Ouch

I got this press release a few minutes ago:

James Levine to Undergo Surgery for Herniated Spinal Disc

Mr. Ronald Wilford, Chairman of Columbia Artists and James Levine’s manager has announced that Mr. Levine will undergo immediate surgery for a herniated spinal disc. The procedure necessitates withdrawing from his scheduled performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera.

Mr. Levine has withdrawn from performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston on Tuesday, September 29 and Saturday, October 3 and from Carnegie Hall’s opening night performance on Thursday, October 1. Mr. Levine has also withdrawn from performances of Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera on October 6 and 10.

Let's hope he recovers quickly from this latest back issue.

Less Gagnidze

So it seems that last night's performance of Tosca (also featuring an unscheduled Levine cancellation) had George Gagnidze singing the first act and only acting the second while Carlo Guelfi sang from the side. Very odd, and I hope this won't launch another set of revolving door casts as in the last years' Tristans.

The awful truth

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Season six

This back-dated post indexes the blog's commentary on the 2009-2010 Metropolitan Opera season. It will be updated as new reviews are posted.

Season preview

Opening night: Tosca
Magic Flute
Der Rosenkavalier
From the House of the Dead
Figaro
Les Contes d'Hoffmann (and a later cast)
Il Trittico
Elektra
Turandot
Carmen
Simon Boccanegra
Ariadne auf Naxos
Attila
The Nose (guest review) and more
Hamlet
La Traviata
Armida
Tosca (spring revival)
Lulu and more

2009-2010 Met season preview

This is mostly the text of my February post after the initial season announcement, with some edits to reflect changes since then. Cast changes in those months are highlighted.

Note that not every cast combination is listed below -- just most of the recurring ones.

Tosca (new Luc Bondy production)
Mattila, Alvarez, Gagnidze / Levine (opening night through October)
Mattila, Alvarez, Gagnidze / Colaneri (October -- 3 out of 5 performances)
Mattila, Kaufmann, Terfel / Levine (April)
Dessì, Giordani, Gagnidze / Auguin (end of April-May)
New: No more complaints about Juha Uusitalo, who's been mercifully axed from this production (though not -- yet -- the spring Flying Dutchman) at the last minute. Both of Karita Mattila's casts have potential, at least with Levine in the pit; Daniela Dessi, who might be an interesting Italian contrast, is saddled with the uninspiring baton-work of Philippe Auguin.
As for opening night itself, I expect those yearning for a specific Puccini sound will complain as they did about Mattila's Manon Lescaut. But Tosca has been a star singing actress' part for a long, long time, and Bondy has inspired Mattila to some of her best work.

Figaro
de Niese, Relyea, Bell, Skovhus, Leonard / Ettinger (October)
Oropesa, Pisaroni, Dasch, Tezier, Leonard / Luisi (November)
de Niese, Pisaroni, Dasch, Tezier, Leonard / Luisi (December)
John Relyea has been intolerable in the title part, and as curious as I am about unknown debutant Dan Ettinger, I'm sure Fabio Luisi will impress in the pit here. Wait until November and Lisette Oropesa's likely less-affected Susanna.
New: de Niese, who sang well but un-touchingly as Eurydice last season, sings the three December Susannas for which Oropesa had been originally scheduled. Note that Met Council winner (as seen in "The Audition") Angela Meade (of all people) has a one-off Countess in the first of these.

Magic Flute
Phillips, Klink, Miklósa, Maltman, Zeppenfeld / Labadie (September)
Kleiter, Polenzani, Shagimuratova, Gunn, König / Fischer (April)
New: Susanna Phillips (another, most memorable, Met Council winner) is in as Pamina; Genia Kühmeier is out. I'm not sure why, but I'm not complaining either.

Aida
Urmana, Zajick, Botha, Guelfi / Gatti (October)
Urmana, Zajick, Margison, Guelfi / Carignani (end of October-November)
Papian, Zajick, Licitra, Guelfi / Carnignani (April)
Not bad casting -- and some fairly promising conductors -- if you crave the Met's grand Aida. So much for the internet rumor of Salvatore Licitra being finished at the Met... Though I do think Johan Botha is the better bet here.
New: Note that the first group will be the performers in the moviecast.

Barber of Seville
DiDonato, Banks, Pogossov / Benini (October)
DiDonato, Banks, Vassallo / Benini (end of October-November)
Damrau, Brownlee, Vassallo / Benini (February)
I saw the amazing Joyce DiDonato in this production two years ago with Lawrence (the sometime DJ) Brownlee as Almaviva and Russell Braun as Figaro: a pleasant show all around, though DiDonato's was the only major star instrument on display. I suspect these casts will do similarly, though I wouldn't sell Barry Banks short. Conductor Maurizio Benini has grown on me a bit.
New: I doubt DiDonato will be able to top the whole singing on a broken leg/in a wheelchair thing from Covent Garden this summer, but who knows?

Der Rosenkavalier
Fleming, Graham, Persson, Sigmundsson, Vargas / Levine (October)
Fleming, Graham, Schäfer, Sigmundsson, Cutler / Levine (January)
Librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal rolls over in his grave as Renee Fleming reprises her emo Marschallin. The rest of the cast is promising, though, particularly in October. This Strauss opera has never been one of James Levine's strong pieces.
New: Perhaps Levine assistant Jens Georg Bachmann's sole conductorial outing (October 22) could liven things up?

Damnation of Faust
Borodina, Vargas, Abdrazakov / Conlon (October-November)
What a cast! Too bad about the production.

Turandot
Guleghina, Giordani, Poplavskaya / Nelsons (November)
Lindstrom, Giordani, Poplavskaya / Nelsons (November)
Guleghina, Porretta, Poplavskaya / Nelsons (November)
Guleghina, Licitra, Kovalevska / Nelsons (January)
The Met is doing 16 performances of this (in)famously over-the-top Zeffirelli version of Puccini's opera, all but one conducted by the young Latvian newcomer Andris Nelsons. But to see this show without seeing Latvian soprano Maija Kovalevska as Liu would be criminal.
New: The moviecast is in November. As I said, criminal.

From the House of the Dead (new Patrice Chéreau production)
White, Margita, Mattei, Streit, Hoare / Salonen (November-December)
Janacek+Dostoevsky+Salonen+Mattei = must-see+great press+empty seats

Il Trittico
Racette, Lucic, Blythe, Corbelli, Antonenko / Ranzani (November-December)
Racette, Lucic, Blythe, Corbelli, Licitra / Ranzani (December)
Patricia Racette stars in all three operas in Puccini's triptych, and -- with Stephanie Blythe, who stole the show last time -- may finally bring Jack O'Brien's literal production to life. Very promising, though debuting conductor Stefano Ranzani is unknown to me.

Tales of Hoffmann (new Bartlett Sher production)
Calleja, Held, Lindsey, Kim, Netrebko, Gubanova / Levine (December, including first night Gala, and January)
Calleja, Held, Lindsey, Kim, Netrebko, Gubanova / Keenan (December)
Early rumors had Anna Netrebko attempting all the heroines in this, but she's wisely left high-coloratura Olympia to Kathleen Kim and mezzo-ish Giulietta to Ekaterina Gubanova.
Sher's first production at the Met wasn't so impressive, but perhaps he's learned from it. Obviously Levine's performances are the ones to see; his sciatica-induced cancellation drained the life out of an excellently cast (Shicoff, Swenson, Terfel, Mentzer) 2000 revival.
New: Unsurprisingly, originally-announced tenor Rolando Villazon isn't singing Hoffmann: the remarkable Joseph Calleja is. More surprisingly, Rene Pape and Elina Garanca (the latter now singing Carmen instead) aren't going to be in this production either, being now replaced by Alan Held and Kate Lindsey. Held has some big shoes to fill but the other changes are, I think, probably for the better (performance-wise, that is -- not box-office).

Elektra
Bullock, Voigt, Palmer, Schmidt, Nikitin / Luisi (December)
Luisi did well with Strauss' Helena, and he plus the excellent supporting cast should make much of the show whether or not debuting English soprano Susan Bullock crashes or triumphs in the name part -- and whether or not Voigt, who is no longer the creamy-voiced marvel of the 90s (as in the telecast with Behrens), can make Chrysothemis work in her new voice.
New: With Held tied up singing the four villains in Hoffmann, Evgeny Nikitin replaces him here as Orest.

Hansel and Gretel
Persson, Kirchschlager, Langridge, Plowright / Andrew Davis (December-January)
This is a pretty starry lineup for a kids' presentation (with attendant 11AM matinees).

Carmen (new Richard Eyre production, choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon)
Garanča, Alagna, Frittoli, Kwiecien / Nézet-Séguin (New Year's Eve Gala through January)
Borodina, Jovanovich, Kovalevska, Kwiecien / Altinoglu (end of January-February)
Borodina, Jovanovich, Kovalevska, Rhodes / Altinoglu (February)
Gheorghiu, Kaufmann, Kovalevska, Kwiecien / Altinoglu (April-May)
Yes, Angela Gheorghiu's first Carmen attempt onstage anywhere. A better fit for her temperament than Micaëla, but a stretch for her voice. Barbara Frittoli sounded sufficiently poor in her 2007 Suor Angelica that I've wondered why she's still getting big engagements here. In the other cast, Olga Borodina can certainly sing Carmen but seemed bored in her last one: perhaps the new production -- and not injuring her foot -- will energize her a bit. 2007 Tucker-winning tenor Brandon Jovanovich makes his debut opposite, which should be interesting, and Kovalevska's Micaëla has already outshined Borodina once. Much will depend on the two debuting conductors.
New: Whoops! Gheorghiu's big Carmen debut won't happen until April, as she's decided she doesn't want to sing with her husband any more. Elina Garanca withdrew from Hoffmann to take up the title role, which is... interesting. We'll see the London reviews for her and Alagna this October.

Stiffelio
Cura, Marambio, Dobber, Ens / Domingo (January)
This obscure Verdi opera was only moderately interesting when Domingo was actually singing in it and James Levine conducted. Now, account for the mind-boggling gap between Levine and Domingo-as-conductor... A definite miss.

Simon Boccanegra
Domingo, Pieczonka, Giordani, Morris / Levine (January-February)
Domingo sings baritone! -- and not just any baritone part, but the great title role of this Verdi opera. Whether it works or not, it's an event -- though I'll be surprised and cheered if it's as good as the last revival.

Ariadne auf Naxos
Stemme, Ryan, Kim, Connolly / Petrenko (February)
Low-glamour but high-promise cast in a great opera and production. Kirill Petrenko's conducting last time was routine.
New: Out (as Zerbinetta) -- Aleksandra Kurzak, charming in last season's Rigoletto. In -- Kathleen Kim, who almost stole the show in Rusalka, and might well steal the show in Hoffmann earlier in the season.

La Fille du Régiment
Damrau, Florez, Palmer, Te Kanawa / Armiliato (February)
If you want to hear this Donizetti piece again, the singing here's bound to be good. Dame Kiri is in a non-singing role, however.

La Boheme
Netrebko, Beczala, Cabell, Finley / Armiliato (February-March)
Netrebko, Beczala, Swenson, Petean / Armiliato (March)
Will get a lot more press than this season's revival, but won't necessarily be as good. The role of Mimi suits Netrebko's current voice, though.

Attila (new Pierre Audi production)
Abdrazakov, Urmana, Vargas, Alvarez / Muti (February-March)
Abdrazakov, Urmana, Vargas, Alvarez / Armiliato (March)
This is not only conductor Riccardo Muti's Metropolitan Opera debut but the house premiere of this Verdi rarity. Don't miss it, and buy your tickets to Muti's performances early. Intense young tenor Russell Thomas has one performance (March 19) in place of Ramon Vargas -- both should be interesting.

The Nose (new William Kentridge production)
Szot, Geitz, Popov / Gergiev (March)
This is the Met premiere of this early Shostakovich piece, and the debut of all three principal singers as well as the production team. If Gergiev makes you nauseous these days, there is one performance (March 25) led by his fellow Mariinsky conductor Pavel Smelkov. Very interesting, though by no means a sure bet.

Hamlet (new production imported from Geneva)
Keenlyside, Dessay, Larmore, Morris, Spence / Langrée (March-April)
Another Natalie Dessay showpiece, with another Natalie Dessay mad scene. Who can resist?

La Traviata
Gheorghiu, Valenti, Hampson / Slatkin (end of March-April)
2002 Met Council Finals winner James Valenti finally makes his company debut as Alfredo. Gheorghiu's Violetta and Hampson's Germont are likely familiar, but by the time of this revival it will have been a dozen years since Leonard Slatkin conducted at the Met.

Armida (new Mary Zimmerman production)
Fleming, Brownlee, Ford, Zapata, Banks, van Rensburg / Frizza (April, including first night Gala, and May)
Fleming in her element -- Rossini's take on Tasso. Don't miss, and buy your tickets early.

Flying Dutchman
Uusitalo, Voigt, Gould / Ono (April-May)
See note on Tosca. Tenor Stephen Gould's debut is interesting, but this revival's likely a miss unless Uusitalo shows well in the Puccini.
New: Or unless he doesn't sing this either...

Lulu
Petersen, Lehman, von Otter, Morris / Levine (May)
The greatest, most gorgeous (particularly when Levine conducts it) modernist opera gets a surprisingly starry cast.

Gagnidze fans, rejoice

A reader notes that unimpressive baritone Juha Uusitalo is out of not only Monday's opening night gala of Tosca, but the entire run. George Gagnidze, who sang Scarpia in last year's NY Philharmonic Tosca, will now sing in all non-Terfel performances.

One week

The happiest thing about opera is that it occurs in the now -- palpably so. The experience of the operagoer may well, as familiarity grows, expand to enclose future (the near pleasure of getting one's tickets or wondering what the season may bring, as well as the more distant games of what future lineups would be pleasant to see, or what some singer or conductor might become over time) and, of course, past (both the vast art history in which musicologists swim and the closer performance nostalgia into which many a devoted fan has sunk) but these are secondary to the existence of a performance in the present, as the many and various times of a house full of people sync into a single now as each makes his way through the music and story, the sounds and meanings made on that specific occasion. It's this now created each night anew that is important: the great mystery that makes everything else about the opera world tolerable.

All this by way of saying that if you've been away from opera for the summer months -- or longer -- or have never seen an opera at all (if by some chance someone of that description is reading this blog)! -- you may have missed some number of great performances and rather more less-great news and gossip, but none of that has any bearing on what you may or may not experience at to the Met season-opening Tosca next Monday. (Or, of course, any other performance.)

102 minutes

Via the History Channel, eyewitness video footage from this day in 2001.

A "Day of Service"? What a grotesquely vile perversion of memory. Watch the footage instead.

Recreation

After his failure last season in Don Giovanni (partially redeemed later), I wasn't sure what to expect from Louis Langree's Mostly Mozart efforts and -- though largely for other reasons -- missed most of them. But last night's performance of Haydn's Creation (in English) was indisputably successful, with Langree leading the festival orchestra, the Concert Chorale of New York, and three very pleasurable soloists: Carolyn Sampson, Matthew Polenzani, and Peter Rose (all, of course, native English speakers). The only glitch was an included libretto different at many points from what the performers were singing.

No surprise in Langree's conducting success, I suppose: Haydn's masterpiece is almost an experiment in how far one can go without the Satanic element, not just in story -- he ends it just before the temptation, expulsion, and all that business -- but in overall aesthetic as well. Don Giovanni, though less than a dozen years older, breathes a far different air.

*     *     *
I hope to catch up on a number of unposted summer topics in the next week or so. Then, a revision/update of the 2009-2010 Met season preview.

Beyond Meyerbeer and Wagner

Les Huguenots -- Bard SummerScape, 8/05/09
Spyres, Deshorties, Morley, Lenormand, Schroeder, Volpe, Bindel / Botstein

Giacomo Meyerbeer's blockbuster of 1836 is, these days, more often mentioned than performed, and I was glad to see a fully staged version at last, apparently uncut. But all the committed and commendable efforts of the performers couldn't turn this Grand Opera into great opera.

Meyerbeer's defenders (and more and more seem to have been appearing these last decades) generally blame the eclipse of this long-time operatic king of Paris on Wagner, and it is again in this general context that Leon Botstein and Bard presented this revival. Many of the corrective points the defenders wish to make -- that Wagner learned much from Meyerbeer, that his later slurs were in bad faith, etc. -- are surely true (much of the nonsense in Twilight could perhaps have been avoided if Wagner had taken a better model of what Big Opera was about) and academically important, but that doesn't mean we're wrong to have stopped listening to Meyerbeer either.

In fact, this performance didn't get me thinking about Wagner at all, but about another great opera composer who didn't quite succeed in conquering Paris. Verdi's Don Carlos is now -- by some odd twist -- not only the one French grand opera firmly in the repertory, but seems at this distance to have been written as a sort of corrective to the genre's epitome. (Though written many years before Verdi's first Parisian piece and three decades before the original version of Don Carlos, Huguenots was ubiquitous in Paris -- and elsewhere in Europe, including Berlin and Vienna -- for a long, long time after its premiere.) Don Carlos picks up more than a few of the potentially disastrous threads in Huguenots -- the dimwitted tenor "hero" whom others somehow admire despite his more or less screwing everything up; the soprano's marriage to the wrong man; the full-throated anti-clericism; the wild and extreme swings of mood and sound; intrigue at a Valois court (Elisabeth, the soprano lead of Don Carlos, was in fact the elder sister of Marguerite de Valois who is the second soprano of Huguenots: a marriage between Marguerite and the historical Don Carlos was actually contemplated after Elisabeth married his father instead); etc. -- and makes of them a magnificent tragic whole. Huguenots itself... doesn't.

Of course part of the difference is that Meyerbeer set a libretto by Scribe and Émile Deschamps, while Verdi's text was fashioned after Schiller. But each composer presumably got just what he wanted: Verdi's own touches, for example, are all over his Don Carlos libretto (not least in the bizarre ending). And the musical contrast is just as distinct: to my ears Huguenots contains one really impressive episode -- the Act IV love duet between Raoul and Valentine -- and a lot of decent but ultimately forgettable and forgotten virtuosic filler. But Verdi must have liked that duet too, because today it sounds an early draft of the Elisabeth/Carlos reunion... which doesn't come at an utterly hilarious juncture of the action.

By Act IV, the tenor Raoul has, from his own boneheaded conclusion-jumping, not only ruined Valentin's life by refusing to marry her, but thereby broken his own oath, insulted the Queen and Valentine's family (her father, at that point ready to make peace, thereafter leads the slaughter of the Protestants), and inflamed a civil conflagration that will soon kill him and everyone he cares about. Valentine nevertheless has saved Raoul's life (from a plot by her father), and the Queen's revealed to him how badly he screwed up in the first place. Raoul comes on (full of self-pity), after a sorrowful aria by Valentine in her new husband's home, and is quickly rushed off to hiding. He overhears a plot by the Catholics, and returns from his hiding-place to tell Valentine he has to go save his fellow Protestants... Until she tells him she loves him.

At this point one can only laugh. He's ruined her life and horribly insulted her from pique, and despite this she's exposed herself to yet more ridicule and hatred by saving him from her father... and now he's suddenly swayed (not to apologize or make amends, mind you -- being a tenor hero apparently means never having to say you're sorry) from a much more important duty by "I love you"!? That the music soon rises to a higher level than the rest of the piece makes the scene even more surreal.

With all good will, we have to face that Meyerbeer's dramatic sense was that of, well, Joel Silver: great at getting like clockwork from one big over-the-top kaboom to another, but with no sense of when too much -- piling up crowd scenes, plot twists, and long virtuosic displays upon themselves -- becomes absurd. Botstein attempts to rescue Meyerbeer from himself by celebrating the "ironic distance" created by this pileup of artifice. But the piece itself isn't ironically distant at all: its mode isn't winking elegance but the voluptuousness of ever-more-bloody emotionalizing. Meyerbeer himself may have taken an ironic view of his effect-conjuring, but it's anachronistic to suggest that he was some postmodernist intending us to do the same. Botstein, it seems to me, reads Huguenots as camp.

This does, I think, get close to the mystery of the opera's rise and fall. For as Hollywood-style popular art, many of the inanities fall into place: Raoul is a fawned-upon blockhead because he's there to satisfy a certain Romantic hero wish-fulfillment fantasy of men in the audience (the drawn-out Act I finale hardly makes sense otherwise), Marcel's bloody intolerance (symmetrical with the most extreme Catholic's -- he'd no doubt have led the slaughter had the positions been reversed) is celebrated because he represents oppositional chic, etc. But tastes in popular art change more decisively than in high culture, and even if it would swing back the audiences that might make this stuff a hit don't look to opera for their fix these days.

*     *     *
In any case, the singers did well. Although perhaps only Lindemann soprano Erin Morley (Marguerite de Valois) and young-ish bass Peter Volpe (Marcel) showed the pure sonic glamour that Huguenots might have showcased in ages past, everyone sang well or better. The particular triumph, though, was of Europe-based American tenor Michael Spyres, who not only survived the torturous and punishing role of Raoul but showed an impressively expressive middle voice (which reminded me a bit of the young Alagna's) throughout. I'm not sure how he'd fare in a Met-sized hall, but I'm at a loss to think who could have sung the part with any more style or vocal pleasure here. Botstein and the American Symphony supported the cast and work with relish.

The production was less happy. I guess it was notable for being the first opera production I've seen with MMA (mixed martial arts) in it, but otherwise it's best forgotten. Director Thaddesus Strassberger seems to have taken his aesthetic cue from Meyerbeer's too-muchness, piling on pretty much every anti-clerical bit of religious imagery one could think of (well, there was no child molestation at least). So Act II's genre gypsy interlude turns into "Scenes from a Paris Banlieue" (the gypsy girls gang-attacked for being insufficiently "modest"), while Act IV's weapon-blessing scene has a distinct lack of weapons being blessed but does include one of the two MMA fighters (are they supposed to represent the aggressiveness of men vs Marguerite's love-court? the Catholic-Protestant conflict? -- who knows...) being strung up, speared, and put in a crucifixion pose. And it's no surprise by the time of the last-act massacre that we're shown no actual men being massacred but sexual violence (by monk-robed Catholics, of course) with, downstage, four naked women dressed up as Jesus on the cross.

But other aspects of the production are much too little: everyone but Valentine is outfitted in costumes either drab (all the men, the uni-color ladies at court) or ridiculous (Marguerite in her Act III reappearance, apparently wearing something borrowed from Julie Taymor's Queen of the Night), and one of the grand spectacular scenes (Marguerite's ball that starts Act V) is totally cheapskated out of the show, being essentially unstaged (the curtain is used, and only Raoul is seen at all). Did Bard run out of money? Meyerbeer at least realized the need for scenic variety.

Bori sings Rondine (a test)

I'd mentioned possibly posting this back in January, and we'll see if this method works. The live performance of the Puccini opera (Act II) is from 1934: besides the great Lucrezia Bori (more on her in January's post) as Magda, we hear Mario Chamlee as Ruggero, Florence Macbeth as Lisette, and Marek Windheim as Prunier.

Act II.mp3

Technical difficulties

I was finalizing my post on Lucia this morning when I noticed the blog wasn't loading properly: it seems the Googlepages file purge has finally hit, zapping the css and favicon files that I had uploaded there for simplicity. (In non-tech terms: all the formatting info vanished.) I've reverted to an old old template that doesn't require off-site files but, as you may notice, it's a bit buggy. (E.g. the color scheme switching is broken again.)

I'm working on a more elegant permanent solution. If anyone knows a good place to host blog-related css and favicon files for hotlinking, please send me an email.

The RSS feed should remain unaffected.

UPDATE (7/14): OK, I think I found a hosting fix. And an opportunity for other stuff, perhaps. For some reason color switching is still down, though.

Teenagers of Lammermoor

Lucia di Lammermoor -- Opera New Jersey, 7/10/09
Oropesa, Boyd, Dubin, Casas, Candia, Stayton / Ching

As often as she may break down onstage, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is apparently indestructible. A few of the right elements and a performance hits home, whether on a grand world stage or in a regional performance where the chorus looks like some high school AV club (with a corresponding level of seriousness and menace), the tenor blows his most important high note, and the show cuts not only the Wolf's Crag scene but the Raimondo-Lucia scene while featuring some real "Huh!?" moments from the director.

These all, as you may guess, were part of Friday night's Opera New Jersey summer opener in Princeton. And yet it was a success, a real taste of opera's glory. What was needed? Just a fairly handsome and functional traditional physical production by set designer Carey Wong, costume designer Patricia Hibbert, et al.; a conductor (composer Michael Ching) who could hold the young ensemble together; and... a star, of course -- a soprano to seize one's attention on the unhappy title character's behalf.

This was Lisette Oropesa's first Lucia anywhere, and though I've heard her (including at the 2005 Met Council Finals) display a musical maturity far beyond her (now twenty-five) years I half-expected a work in progress with only intermittent flashes of whole success. But while I'm sure her account of the part will deepen, her performance this night was not only already a success but one identifiably her own. Her voice strengthened act by act, but Oropesa had no problem with the singing even from the start, showing an easy trill and confidence through the part's range. (Though she's obviously in the lighter line of Lucias, Oropesa's voice doesn't naturally sit super-high.) And her character snapped into focus as soon as Edgardo stepped onstage: between them he is the wild one, temperamental and touchy, with her dropping her own moody fancies to gently calm and cajole him on their love's behalf. The knife that kills her unwanted husband begins a long, long way from this young girl's hand.

It's even more unfortunate, then, that her scene with Raimondo is omitted. I've never seen this cut before, but whether it was for one of the performers or overall length or some other reason the decision was apparently made beforehand -- the program's plot synopsis does not include the chopped action. What's lost is not only a lovely bit of music but an essential point in the story's development: with Raimondo -- her priest and ally -- at last counseling her to give in and marry her brother's choice Lucia is alone against both earth and heaven, a siege she has not the heroism to resist.

She is nevertheless, of course, at last provoked to reject this married outcome in the most decisive way, and the subsequent mad scene is where Oropesa best shone. It was as coherent and moving an interpretation as I've heard anywhere, but perhaps more importantly utterly commanding throughout in person and character (though again in a gentler, less wild way than, say, Natalie Dessay's overpowering depiction of sexual un-repression). Lucia's dreams and desires, squashed over the previous acts, finally get their airing before her end, and they turn out in this case to be surprisingly wholesome. She plays the imagined wedding fairly straight (with the right touches of innocent joy), and it is heartbreaking when Edgardo's rejection eventually dawns on her. "Spargi d'amaro", the final part of the scene, is preceded by a chilling laugh (the final cracking of sanity), and the pyrotechnics -- capped on this night by a dead-on final high note -- well depict her conclusive dissolution.

*     *     *
Best of the remaining cast was baritone Eric Dubin as Lucia's brother Enrico: as in last month's Rape of Lucetia (where he played Junius), he sings well and characterizes his ambitious, less-than-virtuous role with some real zest. Also commendable were bass Rubin Casas, a late substitution as Raimondo, and Taylor Stayton, who despite some unsteadiness on top showed a promising tenor instrument and stage presence as Lucia's short-lived husband Arturo. Paul Nicosia as Normanno and Cathleen Candia as Alisa left on me little impression beyond youth.

It is hard to dislike Jonathan Boyd (singing Lucia's doomed lover Edgardo): he is so unreservedly ardent, and seems to inspire Oropesa to intensify her characterization. But his singing, though forceful, seems something of a mess, with not much bel canto style to channel and elaborate the ardor, and a high note technique that was iffy on the night. Act I went well, but the climactic curse at the end of Act II -- yes, the A and B-flat that undid Rolando Villazon -- was squawked out, and the climaxes of the last act's double-aria finale sounded effortful and a bit too falsettish (if still loud and full). Boyd did, as I said, catch the character, and thus contributed not a little to the success of the show, but it would be better if his vocalizing caught up.

*     *     *
Director John Hoomes lays on the show's traditional base some overtly "directorial" elements that don't much help. The beginning I thought designed to confuse: over the short orchestral introduction we see, in fuzzy light, a pair of young lovers eagerly meeting at the well -- and then the man stabs the woman. This is, of course, the backstory to Lucia's ghost tale (and we see a ghost dutifully projected onto the stage for various bits of Act I), but with the explanation coming a whole scene later, the relevance is long unclear. Given that the opera actually starts with the backstory of Edgardo meeting Lucia and the search for his identity, their past meeting would seem to make more sense.

But the real head-scratcher comes at the end: being, apparently, one of the few people who liked Mary Zimmerman's interjection of Lucia's ghost into Edgardo's closing suicide, Hoomes has Oropesa come out herself from the left (after he stabs himself, though) as, I guess, the ghost. Unfortunately, Hoomes also likes to show corpses (Arturo's bloody body is carted down the staircase before Lucia arrives) and by the time Oropesa comes out Lucia has already appeared on stage, dragged in on a bier on the right so Edgardo can address his final aria directly to her corpse. And not a covered corpse, either: he pulls the sheet off her head and shoulders to reveal a body double with the same reddish hair/wig and outfit. In other words, Lucia is on stage twice at the same time, looking exactly the same on both sides (and incidentally nothing at all like the projected ghost)... How did this not get edited out?

*     *     *
I have no idea if Oropesa could or will ever sing Lucia at the Met, but that seems more reason to see this show.

Moviecasting crosses genres

If you didn't see the interesting article in Friday's WSJ, London's National Theatre is entering the HD moviecasting market with four live* play transmissions beginning on Thursday. The list of US venues is here.

Unfortunately this first show -- Racine's Phèdre (in the Ted Hughes translation) starring Helen Mirren -- is already sold out in its only same-day venue in New York City, but both Walter Reade and BAM will show it delayed in July.

Incidentally, the Met is offering summer reruns of its own shows beginning late August in the Lincoln Center plaza.

(* Live, I believe, in Europe, but delayed until the evening here.)

Summer addition

I'd somehow overlooked that the end of June brings three opera-in-concert programs from NYCO as part of the River to River Festival: Magic Flute (shortened kids' version, in English), La Navarraise (seriously!), and a mixed aria show. These are now on the summer opera listing.

Please, incidentally, pardon the insufficient editing of the previous post -- it was bizarre personal happenstance earlier in the week combined with having to run out that evening to see (an unforgettable) Giselle.