Actually, I suspect he's right

Via Intermezzo, an interview with Marcelo Alvarez:

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

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

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

Addicted to love

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

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

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

Bryn Terfel, superstar

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

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

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

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

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

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

Duty's call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wet eye, dry eye

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does The Nose mean?

Well, it depends.

The Nose the story/opera means a bunch of things, not least of which is the (extremely funny, in this case) reduction of man when social leverage continues to have its bite despite and because of the utter failure of rationality. That this may not be far from the true experience of Russian life -- whether in the 1830s, 1930s, or today -- is of course the point.

The Nose the William Kentridge production means, well, another bunch of things, but not least "in the beginning was the word", as public scenes of cathedral, newspaper office, and railway station are quite literally rendered from their essential texts (Bible, newsprint, and train schedules respectively). On top of this architectural language are more unruly tangles of words: borrowed, assembled, made up; in Russian, English, and a mix; texts, slogans, piled on top of graphics and each other -- and even costumes -- exhilaratingly to animate the visual face of the production. Having subtitles visible onstage (or on a little ledge below the main action) here was a neat further bit of word overflow, the opposite of Patrice Chereau's lazy/willful non-adaptation to the house for the earlier Janacek.

The Nose the first truly crossover-audience hit of the Gelb regime means, perhaps, that the outreach and cross-marketing to other culture-consumption segments -- kicked off at the very start of his tenure -- has begun to pay off. Not having a moviecast and subsequent video version was an odd outcome, however: with the production heading off to be re-mounted in France, the media cash-in may fall to another company. But perhaps the Met's retained exclusive video rights for the show's inevitable revival.

I also, as it turned out, agreed with everything in the earlier guest review.

Lonesome Ariadne

[Expect some old reviews here for a while as I clear out the backlog.]

Ariadne auf Naxos -- Metropolitan Opera, 2/8/2010 & 2/15/2010
Stemme, Kim, Ryan, Connolly, Ryan / Petrenko

Acres of velvet greeted this show on February 8, a problem the Met more or less successfully papered over by the next week. On the one hand, it's understandable: none of the principals yet has the sort of local name recognition (Nina Stemme is, of course, much bigger abroad) that puts butts in seats, while the opera itself appeals strongly to cognoscenti but is, again, unknown to the casual operagoer. On the other hand, the revival of Elijah Moshinsky's now-classic production brought together a uniformly strong cast for the most successful Ariadne here in a while.

Stemme first: best known for singing the big Wagner parts in Europe, the Swedish soprano actually made her debut here a decade ago, singing Senta opposite James Morris' Flying Dutchman. Her voice then seemed a bit small for the house, but it's now strong and full through the whole of Ariadne's substantial range.

In fact Stemme's success here was largely due to pure vocal strength. Ariadne's part (as previously noted) is half lyric solos, half Wagnerian shouting match with Bacchus, and it's in this latter part that Stemme really shines. Interestingly, the scale of her soprano allows Stemme to be more refinedly warm and vulnerable as the volume and accompaniment swells -- naturally full-voiced, she never has to just go as loud as she can to keep up.

She catches the character too, and though -- as with other recent Met Ariadnes -- the great lyric beginning is not quite tragic, not quite the lament and rapt death-invocation of a woman wholly at the end of her rope, Stemme's Ariadne is at least princely, knows herself to be born to some grand and awful destiny. Even in the forced interaction with Zerbinetta et al. that this production pushes on its Ariadne (the direction has not much changed from five years ago), Stemme does not (as predecessors did) break her character's spell -- instead, she reacts with a decided impishness that ever-more-strongly proclaims her status.

It helped, of course, that Stemme was paired with a most honest coquette of a Zerbinetta in Kathleen Kim. The recent Olympia gives us a Zerbinetta who's neither showing off nor showing up Ariadne, but living and preaching her own credo with utter sincerity -- and, despite full measure of worldliness and happy vulgarity (until the static Attila premiere, it seemed every Met production this season would have onstage dry-humping, and this revival was no exception), not a bit of cynicism or world-weariness. Those who expected a more Mephistophelean contrast to Ariadne may have been disappointed, but Kim's Zerbinetta was as memorable as her other recent outings.

The February 8 performance was, in fact, Canadian tenor Lance Ryan's Met debut. He was scheduled to begin the week before, but this revival got off to a poor start when Ryan got sick and had to be replaced by a less satisfactory Bacchus. The role is, of course, a prime exhibit for Strauss' proverbial dislike of tenors, and difficult even for the best. On his debut night, Ryan sounded so good -- clear, young, and powerful -- in his early offstage shouts of "Circe!" that his ordinary onstage singing was a disappointment. (I believe offstage parts are mike-assisted at the Met, but it shouldn't have made such a difference.) A week later he sounded reasonably good throughout.

Mezzo Sarah Connolly gave a fully realized and detailed performance of the Composer with no flaws (even the high parts that usually remind us of the part's soprano character -- Lotte Lehmann herself premiered it -- were easily handled) that lacked only the divine fire of genius.

The real strength of the Met showed in its roster of bit players for this revival. Not just the nymphs -- Erin Morley, Anne-Carolyn Bird, and Tamara Mumford -- but the whole supporting cast sang beautifully and well. Most notable among the men were tenors Tony Stevenson (the Dancing Master) and Sean Panikkar (Brighella): Stevenson excellent as ever in character parts, and Panikkar, though still not wholly refined in style continuing to show a standout clarion instrument.

Kirill Petrenko was fairly routine in conducting the previous run of Ariadne, but did better this time: though still generally taking the textural approach to the piece (like Kempe's famous recording), Petrenko didn't lack much in dramatic momentum, and brought some sensitivity to the final half-hour of Wagnerian crescendo.

*     *     *
Next May's return brings more star power, particularly in the pit with Fabio Luisi (whose Lulu this spring should be most interesting). But Stemme has become a remarkable singer, and her absence -- both in that Ariadne and in the season's Wagner selections -- is unfortunate. Of course, given last year's Ring cast shakeups, it's not impossible we'll see Stemme somehow. I'd love to hear her Walküre Brünnhilde.

[UPDATE 4/9: I'm told by someone who should know that Bacchus is not mike-aided for his initial offstage music. So more credit to Ryan, then...]

Not April Fool's

For those who were wondering, the calendar has reached April 2 and the Met website still shows Karita Mattila, apparently suffering from back issues, out of her remaining Toscas (to be replaced by Patricia Racette) and Leonard Slatkin out of the remaining Traviatas (to be replaced by a number of people including Yves Abel).

Racette has done well here in Puccini (though not so well in Verdi), so the show may still work... if the most fragile and important back at the Met -- James Levine's -- makes it back on time. Meanwhile on last night's evidence the Tosca to see in April may be in Colorado, but more on that in a full post.

Ophelia is dead

[Pardon the delay -- Blogger ate an earlier draft of this review.]

Hamlet -- Metropolitan Opera, 3/16/10
Keenlyside, Petersen, Larmore, Spence, Morris / Langree

If Verdi's Attila shows a still youthfully vigorous operatic Romanticism, Ambroise Thomas offers quite a later thing with his so-called Hamlet. It's the hapless and doomed Ophelia of which this Second Empire piece makes much: her presence onstage ignites the music and drama, climaxing in a mad- and death-scene tour de force that makes up the entire fourth act (except the ballet, which this production omits). Hamlet's own spirit, despite Simon Keenlyside's best efforts, is distinctly absent -- a circumstance fatal to any literate English-speaking listener.

The crushed innocent girl is, of course, a classic Romantic-opera trope: most perfectly put to music in 1835's Lucia di Lammermoor, we see her appear over and over in this period, whether not-quite-tragically as La sonnambula's Amina or in Verdi's own hand as Luisa Miller. (By Maeterlinck and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande she reappears transformed: no longer crushed -- though still too fragile to live -- and perhaps no longer quite innocent either -- though she's definitely not guilty.)

But compare Lucia to Ophelia. Lucia, though a pawn in her brother's political struggle, is an active (if coerced) agent of her destiny, shaping the story twice by decisive deeds: first in accepting the marriage arranged for her (and abandoning her love Edgardo), and then again in murdering this husband before herself falling into madness and death. Poor Ophelia falls in love with Hamlet but remains so far from the central struggle and the forces buffeting him that she never even finds out what's going on, much less influences it.

This is fine in itself -- and the otherwise uninspired import production by Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser does well in highlighting her impotent isolation by leaving all of the peasants offstage for the whole mad scene, which Ophelia therefore sings solo more-or-less in her own head -- but we have moved very far along the Romantic career. Of that aesthetic's two characteristic themes -- "the infinity and then the infinite uselessness of human subjectivity and individuality", as last month's post put it -- the latter has here become so dominant that only she at the furthest remove from action is endowed with real vitality: the rest is depressingly conventional. Thomas, as we may remember, came to prominence turning another literary masterwork into a piece about its innocent and hapless girl (though it's true that Mignon is a much more memorable character than Wilhelm Meister himself, and that her songs have inspired settings from Goethe's younger contemporary Schubert to the present day); his imagination's preference for worldly impotence seems -- whether because of 1812, 1848, 1851, some more specifically cultural-aesthetic evolution, or his own personal taste -- to have been characteristic.

*     *     *
Shakespeare's Hamlet is himself not exactly an action hero: he is, as most tragic protagonists, one caught in a situation where his particular virtue only leads him more surely to doom. But if Hamlet's quick, dissatisfied, hyper-aware spirit keeps him too long from his deed, it nevertheless dominates and illuminates the show, the great bulk of which is -- no less than the play he stages within his play to expose Claudius -- the very product of Hamlet's dilation, and thoroughly colored by the character that caused it. As much as he tries to use it, the tragic hero's virtue isn't effective -- but it is interesting and significant.

There is nothing of this in Thomas. In every bar and line of music and text his Hamlet is enmeshed in a conventionality and Second Empire syrupiness that even the most energetic performer can't pierce. The mercurial, hyper-articulate prince is made into a leaden, lovesick mooner, and while this sort of bastardization is pretty effective for German Romantic figures -- e.g. Faust and Hoffmann (both written by the same librettist team of Jules Barbier and Michel Carré that did this very opera) -- it makes utter nonsense of Hamlet, happy ending or no.

*     *     *
All the performers did well, although perhaps a really exciting conductor like Nézet-Séguin (Louis Langree, you may recall, once made Don Giovanni boring) could have made more of the score. Perhaps the out-from-illness Natalie Dessay could have provided a stronger star turn in Ophelia's big scenes, but I doubt that would have made an overall difference. Though his interest and inspiration was only in Ophelia, Thomas kept in all the other, less interesting (to him, and -- as set by him -- to us) bits from Shakespeare's play, and they weigh down the whole something awful. If he, anticipating Stoppard, could have cut everything out from the play that's not Ophelia, Thomas might have had a masterpiece... Alas.

Met Council Finals 2010

Perhaps it was the return of conductor Marco Armiliato: he led the last exciting edition of the Council Finals (the much-seen 2007 version). Perhaps just luck. But yesterday afternoon's event more than made up for the lackluster 2008 and 2009 Metropolitan Opera National Council Grand Finals Concerts. Pretty much all of the participants this year were impressive, some extremely so. But more than that -- and more than in previous years when just one or two singers electrified the house on their own -- they all, particularly in the second half of the show, seemed to feel and feed off of the occasion, delivering a string of frankly inspired performances that made this an event I'll long remember.

Although the singers sang one aria each in both halves of the program, I'll list and consider both together below. The order of the singers remained the same.

Haeran Hong (soprano, 28)
"Je suis encore tout étourdie" (Manon)
"Deh vieni" (Figaro)
Hong is a very good version of the cute soprano, charming of form, manner, and voice, though the sound has a bit more meat than ethereality for her particular type. The Juilliard grad is well-schooled musically as well, and only lacked a bit of... magic, for want of a better word.

Maya Lahyani (mezzo, 27)
"Deh! proteggimi" (Norma)
"Près des remparts de Séville" (Carmen)
I really liked what I saw from this Israeli mezzo. Her firm & even instrument is pleasing in a standard sort of way, but at the service of her wonderful musical sense (and/or ability to follow Armiliato -- does it matter which?) and intense seriousness it's quite something. Lahyani may have hurt herself with her aria choices, though -- the Adalgisa scene is a revealing slow selection but lacks a contrasting cabaletta, and though the Carmen bit showed off her rhythmic facility it's still short and not hugely ambitious.

Rena Harms (soprano, 25)
Nedda's bird song (Pagliacci)
"Tu che di gel sei cinta" (Turandot)
I found Harms' voice uneven, and unsatisfactory when tested at the bottom in Nedda's aria. She did do well in delivering Liu's aria, though.

Nathaniel Peake (tenor, 28)
"Ah, la paterna mano" (Macbeth)
"O paradis" (L'Africaine)
Hear Peake sing one note and you're pleased and impressed: he has real force and some money notes. Hear him sing a series of notes and you wince: he puts them out one by one with little apparent sense of line or phrase, and with a really unstylish bit-by-bit overemphasis in the Verdi. He's got the sound production, but isn't 28 a bit late to start becoming a musician? The big YAPs he's done -- with, incidentally, companies (SFO, Houston) represented on the judging panel -- don't seem to have helped.

Lori Guilbeau (soprano, 24)
"Toi qui sus le néant" (Don Carlos)
"Give me some music" (Antony and Cleopatra)
Guilbeau managed to bore for 3/4 of Elisabetta's heart-rending aria (in French!), but woke up for a rousing end. Barber's languorous music for Cleopatra was a better fit for this young singer, alive from start to finish and more satisfying, I think, than Lauren Flanigan's effort in the full concert version last year. Guilbeau's voice is strong, compact, and focused though not, at this young age, quite expansive. Very interested to see what it becomes in ten or so years.

Hyo Na Kim (mezzo, 27)
"Smanie implacabili" (Cosi)
"O mon Fernand" (La Favorite)
The rendition of the Dorabella aria was one of the two most impressive performances of the day (the other being also from Cosi -- see below). Kim has a voice to savor: flexible, of course, but more naturally and effortlessly large-limbed and expansive than any other of the day, the sort of sound that loves a big house and vice versa. And though she doesn't seem a natural actress (at least as Dorabella -- the tragic grandeur of Leonore seemed an easier fit) Kim did show well-developed musical understanding in both pieces, with an excellent sense for phrase and line. You can see her as Dorabella in full with Mannes May 6 and 7, but she should really be singing big parts at big houses.

Rachel Willis-Sørensen (soprano, 25)
"Einsam in trüben Tagen" (Lohengrin)
"Come scoglio" (Mozart)
Willis-Sørensen has a hint of a quick vibrato underlying her voice, less audible at top, more audible -- and helpful in making an impact -- at the bottom. It's an interesting, effective sound that should work for many parts. She took a bit to warm up to the interpretive side of Elsa, but when she came back for the second half in Fiordiligi's aria she really seized the moment. The voice has character, yes, but it also passes all of Mozart's cruel tests: strong through the range, surprising in flexibility, and (not least because of its character) very effective at conveying strong emotion. Willis-Sørensen went all-out, offering not only virtuosity and gripping seriousness but flashes of humor, and though she nearly ran out of gas on the last high notes it worked: the audience rightly wouldn't stop clapping even long after she'd gone offstage, though a competition like this certainly won't allow a curtain call.

Elliot Madore (baritone, 22)
"Batter my heart" (Doctor Atomic)
Largo al factotum (Barber of Seville)
Curtis student Madore is an energetic and game performer, and though I can't help sensing something a bit put-together in both his sound and stage manner, they're both very impressive and well-developed for a 22-year-old.

Leah Crocetto (soprano, 30)
"Ernani involami" (Ernani)
"Ch'il bel sogno di Doretta" (Rondine)
Yes she can, in fact, sing "Ernani involami" -- impressively well, too. She can even sing the cabaletta, which the audience didn't expect -- again, pretty well and with some big top notes. How many sopranos can say that? Crocetto has a big figure, but not as big as Angela Meade (the last notable dramatic coloratura in this event) and perhaps her large head helps with the on-stage thing. The voice, though full top to bottom and more excitingly dramatic-coloraturaish than Meade's, isn't quite finished: Crocetto's vibrato can get away from her at times, particularly at the end of phrases, and she unfortunately only fakes a trill. And Madga's aria was a mistake: the final high notes are impressive, but for all its flexibility Crocetto's instrument hits for power, not finesse and romantic wistfulness.

*     *     *
After the finalists had sung, there was a bit of a nostalgic interlude. Met legend Frederica von Stade has only been a Gala presence since the 2000-01 run of the Merry Widow, but she called an official end to her singing here with a couple of arias. Her voice has, of course, aged much in the 40 years since her company debut, but here she didn't at all embarrass herself in reprising the Werther aria that helped her in this very competition before even that. She gave a short speech, finished her part with a lighter selection from Offenbach's "La Perichole", and accepted praise and a first edition of Cendrillon from Peter Gelb. Brief but touching.

*     *     *
Unfortunately, an event headlined by two mezzo legends (Marilyn Horne emceed in place of the stuck-in-London-due-to-weather mezzo great Joyce DiDonato) finished with both worthy mezzo-sopranos getting the short end of the stick as Peake, Guilbeau, Willis-Sørensen, Madore, and Crocetto were selected as the official winners. The sopranos certainly impressed, but I would have selected both mezzos before the men and certainly Kim over Peake.

That said, time will tell, and all who sang yesterday will surely get their chances.

Nose

A guest post on the premiere of the William Kentridge production from reader&commenter Straussmonster follows below. My long write-up of yesterday's Met Council Finals will be posted later today.

*     *     *
It was a packed house for the Metropolitan Opera Premiere of "The Nose", and a great buzz throughout the house. Listening in to conversations, a lot of people there were primarily Kentridge/art fans, so they didn't really know what they were getting into, musically...

And, well, Nose is not the easiest musical thing on earth. Much of the music is practically atonal, and on the spiky side even for Shostakovich, lacking the expansive lyricism that would later surface in Lady Macbeth, especially in the grim fourth act of that piece. Nevertheless, the fundamentals of his better-known works are all present: the tendency to pair very high and very low instruments, prominent lines for solo wind instruments, the love of the jaunty and tonally somewhat off-kilter, the world as seen through a cracked mirror. Tons of percussion, especially tuned--there's even an interlude entirely for percussion, which only Ligeti would later one-up with the opening toccata for car horns in Le Grand Macabre.

The production, accordingly, is a perfect match of director to material. It looks like an experimental Soviet film brought to life on the Met stage. The work is given without intermission (only a short break for retuning before the third act), and the set is fluid so no pauses need to be taken between the many scenes of the opera. The dominant theme is newsprint in both Russian and English. Projections done in the style of old Newscasts of the World (scrolling over the globe) describe changes of locale. Some of the action is a little obscure if you don't know the plot, but the outlines are always easy to follow. The musical side of things had a few bumps on opening night, but the orchestra (as always) sounds great and plays the score with both verve and swagger. Szot is great in the title role, only showing a few audibility problems in the cathedral scene--but he's very funny in all of the different moods required from Kovalyov, which matters more in this kind of piece. Other top vocal honors go to Andrei Popov in the Astrologer-high role of the Police Inspector, and always a pleasure to see Vladimir Ognovenko back, playing the hapless barber and other roles. Costumes are a mix of straightforward, slightly surreal, and really surreal, but all contribute to this late 1920s vibe, which works well for the piece (technically set in 1830). I wish I read Russian, because many of the costumes are also festooned with writing, making the characters into extensions of the same aesthetic of the sets. The skill with projections and video is top-notch, and the flexibility that they can add to a staging is really superb.

Opening night the production team received huge acclaim at the curtain call, and all of them were there--Kentridge took a solo bow, got cheered for, and then everyone else came out and got cheered loudly as well. The opera is a bit of a curate's egg, but I can't imagine a more fun and thoughtful production of this piece. A real pity it's not being HD broadcast to delight and confuse out in the hinterlands.

Updates

Since it seems that some of this blog's feed-based readers have not received the previous post, a short miscellany to update the feed.

First, as you've likely heard, Natalie Dessay is ill and has cancelled the entire Met run of Hamlet. Marlis Peterson, scheduled to make her debut late in the season as Lulu, will sing most of the performances. Let's hope Dessay recovers well for next season's Lucias.

Second, while I'm still personally boycotting Gergiev, this blog may soon offer a firsthand guest report of Thursday's Nose premiere.

The 2010-2011 Met season announcement, annotated

Like last year, this post lists the productions and main cast lineups for next season at the Metropolitan Opera. Operas are listed in the order of their first appearance.

Das Rheingold (new Robert Lepage production)
Terfel, Owens, Siegel, Croft, Selig, König, Blythe, Harmer / Levine (opening night through October; March-April)
The Met's first new Ring in decades -- a big event even if Lepage's tech tricks prove to be as soporific as they were in Damnation.

Tales of Hoffmann
Filianoti, Lindsey, Abdrazakov, Christy, Gerzmava, Borodina / Fournillier (September-beginning of October)
Filianoti, Lindsey, Abdrazakov, Mosuc, Gerzmava, Borodina / Fournillier (October)
When I last saw Filianoti here last year, he sounded not yet recovered from his illness-prompted vocal issues of the year before. Let's hope his big engagement here is a sign there was no permanent damage. Patrick Fournillier debuts in the pit, and Mr. and Mrs. Olga Borodina seem a fine fit for their parts.

Rigoletto
Ataneli, Schäfer, Meli, Silvestrelli, Surguladze / Arrivabeni (September-beginning of October)
Gagnidze, Schäfer, Meli, Silvestrelli, Surguladze / Arrivabeni (October)
Alvarez, Machaidze, Calleja, Kocán, Chávez / Arrivabeni (January)
Lucic, Damrau, Filianoti, Kocán, Herrera / Luisi (April-May)
Young Italian tenor Francesco Meli (who sang this last year at Covent Garden) makes his house debut before more familiar Dukes take over. Also debuting: soprano Nino Machaidze and conductor Paolo Arrivabeni.

Boris Godunov (new Peter Stein production)
Pape, Antonenko, Semenchuk, Nikitin, Balashov, Petrenko, Ognovenko / Gergiev (October, March)
Pape, a bunch of Russians, and an impressive-voiced Latvian (Antonenko as the False Dmitri) try Mussorgsky. Note that Pavel Smelkov is conducting one performance each in October and March, the latter without Pape in the lead.

La Boheme
Kovalevska, Grigolo, Opolais, Capitanucci / Rizzi Brignoli (October-November)
Stoyanova, Calleja, Dehn, Capitanucci / Rizzi Brignoli (December)
Kovalevska, Beczala, Opolais, Mattei / Rizzi Brignoli (January-February)
Kovalevska, Vargas, Opolais, Mattei / Rizzi Brignoli (February)
Four remarkable casts, though unfortunately Kovalevska (peerless today as Mimi) and Calleja don't sing together. Having Peter Mattei as Marcello for the third and fourth iterations is serious luxury.

Il Trovatore
Racette, Cornetti, Álvarez, Lucic / Armiliato (October-November)
Radvanovsky, Zajick, Álvarez, Hvorostovsky / Levine (April)
As good as Racette is, florid Verdi isn't her strength. Still a promising alternate fall lineup, though, before April's not-to-be-missed premiere cast reprise (this time with Levine!). Note that Julianna Di Giacomo (heard this season in Stiffelio) will do one Leonora on November 11.

Don Pasquale
Del Carlo, Netrebko, Polenzani, Kwiecien / Levine (October-November, February)
I loathed this production when it opened, though Del Carlo did do much to make it work in his sole performance of the run. And Netrebko's bel canto outings since then have only grown more vocally iffy.

Carmen
Garanca, Jovanovich, Cabell, Relyea / Gardner (November-December)
Vizin, Jovanovich, Cabell, Relyea / Gardner (December 9)
Aldrich, Alagna, Kühmeier, TBA / Gardner (January)
A reshuffling of this year's Joses and Carmens, though the conductor and Micaelas aren't as exciting. It will be interesting to see how Garanca and Alagna fare in this without Nézet-Séguin.

Cosi fan tutte
Persson, Leonard, Breslik, Gunn, de Niese, Holzmair / Christie (November-December)
From Sophie to Fiordiligi? Holzmair at the Met? With Christie in the pit?
So many oddities, it almost has to work.

Don Carlo (new Nicholas Hytner production)
Poplavskaya, Smirnova, Alagna, Keenlyside, Furlanetto, Halfvarson / Nézet-Séguin (November-December)
Poplavskaya, Smirnova, Lee, Keenlyside, Furlanetto, Halfvarson / Nézet-Séguin (November-December)
The Met is scrapping its finest Verdi production to bring over Hytner's cheesy Lego sets? With a great Francophone conductor and tenor and it's still in Italian? What a waste.
That said, it'll probably still be really good. (But still a waste.)

La Fanciulla del West
Voigt, Giordani, Uusitalo / Luisotti (December-January)
Luisotti in the pit again is a treat, but the onstage lineup isn't exactly Destinn, Caruso and Amato.

Pelléas et Mélisande
Kožená, Degout, Finley, Palmer, White / Rattle (December-January)
You'd be crazy to miss this. Probably will sell badly, though, despite Rattle and the amazing cast.

Magic Flute
Phillips, Miklósa, Thomas, Gunn, Robinson / Nielsen (December-January)
Like this season's Hansel&Gretel, this is a really good cast for a kids' version.

La Traviata (new Willy Decker production)
Poplavskaya, Polenzani, Dobber / Noseda (New Year's Eve through January)
Poplavskaya, Meli, Dobber / Noseda (January)
Decker's famous Salzburg Traviata arrives -- minus the stars (Netrebko and Villazon) who made it famous. This may be for the better.

Tosca
Radvanovsky, Álvarez, Struckmann / Armiliato (January)
Urmana, Licitra, Morris / Armiliato (March-April)
Wouldn't have imagined Urmana as Tosca myself. Radvanovsky, yes.

Simon Boccanegra
Hvorostovsky, Frittoli, Vargas, Furlanetto / Levine (January-February)
The men's names speak for themselves.

Nixon in China (Met premiere with Peter Sellars production)
Maddalena, Kelly, Fink, Brubaker, Kim, Braun / Adams (February)
Ahh, the days when John Adams realized he needed an actual librettist.

Iphigénie en Tauride
Graham, Domingo, Groves, Hawkins / Summers (February-March)
Kitschy, over-the-top production + excellent music = ?


Armida
Fleming, Brownlee, Osborn, TBA, Banks, van Rensburg / Frizza (February-March)
Most of the same players from the Rossini show that will premiere later this spring.

Lucia di Lammermoor
Dessay, Calleja, Tézier, Youn / Summers (February-March)
Dessay and Calleja should provide fireworks. Stephen Gaertner does one Enrico on March 12.

Roméo et Juliette
Gheorghiu, Beczala, Boulianne, Meachem, Morris / Domingo (March)
Undeterred by his inability to draw audiences from the pit in this season's Stiffelio, the Met saddles yet another impressive cast with Domingo's subpar stick work.

The Queen of Spades
Mattila, Galouzine, Markov, Mattei, Zajick / Nelsons (March)
Yet another incredible cast you'd be crazy to miss.

Le Comte Ory (new Bartlett Sher production)
Florez, DiDonato, Damrau, Resmark, Degout, Pertusi / Benini (March-April)
Don't know the piece, but the cast is certainly something.

Capriccio
Fleming, Kaiser, Braun, Rose, Connolly, Larsen / Davis (March-April)
The Countess is a tricky part, particularly for one of Fleming's instincts. But she did eventually make a success of the Marschallin...

Wozzeck
Goerne, Meier, Skelton, Siegel, Fink / Levine (April)
I believe this will be Goerne's first appearance at the Met outside Papageno's bird suit. But even he, Waltraud Meier, and James Levine will be hard-pressed to sell out Berg's early modernist masterpiece.

Die Walküre (new Robert Lepage production)
Voigt, Terfel, Westbroek, Kaufmann, Blythe, König / Levine (April-May)
Again, an event no matter what.

Orfeo ed Euridice
Daniels, Royal, Oropesa / TBA (April-May)
Kate Royal debuts as Euridice. Countertenor David Daniels, though not lacking for fans, is vocally all wrong for the lead part.

Ariadne auf Naxos
Urmana, Kim, DiDonato, Smith, Allen / Luisi (May)
This season's revival was surprisingly good (more on this later), but Luisi in the pit adds another dimension.

The last modernist

Attila -- Metropolitan Opera, 2/23/10
Abdrazakov, Urmana, Vargas, Meoni, Ramey / Muti

There were a slew of non-singing debuts in this house and company premiere of Verdi's 1846 opera on Attila the Hun -- not least the opera itself, here in Pierre Audi's new production -- but the most notable was conductor Riccardo Muti. Deposed five years ago from La Scala, he still retains iconic status in the opera world. Last night was the first time in many years that a conductor of comparable long acclaim and stature has stood on the Met podium in James Levine's absence.

Muti has the power and inclination to command. Like the first and greatest modernist conductor -- La Scala and Met legend Arturo Toscanini -- however, he quite publicly puts this at the service of the score, the composer's work as written. The most notorious result of this is that all unwritten high notes are suppressed in a Muti-led performance, and last night's Attila was no exception. But that hardly constitutes his aesthetic viewpoint: better to note the serious, fiery, and ever meticulously held and balanced musical execution he gets from his ensembles in both opera and concert.

The orchestra, of course, played well for Muti, with clear textures throughout and (for example) stupendous soft string sound at the beginning of Act III. Donald Palumbo's chorus, an essential (if ever hat-switching) player in this early Verdi drama, sang with similar skill and gusto. The cast, too, was strong top to bottom in the best Met tradition. And yet...

*     *     *
The program note (written, I believe, by the editor of the new critical edition used in this production) helpfully observes that Attila is something of a high-water mark in Verdi's use of the cabaletta, the (usually -- and in this piece, always) quick, rhythmic, excited, and often virtuosic section following the slower "cantabile" section we often think of as the aria proper. More specifically we might say that Attila is a high-water mark in Verdi's use of the cantabile-cabaletta (slow-fast) double aria structure itself, which he goes to again and again here, providing equal interest in each part without messing around with the structure or balance as he would in later pieces.

But this cantabile-cabaletta setup is no modernist invention; it is the foundational building block of all bel canto -- that is, Italian romantic -- opera. And in this work Verdi is clearly using it (over and over) to his romantic aesthetic end.

The opera begins with Attila at the height of his power, being praised by the Huns for having just conquered the (northern Italian) Roman city of Aquileia. The prologue introduces the other three leads -- all Roman -- in succession: Odabella, Ezio, and Foresto. Each appears dispossessed, far from her or his much-desired goal -- Odabella needs honorable vengeance against Attila for her father, Ezio personal glory and power, and Foresto happiness (married to Odabella) in his now-wrecked homeland. Attila, of course, wishes to complete his conquest of Rome, and he does not get his big solo set piece until late in Act I -- when this great goal is, for the first time, in doubt.

The world can't accommodate all these desires at once, of course: not only is it Attila vs. the Romans, but -- as we see later in the story -- the particular Roman plans clash, though not quite so fatally. But each character, as he or she moves to enact his or her particular wishes, gets to take the stage for a solo sequence. First -- in the cantabile -- we hear the inner stirrings at length, pained or sublime or some combination of the two. Then the cabaletta, and what is that but the delighted roar of that individual's subjectivity as it attempts to become the world?

The protagonists of Attila are all confident in pushing their particular selves and visions forward in this way, which is no surprise given the chronology of Verdi's operas. We see an advance from 1844's Ernani, where all characters and singing (slow and fast) express, essentially, the same thing -- a glorious fatality -- while yet being leagues away from, say, Verdi's later masterpiece Don Carlo[s], in which the characters chase and express their wants ever the more mightily because it is so clear that all are beyond earthly reach. (Not to speak of Aida, where dramatic impulse has receded to a trickle before the immobile pageantry of ancient Egypt, and the cabaletta form appears transformed, at the end, in the slow (!) motion of "O terra addio" as the main couple's lives ebb away with romantic opera itself.)

And yet never in these main-career operas (one might regard Otello and Falstaff, written long after Verdi's post-Aida "retirement", as as proto-modern -- partly explaining their outsized 20th century esteem) is the musical-dramatic sense apart from these chained solo and ensemble outbursts: the later methods of, for example, through-composition or symphonic forms or an ever-acting and -commenting orchestra don't yet bring a conflicting truth against them. When a character takes the stage for a solo, the stage is his. Equality is seriatim, as each main character gets a turn -- or, perhaps, an interruption. (Even when, as in Don Carlos, Verdi inserts external comment on the action, it takes the form of such an interruption, on par with any other vocal bit.)

So the opera Attila is a confident Verdian glory of romanticism, the process by which European art proclaimed and elaborated first the infinity and then the infinite uselessness of human subjectivity and individuality. Attila's own course shows a not-yet-nihilistic form of the latter: humbled by Pope Leo's divinely-backed admonition at Act I's close, he veers to seek a sort of equality rather than complete dominion. But this is not, cannot be enough: the other characters have goals that demand complete victory for each of them, and Attila is opportunistically beset until the one for whom he sought most complete equality -- Odabella, his bride -- kills him. Just before the murder Attila, musically backgrounded after his great Act I revelation (he wished, after all, no longer to compete and squash), again attempts to reassert his self-suppressed ability to dominate, launching into a solo of accusation and outrage -- but his lone complaint is broken into by the other three leads, igniting with their interruptions the final quartet of Attila's doom. The musical form perfectly embodies the dramatic.

*     *     *
But Muti is a modernist, and for all his musical understanding of Italian opera and its construction, his ear and brain gravitate to the objective -- not to the orderly riot of subjectivity that is the aesthetic essence of early Verdi. The score provides a measure of objectivity -- of course -- but it is deceptively flat, gives no special clue of the dramatic truths unleashed by having one singer grabbing the stage solo after another.

A modernist aesthetic in the pit does well for certain elements, and Muti is particularly fine in these: we hear all the various voices and harmonies clearly, phrasing is precise and appropriate, and, as mentioned above, the whole thing is based on a score restored by scholarship to a more Verdian state. Further, as one can hear from any Toscanini recording, modernism isn't incompatible with drama. But it's a peculiar kind of drama that's encouraged: with the composer's score at the center, it's the personality or ideology of the score's central, commanding interpreter -- the conductor himself -- that is ever more unitarily felt. This makes ever more sense with later, more modernist works, as the action shifts to the orchestra and the argument gets both longer and more abstruse -- or centered on a single character. Nevertheless it leaves precious little air for the multiple and various natural egoisms on which early Verdi -- like romantic opera generally -- depends.

So the characters of Verdi's Attila here appear a little shrunken, a little overzealously limited by Muti's baton and impressively accompanying orchestra. As modernism was born when individual subjectivity was sharply put in its place (e.g. "enough with the high notes!") -- replaced as the organizing basis of art with some new objective principle -- it can hardly be expected to display the thing with quite the unimpeded gusto of the romantic original. For all Muti's famous (and famously insightful) hands-on work with the individual singers, it simply does not come out the same. One sees Attila and his enemies a bit like the lions of a zoo, slightly depressing, no longer quite kings of the jungle-stage even if they are all kept in good trim.

*     *     *
Not to take away from the singers, all of whom have shown plenty of personality in other, more expansive settings and actually do a good job here all around. Bass Ildar Abdrazakov (Attila) continued his string of strong outings outside the shadow of his wife (Olga Borodina); mezzo-turned-soprano (her last Verdi here was, I believe, Eboli) Violeta Urmana (Odabella) was strong and focused if not Italianate -- and did a decent try at a trill; meanwhile tenor Ramon Vargas (Foresto) did surprisingly well in rearranging his sound a bit to more heroic effect. Tenor Russell Thomas, who will sing Foresto in one of the later performances, also sang strongly in the smaller tenor part of Uldino, and Sam Ramey was authoritative in his few lines as Pope Leo the Great. But the big surprise was the unscheduled early Met debut of baritone Giovanni Meoni (Ezio). Meoni showed a layered, full-size instrument -- joining Željko Lucic as perhaps the only full-blown "Verdi baritone" on the roster -- while not eschewing (as Lucic does) the nasty and villainous side of his character. In fact he seemed to embrace the crueler bits -- phrasing his part with spirit -- while retaining a certain charismatic integrity. Add these up and: more Verdi please. Di Luna, Rigoletto, Renato...

*     *     *
The production got a fair amount of hype before the premiere, but turned out to be not much. It's far from the other premieres this season has seen: Tosca, From the House of the Dead, Hoffmann, Carmen -- all closely-directed, psychological shows with fine attention to character. This show appears not to have been directed at all, with some nicely textured but basically flat scenery acting as pretty backdrops to a stand&sing -- yes, a throwback to the bad old days, though in an updated primary-color palette. Miuccia Prada's costumes were low key for the chorus, a bit more elaborate for the principals. Attila and Odabella got tall headpieces: his an amazingly silly silver feathered helmet that sat atop his head for additional height (and was mercifully soon removed), hers a tall Marge Simpson hairdo. The Roman men got shoulder guards, I assume to show their military status, while Attila's slave Uldino was in a bulky snowsuit-looking thing that made him look sort of like a Krogan. (I'm quite sure, mind you, that Prada wasn't inspired by a video game.) The Pope was in a reasonably Pope-like plain outfit of white with red accents.

The two men (whoever they were -- was this the team of Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron?) who came out to take bows for the production were booed, though not with the fury one heard at Zimmerman's Sonnambula or Bondy's Tosca. In fact I thought it was quite acceptably mediocre: the physical elements are attractive -- and acoustically friendly -- enough, the chorus is conveniently segregated into a bottom space and isn't made to run around, and perhaps on revival some assistant stage director will actually come up with nontrivial stage direction. Not worth a cheer, but not worth a boo either.

The show, however, is quite worth seeing and cheering, an unfamiliar but real example of Verdi's genius. I don't suppose next time could have Levine, Radvanovsky, and Calleja though...

New season, new production

I'll have a post on the Met's 2010-2011 season announcement after tonight's house premiere of Verdi's Attila. Not many surprises for those who'd followed Brad Wilber's collations.