The artist is not present

La Clemenza di Tito - Metropolitan Opera, 11/16/2012
Filianoti, Garanča, Frittoli, Crowe (d), Lindsey, Gradus / Bicket

It's hard to dislike mezzo Elina Garanca, but it's hard to like her past a certain point either. The daughter of a prominent Latvian voice teacher, Garanca is every bit the coach's son: heady, impeccably schooled, and willing to work and try at most anything. Put at her disposal the full-scaled, even, adaptable voice she in fact possesses and stardom is a matter of course. And yet -- and yet the moment is not hers. For whatever reason, that last crucial indicium of a star fails to appear, and even the triumph of Garanca's musically impeccable "Deh, per questo istante sole" is one for the broadcast mikes only. In the house one listens in vain for the central, personal point of agony behind Sesto's outcries of stubbornly uninformative sincerity, the opera-house magic that made Susan Graham's incarnation a human revelation and event.

An unfair standard, perhaps, but the rest of the current cast presented their own characters in much sharper focus. I've knocked Barbara Frittoli in the past -- including in last season's Don Giovanni -- for iffy vocal state and occasional lack of focus, but she is remarkably in her element in the tricky part of Vitellia. Not only does she hurdle the technical obstacles while sounding again as good as in the first of her 2011 Amelias, but Frittoli embodies the monstrously self-involved villainess with an ease and elan that make not only Garanca but her predecessor Vitellias seem a bit monochrome. Meanwhile, for much of the first act and in her solo bits of the second, Lindemann grad Kate Lindsey was seriously threatening to steal the show as Annio, something I hadn't even imagined possible in Clemenza. In vocal size and physical impact the American mezzo can't compete with her Latvian colleague, but in an actual show I think I'd prefer to see Lindsey every time: she is not only the finest of the Met's pants-role players, but seizes the moment and presence of her time in the dangerous spotlight with abandon. And Giuseppe Filianoti -- well, he did start in a rather rough vocal state, but he too embraced rather than shied away from the title character's singleminded display of moral hygiene and wound up giving about as good a Mozart performance as one could ask from a veristically inclined lyric tenor.

Debuting soprano Lucy Crowe, as Servilia, didn't get the space to make this sort of impact, but she -- unlike, it seems, her more hyped countrywoman Kate Royal -- can actually sing well and beautifully. Nice traditional clear sound, more presence on the bottom than one might expect given her repertoire, and comfort with the emotional demands of the sincere soubrette part -- a good addition. Harry Bicket's airless pit work was the only drag on the 2008 revival's triumph, but he's significantly more relaxed and sympathetic this time around, actually one of the show's real strengths and allowing the Met winds to work their characteristic magic. And Ponelle's production! Like all pre-Gelb shows still extant, it shines brighter than ever surrounded by detail-stripped look-alikes.

It's a good show, but the early Gelb-era decision to fast-track Garanca while marginalizing Graham and ignoring Joyce DiDonato seems sillier than ever -- and moviecasting this incarnation instead of 2008's is a loss for those limited to such media. (But at least Graham is at last getting her Troyens revival this season, and DiDonato headlines the next big Donizetti.) Of course, from her early years one would hardly have pegged Karita Mattila as the great stage performer of our time... but from Garanca's history so far, I think it more likely that the mezzo learns to fake embodying the stage charge than that she actually does it.

The week in NY opera (Nov. 26-Dec. 2)

A very slow post-holiday week.

Metropolitan Opera
Aida (M/Th), Ballo (T/F), Don Giovanni (W/SE), Clemenza (SM)
Continuations except for Don Giovanni, which brings American soprano Susanna Phillips along with the return of Russian bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov, this time with (presumably) a more sympathetic Mozart conductor than David Robertson. Erwin Schrott is this time in the more character-appropriate part of Leporello.

The week in NY opera (November 19-25)

Babar or Wozzeck? Your choice tonight to kick off this Thanksgiving week.

Metropolitan Opera
Ballo (M/SE), Clemenza (T/SM), Aida (F)
Clemenza is good, but not the revelatory experience it was in its previous incarnation. Radvanovsky's Act 3 aria still brings down the house in Ballo. Aida appears for the first time this season, with debuting Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska in the title part.

Avery Fisher Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra Wozzeck (M)
Concert performance with Esa-Pekka Salonen on the podium, Angela Denoke as Marie, and Simon Keenlyside as Wozzeck. What are you waiting for?

Peter Jay Sharp Theater
Juilliard Opera Cosi fan tutte
Last of three shows that began last week.

OT
Simone Dinnerstein recital (M)
The local pianist plays Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and (with some colleagues) Poulenc's "The Story of Babar the Elephant".

The week in NY opera (November 12-18)

Lots of things on this week as the concert schedule returns to normal.

Metropolitan Opera
Ballo (M/Th), Figaro (T/SE), Tempest (W/SM), Clemenza (F)
It's the final week for The Tempest and Figaro -- don't miss the former, if you haven't yet seen it. Hearing Radvanovsky and Hvorostovsky in Ballo is probably worth the non-production... probably. Meanwhile the Ponnelle production of Clemenza -- last seen with an amazing Susan Graham star performance four years ago -- returns with Elina Garanca as Sesto. Harry Bicket's conducting was the least impressive part of that run, but perhaps his sense of the piece has deepened since.

Carnegie Hall
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique Missa Solemnis (S)
Joyce DiDonato Drama Queens (Sunday 2pm)
The glibness of John Eliot Gardiner's overpraised recording decades back has me doubtful, but performances of this Beethoven landmark aren't common enough. The event of the week is probably Joyce DiDonato's Carnegie program the following afternoon. Her last NY baroque concert was in the smaller Zankel space, and a mesmerizing display of art at which her (excellent) studio album only hints. This time she's got a new album and the bigger Stern Auditorium in which to work her magic. There are, amazingly, still lots of tickets to be had.

Alice Tully Hall
Bernarda Fink recital (W)
The mezzo sings Schumann, Mahler, and Dvorak.

OT: Avery Fisher Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra Mahler 9 (Sunday 5pm)
If you have the endurance, you can probably walk from Carnegie to Lincoln Center in time to see both DiDonato's concert and Salonen conducting Mahler 9. I'm not sure how many concertgoers are excited by both prospects, though...

UPDATE --
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
Cosi fan tutte (W/SM)
Just on cue, as I put up this post I got an email reminder of this Juilliard/Lindemann co-production's opening. Like the 2011 Bartered Bride, this show features direction by Stephen Wadsworth and a star conductor. Back then it was Levine; this week it's NY Phil chief Alan Gilbert. He and the young cast are certainly promising, but Wadsworth has to date consistently failed to engage with the feminine and heterosexual-romance aspects of operas he's directed... and Cosi, though cynical and partly parodistic, mines almost no other ground.

The dog ate my production

Un Ballo in Maschera - Metropolitan Opera, 11/8/2012
Radvanovsky, Alvarez, Hvorostovsky, Kim, Zajick / Luisi

So this production would, I think, be best explainable in two ways:
(1) The Met is running low on money and drastically cut the budget so that David Alden could only afford this shabby display.
(2) Alden had director's block, couldn't think of any staging ideas for months and months, and finally just decided to throw half-remembered bits of other recent Met productions together and call it a show.

If, as is sadly likely, neither of the above apply and this was seriously the considered work of Alden and his team, all the boos they got were well-deserved. And these weren't angry or offended boos at some conceit or idea. They were "are you kidding me!?" boos of disbelief that something so lame and half-baked could be presented as a finished, full-price product.

*     *     *
The worst part is, of course, that the cast showcased by this premiere is so good. Two of the three main principals -- Sondra Radvanovsky and Dmitri Hvorostovsky -- are the cream of today's crop, and they are both in very fine voice. Radvanovsky's instrument has filled and evened out from top to bottom with a true Verdian soprano sound, and as always she rings the whole house at any level of her vast dynamic range. Hvorostovsky was not quite convincing as Renato/Anckarström four-plus years ago, but he's really grown into the role: where in the 2010 concert he made the Ballo bits work with personal force, he now can use both personal and sonic; there's no lack of color or dynamic range even in declamation.

Marcelo Alvarez isn't quite the Gustavo/Riccardo of one's dreams -- is Calleja's May run in Frankfurt really his first!? -- but he's very good in this: precise in rhythm and ensembles, good at using word and dynamic accents, and with a pleasing and surprisingly firm lyric sound. Kathleen Kim is both audible and sprightly, something her predecessors haven't simultaneously managed in forever. Ulrica's initial aria sits poorly in Zajick's current voice but there's a lot of good stuff after that. And American bass-baritones Keith Miller and David Crawford as the conspirators bring some much-needed kick to the bottom end of the ensembles.

What's missing? That incandescence where spirit takes over from sound and detail-management. Perhaps it's Luisi (who has everything but that spark of genius), perhaps it's the weight of the lifeless new production, perhaps it's the start-of-run feeling out period after Sandy has hindered preparation. We'll see in the next month as the run continues.

*     *     *
The production did provide a bit of viewing fun: figuring out which bits were lifted from what. The basic stage configuration (the first two acts are on the exact same set) of bare tilted almost-converging floor/ceiling seems to be from Minghella's Butterfly; the surreal civil servants in hats from Lievi's Cenerentola; the women's chorus in the Ulrica scene taken wholesale from Noble's Macbeth; the color palette from Pelly's otherwise forgettable Manon; the ugly decorative wallpaper and use of uniformly-attired chorus in a threatening way from that Decker Traviata, the contemplation area downstage left from Sher's Hoffmann; the physical direction (particularly for Radvanovsky, who's sprawled on the floor a lot) from McVicar's Trovatore... and did Alden venture beyond the moviecast repertory to lift the mass of mirrors for the last scene from the high-point of Volpe's tenure, the too-long-absent Wernicke production of Frau? That's a nice thought. The rest is Generic Gelb Production, with its "near-doctrinaire avoidance/elimination of representational detail (as in Islamic art, words and abstract designs are permitted) in sets though not in costumes, and of course a general tilt to the crass and vulgar in stage direction." The Obligatory Gelb-Era Humping Scene occurs when the sailor requests Ulrica read his fortune.

It's not completely absent of good points: the stage layout does aid the singers' projection (though Radvanovsky doesn't need it), and the first scene of the final act finally provides a more intimate space for action than the full-stage emptiness that's endemic to Generic Gelb and the rest of this production. (It is, however, just a plain white room with tilted floor/ceiling.) But the bad predominates. Least helpful, perhaps, is the contribution of debuting choreographer Maxine Braham, who seemed determined to squash any potential outbreaks of elegance or elan by making not only the singers but the actual dancers look silly in... deconstructed square dances, or whatever that was. (Kim made her dance material at least amusing by throwing in some Olympia bits.) Or perhaps the nadir is the contribution of Alden himself, who apparently didn't bother figuring out how to block the final act: Gustavo, it turns out, is able not only to read a tiny note from halfway across the stage without opening it, but to carry on a private conversation with Amelia while the two are on opposite sides of the massive dance floor, looking away from each other.

As for the idea that the dark and macabre should predominate in a production of Ballo -- well, I think it's quite wrong, but this unserious production isn't much of an occasion to evaluate it. None but the performers come off well here -- including subtitler Cori Ellison, who coarsens (and thereby destroys) the sarcastic joke of the second act's closing laughing chorus.

The island

The Tempest - Metropolitan Opera, 11/6/2012
Keenlyside, Luna, Leonard, Shrader, Oke, Burden, Spence, Feigum, Del Carlo / Adès

Rich and strange it is, but not entirely in a good way. Wonderful music and an excellent libretto... that don't quite add up to great opera together.

Composer/conductor Thomas Ades has an remarkable musical gift, conjuring as varied and fluent a torrent of sound as Strauss or Berg. Meredith Oakes fashioned here a libretto of sound and interesting structure and much in the text and scenic setup to chew on. But they are not, perhaps, for each other. For the characters and their drama don't seem to engage Ades: he gives their expressions audible effect, to be sure, but they are mostly secondary elements in the show's broad aural course. Ariel's turns are brilliant, others more humanly plain, but none guide the whole flow of sound, even in the final act where Ades dials the orchestral stuff back for some intimacy. Indeed only once do music and text wholly engage and the great operatic moment appear, and that's in the middle of the middle act -- Caliban's dream invocation of the island.

This, along with the lovely and evocative finale in which Caliban appears like Capriccio's M. Taupe from the prompter's space to re-inherit the island (with Ariel) does suggest one sort of musical-dramatic unity, alluded to in the program note: the island itself as the central musical figure and, er, grounding presence in the proceedings, upon which the humans' troubles are a passing episode. But while this is interesting and enriches our picture of the two spirits, it puts to the side most of the stuff we're actually watching in the opera... and indeed, that's the experience.

Shakespeare's Tempest certainly has room for this kind of conceit, and perhaps someone else might radically rewrite it to really centralize these themes in the actual stage action, but Oakes did not do so. Instead she very cleverly and librettistically reassembled Shakespeare's story elements -- but still in a very human and human-focused manner. Ades dutifully and sympathetically set these human bits, but his brilliance is in all the sonic doodling he did over and around and between them.

It's an excellent show to see and hear: besides the libretto and music, every member of the cast is a pleasure (though Isabel Leonard's English diction could be more comprehensible), and Robert Lepage, it turns out, can actually turn out a nice production when his video toys are (mostly) left aside. (There is, of course, the obligatory multilayered scaffolding.) And it suggests even finer things in the future. But if Thomas Adès is Strauss, he has not yet found his Hofmannsthal.

The week in NY opera (November 5-11)

The hurricane cancelled half of last week at the Met, but the dangling crane on 57th has forced a Carnegie Hall shutdown that's still ongoing. At least power and most of the subways are back in and around the venues...

Metropolitan Opera
Turandot (M/F), Tempest (T/SM), Figaro (W/SE), Ballo (Th)
David Alden's Ballo debuts, with an excellent cast and Luisi in the pit. You can see The Tempest on Election Day (and I may actually end up doing this) or at the moviecast this weekend. This incarnation of Turandot is pretty good for what it is; the Figaro isn't.

Avery Fisher Hall
Richard Tucker Gala (Sunday 6:30pm)
Along with this year's Tucker Award winner Ailyn Pérez (not yet much heard in the city), the lineup includes Abdrazakov & Borodina, Filianoti, Giordani, Finley, Hvorostovsky, and Schrott.

NYU Skirball Center
Vox 2012 (Th)
This year at the new opera showcase: bits of operas by John Zorn, Moto Osada, Christopher Weiss, Evan Meier, James Stepleton, and Osnat Netzer. Too bad it's up against the Ballo premiere!

UPDATE (misread my calendar last week...)
Frick Collection
Toby Spence recital (Sunday 5pm)
The British tenor makes his New York recital debut in a program of German lieder, capped off by Schumann's Dichterliebe.

The week in NY opera (Oct. 29-Nov. 4)

With Sandy approaching, who knows how many of these performances will actually take place?

Metropolitan Opera
Turandot (T/F), Tempest (W/SM), Figaro (SE)
Figaro (grossly mishandled by Robertson) was supposed to play tonight as well, but that's been cancelled. Turandot, whenever it manages to begin, will bring the company debut of this year's Met Council Finals sensation Janai Brugger. I meant to see The Tempest on Saturday, but Figaro left such a bad taste in my mouth that I skipped it. This week, perhaps, if the real-life tempest permits.

Carnegie Hall
Opera Lafayette L'invitation au Voyage (F)
Chamber vocal selections by this French-themed company based in DC; features soprano Emmanuelle de Negri, recently seen with William Christie's company in Atys and a Rameau double bill.

OT
Murray Perahia recital (F)
Classical/romantic program by the now-veteran classical/romantic pianist.

The replacement

Otello - Metropolitan Opera, 10/16/2012
Amonov, Fleming, Struckmann / Bychkov

After a dress rehearsal in which he was a bit cautious but in no particular distress, tenor Johan Botha fared poorly on Otello's opening night. His indisposition left him out of the remainder of the run -- except, perhaps, this afternoon's moviecast, surely a nerve-wracking return if it happens.

His replacement in the title role? A Russian from the Mariinsky: Avgust Amonov, who made his Met debut three days before this performance. Yes, he was pretty good. No, he's not the next _______. In fact, he (like Botha) is on the lyric side of the sing, with a nice basic sound in which one can hear the Bacchus he's sung elsewhere. But unlike Botha, Amonov doesn't have a big clarion ring to his lyric instrument, and the demands of Otello do restrict his colors and prevent big statements. Still, contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, it's a pleasant sound... or was on this night.

His other "unlike Botha"s may have been to his benefit. He's not a stand-and-sing paragraph phraser, but has some sense of dramatic character development even as a late cover. Definitely held up his end of the show, and an Otello I wouldn't mind seeing again given sufficiently good support.

Here Amonov had two amazing co-stars. Falk Struckmann seemed to me insufficiently menacing and impressive as Pizarro a dozen years back, but time has changed his capabilities. When he chews the scenery now as Iago, the vocal impact is as great as the dramatic -- and I'd love to hear his current incarnation as the Fidelio villain. Meanwhile Desdemona is still probably Renee Fleming's best operatic part, one in which she invariably finds her focus by Desdemona's great final double aria.

Bychkov's conducting depends on the moment: though he always seems to get the huge loud climaxes up, the material in between may be urgent or slack. This night, he was a bit of both, though the cast change may have thrown things off -- we'll see what happens this afternoon.

Elijah Moshinsky's revived production, like his Makropoulos Case last season and Queen of Spades the season before, brings into sharp relief the limitations of the current Gelb directorial stable.

You blew it up!

Le Nozze di Figaro - Metropolitan Opera, 10/26/2012
Abdrazakov, Erdmann, Kovalevska, Schäfer, Finley / Robertson

Wait, no joke? The Met managed to ruin Figaro? Seriously!?

Yep. I hadn't thought it possible. Jonathan Miller's production debuted with James Levine and an all-star cast, but quickly adapted to all sorts of personnel. Big names, small names, Levine, not Levine, the show rolled on. (Best Figaro: probably Furlanetto. Best non-Levine conductor: undoubtedly Edo de Waart.) But not this time. David Robertson is finally the conductor who makes nonsense from Mozart's sense, intentionally removing all traces of breath, sentiment, line, reflection, rapture, and, well, anything besides an endless monotonous chugging-forward from the piece. At this point it's impossible to get the Met Orchestra to sound bad in this material, but Robertson turns what should be the ebb and flow of feeling into sonic cacophony. I was initially inclined to point fingers at Gregory Keller's unsubtle stage direction and Christine Schäfer's bizarrely grim and glum Cherubino, but by the end I wondered if they were just trying to keep up with the pit's insanity. Mojca Erdmann (the second Lulu in the cast!) is miscast -- Susanna repeatedly hits the sour part of her voice -- but the rest of the cast was quite good... given what they had to work with. I'm amazed that Ildar Abdrazakov kept up with the silly, breathless tempi Robertson set in his last-act aria.

Ensembles also seemed under-rehearsed, but from all evidence that's not going to fix Robertson's anti-Mozartean pit work. He makes Mozart boring. Avoid.

Deliver me

(Verdi) Requiem - Philadelphia Orchestra, 10/23/2012
Poplavskaya, Rice, Villazon, Petrenko / Nézet-Séguin

James Levine, Renee Fleming, Olga Borodina, Marcello Giordani, Rene Pape, and the Met Orchestra and Chorus performed this piece a dozen seasons ago at Carnegie Hall (the afternoon of April 29, 2001) -- an orchestral show not, in my concertgoing, equaled since. Last night wasn't that, but it was definitely something.

Verdi's Requiem Mass, ostensibly for Alessandro Manzoni, capped off the composer's great mature run of operas, which gave us an amazing string of dramatic masterworks -- Boccanegra, Ballo, Forza, and Don Carlos -- in succession before closing with two odd works, Aida and this sacred piece. In fact Aida is probably the less dramatic of the pair: true to its dream of old monumental Egypt, the opera's characters can hardly even consider struggling as events roll to implacable doom, instead reflecting and lyrically responding to the spectacle as it proceeds. Within the Requiem, it's true, the solo singers have lost names & histories, and are dwarfed by contact with the limitless. But Christianity is and has, in a way likely unprecedented, been fundamentally concerned with the event -- and not just the ritually recreated & celebrated event(s) of its founding, as most religions are, but the ever-newly-enacted event of each individual soul's salvation/damnation. Even at the final, most hapless moment -- the day of judgment -- we are not (Calvinists aside) in a ritual roll-call but at the end of a live event, full of dramatic emotions and disruptions and the echo of decisive struggles.

Verdi seizes on this essential kernel to set the grandest of his great dramatic scenes: the Sequentia (Dies Irae), the heart and longest part of this piece. It is great and grand and terrible, but also endlessly personal, the close of each individual soul's event&story. And so in the greatest performances we hear the irreducible impassioned individuality of the solo voices as they move through those familiar Verdian turns...

On this night, only soprano Marina Poplavskaya's instrument carried this kind of charge. For all my complaints about her Met ubiquity and sometimes-infuriating humorlessness, Poplavskaya certainly has the tools -- musicality, sonic scale, a range of dark and cutting tones -- to make much of a dead-serious part like this one (or Elisabetta): and she did, lack of warmth and some imperfect top notes (she actually had to cancel the first Philadelphia performance due to illness) notwithstanding. Mezzo Christine Rice and bass Mikhail Petrenko have very nice, well-groomed voices, but didn't deliver much beyond that.

The most famous of the soloists was probably the worst. Rolando Villazon almost crashed on the very first line of the "Ingemisco", was missing and sliding around between pitches all over the place, and generally sounded like he'd patched together fragments totaling maybe 2/3 of a tenor voice: most of the bottom, not much of the top (which was never, volume-wise, a strength), and danger in between. The singer once notable for exquisite breath and control is still in a sad form to witness.

But the evening was Nézet-Séguin's (or, as the program notes would have it, "Yannick's" -- understandable given pronunciation issues). If his conception lacked some of the life-and-death urgency and particularized detail certain of his elders have brought (and perhaps the good-but-not-great solo lineup was significant), it nevertheless astounded by its coherence and sonic & conceptual clarity. The audience responded with rapt silence through the end and terrific enthusiasm afterward.

It's the same story as Nézet-Séguin's Met debut Carmen: I can't wait to hear what he does with this stuff both now and over the years.

The week in NY opera (October 22-28)

Nothing tonight, but tomorrow is one of those evenings in NYC where too many things happen at once.

Metropolitan Opera
Tempest (T/SE), Trovatore (Th), Figaro (F), Otello (SM)
Short week, perhaps because of two productions beginning: The Tempest, in its house premiere, and Figaro, featuring Ildar Abdrazakov and perhaps the only real lyric soprano cultivated during Gelb's tenure -- Maija Kovalevska. Meanwhile Trovatore wraps up its fall run (it returns in January with a wholly different lineup of singers), and the moviecast Otello gives Johan Botha one last shot at recovering from his illness...

Carnegie Hall
Philadelphia Orchestra concert (T)
Gabriel Kahane concert (Th)
Marlis Petersen recital (F)
Call me a reactionary, but Yannick Nézet-Séguin's first Carnegie show as Philly's music director -- Verdi's Requiem, no less -- seems more tempting than the first of many Met evenings of The Tempest. But is Villazon seriously going to sing it? Composer/songwriter/performer Gabe Kahane has a classical/hipster pop show at Zankel Thursday, while the very German soprano Marlis Petersen offers a recital themed on Goethe's Faust the following evening at Weill.

Le Poisson Rouge
Metropolis Ensemble concert (T)
An Evening with Thomas Ades and "The Tempest" (F 6:30pm and 9pm)
The former show features a mini-opera on Tesla, a rearrangement of Berlioz's Nuits d’Ete sung by Keira Duffy, and a new song-cycle by Mohammed Fairouz sung by Kate Lindsey. Lindsey returns Friday, joined by the composer/conductor of and singers from the Met's Tempest, for a remix on the opera and other Shakespeare-themed stuff.

The week in NY opera (October 15-21)

Metropolitan Opera
Carmen (M/Th), Otello (T/SM), Trovatore (W/SE)
It's the last week for the current cast in Carmen -- the excellent Yonghoon Lee, the not-so-excellent Kate Royal, and the mostly-excellent Kyle Ketelsen all are gone when the show returns in February. Trovatore should also be good. Tomorrow is the last weeknight performance of Otello with the current cast.

Link for weekend ticket lottery drawing here; enter by midnight ET.

Carnegie Hall
World Orchestra for Peace Solti centennial concert (F)
It is, I think, entirely appropriate in its irony that an body called the "World Orchestra for Peace" will be conducted by the music world's most shameless Putin bootlicker, last seen celebrating the Russian invasion of Georgia. If your nose doesn't register such stenches, Angela Gheorghiu and Rene Pape offer delicacies for the ear.

Alice Tully Hall
Les Arts Florissants Charpentier motets (F)
William Christie's company offers, this time, not opera but French baroque sacred pieces.

The standard

Il Trovatore - 10/4/2012
Jones, Giannattasio, Zajick, Vassallo, Robinson / Callegari

The premiere of McVicar's Trovatore at the Met had big stars; this revival lacked them, to the point of serious box office impairment. But the result this time reflected pretty well on the standards of the house even on lesser-name evenings.

Most impressive may have been baritone Franco Vassallo. I was decidedly unimpressed by his Belcore four seasons back, but his di Luna presented him in a totally different light. In fact, between his naturally robust sound, straightforward engagement in the character's villainy, and facility for both the lyric and declamatory sides of his music, Vassallo may have been the best di Luna I've seen in this production, outdoing both Hvorostovsky (intense but vocally taxed) and Lucic (alternately too lyric and not lyric enough).

Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones and Italian soprano Carmen Giannattasio had, depending on how you cared to look at it, either complementary strengths or complementary weaknesses. Jones gave basically a brighter-voiced version of Marcelo Alvarez's production-opening performance: intensely satisfying in the lyric and conversational portions of the role (thanks to a feel for the Verdian phrase that also served him well in ensembles), but lacking at climaxes. For Alvarez these punctuating high notes weren't easily reached; for Jones they just lacked force, particularly compared to his partners. How I would have liked him to break from expectation and sing both verses of "Di quella pira", giving pleasure more in the phrasing than in the obligatory high note... instead, of course, he sang one hasty verse before an impressively long but unimpressive-sounding high-note finish, the tone of which actually got away from him at the end.

Giannattasio does not lack for volume or high-note resonance: in fact her voice may rival Sondra Radvanovsky's wondrous instrument in natural scale. Just hearing her pop off big ensemble-capping high notes is a pleasure... but what leads up to that point is less exciting. She is not quite finished, both vocally (not entirely even in sound from top to bottom, still -- like most young singers -- unwilling to use chest voice) and musically, where she really could not compare to Jones. ("D'amor sull'ali rosee" was quite spoiled by her letting the end of each phrase sag.) The raw material for an excellent Verdi soprano is certainly there: besides the size and volume, she has a natural liquid flexibility that makes the cabalettas natural fodder. But she won Operalia a decade ago, has had major engagements for years and years, and though 34 isn't old, it's old enough to wonder if how and when she might make the last, oh-so-important refinements to turn her from a case of infuriatingly underutilized potential into a major and indispensable star.

Though she was, I believe, scheduled to debut the first week, this second performance of Trovatore turned out to be Gianattasio's debut -- perhaps this (or whatever caused the initial cancellation) affected her performance? In any case she seemed quite moved at her very positive curtain call reception (though perhaps she's a better actress in real life than Paula Williams' revival stage direction -- which put Gianattasio through McVicar's familiar postures for Leonora but had/let her recast them as hesitant instead of decisive -- let her express)...

Dolora Zajick of course carries over not only from the premiere of this production but from many years of false starts before that when casting anyone but Azucena properly seemed unlikely. The 2009 premiere found her showing, perhaps for the first time, some age: this revival finds her having adapted well to the years' changes. Her singing is again clear throughout, with no fraying tone to be heard, and if it's lightened a bit on top, the chest still hits with massive force.

Morris Robinson is a forceful -- if not dramatically onrushing -- Ferrando. Daniele Callegari conducts with a nice overall sweep and some fine ideas that may come to fruition later in the run -- when the ensemble hiccups that popped up in the show's second half will presumably have been exorcised. This same basic cast, with Chinese soprano Guanqun Yu in place of Giannattasio, has a few more peformances this month. Certainly worth catching.

*     *     *
Every good performance, like this one, convinces me a bit more that Il Trovatore is the most indispensable of operas. As I wrote after the premiere,

Verdi's much-derided opera has brothers, lovers, and a mother, but lacks one of his most persistent figures: the father. Whether divided and beset as in Rigoletto (both he and Monterone), stylish and daring (and metaphorical) as in Ballo, all-too-solid as in Traviata, or -- well, one could go on indefinitely -- the father sets the tone for his opera's world. Here, in Trovatore's story, he is wholly absent: dead of heartbreak, overthrown (in a sense) long ago by gypsy machinations. And so too in the piece itself: gone is the responsible worldly figure that makes our daylight world what it is -- ordered; rationally explainable and advancing; free from witchcraft, ghosts, and meaningful coincidence. But it is not just the shadowier stuff that he keeps off, but the oldest magics: rhythm - story - sacrifice. So here Verdi unleashes them all as no other could -- and too few since have at all dared to try -- for a nap-of-reason draught more intoxicating even than its near-contemporary Tristan's.

An art incapable of such a potent, primeval draught seems hardly worth the trouble.

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The long post below alludes to it, but I should mention it as news: according to the Met, James Levine will conduct the orchestra again in May and three productions (Falstaff, Cosi, and Wozzeck -- three of his greatest pieces) next season.

Fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc.