo(s) characters are cursed by the moment, stuck passionately in unbearable stasis for most of the night. In Les Troyens it is time that is the destroyer, the onrush of which will -- as every half-educated viewer knows from a glimpse of the title -- unmake all the cities shown on stage. Why does Berlioz add and foreground Cassandra within Virgil's Book 2 telling of the sack of Troy? Because the outcome is too well-known, is buried under too many irrevocable pasts: Berlioz reaching back to his childhood reaching back to Virgil reaching back to Homer whose account of his already-distant past was the literal beginning of Western literature as such. Not only must Troy fall, but its fall is basically the most famous and significant secular event ever: every viewer must expect the end from the moment it appears, will react to the foolish joy and expectation of the crowd with the same despair and horror as only one who within the story impotently knows the future can express. (In Virgil it not offered in the present; the running commentary is by Aeneas himself who is spinning a tale-within-the-tale.)

And so the tenor-hero Aeneas appears, not wanting to change his personal and private world as Don Carlo(s) or others do, but instead happy before he's dislodged, in fact resisting the inexorable march of time and event across his city's life and his. He fights the intruders, preserves what he can (treasure, immediate family, and a contingent of Trojan men), and tries to make the best of the divine command that drags him onward to "Italie" -- that is, past the razing of his city and into the swirl of the future we know too well... for today we know that Rome, too, falls and becomes picturesque ruin.

He doesn't like it, of course. Neither, necessarily, did Berlioz, whose very first engagement with literature was, by his own account, with the Aenied's Book 4 -- the Dido story. And so after depicting, in its first two acts, the grand and horrible power of onrushing events -- broken only for long breaths of awe and despair and foreboding -- the opera finds its counter-theme: that first magical space of childhood imagination, Dido's court, fleshed out to unmatched fulness by the adult's genius and long engagement. Here Aeneas, his men, his viewers, and perhaps the composer himself find not only respite from fate's whirlwind (it is, after all, a storm that forces the Trojans to Libyan shores) but actual resistance thereto. Dido's Carthage is not, as with so many exotic operatic locales, a palpably ephemeral world born just for a two-hour life (like, say, Minnie's mining camp): doomed it is, but from the beginning it senses the tide of fate -- and opposes it, more and more determinedly, long past the point of reasonableness or decency or self-preservation... so that its defiance lives on, echoing long past the ruin of not only its queen and itself, but of the "eternal" empire it was abandoned to found.

*     *     *
What space does all this blindness, struggle, and agony shelter and nourish and pay for? It's an achieved tranquility almost unheard elsewhere in the operatic canon. The ceremony of the poem's Book 1 and the fevered tragic course of its Book 4 are rearranged by Berlioz and opened out into something like the ur-courtly space, where even the rhythmic impulse of the dances doesn't need to go anywhere in particular. This is, of course, a very French mode, one that appeared in its great courtly period with Lully and Rameau and would reappear in great glory in the late-Romantic Franco-Russian court ballets of Petipa -- and indeed the uncut, full-length Russian re-creations of the latter are about the only other place one can sample these gloriously unhurried flavors today. But in the 1850s this transplanted re-flowering was yet some time off, and with a Revolution and numerous forms of government lying in between, the self-confident courtly mode of the Sun King's time might have seemed as immensely far from Berlioz as Carthage itself.

And yet both live again, all the more interestingly colored by their tenuous temporary existence. Because we -- and the characters, and indeed the composer -- now know what must come next if the flow of time and event and "fate" resumes its normal course, the courtly suspension thereof in ceremony and ordered luxury takes on a simultaneously triumphant and melancholy character -- in fact reflected in the moods of those depicted! -- for as long as it lasts. Because it cannot last long (and, in a way, should not be at all), it might as well last forever -- or seem to. And so the great Act IV sequence of dances, Iopas' song, and the ensembles through the duet "Nuit d'ivresse" again&again tries to settle into this temporary time-defying infinity... and again&again succeeds, for the duration of the piece(s). That we are twice kicked back to the onrushing crisis by Dido's doubts and the echo of Narbal's worry only increases the determination and savor of the next attempt. At last, with the rapt final duet, all is settled... And then the god speaks.

An intermission later, Act V plays out the breaking of the spell -- as we know must happen -- again in stunning Gluck-derived tragic form. But it's the Act IV spell itself -- more civilized than Tristan's, more humane than later ballets' (it's really white act and court act delicately and unstably fused into one) -- that makes Les Troyens a unique and unmissable masterpiece.

The week in NY opera, January 14-20

Winter cold season means I'll get to the backlog... when I can. Also made me miss (and forget to list) Matthew Polenzani and Emalie Savoy's Morgan Library recital yesterday -- ah well.

Metropolitan Opera
Rondine (M/F), Maria Stuarda (T*/SM), Trovatore (W/SE), Comte Ory (Th)
New this week: Le Comte Ory, minus all the original stars but Florez. Don't go. Not while Maria Stuarda and Trovatore are still playing, certainly... Note that Wednesday's Trovatore is Angela Meade's one performance of the run.

* Tuesday's (starred) Stuarda 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.

Prototype
Sumeida's Song (M/T)
Soldier's Songs (W/Th/F)
These new short chamber operas continue their run.

Going big

Il Trovatore - Metropolitan Opera, 1/9/2013
Berti, Racette, Blythe, Markov, Stamboglis / Callegari

An operagoer (like myself) inclined to look first at the soprano spot in a cast listing might perhaps have thought that this would be a smaller-scaled revival, in line with Patricia Racette's familiar and admirable -- though, you know, smaller-scaled -- take on Leonora. That thought would have been completely wrong. Racette is herself, but everyone else involved puts on a hell of a shouting contest... mostly in the best way.

What Stephanie Blythe does is hardly to be called "shouting", but her sound is unbelievably loud and full throughout, as much so in this full-length part as in her gooseflesh-inducing one-act cameo in the fall's later Ballos. Yep, the Golden Age of Mezzos I've mentioned from the blog's very first review is still going.

More surprising were the low-voiced men: Greek bass Christophoros Stamboglis sounded so juicy and rounded as Ferrando that it was easy to overlook his getting tangled up in the rhythms of his initial scene end, and Russian baritone Alexey Markov has completed an impressive transition to the Italian rep with a full, easy, both lyric&strong di Luna... missing only big top notes. Markov is an interesting change from his countryman Hvorostovsky, who premiered the part in this McVicar production: more conventionally handsome and good-sounding and less thoroughly intense/crazy, the current Russian's Count often seems to be wondering why Leonora keeps choosing the odd-looking, hopeless tenor over the nobleman with looks, power, authority, and snappy outfits.

Said odd-looking tenor was Marco Berti, who's improved hugely since being defeated by "Ah si, ben mio" (and everything else delicate) in his first go at the production four seasons back. While still shouting (very) impressively, he's now able to actually sing and phrase (and try to trill!) in delicate bits as well. It's all pretty musical now, but Berti hasn't yet quite gotten to making sense of the small turns and figures in Manrico's music. For loudness plus that feel for the Verdi phrase one will probably have to wait for Yonghoon Lee to sing the part.

Finally, Racette sounded healthy and full-voiced (for her) throughout, but didn't quite deliver interpretive magic on this night's solos. As far ahead on phrase and expression as she anyway is over her predecessor this season Carmen Giannattasio, I wonder if the latter (who was oddly paired with a lighter- and more lyric-voiced tenor) wouldn't have been a better match for the rest of this cast (with Racette better off opposite Jones in the fall). Then the shout-a-thon would have been complete... and/or completely ridiculous.

McVicar's production is still great, and is done justice here. Callegari is still the only conductor this season to provide real forward movement. If you like singing, you'll kick yourself if you miss this run.

The week in NY opera (January 7-13)

A return to semi-normalcy after the holiday season, though winter cold season is also upon us.

Metropolitan Opera
Turandot (M/Th), Maria Stuarda (T/SE), Trovatore (W/SM), Rondine (F)
Two newcomers this week: the alternate cast of Trovatore (Racette, Blythe, Marco Berti, and Alexey Markov) and the Puccini rarity La Rondine. The latter brings the debut of Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais, whose originally scheduled debut two seasons back in Boheme was dropped without much comment. How she'll do in this show so perfectly fit for Angela Gheorghiu, I have no idea. (Had to skip this morning's dress rehearsal.)

Prototype
Sumeida's Song (W/Th/F)
Soldier Songs (F/SE/Su)
These one-hour chamber operas are the most recognizably "opera" offerings of this inaugural "festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre" at multiple downtown venues. The former is the world premiere of young Arab-American composer Mohammed Fairouz’'s setting of a classic 20th century Egyptian theater piece, and the latter a more stylized piece on war by David T. Little, who earlier this season premiered "Dog Days" in NJ.

In case you were wondering

Not enough went right in yesterday afternoon's Chenier to rate a report. Sorry, too much to catch up on... like the closing Troyens, which was really something.