Review

The Festwochen’s Rigoletto (later to be the Met’s)

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I think my favorite part was when Sparafucile handed Rigoletto his business card.

I wrote about Sunday’s premiere of Luc Bondy’s serviceable but mediocre Rigoletto for Bachtrack, and you can read the review here.

This production will be seen at La Scala and at the Met, reportedly in New York during the 2012/13 season. After Luc Bondy’s roaring success with Tosca, it’s something of a surprise he will be back at all (possibly the contract was signed long ago, and the La Scala connection is due to Stéphane Lissner, intendant in Milan and music director of the Festwochen). This production is rather better than the Tosca, and hovers around the weak average level of Met new productions. I would put it on a par with Bartlett Sher’s Hoffmann, a production it somewhat resembles in its dark, vague, slightly surreal ladies-in-underwear circus look. (The first thing that always happens when things get surreal is that women take their clothes off. Funny how that works.)

Basically, this is a traditional Rigoletto with an updated grimy look. George Gagnidze in the title role is the best part of the production, but he is generally working the usual Rigoletto clichés. I tried to find a little more in Bondy’s work in the Bachtrack review above, but I may have been reaching. Its combination of static sections, completely conventional moments, and a few added details already resemble the third or fourth revival of a once-interesting production.

But it’s still got stuff to piss off traditionalists. Let’s take a look at what! Also, more pictures.

(To be fair, the Met audience probably won’t be seeing this production the day after seeing a Stefan Herheim production, like I did. That was not advisable, though unavoidable. More on that one later today.)

The issues I see:
1. The set, though the work of important designer Erich Wonder, is ineffective and looks bargain basement. The first two acts are just some sliding diagonal walls (not really shown in any of the official production photos), the third act a two-level job that looked small on the Theater an der Wien’s stage. Resizing will be tricky: the Met is twice as big or so.

2. There is some doubling going on. First Rigoletto and the Duke wear the same color jackets. Then in Act 3, Maddalena and Gilda are kind of similar, and then Gilda dresses up as the Duke to die for him. This could have gone somewhere, but it didn’t.

3. There are a few non-literalisms. Rigoletto lacks a hump. The blocking in “Bella figlia” shows Gilda approaching the Duke but him not seeing her. I thought this last bit was rather good, actually.

4. Rigoletto kind of looks like the Joker from The Dark Knight. This would make him the second Joker I’ve seen onstage in an opera this season.

5. There are some ridiculous moments. There’s the matter of the ladder I described in the Bachtrack review, which seems like it must be a retort to those who protested the candle elimination in Tosca. There are the business cards. Giovanna sneaking the Duke behind Gilda onto her bed without her noticing him courts unintentional comedy. Gilda is carried off on her bed, not protesting as a bunch of masked men abduct her (really???).

6. There are some big gestures that are visually effective, such as when the mass of the chorus surrounds Monterone. But since we never get a feeling of power or corruption out of this court, the motivation is unclear. The court mostly spends its time gleefully skipping around in circles like Otto Schenk’s Italian peasants. Seriously, the choreography is bad. (Bonus: Karina Sarkissova is credited with “choreographic collaboration”–Sarkissova is the Staatsoper ballet dancer best known for getting fired and then re-hired after an underclothed photoshot in a Viennese men’s mag called, yes, Wiener.)

7. I actually thought the women’s dresses in the first scene were kind of fabulous. The random pantaloons ladies seemed like gratuitous male gaze decoration, though–maybe they could have had a dramaturgical function had Bondy done anything with them at all.

With a Duca and Gilda who can bring more individual personality to their performances, I can see this production being sort of OK. Uh, yay?

More pictures:

 

 
Photos © by Ruth Walz

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Review

Following Tosca’s footsteps

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While in Rome, I did what any self-respecting opera fan in Rome does: I took myself on a Tosca walking tour. Here’s what I found.

Like most verismic operas, Tosca is specific about details of setting. At the beginning of Act 3, Puccini specifies no fewer than fourteen different bells, situated in eight different locations as to aurally render dawn in Rome from the standpoint of the Castel Sant’Angelo. Compared to that, finding the three main sites is easy.

You can see these locations in literal-minded action in this movie version of the opera. 

Act 1: The Church

Cavaradossi is doing his painting job at the Baroque basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle, on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and around the corner from the Pantheon. It’s spectacular, but doesn’t rank very high in the food chain of local ecclesiastical tourism, which tells you something about Roman churches (this is possibly because it lacks a defining big-name painting or statue; I guess Cavaradossi doesn’t count). Around a dozen people were milling around when I visited. It boasts lots of frescoes depicting the life of the eponymous St. Andrew and the third-largest dome in Rome (after St. Peter’s and the Pantheon).

A small sign identifies the chapel dedicated to the Barberini family as the relevant Attavanti chapel. Appropriately, it is enclosed by a locked gate. No lady’s clothes in sight.

The art ranges from the sixteenth to nineteenth century. The center of the church is filled with unusual yellow light due to colored windows around the dome, as seen above. Baroque fans should note that there is also a chapel dedicated to the Strozzi family (think Barbara Strozzi). The church is open from 7:30 a.m. until noon and 4:30 to 7:30 in the evening.

Here is the set from Franco Zeffirelli’s late Met Tosca prodution. As you can see, he enlarged the church to include (presumably) three vaults to accommodate the size of the Met stage. Shenanigans!

Act 2: The Palazzo Farnese
The home of Scarpia’s evil lair is only a five-minute walk away, on the other side of the Campo de’Fiori. Today, in what I’m not sure can be described as dramatic irony or just as strange, it houses the French embassy.

You can tour the building if you make an appointment ahead of time, but not being organized, I didn’t, and just admired it from the outside. Too big to fit in one photo!

Act 3: The Castel Sant’Angelo
The Castel Sant’Angelo is a major landmark just by dint of its size. It began life as the mausoleum for the emperor Hadrian but later was expanded into a fortress. It’s located on the other side of the Tiber, but I really don’t need to give directions. You can’t miss it.

Inside it looks quite cute and peaceful today. It houses a not terribly popular museum of miscellaneous objects, but it’s best for just wandering around the battlements.

You might also remember it from the film Roman Holiday:

I did wonder: so where did Tosca land? If she landed in the moat (is that what this is?), maybe she changed her mind and swam away down the river?

But pavement of some kind seems more likely. Hopefully she didn’t take a living statue out with her.

Her last view, however, was probably gorgeous (for verismic accuracy, I should note that this photo is was taken at around 11:00, not dawn).

The location of Mario’s villa, however, remains a secret.

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Review

La battaglia di Legnano in Rome

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The Teatro dell’Opera di Roma’s new production of La battaglia di Legnano is part of the nationwide celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Republic’s founding. The choice is apt; this obscure opera is one of Verdi’s less covert Risorgimento works and features many rousing paens to Italia. (One post-unification production even retitled it The Defeat of Austria.) The production pushes this angle, so it’s almost irresistible to make this underwhelming, underattended, indifferently received premiere an allegory for the (poor) State of Opera in Italy Today. I don’t know if that’s appropriate because Italian opera politics isn’t something I know much about. After passive aggressively suggesting that, let’s talk about this opera.

Verdi, La battaglia die Legnano. Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, 5/25/2011 (new production premiere). Production by Ruggero Cappuccio, sets and costumes by Carlo Savi “con interventi di Mimmo Paladino e Matthew Spender,” lights by Agostino Angelini. Conducted by Pinchas Steinberg with Luca Salsi (Rolando), Tatiana Serjan (Lida), Yonghoon Lee (Arrigo), Gianfranco Montresor (Marcovaldo), Dmitriy Beloselskiy (Barbarossa)

La battaglia di Legnano dates from 1849, just before Luisa Miller, which is for me the cusp of where Verdi starts to get interesting. I can’t say I found a lot of the music very memorable, though. It’s got a good soprano aria (made semi-famous by Leyla Gencer, it’s not on YouTube but here she sings another part of the opera) and some good choruses. The most entertaining thing for me was to spot what Verdi recycled later: the plot is basically the same as Luisa Miller only with a warrior cult known as the Knights of Death instead of Federica providing competition for the tenor. Baritone Rolando’s aria in praise of familial love is a warm-up for “Di Provenza,” with the same accompaniment figure. And monks singing offstage while the soprano obligatocizes onstage recalls the Trovatore “Misere.”

Dramatically speaking, the titular battle disappointingly occurs offstage. The onstage action involves a love triangle but mostly consists of episodes of saber-rattling and note-passing more confusing than the Roman bus system. Plus the periodic chorus in praise of the Patria, naturally. In war-torn Medieval Milan (Barbarossa is invading), Lida married Rolando, but always loved Arrigo. Who she thought was dead, but of course he wasn’t. Drama ensues.

Singing comes before staging in most Italian opera houses, and that was the case here. The production is primarily concerned with getting everyone lined up downstage so they could sing nice and loud. Conceptually it is a mess. Director Gabriele Lavia left the production acrimoniously three months before the premiere, his vision apparently too costly and complicated for the company management (click on the Battaglia di Legnano link in the right column in the link above for a PDF with an article concerning this, in Italian). What last-minute replacement Ruggero Cappuccio has pieced together isn’t that great.

In what’s left over of Lavia’s concept (judging by what he says in the article linked to above), he pays studious tribute to the truism that an opera staging should reflect the original setting, the time of the opera’s composition, and the present day. The first is shown in the action itself and 19th-century paintings representing Medieval subjects which appear as a backdrop, the second in the costuming of the principals (tenor warrior hero Arrigo rather obviously sports a red Garibaldi neckerchief), and the latter in the modern dress of the chorus. Added to this is a silent lady in white who dabs at the background paintings, apparently showing the representation of Italy, or something. There are also some antiquities in crates, further showing the construction of Italy’s identity? Unfortunately none of this helps tell the story, the sets give little help to figure out what is happening and the non-existent blocking and characterization don’t assist either. It all ends up a bit screwy. I was wondering why the chorus was dressed in three different colors until they obediently organized themselves to reveal that their red, white, and green made them look like a massed Italian flag. OK.

It’s a shame that the staging didn’t make a better case for the opera, because the singers were pretty good. Tenor Yonghoon Lee has been getting a lot of buzz recently, and after missing his Wien Cavaradossis in April I was glad to hear him here. His voice is a dark, ringing spinto that’s powerful, glamorous, and even, a remarkable instrument with a ton of potential. But as a performer I have to keep him in the “potential” category for now due to a distinct lack of musical sophistication. I know this isn’t a style crying for subtlety, but singing with only one tone color and little differentiation of phrasing and dynamics becomes boring no matter how great the voice. I can’t really judge his acting based on this production, but he is quite good-looking.

Tatiana Serjan as Lida has a loud and steely and Russian voice that isn’t that beautiful, and she got tangled up in the cadenzas and coloratura at times. But she’s got that elusive thing known as temperament, and was fascinatingly intense to watch. Despite the blunt nature of her instrument she varied her singing well. She is what Maria Guleghina should be, with a better technique, no wobbles and without the wildly inappropriate repertoire. I would love to see Serjan go to town in an opera and production that gives her a little more space; I think she would bring it.

The only Italian among the major roles (a fact I’m sure escaped no one) was Luca Salsi as Rolando, who was solid and reliable and effective if something less than amazing. Dmitriy Beloselskiy made a strong cameo as Barbarossa (yeah, it’s that kind of opera). The chorus subscribes to the same school of Hearty Singing as the Staatsoper and sounded excellent, likewise the orchestra made this music sound less oom-pah-pah dull than it could. Pinchas Steinberg’s reading was clear, effective, not the high polish of Muti but a cut above average tub-thumping early Verdi.

The house was, at most, 75% full and the performance was received indifferently, with many not even staying to applaud or boo the production team (there was a decent amount of booing for them, yet), despite enthusiastic reception for Lee, Steinberg, and the orchestra. Not very festive for a celebration of Italy. Or maybe I’m just too used to the long ovations of Austria and Germany and having an ORF camera pointed in my direction at every first night.

Further performances are on 26, 28, 29, 31 May. May 28 features an alternate cast. This production will be seen later at the Liceu in Barcelona.

About the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma: It is important to note that the opera house’s website does not sell tickets in the cheaper price categories. It might look like the cheap tickets are sold out, but they may not be! If you want to buy a cheap top-level galleria seat (it is a small house and I could see just fine, even from the side, for the very reasonable price of 23 Euros), you can do so from the box office in person. I got mine there on the day of the performance, for a premiere, but this might not always be possible. You can also buy a galleria ticket for extra cost through a third party website such as this one. Last-minute discounts aren’t that good and there is no standing room.

Dress is somewhat more casual than in Austria or Germany, but also more stylish.

In a city of many beautiful buildings, the opera house doesn’t even bother to try to compete. It is also located in a dull district near the train station.

The side of the house suggests a slightly grander past:

But it also confuses (the white sign clarifies that, contra the other sign, this is not in fact the entrance to the galleria):

Inside is quite a bit better, but I didn’t take any photos because a sign forbade it and since I performed an epic feat of seat-hopping for the second half I wasn’t going to tempt fate. Here’s a photo I found on the internet. The theater looks better when it’s full:

Production photos copyright Teatro dell’Opera Roma.

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Review

Peter Konwitschny’s lean and mean Traviata in Graz

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Peter Konwitschny’s new Traviata at the Oper Graz looks like simplicity itself. The set consists solely of some curtains and a single (1) chair. Most university productions are more elaborate. But this performance, led by Marlis Petersen’s devastating Violetta, needed no help to cut right to the heart, and the story unfolds with a brutal directness. The score is trimmed in ways you might expect and some you wouldn’t (no intermission), and the musical performance is so closely tied to the drama that discussing it separately seems silly.

It is, in short, this is Musiktheater with a capital M (because it’s a German noun, duh).

Verdi, La Traviata. Oper Graz, 3.6.2011. Production by Peter Konwitschny, sets and costumes by Johannes Leiacker, lights by Joachim Klein. Conducted by Tecwyn Evans with Marlis Petersen (Violetta), Giuseppe Varano (Alfredo), James Rutherford (Germont)

The spare means of the production belie its conceptual sophistication. The rows of curtains are printed with trompe de l’oeil folds, and their red ripples are echoed in Violetta’s Act 1 dress. (Yes! we have another objectified lady in a short red dress o’ oppression.) They represent the layers of Violetta’s life: the shallowest stage (the most downstage curtains drawn) is her life as a courtesan, her love for Alfredo lets her painfully begin to open the layers to her deeper self. Finally, in the denouement at Flora’s in Act 2, it all collapses, the curtains pulled down, leaving the empty space of Violetta’s destroyed world.

She is already deathly ill in Act 1; the black-clad guests at her party are voyeurs, watching her every gasp. The group is less a dazzling society than a drunken, sadistic mess. Eager for more entertainment, the crowd throws nerdy, out-of-place Alfredo at Violetta, laughing at his attempt at a toast. She rebuffs him, but he tellingly makes his appearance in “Sempre libera” from the audience: the world of Alfredo and his father is the bourgeois one of the opera’s audience.

In Act 2, Violetta has desexualized herself, losing her bob wig and dress in favor of a lumberjack shirt, cargo pants, and combat boots, but this domestic and pastoral life is also an uneasy illusion of happiness (behind the curtains drawn at the end of Act 1 is another curtain). Alfredo’s father is a violent brute, actually bringing along his very young daughter to the meeting and not treating her so well. (Konwitschny is a good Brechtian, and the bourgeois morality on display is sufficiently hypocritical.) This life, it seems, isn’t all that fulfilling either, and Violetta even seems willing to shoot herself.

The pacing of the scene at Flora’s party is very strange, because the ballet is cut, as well as the references to the duel. Alfredo shows the moralizing tendencies of his father in the previous scene, leading to the climactic breaking point found in most Konwitschny productions, or, as Konwitschy puts it in his program note, “the surface cracks for a moment, and through his music Verdi gives us an insight into the genuinely apocalyptic forces in so-called civilized society… the whore, the only genuine human being in this opera, expresses, more or less as the lead voice, the great longing for a truly fulfilled existence.”

The final scene offers Violetta little consolation. The doctor is still wearing his party hat from the night out, and even though Alfredo returns too late, and as Violetta dies the other characters move further and further away from her, not so much a physical distance as an existential one. Eventually the all appear in the audience while she, heartbreakingly, dies alone.

What keeps the production going is the detail and commitment of the performances, from the leads to the chorus. The bare setting feels exactly right for a production this emotionally intimate and vivid. Never is there a hint of sentimentality. The cuts and lack of intermission place the focus squarely on Violetta’s quickly-unfolding fate as she attempts to find a livable place in an inhuman world.

Marlis Petersen’s utterly tragic Violetta is at the very center, with honesty, intensity, commitment, and considerable acting talent. She is a coloratura soprano, and while her high notes are dazzling the middle of her voice is less than refulgent. But she is so absorbing that complaining seems ridiculous. Giuseppe Varano as Alfredo’s acting was less accomplished than Petersen’s. The basic idea was there, but some of the more frantic moments did not quite work, though he was clearly trying. He is a solid, traditional Italian lyric tenor, but his singing in the passaggio and above sometimes sounded constrained, though he managed a decent high C at the end of the cabaletta. (We got one verse of his cabaletta while Germont’s cabaletta was cut, as were the second verses of Ah, forse’è lui and the letter aria.)

James Rutherford was a deep Wagnerian Germont, an odd bit of casting. He did his best to sing with flexibility, but sometimes sounded ill at ease in the more lyrical sections such as “Pura siccomme un angelo.” The aria was better. And he was an excellent actor in this exceptionally unsympathetic conception of the role. Smaller roles were adequately sung.

Tecwyn Evans conducted a fast account of the score that fit the production’s intermission-less rush, and everything held together well. The orchestra sounded quite good, but to be honest I did not notice them a whole lot.

This is not a Traviata for everyone–I know people who would be hollering about the cut of the ballet, and other people who would disparage the lack of pretty costumes–but as a night out at the theater it is a powerful experience. Not to be missed.

Note that this production is a joint effort with the English National Opera. Watch the trailer below and then see some photos I took of the beautiful Graz opera house. Further performances 11.3, 26.3 and 5.5, 18.5, 27.5 (in May with a slightly different cast).

Trailer:

Local sights:

 
This model is for people with visual disabilities, but somehow it reminded me of Act 1 of Stefan Herheim’s Rosenkavalier.
 
Those go straight to Maestro Evans’s dressing room, thx.

Production photos copyright Werner Kmetitisch/Oper Graz

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Review

Rigoletto: Puffy shorts brigade

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Take three first-rate voices (Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ramón Vargas, and Patrizia Ciofi), one of which might not be quite ideally cast (guess), add a psssshhhht, and you have Rigoletto. That last bit is the sweet song of separating Velcro on the Gilda-containing sack in the last scene. Just another rep night at the Staatsoper.

Verdi, Rigoletto. Wiener Staatsoper, 16/11/10. Production by Sandro Sequi, conducted by Michael Güttler with Ramón Vargas (Duca), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Rigoletto), Patrizia Ciofi (Gilda), Kurt Rydl (Sparafucile), Nadia Krasteva (Maddalena)

Dmitri Hvorostovsky is no more a pathetic loser than Juan Diego Flórez is. Hvorostovsky’s carelessly sprightly Rigoletto wasn’t annoyingly smug like Flórez’s Nemorino, but he was even less plausible on a theatrical level. Looking only mildly bedraggled, hunching over roughly half the time, and giving one or two rakish smiles too many, he was closer to being the drunken life of the party than an outsider from it. Rigoletto flirting with the Countess Ceprano seems a little wrong somehow, or at least it does in a production as utterly conventional as this one. I’m sure Hvorostovsky has a more convincing Rigoletto in him, but he’s not the best actor and is so naturally unsuited for the part that it would require more rehearsal than a Staatsoper rep performance gets to bring it out.

Vocally there were some weird things going on. His tone sounded much darker than I remember from the last time I heard him (around a year and a half ago, Trovatore at the Met), and I wonder if he’s doing something odd to get the volume. He was perfectly audible for the Staatsoper’s size, but the tone lacked brilliance. It’s still a deluxe voice, but I liked the moments when he lightened up a bit to a rounder, more resonant sound best. It wasn’t bad at all, but based on this outing Rigoletto is not a role that plays to his strengths.

He smartly positioned himself in one of the stage’s hot spots downstage left for “Pari siamo.” It’s always interesting to see which singers manage to gravitate towards the acoustically best locations on the stage (Flórez is also adept at this). Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to interest the lighting folks, and he was completely in the dark for the entire monologue. Better unseen than unheard, though, especially when suffering from an excess of hotttness.

Ramón Vargas was an undercharacterized but stylishly and assuredly sung Duke. His ease and comfort with the notes and the style were impressive, however I wish they had led him to a more dynamic portrayal. I think the years of heavier rep are beginning to take a toll on his voice, which has the traces of a beat and can be kind of spread and unfocused, but the sound is still pleasant. No high C, which I think was wise; the high Bs sounded excellent. (OOPS, I mean high D, not that either, even better that he skipped it.)  Experienced Maddalena Nadia Krasteva (last seen feeling up a different tenor as the Foreign Princess in Munich’s Rusalka) managed to light up her short scene, getting more life out of Vargas than he had shown in the rest of the opera.

Patrizia Ciofi as Gilda was the most unqualified vocal success of the evening, with a clear yet full sound that sounded bell-like in the coloratura. Her very top notes turned shrill, and she rushed through the “Caro nome” cadenza, singing the highest section legato. However, for the most part this was really lovely and vibrant singing. Gildas often sound generically angelic, but she was nicely distinctive. Acting-wise she did the best she could, somewhat more engaged than Vargas but nothing particularly innovative.

Smaller roles were fine. Kurt Rydl sounded ancient and wobbly as Sparafucile but he sure was loud. Janusz Monarcha as Monterone could graduate to Sparafucile should Rydl ever retire. Michael Güttler led a conventional but tight account of the score with good control over the tempos and only a few coordination hitches with the chorus and offstage bands. The orchestra sounded slightly below their usual standard, the brass particularly out to lunch.  Everyone sang their lungs out in a shapeless “Bella figlia dell’ amore,” leading to a most graceless effect.

I believe this production has received a sprucing-up since I last saw it in 2006. The new costumes are rather loud and fussy. Rigoletto’s jester’s suit looks like a tribute to the German flag via the Italian Renaissance, there are more men in tights than there should be when the men are not ballet dancers, and even Gilda’s man costume has puffy slashed sleeves. Their brightness clashes badly with the same old, faded set. It’s all by-the-numbers, though some things could be improved: why does Giovanna enter with the music obviously portraying Gilda? And that Velcro is just a crime. Shame on you, Staatsoper tech. I have been there–I believe it was around “Venite, inginocchiatevi”–and I have chosen not to do that.

Bows. I got one at the end of Act 2, the other is from the actual end:

 
Vargas, Ciofi, Güttler, Krasteva, Hvotostovsky, Rydl

 Scenic photos copyright Wiener Staatsoper (first one credited to Axel Zeiniger), bows photos by me.

Next: I got a ticket to hear Thielemann and the Philharmoniker’s Beethoven show on Saturday.

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Review

Verdi Requiem at the Musikverein: Halloween special

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In a rare display of programming wit from the Musikverein, this year you can hear the Verdi Requiem on two fitting dates: Halloween and All Saints’ Day.  (Theologically speaking All Souls’ Day on Tuesday would probably have been most appropriate, but I guess the schedule didn’t allow for that.)  But Daniele Gatti’s unshakable control in last night’s performance didn’t allow for anything spooky.  It was an epic cathedral of a performance, but not a thrills and chills one.

This year for Halloween I went as a Catholic.

Verdi, Requiem.  Musikverein, 31/10/10.  Orchestre Nationale de France and Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien conducted by Daniele Gatti with soloists Krassimira Stoyanova, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Francesco Meli, and Tomasz Konieczny

Daniele Gatti is a micromanager of a conductor, beating subdivisions and keeping a very careful eye on solo sections.  This wasn’t a very spontaneous performance and sometimes lacked momentum and excitement, but it was majestic, monumental, and mmm… awe-inspiring.  It was an interpretation of extremes, beginning almost imperceptibly softly (thanks, Musikverein acoustics!), broken up with exaggerated Luftpausen, and exploding into the louder sections.  Sometimes Gatti’s precision seemed counterproductive, as in the hesitant and oddly shaky fanfare beginning the Tuba mirum.  Tempos were slow with a running time of almost an hour and 35 minutes.  The most exaggerated slowness came in the Dies irae, here not a roller coaster but a monumental block, the wind lines emerging with unusual clarity.  The Orchestre Nationale de France sounded excellent and followed Gatti though all of his precisely planned changes of scenery–much more so than the excellent but enormous and not as subtle Musikverein chorus, which sometimes drowned the orchestra out.

The soloists didn’t blend very well, but since only two of them were the originally scheduled people I suppose you can’t really blame them (why do I have to write something like this for EVERY SINGLE THING that I see?).  Krassimira Stoyanova in the soprano part was the best match for Gatti’s style, singing with elegant control and reserved passion.  She never pushed and sometimes was drowned out by the chorus in the Libera me, but nailed the pppp high B-flat on “Requiem” and sounded generally fabulous.  Marie-Nicole Lemieux gave a more extroverted reading of the mezzo/alto part with a big voice that sounds like a real alto.  She has great low notes, but a very large vibrato.  Francesco Meli, substituting in the tenor part, has a nice Italianate timbre and fine phrasing, but sounded too lyric for this piece with occasionally strained tone and some tremulous piano singing.  Tomasz Koncieczny in the bass part was a very late replacement and sounded solid but not terribly coordinated with the others.

This concert will be repeated tonight.

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Review

La forza del destino: Showdown at the Staatsoper corral

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Preziosilla is onto Carlos’s game.
(Note: picture is a different cast, though same Preziosilla.)
(Photo: Opera Chic)

Of all the caves in the world, you had to walk into mine.  La forza del destino might not be the most outwardly coherent of operas, but Verdi didn’t call it an “opera of ideas” for nothing, and it has an agenda under all that shaggy discursiveness.  Unfortunately David Pountney’s Wiener Staatsoper production, shorn of almost half an hour of music, has the ideas underlined and highlighted and little of the dark chaos.  This messily-staged revival and Philippe Auguin’s conducting went unstoppably forward like the plot’s bullet fired by mistake, and despite four strong singers it all felt rather off.  And the cowboys, well, they were a mistake too.  Giddyap, pardner.

Verdi, La forza del destino.  Production by David Pountney, conducted by Philippe Auguin.  With Eva-Maria Westbroek (Leonora), Fabio Armiliato (Alvaro), Zeljko Lucic (Don Carlos), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Padre Guardiano), Tomasz Konieczny (Fra Melitone), Nadia Krasteva (Preziosilla)

If you’ve ever met me, I’ve probably told you how you have to read War and Peace.  (Because you do.  It’s wonderful in every way.  It’s my favorite novel.)  La forza del destino is kind of like War and Peace.  Shit happens, some personal and some global-historical, and sometimes there’s little the characters can do to control it.  They wander through things that are larger then themselves.  Some glory in the chaos (Preziosilla) , others try to hide from it (Leonora, eventually Alvaro).  In the opera, you don’t have Tolstoy’s narrative voice telling you all the fateful stuff.  But if you’re at the Staatsoper, you have David Pountney, who’s even more pedantic.

As suggested by the opening video of a butterfly starting an enormous wheel, the production is about coincidences and unintended consequences (I was sadly distracted through the whole overture).  Christianity provides a kind of anchor for these characters adrift, who finally all end up assailing the monastery for help and guidance.  The inn is a place of momentary respite, where many Bibles seem to provide a veneer of security.  The period is sometime during the twentieth century, but only vaguely so (there are still swords for dueling).  As an interpretation it makes sense, but it hits you over the head a few times too often.  Moreover, its extreme minimalism and attendant demurral to create a world outside the principal characters undermine the portrayal of larger forces (of DESTINY) at work.  When we’re suddenly at war in Act 3 the means are not great enough to give us any real atmosphere, just some halfhearted projections.  Destiny’s force never seems adequately cataclysmic.

Crosses, crosses everywhere (Photo: Wiener Staatsoper)

The sets are simple and OK enough, but the chorus in the inn scene is a somewhat inexplicable band of sexy dancing cowboys, including also sexy dancing cowgirls, and later at war we gets sexy dancing nurse nuns.  I think most opera suffers from an excess of good taste but I’m going to make an exception here.  We have lost any opportunity to establish who these people are in favor of sexy dancing cowgirls.   If the dancing had been fun or meaningful, it would have been alright, but it was just awkwardly bad.  The execution as a whole was so messy that I really can’t say how good or bad the production as originally conceived was.  The buttons in particular were hopelessly off, with some awkward silences and interruptions–the audience had no clue when they should clap and it made the reception feel tepid just because it was unclear.  (The lights, blocking, and conductor should always signal when we should applaud.)

The score suffered from some major cuts, particularly in the choral and minor character material of Act 3.  Not that I really miss Preziosilla’s “Al suon del tamburo” and Trabuco’s aria as such, but they give this opera its texture, its wildly incoherent patchwork of random events and moments that confuses the characters as much as it does me.  Making Forza neater seems to go against its spirit.  And the one major rearrangement–reordering some scenes in Act 3 so the tenor and baritone get a break between their duets and then cutting directly to the Rataplan–destroys the wonderful sequence of the Act 3 finale entirely.

Opening scene (Photo: Wiener Staatsoper)

Conductor Philippe Auguin favored a fast and loud account of the score that, while sometimes exciting, similarly allowed for few excursions into anything.  We’re getting this sucker done in under three hours or else, he seemed to say (my recording [Levine] is two hours fifty-six minutes total and the intermission was 20-25 minutes).  By the time Leonora pled for pace, pace, I was thinking, you and me both, sister.

The singing was mostly very good, though not transcendental enough to overrule these production and conductor-ly deficiencies.  Fabio Armiliato offered solid and admirable Italian tenoring with good phrasing and intonation, fine coloring and very loud and rich high notes, faulted by a muscley and dry tone at the passaggio and below.  I feel kind of bad for never warming to him, but he failed to grab me somehow.  His acting is generic but he does manage to look impressively Jesus-like in Act 4 in a long white robe with his short beard and longish hair.  I think this was unintentional.  If it wasn’t, I have no idea what it was supposed to signify.

Act 3.  Several of the upper parts of this set were MIA last night.
Photo: Der Standard

Eva-Maria Westbroek has a fabulous soprano, lush and creamy and even right up to the top of the staff.  Above that it gets steelier, but not unpleasantly so (that is to say, her first two “malediziones” were better than the last one).  I would liked to have heard more rhythmic flexibility and Italianate phrasing from her, but Augiun was conducting like he would slow down for no woman or man, so I’m not going to say she couldn’t do it elsewhere.  She did some marvelous acting when onstage alone.  And as for her future role as Anna-Nicole Smith, well, if Anna-Nicole had had better taste she would have wished she could look that good in a pantsuit.

Zeljko Lucic has plenty of volume for Don Carlos and sang his aria with real beauty and musicality, but he seems too fundamentally decent and his voice too lyrically gentle for a villain who kills his own sister.  I would love to hear him as Boccanegra, but am not convinced of his Verdi-villain status.  Tomasz Konieczny, as Melitone, had a metallic edge to his voice that made me think he would have been more suitable, if less opulent.  Ferruccio Furlanetto is not the type to be confined to near-last in a cast list and I’m rather surprised to see him singing such a small role as Padre Guardiano.  It was lovely, and his duet with Westbroek had, along with Lucic’s aria, the best singing of the night, but, still.  It’s minor.  Nadia Krasteva as Preziosilla had the misfortune to get totally lost in Auguin’s manical tempo for the Rataplan, but otherwise didn’t sound bad and, hey, she can do both a split and a backbend.

Finally, a Great Moment in Opera Titles: “The bullet in his chest worries me.”  (“La palla che ha nel petto mi spaventa.”)  (Even in Italian it is somewhat dry, but “mi spaventa” is more properly “scares me.”)

Bows, another lousy in-house photo from me:

Next: The Semele prima is tomorrow but I need a break and think I’ll go on Friday.

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Review

Attila the underdone

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Verdi, Attila.  Metropolitan Opera, 2/23/2010.  Conducted by Riccardo Muti and no one really cares about anything else.  No, wait, it was a new production by Pierre Audi with Violeta Urmana (Odabella), Ramon Vargas (Foresto), Giovanni Meoni (Ezio) and Ildar Abdrazakov (Attila) with sets and costumes by Herzog, de Meuron, and fat-phobic Miuccia Prada.

The story of this show, for good and ill, begins and ends with Riccardo Muti.  The good is that the music had tremendous style and shape, the orchestra sounded fantastic, and the singing was variable but committed.  The bad is that Muti wields his power over directors in ways not necessarily conducive to dramatically exciting productions.  The most important thing seems to be that the singers have an uninterrupted view of Signor Muti at all times.  I got the feeling that the director and designers were very aware of this and were trying to make the restrictions part of their concept, but it backfired a bit.  They might have been aiming for the formalism of Greek tragedy, but the blocking was so sparse it just ended up static and stiff.   Not a successful collaboration, but the production has redeeming qualities, and I enjoyed it.

Purely as looks, I liked a lot of the design.  It’s certainly more visually striking and original than many other endeavors this season (e.g. Carmen, Hoffmann, Tosca).  The prologue begins on an enormous pile of rubble, most of the other scenes are staged against an enormous curtain of greenery.*  But both provide little space for movement.  The costumes are vaguely steampunk post-apocalyptic something, including a scary Marge Simpson/Bride of Frankenstein ‘do for Odabella, but even from my seat around a third of the way back in orchestra (thanks, lady who rescued me from standing room!) only some of the details read–namely the car-wash fringe on Ezio shoulders and the occasional LED lights.  Most of it was too dark.  Also, all the hems were too long, everyone was holding up their skirts and capes all evening.

The blocking was, to put it gently, minimal, clustered in the stage’s limited spaces, all of which coincidentally were near Muti.  There were some efforts to be static with ATTITUDE, most successfully by Urmana, but generally everyone just stared out at the audience at Muti.  A sympathetic interpreter would say that the concept is that the characters are caught in a destroyed (rubble) and wild (forest) world where human connections are impossible, Attila’s army is nothing more than a faceless mass (in fancy t-shirts).  A less sympathetic one would say that this distant approach is a poor fit for a work that has a lot of passionate relationships, both of love and hate.  I’m somewhere in between these two.

OK, now for the music.  The orchestra sounded fantabulous from the first bars.  The strings had an amazing gauzy quality, I was never once conscious of there being oom-pahs, though I know there were, I have never heard a less bombastic and bangy account of early Verdi.  Or most middle Verdi.  It was loud, there was a lot of dramatic contrast, but nothing was underlined solely for flashy effect, it felt right.

The singers similarly showed subtlety and sensitivity–in early Verdi terms that is–though their instruments weren’t ideal.   I liked Violeta Urmana’s Odabella quite a lot despite some obvious problems.  She owned the role and production more than anyone else in the cast, and tore into the music and its considerable quantity of notes.  But her high notes were shrill, her middle voice better but not always opulent, and her chest notes loud enough but not exciting.

Ildar Abdrazakov should have been the star of the show.  The problem is that he wasn’t.  He wasn’t bad, his sound is warm and biggish, he looked scary, but he lacks charisma and star power.  It seemed like Attila’s part is somewhat dull, which I’m sure in the hands of a star bass it isn’t.  The production didn’t help by depriving him of the opportunity to show his power over the troops–the chorus being caught in the set’s underworld.  Unmemorable.

Ramón Vargas is a tenor of great musicality and cruised through lots of the music with a nice legato.  But he lacks the heroic heft needed for this part, he was audible but the voice is just too lyric for an opera this fierce.  I think there is strain, his tone is developing an unfortunate flutter similar to Alagna’s in recent years.  Finally, Giovanni Meoni subbed for Carlos Alvarez as Ezio and did a fine job with a large, round, pleasant sound, though he lacked something in dramatic attitude I can hardly fault a cover for that (and everyone except Urmana needed an attitude injection, really).

As for the booing, I talked to a bunch of people in intermission and afterwards, and their major complaints all seemed to be about the abstract sets.  OPEN YOUR MINDS, people.  As long as we’re all whining that the Big Wall o’ Green Stuff is not a legitimate visualization of a wild forest, we’re never going to get to get to Level 2 of Abstract Regie, at which point we consider that the forest could perhaps not even have trees and still be OK (GASP).  It’s not that there weren’t problems here, but don’t be ridiculous.

To catch up with the news, Prada’s skinny replacements for the fired supersized supers were superfluous, though skinny.  Also, Robby Duiveman is credited as “Associate Costume Designer” and gets a picture and bio in the program, which makes me wonder as to the extent of Prada’s involvement with the production.

There are some memorable scenic effects, most of all some rotating gobos that made the wall o’ green stuff come alive, which made me remember that I missed Lost last night.  Do we know if Sayid is a zombie yet?  No, don’t tell me.  Also, can Daniel Faraday show up wearing Attila’s  kickass spiky helmet?  Because that would be awesome.

Next: Have you seen my Nose?

*The wall serves to remind us to visit the David Rubenstein Atrium down the block, which has a very similar albeit smaller green wall designed by the same dudes–also, have a sandwich there, they’re delicious if a bit pricey.  Unless you’re in danger of being fired by Miuccia Prada, that is.

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Review

Simon Boccanegra: I Can Still Sing, But I Never Could Fence Properly

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Verdi-Piavo/Boito, Simon Boccanegra.  Metropolitan Opera, 1/22/10.  Conducted by James Levine. Placido Domingo (Boccanegra), Adrianne Pieczonka (Amelia), Marcello Giordani (Adorno), James Morris (Fiesco), Patrick Carfizzi (Paolo). Directed by Peter McClintock after a production by  Giancarlo del Monaco.

Oh, better far to live and die
Under this baritone’s flag I fly,
Than sing an odd modulating part,
With an aging voice if a tenor’s heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where other tenors transpose too;
But I don’t care which fach I sing,
I’ll live reborn as a Baritone King.

Apologies to G&S.  (I hasten to remind you that Simon Boccanegra was a semi-pirate before becoming Doge.  You don’t know how hard it was to not write a lot of pirate jokes into this review, mateys.)

This opera is pure gold, y’all.  Yeah, the plot is a bit convoluted, but the score is absolute perfection from start to finish. And maybe it’s partly because I’m so partial to this period of Verdi but this was one of the most musically satisfying performances I’ve seen at the Met in a while.  Sure, there are some perplexing things (like “age”) happening to the voice of our dear Placido Domingo, which I will discuss!  And the staging is pretty as a picture, a picture painted many centuries ago, and about as mobile as a painting too (coming from me, this is not a compliment)!  And yet I highly recommend.

Let’s start off with the most important thing, and that would be James Levine.  When I see him conduct like he did last night I feel that most of the time I am insufficiently appreciative of his skill, because it was awesome.  But I honestly haven’t heard him conduct a performance this majestic, this finely colored, this exciting in a while.  There are a few little orchestral interludes that ended up being a little conductor-showy–I swear part of the intro to Amelia’s aria was sounding like a Klangfarbenmelodie–but all to fantastic effect.

Adrianne Pieczonka sang Amelia, the only female role in the opera.  She had a slightly iffy start, the entrance aria doesn’t sit in the prettiest part of her voice (an aria Krassimira Stoyanova hits out of the park, actually her Amelia is generally fantastic).  But after the aria Pieczonka was fantastically consistent.  By which I mean, musically perfectly precise, refined, and controlled.  That’s not something you hear in this rep very often.  Her voice itself is very lyric, clear, and even in color and yet big, projecting marvelously, an interesting combination that makes me think she would be good as the Elisabeth of your choice (Carlos or Tannhäuser).  Really gorgeous, I would love to hear her more at the Met.  Get on that, Casting Department!

She was somewhat oddly matched with the infuriatingly inconsistent Marcello Giordani as Gabriele Adorno.  He’s got something that not many tenors have, a certain sound and fearlessness that makes things work in an exciting way.  But his voice can turn sour on occasion, and next to a singer as tasteful as Pieczonka he sounds somewhat musically sloppy and coarse, she somewhat too restrained (JJ in the Post referred to her as “primly musical,” which is harsh but also true).  But mostly it was a good night for him, this role a much better fit for his unsubtle style than most–Adorno is such a hothead–than, well, Faust in Damnation de Faust.

In what often resembled Senior Night onstage, James Morris as Fiesco had the unenviable effect of making Placido Domingo (see below) sound young.  I realize in years he is somewhat fewer, but all those Wotans have had their costs.  He has gravitas, yes, there’s a lot of sound left too, but it’s wobbly, and his low notes have deserted him more or less completely.  He’s not quite in Ramey territory yet, but approaching it (look behind you, you may see a hill).  Also, the sword fight between him and Placido in the Prologue was rather pathetic, I’m not sure if this was due to a lot of arthritis or insufficient rehearsal time or what, but it did not live up to the ferocity of the score in any way.
OK, now onto Placido Domingo.  Let’s forget about the questionable management of opera companies and conducting for a moment.  Miraculously, at his age and in this tessitura, he still sounds like Placido Domingo, more or less.  And that would be a tenor sound.  Ironically, he may have finally proven to all those critics who said he’s a baritone that he’s been a tenor all along (a criticism whose logic I fail to see–he was a baritone who had a very long, very healthy career as one of the best tenors ever? really???).  In case this isn’t already clear, I LOVE Placido Domingo.  I have heard lots of his recordings, if I need a recording of an opera and one by him is available and the thing isn’t in German I will almost always pick him, I’m not a completist because generally I’m not like that and besides being a Domingo completist would be IMPOSSIBLE, but I’m very familiar with what his voice sounded like in his prime.

Which makes seeing him in this opera just a little surreal at times.  Because he is, inarguably, still Placido Domingo, and still sounds like it.  But the age and tessitura disguise him a bit, like watching Sean Connery in a movie today after having seen lots of James Bonds.  But there’s no way he sounds like a baritone, he sounds like Placido Domingo singing low, and while there is a certain loss of that Verdi baritone sound in this opera, there’s a lot of gain because it is Placido-freaking-Domingo.  The very audible prompter did have a big job last night (not the first time), but still, he gets the nobility and generosity of this character just right, even with the occasional wobble.

No whining about the plot, folks, sure, it’s too complicated and has some holes but I actually like it, and find it much more involving than many other works of similar convolution, maybe because the music is so good.

I feel obliged to comment on the production, but don’t have much to say about it.  It is pretty, the prologue and Council Chamber especially so.  It has a few functional issues, namely sometimes it’s a little creaky in the most literal sense and the offstage chorus behind the Council Chamber isn’t the most audible.  The statue that is pulled down in the Prologue is a silly-looking effect (apparently the Genoese equip their statues with hinges for smooth toppling and removal).  The Act 3 set is set very far upstage in a way that I believe facilitates a faster scene change but seems like a slightly spiteful screwing of those of us who are already sitting pretty far from the stage.  The Personenregie wasn’t out to make any statements, the only interesting thing that happens is in the last act, when Fiesco sits in Simon’s chair, which actually is a good kind of point.  If you want a fancypants Regie Boccanegra it does exist on the YouTubes, and looks intriguing.

So yeah, go if you can, you won’t regret it.

Next: A plane carrying a commedia dell’arte troupe crashes on a tropical island inhabited only by a lamenting woman, some unhelpful nymphs chanting mysterious numbers, and a cloud of smoke with a bad attitude.   Let us now say thanks that the prima of Ariadne auf Naxos does not fall on the same night as that of Lost.

I won’t be seeing Il Mondo della Luna at Gotham Chamber Opera, though appears to be something right up my alley it is sold out and I failed to remember to buy a ticket earlier.  (Gotham Chamber Opera!  Call me!  I will write about it!  Not that you seem to have any problems selling tickets, but, well, I’m totally an opster!)

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