Giacomo Puccini - La Bohème
Royal Opera House, London - 2018
Antonio
Pappano, Richard Jones, Michael Fabiano, Nicole Car, Mariusz Kwiecien,
Simona Mihai, Florian Sempey, Luca Tittoto, Jeremy White, Wyn Pencarreg,
Andrew Macnair, John Morrisey, Thomas Barnard
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
There's
no other work of opera that hits you emotionally the way La Bohème
does, and that's something you don't want to lose with an inappropriate
stage production that sucks the life out of it. The challenge of
finding a replacement for John Copley's long-running 40 year old
production at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden then is not without
considerable risk, as its production design and tone has become
inextricably entwined with the opera and even seared into the
consciousness of several generations of opera goers.
Of
course it doesn't have to be that way. The genius of Puccini's musical
composition and arrangements goes far beyond the mere tugging of heart
strings. It's a model of precision that captures a variety of tones and
moods, celebrating the spirit of youthful endurance through deprivation
and set-backs, of young love and maturity of sentiments, of facing up
to changes including the ever-present reality and inevitability of
death. It is a serious work, a great work that speaks for itself.
A stage production doesn't really need to do too much to illustrate that any further, and it often
seems like Copley's production captured the essence of the work and retained a
freshness while Zeffirelli's similarly long-standing production, for
example, now looks tired and overwrought. No matter how enduring or
suitable the production, La Bohème can always do with a bit of a refresh, even
if it's just to take the predictability out of it. And, essentially,
that's really all Richard Jones's new production does. Whether it improves on the old production is debatable - although I can't imagine
many would think so - but it does highlight new parts of the work that
might be lost through over-familiarity.
The locations
remain much the same and are instantly recognisable, if a little more
minimally stylised in design, which is not surprising since it's a
Richard Jones production. The garret in Act I is sparsely furnished,
its furnishings presumably gone the same way in earlier occasions as
Rodolfo's play - into the furnace to heat the place. Narrow wooden
beams bear down on the limited roof-space, a small door leading into it
and a skylight above. Its bohemian artist inhabitants do indeed look
like scruffy artists in second-hand clothes that may once have been
smart, with long hair and unkempt beards. No hipsters here, thank
goodness.
Act II is also refreshing for its move away
from the traditional French street cafe depiction of Cafe Momus for a
rather more obviously upmarket posh restaurant. Once outside of the
garret however it also becomes clear that Richard Jones's production has
also done away with 1840's Paris Commune setting for a location that is
a little more generalised, but certainly evokes the nearby Covent
Garden market in some kind of idealised Quality Street box way. It's a
little bland, but functional and it doesn't get in the way of the
musical performance, which since it's Puccini under Antonio Pappano,
means it's in very capable hands, and indeed, Acts I and II are
everything they should be; urgently, sweepingly romantic, playful and
lyrical.
That also makes up for the lack of imagination
shown in the designs for Acts III and IV. Really, Act III is just a
stripped-back version of the familiar cold night outside a warm lively
tavern scene, with a stage bare but for falling snow and a cardboard-box
looking tavern, albeit with Marcello's wall paintings displayed on the
outside (which at least shows he can paint, something that the invisible
canvas in Act I and his crude stick figure drawings in Act IV don't
really get across). The tavern slowly sliding into the background by
itself however as the Act progresses just looks weird.
If
it still works reasonably well in Act III and on its return to the even
more bare garret room (it must have gotten quite cold again) in Act IV it's got a lot to do with Pappano's musical direction but also
the performances of the singers. And to be fair Richard Jones's
direction of the performances is also good and undoubtedly an important
contributing factor to the production still working effectively as a
whole. It's not the most adventurous La Bohème, but even La Fura dels Baus didn't feel like they could do much with it and let's not even get into Claus Guth's bohemians in space misfire. Only Stefan Herheim
has really been able to bring a completely new approach to in his Den Norske production,
deconstructing the opera, exposing its workings and revealing it as the musically
impressive and emotionally harrowing masterpiece that we already know it
is.
Essentially however La Bohème reinvents itself
every time you bring fresh new voices in to reinterpret the work and
there's an impressive line-up here. Michael Fabiano's Rodolfo is a
revelation. He's a great singer that brings something new and
distinctive to a role every time I've seen him, even in the most
familiar roles (Alfredo in La Traviata, Don José in Carmen). His
Rodolfo is superb; relaxed and confident, charming in humour and
persuasive in his romantic intentions towards Mimi; there's a sweetness
also in his voice and impeccable delivery that is just irresistible.
Nicole Car is perhaps a bit too energetic and full of life as Mimi after
her cough and stumble on his doorstep, but just as the music and
character develop, so too does the emotional charge between the two of
them in the final two acts. The ending is of course devastating.
Links: Royal Opera House
Gaetano Donizetti - La Favorite
Bayerische Staatsoper, 2016
Karel Mark Chichon, Amélie Niermeyer, Elīna Garanča, Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecień, Mika Kares, Joshua Owen Mills, Elsa Benoit
Staatsoper.TV Live - 6th November 2016
On the surface, La Favorite has a melodramatic plot of contrivance, misfortune and happenstance that results in the inevitable tragic ending for the leading lady. It's one that is typical of bel canto opera and Donizetti (Lucia di Lammermoor, Linda di Chamounix, Anna Bolena). La Favorite in fact seems even more over the top than usual, with religion, court intrigue and war heroism all crashing together in a spectacular fashion within the remit of a tragic love triangle. Behind it all however there is the touching and tragic personal story of a woman crushed by huge forces beyond her control, and the Bayerische Staatsoper's 2016 production focuses in on this human element of Donizetti's rich work to brilliant effect.
There is certainly a risk of that human element being lost within the vast scale of the plot and the immense stature of the personalities involved. The human element is principally within the figure of Léonor de Guzman, a woman who is secretly the mistress, the 'favourite', of King Alfonse XI of Castille. Their illicit union however doesn't escape the notice of the Pope, who issues a Papal decree denouncing the king's intention to divorce the Queen and risk placing the nation under threat. The king sees a way out of the problem, agreeing to a marriage between Léonor and Fernand, a captain in his army who has distinguished himself in the nation's wars, but the king has another agenda, having just discovered that Fernand is already Léonor's lover.
Even the history of Léonor's affair with Fernand is shrouded in romantic intrigue and secrecy; Fernand leaving the monastery of St James where he is a novice monk to follow a mysterious woman he is in love with, Léonor necessarily keeping their meetings hidden from the King. Behind all the huge religious, political and royal intrigues however is a woman who is the victim of all these forces; the mistreated and abused mistress of the king, a fallen woman reviled by the Catholic Church, scorned by the royal court who laugh at her "sordid affair", and eventually abandoned by her lover over his deep sense of "honour". These grand forces might take a literal representation in the libretto, but Donizetti's score has a way of showing how they affect women in the abstract.
Donizetti's music is often underrated and indeed in some works it is rather rudimentary in its rhythms and dramatic effects. Composed for the Paris stage, and presented in that original French version here in Munich, the work is considerably more sophisticated than Donizetti is often given credit for. On the grand scale, the collision of such vast forces looks towards Verdi's Don Carlos, but on the intimate and more personal level, Fernand's rejection of the fallen woman Léonor at the altar is equal in force of sentiment and dramatic impact to Alfredo's repudiation of Violetta in La Traviata. Perhaps even more so, since the royal court also round on Léonor in a mass chorus that proclaims "His revenge is noble indeed", in response to Fernand's act.
The key to not letting such highly charged scenes and lofty personalities overwhelm the human tragedy of Léonor's fate is, evidently, restraint. Donizetti's score suggests bombast, but it invites intimacy and a more nuanced approach. The extravagant bel canto histrionics are not there in La Favorite, nor is there is any mad scene to show off the agility and range of the soprano. Léonor is scored for a mezzo soprano, and the timbre is darker, the role more dramatic, but still lyrical and still extremely challenging. Elīna Garanča is restrained in her gestures, almost holding back too much, but a deeper response to the turns of events is there to be brought out and it can be fully felt in her singing delivery. It's an impressively and yet unshowy performance.
Highlighting Léonor's fate as the core of the opera's greatness is the main element that points to another success for the Bayerische Staatsoper following on from their live broadcast of an impressive Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg last month. It seems like many of the previous directorial excesses of the opera house have been scaled back without losing any of the freshness, modernity and inventiveness of their productions. Amélie Niermeyer's direction pays attention to the tone of the opera, to the narrative drama and to the subtext. There's an attention to detail in the characterisation that avoids the broad brushstrokes that the overly-orchestrated plot would seem to invite.
The attention to detail and to the human side of the work is not just reflected in Léonor, but there is effort made to humanise the other characters too. Most notably - even if its "humanising" on a rather more base level - the director uses the interval music between Act I and II to show us another side to King Alfonse. Sitting beside Léonor while a light display suggests they are watching a lurid TV drama, many facets of Alfonse the man are shown, his arrogance and machismo, his boyish playfulness, his sleazy possessiveness of Léonor, pawing over her, but also his romantic fervour. It's a terrific use of Donizetti's music to develop character without distorting it. It has to be said that Mariusz Kwiecień is quite brilliant in running through this range in a fantastic dumbshow display, and his singing and performance in the more conventional kingly role is equally assured and impressive.
Matthew Polenzani is doing great work on the Munich stage, and he's well cast here as a dramatic lyrical Verdi tenor instead of a more romantic bel canto singer like Juan Diego Flórez or Yijie Shi (who sang the role in Toulouse). His voice is not a big one, but it's expressive and he can do much with a role like Fernand. That said, Fernand is not a figure who comes out of the work with a clear or nuanced position, swayed between love and God, working himself up from monk to warrior, with little opportunity for any real human character to be expressed, but Polenzani does what he can with the arias and is always engaging in voice and in performance.
La Favorite shows what opera at its best can do, elevating the human experience to an epic scale, and reducing epic scale down into relatable human experience. The Munich production sees a woman's life within the context of the unforgiving forces of religion and masculine power, judged by their standards and unable to exert any control over her own life and love. Donizetti's music is masterfully up to the task and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, directed with force, vigour and sensitivity by Karel Mark Chichon show just how sophisticated Donizetti's writing can be and just how much of an impact his operas can make. This is another outstanding production in what is so far an impressive broadcast season at the Bavarian State Opera House in Munich.
The next live broadcast from Munich is Shostakovich's LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK on 4th December 2016 at 7pm (C.E.T.), conducted by Kirill Petrenko and directed by Harry Kupfer.
Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV
Karol Szymanowski - Król Roger
Royal Opera House, London - 2015
Antonio Pappano, Kasper Holten, Mariusz Kwiecien, Saimir Pirgu, Georgia Jarman, Kim Begley, Alan Ewing, Agnes Zwierko
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Szymanowski's Król Roger is a rare enough work, but not so rare that you wouldn't have come across it before and even had an opportunity to see it performed thanks to a fine Blu-ray release of the 2009 production at Bregenz. That particular production, while it looked marvellous and highlighted that this was a work that merited more attention, was a fairly arid stage production that made little effort to explore the subtext and context of the work. Kasper Holten takes a bit more of a chance in the work's first production at the Royal Opera House, opening up the themes of a little known work and making it explicit through this release to a worldwide audience. The real risk however is perhaps revealing that there's not much more great depth to the work than is apparent just beneath the surface.
Based on 'The Bacchae' by Euripides, and set in the Byzantine era of the 12th century ruler of Palermo, Szymanowski's Król Roger is a fairly basic morality tale. It explores the consequences of a Christian king whose moral certainties and security of his authority is challenged by the arrival of a new prophet. This takes in a familiar opera subject, beloved of Baroque opera seria, of the need of a ruler to show caution in balancing the exercise of power against the satisfaction of their own personal needs. Like many European artists, writers and filmmakers who have been drawn over the years by the allure of an exotic paradise and a closer connection to nature that permits a more open sexual liberation, Szymanowski had a passion for the hedonism and cultural diversity of the Mediterranean, and issues relating to the composer's homosexuality are also very much a part of what the opera is about.
Listening to the reports of the Shepherd-Prophet's activities, King Roger initially regards his seductive promise that true happiness can only be found in indulging the senses as pagan blasphemy. Troubled and jealous of the influence the Shepherd has over Queen Roxana, he orders the dangerous madman be put to death, but relents when the Queen appeals for clemency and instead banishes him. Roger is however perturbed by the words of the Shepherd. When did he ever last feel passion such as that described by the prophet? He might be a king, but in contrast to the limitless pleasures promised by the prophet, he has to admit to himself that his reach doesn't extend beyond his own arm, or more pointedly, beyond a sword at the end of his arm. There's a persuasive argument here that troubles the King, so he invites the Prophet to another private meeting.
The conflict between the head and the heart can't be missed in the most distinguishing characteristic of Kasper Holten's direction and Steffen Aarfing's set design, with its huge head dominating as the eye-catching centre-piece. It's a feature that was also evident in Holten's Don Giovanni for the Royal Opera House, the psychology of the noble made visible and compartmentally spread in 3D projections across the various levels and rooms of a mansion construction. Unlike Don Giovanni, the simplicity and abstraction of his idea works more effectively in Król Roger. The huge choral opening of the work calls out for a big gesture, and the monumental imagery here could hardly be more effective in achieving the necessary impact.
Like Don Giovanni's house of the mind, Król Roger's head revolves 360˚ in the second act to show the conflict that is going on within it, on a literal as well as an internal level. The head is split into several levels, showing the living quarters of the King and the Queen. At a lower level a mass of semi-naked bodies can be seen twisting and writhing while the king grapples with the doubts that the words of the Shepherd have awakened in him. It's debatable whether Holten's production, set moreover in the 1920s, does anything more than make the subtext of the composer's homosexuality a little more obvious, but on the evidence of the beautiful performance of the work at the Royal Opera house, there is clearly a musical richness to the work and wider themes explored that suggest that Szymanowski's Król Roger is worthy of more attention.
The large choral pieces are the most striking and original element of Król Roger, which is perhaps why the influence of Strauss's Salome - one of the most important works from this period - seems to go largely unnoticed. It seems to me to be the obvious comparison, with its prophet, its awakening of forbidden lusts that challenge traditional Christian morality, and the fear of the consequences that might ensue. It's evident right down to the sensual language of the libretto, and mirrored in the music as well. Salome is very evident in the soaring orchestration, the heady, seductive Oriental melodies and rhythms that are even presented in the form of a dance in Act II, but also in the dramatic punctuation of the music, its notes of dissonance and its roaring crescendos.
All of this is indeed seductive to the listener, as much as it is to the king. What is interesting about Król Roger, and what suggests that there is potentially more to say about the work than Kasper Holten suggests, is the rather more ambiguous ending. There is a danger in letting oneself submit to wild abandon of earthly delights, Roger risking losing his power and influence, becoming reduced to a pilgrim or a beggar. Salome pays the price to pay for stepping outside those boundaries, but after his own experience at transgressing social and sexual mores, Oscar Wilde would later revise this view in 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' to the opinion that each man might indeed kill the thing he loves "yet each man does not die". Szymanowski's Król Roger - and to be fair Holten's production supports this - seems to go along with this, Roger appearing to be reborn through acknowledgement and acceptance of those desires, if not quite in submission to them.
If there's a seductiveness to this view proposed by the Shepherd that Roger is unable to resist, a lot of it is to do with Szymanowski's score, the vivid reading of it by Antonio Pappano, and the outstanding singing performances. The complementary contrasts between Mariusz Kwiecien's Roger and Saimir Pirgu's Shepherd in particular really contribute to the essential dynamic. Singing in his native Polish Kwiecien is impressive - commanding and authoritative turning to tortured and liberated, his voice reflecting all the passion that is contained within that journey. Saimir Pirgu seductive lyric tenor is simply perfect casting for the Prophet, and Georgia Jarman's Roxana is wonderfully persuasive in her effusive declarations.
The complementary material on the BD release gives some good background information on this rare work. The director, conductor and case contribute to a five-minute introduction that explores the work, its musical language and its characters in sufficient depth, and there is also a more detailed look at the sets and the music. In addition to this, there's a full-length commentary from Kasper Holten and an essay in the enclosed booklet by John Lloyd Davies that explores the Nietzschean undercurrents in the subject, as well its parallels with Hamlet, von Aschenbach and Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera. The quality of the recording is good, the opera benefiting particularly from the wide dynamic of the High Definition sound. The BD is region-free with subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.
Links: The Royal Opera House
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Don Giovanni
Royal Opera House 2014
Kasper Holten, Nicola Luisotti, Mariusz Kwiecień, Alex Esposito, Alexander Tsymbalyuk, Véronique Gens, Malin Byström, Antonio Poli, Elizabeth Watts, David Kimberg
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Mozart's Don Giovanni is a larger than life character. Not unrealistically larger than life, but truly a highly complex individual. You could write tomes of analysis on the character and still barely scratch the surface. Don Giovanni has been interpreted and psychoanalysed in countless productions, and every production somehow always seems to bring out another facet of his personality. Depending on the director and depending on the singer, Don Giovanni can be a rogue and a playboy; a heartless seducer of innocent women who is evil incarnate; or he can simply be a sensitive man who loves women too much; a charmer who women can't resist; a commitment-phobe who is unable to form attachments to any one woman when there are so many out there; women who fall for the rogue knowing full well that he will use and abandon them. Some might even foolishly believe they can change him.
Kasper Holten is undoubtedly aware of the complex nature of this colossus of the opera world and is certainly not the first to recognise that Don Giovanni is Don Giovanni - the opera is the man. That's not to say that the other characters in the opera aren't well developed. Like all Mozart's mature operas - and even some of the more youthful ones - the music is considered with attention to detail for even the smallest and seemingly most frivolous of secondary roles. Lorenzo da Ponte's development of character and plot meanwhile ensure that there's a dramatic consistency to the human interaction of every personality. Nevertheless, Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera is a huge figure who is unquestionably the centre and the driving force for the behaviour of every other person. His actions and the performance of the person playing the role determines the whole tone of the opera.
Mozart might have had one dominant character in mind when he composed for Don Giovanni - the work according to Mozart's own description of it is primarily a comedy - but his writing and Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto leave a lot of room for interpretation. A whole lot of room is needed for a figure like this, and Kasper Holten consequently uses the whole of the stage of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. In Es Devlin's designs, the stage is Don Giovanni, every detail, every colour, every lighting consideration, every stage prop and backdrop are used to express the magnificent monstrosity of Don Giovanni as he is written by Mozart. The set is a complex revolving arrangement of boxes, compartments, doors and staircases that during the overture fogs over with a black mist and fills up with the name of his conquests. Donna Anna wears a black stained dress, as if carrying the corruption of Giovanni, and the whole background floods with blood as the Commendatore is killed.
It's an effective way to open the opera and it does place us directly in the mind of Don Giovanni. Elsewhere lighting, colour and projections similarly reflect mood and character, from the ice blue calculating coolness of his re-encounter with Donna Elvira, to the warmth of the golden wood panelling - and all the sincerity of wood-panelling - as he attempts to charm and seduce Zerlina. Although there's complicity on the part of Donna Anna here, there's little doubt which side of the fence this Don Giovanni lies on. There's no sympathy for the devil here - he's an opportunist, an egotist, a snake with no care or feeling for anyone but himself, who will even betray his only faithful companion (Leporello's devotion being truly dogged) just to add another name to his list. The Commendatore is killed without a qualm and without a second thought, he seduces Zerlina in front of Masetto and, in this version, he even has Don Ottavio suffer the indignity of Donna Anna submitting to him again, even after all he has done, while he sings 'Dalla sua pace'. That hits home painfully.
The attention to the staging is strong then, as it often is with Kasper Holten and in the capable hands of Es Devlin, but as with other Holten productions I've seen (Die Tote Stadt, Eugene Onegin), while the spectacle is fully expressive of the music, Holten is not so strong directing singers as actors. All of them are a little bit stiff here and tend to feel like they are going through the motions. Fatally however, the lack of drive must primarily be considered to be down to Nicola Luisotti's leaden and uninspired conducting of the orchestra. Everything plods along, or not so much plods as smoothly sails along with no sense of the dynamic or the darkness that underlies Mozart's score. It's as if the conductor wants to downplay the cruder underscoring of Mozart's dramatic flair, and that's a bad decision. The fortepiano recitative doesn't enliven matters at all either, but some of the sense of drama is restored by the conclusion, even if the actual staging lets it down here.
The projections, it has to be said, do a terrific job of conjuring up all kinds of phantom imagery and an abstract sense of Don Giovanni being consumed by his own ego. The Commendatore, as such, appears to be nothing more than a projection of Don Giovanni's descent into madness. The libretto doesn't really support this idea and it makes the staging of it a little awkward. Donna Elvira screams not at the appearance of the stone man, but at a glimpse she catches into Don Giovanni's madness. Leporello sees the statue of the Commendatore and reads the inscription on it, but turns away at the final scene as if he's not part of it. The stage does indeed become deserted by the time of the epilogue, showing a Don Giovanni trapped in a madness of his own creation. Or even perhaps one laid for him by the enemies who deliver their final verdict ('Questo è il fin') off-stage. The problem is that there's not much sense in the direction of a building crisis to what finally drives Don Giovanni over the edge.
The lack of fire (no pun intended on how the finale is delivered) in the performances is also there unfortunately in the singing. There's a good cast here and they are all very capable in the roles, but with perhaps one exception, there's not much that really stands out and impresses. Mariusz Kwiecień has the looks and the voice for Don Giovanni, and the experience (this performance is his 100th in the role he tells us in the BD extra features), but he doesn't have the necessary charm or charisma to fully inhabit or bring something personal to the role. I've seen Alex Esposito play Leporello a few times now, and like his Papageno, these Mozart roles suit his style, voice and personality well - more so I think that his otherwise fine work as a Rossini bass. He has a way of getting to the underlying humanity of the characters beneath their comic exteriors. His key aria, 'Madamina, il catalogo è questo' is good, but it's not particularly well directed and as a consequence lacks impact.
The same can be said of Malin Byström's Donna Anna. She has character and a good voice, but she's not supported elsewhere. Her aria 'Or sai chi l'onore' for example is well sung, but with Luisotti holding the orchestra back from emphasising those emotional high points, it just doesn't hit home the way it should. Véronique Gens is the one notable exception to the casting here. She has a great voice for baroque opera and opera seria and has everything that is required for a substantial role like Donna Elvira. She stands out so far above everyone else here however and is in such a different league that she's almost miscast for this production. I also liked Elizabeth Watts' Zerlina - she's a fine singer and there's plenty of character in her voice and her performance. Antonio Poli's Don Ottavio was a little stiff and characterless, but Alexander Tsymbalyuk's Commendatore was powerfully declaimed.
On Blu-ray, the High Definition presentation of the performance is superb. Although the stage is mostly in darkness to allow the projections to be effective, the image is clear and detailed. The stereo and surround mixes bring out the colour of the music and singing. The Introduction in the extra features gives a good overview of the production, and there's a little more consideration of the nature of Don Giovanni's women and how Mozart writes for them in another featurette. Kasper Holten and Es Devlin also provide a full-length commentary for the opera. The enclosed booklet has a good essay by William Richmond on the changing faces of Don Juan in literature and film over the ages. The Blu-ray is region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2013
Valery Gergiev, Deborah Warner, Fiona Shaw, Anna Netrebko, Mariusz Kwiecień, Oksana Volkova, Piotr Beczala, Elena Zaremba, Larissa Diadkova, John Graham-Hall, Alexei Tanovitski, David Crawford, Richard Bernstein
The Met: Live in HD - 5th October 2013
No matter how many times the story is told, no matter how simple that story seems to be on the surface, there always seems to be something new you can draw out of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, a fact that testifies to its reputation as being a supreme work of art. The artistry of the opera was in evidence in some aspects of the Met's new 2013 production season opener - broadcast live in HD to cinemas across the world - but in others it didn't quite live up to the high expectations we've come to expect from Tchaikovsky's masterpiece or the strengths in it that have been recognised in other recent productions.
Musically, everything was in place with Valery Gergiev drawing a muscular performance out of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, sensitive to the distinctly Russian rhythms and tones of the work. Grandly romantic and at the same time intimate, any sense of sentimentality or wishy-washiness would be fatal to the work (particularly in this production), but there wasn't a trace of it here. As if to emphasise this robust performance, the Met's chorus were also in fine voice, bringing their presence to bear on each of the scenes where they appear, alerting the viewer to the fact that they are there for more than just mere decoration, but are an integral part of the Russian character of the work and the society.
What was also apparent when conducted in this way is how much the characters develop throughout Eugene Onegin and how the story - which on the surface is simple enough - develops in accordance with the growth of each of the characters. Circumstances force each of the main characters - Tatiana, Onegin and Lenski - to reflect on their situation at various points, principally in their monologues, which they come out from as different people. For Tatiana, it's the crushing humiliation of Onegin's response to her love letter in Act I, for Lenski it's the reflection on the golden days of his youth as he faces death in a duel in Act II, and for Onegin it all comes much too late in Act III. In a very Russian way however, all of the characters feel compelled to play out their fates, Tatiana as much as Onegin, already aware as soon as she places pen to paper that she's writing her future one way or the other.
Like the characters, the opera also grows and accumulates greater force, meaning and significance as it reaches each of those points and builds towards its devastating conclusion. Unfortunately, the Met's production by Deborah Warner, directed here by Fiona Shaw, seemed determined to undercut each of those important three act moments with ill-advised physical contact between the characters, when they should really be alone in their own world. Act I bewilderingly ended with Onegin kissing Tatiana after rejecting her, Act II featured an unlikely brotherly embrace between the two combatants of a duel of honour, and Act III climaxed with a passionately reciprocated kiss from Tatiana after she deals the defeated Onegin his fatal blow. No, no and no. None of it made any sense in terms of the drama or in terms of what the music is expressing.
Aside from these appalling missteps, there wasn't much to recommend in the production as a whole either. Tom Pye's sets were functional and representational of the Larin estate and Gremin ballroom in St Petersberg. The Polonaise and the Ecossaise that have been put to good use in other productions as connecting interludes for the passage of years between the duel scene and Onegin's return many years later to St Petersberg, were wasted here as mere background dance music to the ball in Act III. Compared to recent productions of the opera from Kasper Holten's dancers at the Royal Opera House, Stefan Herheim's huge tapestry of Russian life in the Amsterdam production, Krzysztof Warlikowski's queer reading of the work for Munich or indeed the Met's previous version employing Robert Carsen's seasonal light-box, this was a very drab and uninspired production that had neither the epic qualities nor the intimacy that the work should achieve.
With some minor or perhaps not so minor reservations, the singing however almost made it all worthwhile. It would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that the Met's opening production was almost entirely constructed to be a showpiece (yet again) for Anna Netrebko, and if the production didn't entirely live up to expectations, the same can't be said about Netrebko. The Russian soprano has been taking some good advice, or perhaps just letting her own voice tell her when it was ready to leave behind the bel canto roles and start to tackle some of the darker dramatic repertoire. The combination of a youthful innocent appearance with maturity of voice and expression for Tatiana is a difficult balance to achieve in one singer but Anna Netrebko has it all in looks, in voice and in acting ability, her burnished dark timbre soaring through those intensely dramatic moments with the sincerity of feeling that the role needs.
Despite the billing, this was no diva star-turn either, and Netrebko gave as much in her performance to all those sharing the stage with her. Some of them however weren't quite up to her stature, and unfortunately for the success of the production as a whole, that includes Mariusz Kwiecień's Onegin. There was little wrong with his singing, Kwiecień clearly a strong performer who is more than capable for the role, but he just didn't have the personality or character to be an Onegin opposite Anna Netrebko. I don't think the confused direction did him any favours either. Elsewhere however, the singing performances were just superb. Piotr Beczala is becoming a house favourite at the Met, and deservedly so. Whether he has great personality of his own or not, he's a fine singer in the classic tenor mould and capable of great beauty in his expression, bringing the necessary quality to those key emotional moments and famous arias. For Lenski, that's 'Kuda, kuda vï udalilis', and Beczala's delivery of it was heartfelt and beautiful.
Oksana Volkova was an impressive Olga and there were even solid, shining contributions from Elena Zaremba's Madame Larina and from Larissa Diadkova as Filippyevna. John Graham-Hall's Monsieur Triquet was however just bewildering, his role overworked in the context of the opera to little real effect. Sadly, it was this kind of misplaced emphasis that contributed to the imbalance between the work, the music and the dramatic presentation of its real human qualities. Combined with the lack of any real insight or ideas this Eugene Onegin was far from being totally satisfactory, but all the same there was nothing here to take the shine off Anna Netrebko's impressive venture into the new territory and future greatness.
