Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth
Metropolitan Opera, New York - 2014
Fabio Luisi, Adrian Noble, Željko Lučić, René Pape, Anna Netrebko, Claudia Waite, Christopher Job, Raymond Renault, Noah Baetge, Joseph Calleja, Moritz Linn, Richard Bernstein, Seth Malkin
The Met Live in HD - 11 October 2014
There's at least one good reason for selecting Macbeth as the opening broadcast in the Met's 2014-15 Live in HD season, as opposed to the actual season opener Le Nozze di Figaro (which will be broadcast later this month). It's become a recent tradition to open the HD broadcasts with the popular attraction of Anna Netrebko, and opera's brightest star - possibly now at the peak of her career - has a new role in her repertoire - Lady Macbeth. That's something worth reviving a readily available production of Macbeth for, and Adrian Noble's 2007 production fits the bill.
Considering the liberties that Verdi and his librettist Piave take with Shakespeare's drama, it probably helps that there's a former RSC director behind the production to anchor it back in Shakespeare's themes. The strength of Noble's Macbeth consequently is its adherence to mood and character, and even if it gives the appearance of modernisation, it remains fairly traditional in its presentation. It's a good half-way house that is typical of the Met, where modernisation is acceptable if it is visually impressive and doesn't go as far as reworking the concept or more deeply exploring the themes of the work in a challenging or revisionist way.
Noble's production seems to borrow something of its mood from Alfred Hitchcock, with Lady Macbeth even transformed here into a Hitchock blonde. There's a sinister quality to Mark Thompson's set and costume designs that makes it a bit 'Dial M for Macbeth', the setting dark, misty and moonlit, the costumes vaguely 1940s. The witches wear granny-coats with handbags (think Monty Python's 'pepperpot' old ladies) and there's a more elegant formal dress of the royal court, most notably in the banquet scene. The military scenes however reflect a more modern image of war, but not too high-tech - the jeeps, combat gear and automatic guns having something of the appearance of the Bosnian war.
It's all very much iconic imagery that has resonance and meaning to a modern audience, without introducing high-technology 'magic' that could distract from the very necessary hands-on nature of mad ambition and the bloody business of murder. Is this a dagger which I see before me? It certainly is. It's not a drone or anything else that is designed to make some modern political point about the morality of killing and war in the present day. That's not what Macbeth is about. Nor is it specifically about national identity. Verdi certainly made something more of the Italian Risorgimento struggle in his opera ('Patria opressa') but there are no such references in this production, and little even that relates it to its Scottish setting. There are no saltires, no tartan or flags, and no attempt to update it to make reference to the recent independence vote in Scotland either.
The generic setting and non-specific period allow the focus to fall back onto the human question of our relationship to power, ambition and murder. Fortunately, although it diverts in some plot developments from Shakespeare's vision, Verdi's writing for Macbeth sees the composer at his most inspired. Macbeth is still a relatively early work in the composer's 'galley years', but the quality of the source material (even in translation) clearly spoke to the composer who would much later revisit his beloved Shakespeare in Otello and Falstaff. The selection of scenes and numbers for Macbeth allow him to align power and melody to new levels of intensity, and to stronger characterisation than is found in those other early Verdi pot-boilers.
Melodically and in the setting of the scenes to standard numbers and arias, the composition of Macbeth is wonderful, but the real quality of the work - particularly in the revised version used here - is in Verdi's writing for the voice. Get a couple of great singers into those roles with a strong chorus and Macbeth can be a thrilling and visceral experience. Željko Lučić and René Pape have a track record with this production at the Met in the roles of Macbeth and Banquo. It's perhaps unfair to merely pass over their performances here as "solid" - Lučić in particular is shaping up to be a great Verdi baritone and doesn't put a foot wrong, hampered only by not very special direction - but when you have the right person in the role this is Lady Macbeth's opera, which that means it's Anna Netrebko's.
Quite simply, Netrebko is phenomenal, singing a challenging role with apparent ease, delivering the signature 'La luce langue' aria with remarkable control and tightly focussed precision. She almost makes it look too easy, and that might be a problem. She has clearly waited for the right time to tackle Macbeth, and has prepared for it well (trying out some arias on CD and a couple of live performances of the role at the Munich festival this summer), but at the same time the performance is almost too cool and studious, and it could do with a little loosening up.
That is perhaps just being too picky about what is by any reasonable consideration an outstanding performance, but there are occasionally flashes that show that Netrebko is capable of bringing much more to the role than the direction really allows. Her Act II banquet brindisi ('Si colmi il calice'), for example, isn't quite so joyful, but shows her growing anger with Macbeth succumbing to his terrifying visions of Banquo's ghost, flashing him furious glances and singing the second verse almost between gritted teeth. There's a taste of the fire that could underlie the cold, calculated behaviour here, and it's evident in 'La luce langue', but too little of it is seen elsewhere.
The same however could be said of the production as a whole. Some scenes are handled well, while others are rather static, the cast left to stand and sing out to the audience. In addition to the aforementioned banquet scene, where the bloody ghost of René Pape's Banquo makes a great impression, the scene of the King's burial is well staged, the tensions spilling over in such a way that the suspicions of Banquo and Macduff (sung well by Joseph Calleja) can clearly be seen to set them up in opposition to Macbeth. Fabio Luisi had the measure of the work, finding wonderful character as well as force in the score, and the Met chorus impressed, but in a way that confirmed that the quality of the production lay more in the delivery of the musical performance than in the largely static stage direction.
Jules Massenet - Werther
The Metropolitan Opera, New York - 2014
Alain Altinoglu, Richard Eyre, Jonas Kaufmann, Sophie Koch, David Bižić, Lisette Oropesa, Jonathan Summers, Philip Cokorinos, Tony Stevenson, Christopher Job, Maya Lahyani
The Met Live in HD - 15 March 2014
Much as I try - and I've listened to a lot of his work - Massenet is a composer I've never been able to connect with on a musical level. There are exceptions of course - and Werther is certainly one of them - particularly when the work in question is given a thoughtful stage presentation. Manon, for example, stands or falls based on whether the director is willing to draw the personalities out of the characters, and Don Quichotte can be a wonderful and tragic flight of adventure if it's directed by Laurent Pelly. Werther however, you can't really get it wrong. Surely. It's all there in the music and even the most basic illustration of Massenet's perfect setting can convey the full impact of Goethe's highly romantic work. Basic illustration is however something that you don't often get with Metropolitan Opera productions or Richard Eyre, and I'm not sure their over-elaboration of elements of this production really add anything to the work.
To be fair, Richard Eyre's production, while it does seem terribly old-fashioned and theatrical with fussy details, does have some modern touches that in some respect relates to Massenet's old-fashioned compositional style with its (I feel) uncomfortable relationship with Wagner-influenced modernism. This is particularly evident in the overture in which Eyre stages the death of Charlotte's mother as a prelude to the opera. This is undoubtedly a significant event and the music that accompanies it is similarly brooding with foreboding, with death and its impact on those left behind. In particular, it determines Charlotte's future security in a promised marriage to Albert, and that is what is going to be the great tragedy of Werther's love. This prelude then sets the tone well for what follows, but it's also an example of how literally everything will be laid out, filled in and made explicit on the stage.
While there are certainly broad sweeps in the music, Werther is, admittedly, not so easy to pin down to a consistent overall tone. Certainly there is a large fatalistic romanticism that hangs over everything, but Massenet's score also portrays various little colourful incidents - the children's Christmas carol singing at the height of summer, Charlotte's relationship with her brothers and sisters, the Bailiff's appearance and his visit to the inn with Johann and Schmidt, the ball and intimations of the beauty of nature - all of which have to fit into the overall tapestry. These are important since they represent the life that is gradually squeezed out of the picture by Werther's all-consuming dark despair. This, I would suggest, is however is something that the conductor needs to manage more than the stage director, and Alain Altinoglu responds well to the challenges presented by the varied tones of the work.
Unfortunately, Richard Eyre feels that it's his job not only to depict every colour of the musical score in the staging, but to fill in where he feels that Massenet and the libretto haven't supplied enough detail. In the opening prelude this is acceptable and it's impressively staged, with projections and scene changes that capture the passing of time, set mood and location, the machinery allowing the set to fan out into rolling hills that tilt the stage and skew the lives of the characters. Eyre's production however goes way beyond merely setting the tone. The action of Werther can be left semi-ambiguous and unstated, but Eyre has a very definite, literal view on Werther's stability and his descent into despair and takes care to emphasise them for the audience.
There are, for example, no doubts here that Albert knows all about Werther's letters to Charlotte and that he, and everyone else, knows exactly what Werther's intentions are when he asks to borrow Albert's pistols. In some respects, this can be justified as it adds to the fatalistic romanticism of Goethe's work, that there's only one way that this can end and that everyone has to submit to the natural sequence of events that tragically have been set in motion that will inevitably end in Werther's suicide. Charlotte undoubtedly knows it here too, and - in one choice that I thought worked well in this production - follows this fatalistic path to its inevitable conclusion where she also prepares to take her own life as the curtain falls. In the context of this production, this is a perfectly consistent and effective choice that plays out well.
It's not the choices that Richard Eyre makes necessarily however, as in how he makes everything overly explicit, leaving no room for ambiguity for the viewer to make their own mind up about Werther as a hopeless romantic or as a pathological case. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is in the overly graphic scene of Werther's suicide. In my experience, this is often (and best) left unseen as an off-stage event. Massenet's score and his fate leitmotifs are powerful enough for this to work more than effectively. Eyre not only shows the sequence of Werther's despair, but graphically depicts him shooting himself in one of the bloodiest scenes I've ever seen on the stage, shooting himself through the heart (of course), with blood splattering all over the walls behind the bed in his dingy room.
It certainly a highly charged scene and I would agree with Eyre (in an interview with Peter Gelb during the interval) that it (and the production as a whole) is in keeping with the contemporary references to Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov - both in terms of the subject and the period and in terms of darker undercurrents of the content - but there's a feeling that Act III tips over into more modern depictions of screen violence. Tellingly, Eyre compares Jonas Kaufmann's acting ability to Al Pacino, and I wouldn't disagree with him either (it's largely down to Kaufmann that this works as well as it does), but it would seem that like most dumbed-down cinema depictions, Eyre doesn't trust the viewer to be able to work out undercurrents and make connections for themselves, and needs to spell it all out for them.
With all this over-emphasis, there are times when you think that Jonas Kaufmann is also over-emoting, but in the case of a character like Werther there's probably no such thing. Although many certainly did in Goethe's time, Werther is not a figure that you can entirely relate to nor completely sympathise with from a modern sensibility. You can however recognise the depth of his feelings from Massenet's writing and from the soulful delivery that Kaufmann expresses so powerfully. It could be a little more restrained and guarded in expression, but in the context of this production, it's about right and Kaufmann's ability is as impressive as ever. And comparisons to Pacino are no hyperbole either - this is a committed, convincing dramatic performance.
If there are some concerns about the stage direction, there are however no doubts whatsoever about the quality of the singing or the suitability of the casting. I'm a great admirer of Sophie Koch, who is a versatile and committed performer of tremendous ability. She sometimes sings more from the heart than from the page, but I'll take that kind of emotional and dramatic involvement over note-perfect singing technique any day (I would put Anja Harteros in the same category). She knows the role and character of Charlotte well and her experience shows, working well with Kaufmann and often to spectacular effect. In the rather distinctive approach taken to characterisation here, Albert and Sophie also have significant roles and both David Bižić and Lisette Oropesa make a strong impression and sing well.
This is a typically solid Metropolitan Opera production, overly bold and literal perhaps when Werther would benefit from a more intimate and open approach, but Richard Eyre's production isn't without some distinctive touches. In the end however, it's the singing that carries it through.
Alexander Borodin - Prince Igor
The Metropolitan Opera, New York - 2014
Gianandrea Noseda, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Ildar Abdrazakov, Oksana Dyka, Mikhail Petrenko, Sergey Semishkur, Vladimir Ognovenko, Andrey Popov, Anita Rachvelishvili, Štefan Kocán, Kiri Deonarine, Mikhail Vekua, Barbara Dever
The Met Live in HD - 1st March 2014
Thank goodness for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Not only are we only really starting to appreciate his own contribution to Russian opera in the west through wider productions of The Tsar's Bride, Sadko, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and of course, The Golden Cockerel, but it's in many ways due to the enormous contribution and efforts of Rimsky-Korsakov that we are able to appreciate the legacy of other great Russian composers who came before him whose epic works might otherwise have been forgotten, neglected and, in many cases it seems remained incomplete. Hence we have Rimsky-Korsakov's editions of Mussorgsky's unfinished Khovanshchina and his reworking of the full version of the magisterial Boris Godunov. What is it with these Russian composers and their unfinished epic masterworks?
It's also in no small part due to Rimsky-Korsakov, along with Alexander Glazunov, that Borodin's only opera Prince Igor exists in any kind of a performing edition. Having worked on the opera for 18 years, the work was however left uncompleted at the time of Borodin's death in 1887. Much of the epic undertaking of the opera, based on an historical account of Prince Igor's 12th century military campaign against the nomadic Polovtsian tribe, had indeed been written by the composer as whole scenes, but there was little dramatically to link them or even place the scenes into any kind of order. But for Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov's work, Prince Igor would probably not have been heard at all in the last century, and if you've ever heard Prince Igor you would realise what a tremendous loss that would have been. Even then however, the work still remained a series of bold scenes, with very little dramatic structure or meaning.
Thank goodness then for Dmitri Tcherniakov. A controversial director, one who fearlessly takes chances with bold modernised reinterpretations of works, Tcherniakov is however an important and instrumental figure in bringing working stage productions of rare Russian repertoire to the west, introducing Prokofiev's The Gambler and Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride in the last decade for The Berlin Staatsoper, and most recently putting together a revelatory production of The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh for De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam. If ever there was a work that needed the sense of purpose and meaning that a dramatic interpretation can give it, it's Prince Igor. Using only Borodin's compositions, including music from the composer's other works, Tcherniakov has created a radical new dramatic context for the work, and the result, seen on the Met stage and broadcast to cinemas across the world in HD, is as close to an authentic representation of this remarkable work as we've seen.
What the opera gains under Tcherniakov's version of Prince Igor is that it manages to place Igor himself at the centre of the work, while retaining all of the exotic colour of the Polovtsian scenes and choruses, and contrast it with the dramatic developments and the tragedy of the Putivl sections. After the patriotic fervour of the Prologue, for example, the battle with Khan Konchak having been lost in the interim, the captive Igor becomes a secondary figure in Act I, reduced to the background for a sequence of episodes that seem to bear little relation to the dramatic development of the story, involving a romance between Konchakovna and Vladimir Igorevich (Igor's son who has been killed in battle) and of course the famous Polovtsian folk dances. Tcherniakov however, using Alexander Sokurov-like film interludes, makes all of these incidents part of Igor's fevered dreams, having been wounded in battle, making a personal discovery in them and finding a route to happiness and fulfilment, but also realising where his responsibility to his people lies.
Like Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, it's important to get past all the musical set-pieces, the heavy choral arrangements and the strident delivery and make Prince Igor a credible character, a real person whose actions in the 12th century can be understood by people today and not just appear as some iconic Russian historical figure. Tcherniakov's storytelling brings this out well, contrasting the idyllic scenes of Act I with the horror of the fate that is to befall Putivl in the powerfully staged Act II under the drunken exploits of Prince Galitsky and his men, and under the plotting of Skula and Yeroshka. Even in his absence, Igor's authority, his ability to rule and control the nation remains central, while the more human side of his personality is brought out at the start of Act III in Yaroslavna's deeply emotion longing for her husband who she believes has died in captivity.
In addition to the dramatic and musical reworking, the other essential element for a successful Prince Igor is the singing. Russian singers are absolutely essential here, not just to handle the difficulties of language, but for the very specific tone and the stamina required. Each of the main roles have long passages of Wagnerian-like demands that require enormous control and stamina. Ildar Abdrazakov is well-known at the Met for popular roles in Italian opera but has not had much experience of the Russian repertoire. He proves he's more than capable of it here and is simply extraordinary in the role of Igor, totally convincing as a character and as a singer in this important role, commanding in the Prologue, visionary in Act I and inspirational in Act III.
There are no weaknesses anywhere else in the cast. Mikhail Petrenko exudes charm and menace as Galistsky and effortlessly carries much of Act II. Oksana Dyka has considerable challenges but impresses as Yaroslavna, her mezzo-soprano not as rich and smooth as we are accustomed to, but it's so right in the Russian repertoire. There aren't many tenors to be found among all the deeper bass-baritone range of most of the male roles in Prince Igor, which only makes the qualities of Sergey Semishkur's Vladimir all the more apparent. Anita Rachvelishvili has been a little bit shrill and inconsistent in some other roles I've seen her in, but here singing in the Russian style as Konchakovna, she is marvellous. Štefan Kocán's incredible control in the deepest notes of the bass register have been noted before playing Sparafucile in the Met's Rigoletto last year, and that's demonstrated again here in the rich beauty of his timbre singing the role of Khan Konchak.
The chorus of course have an important part to play throughout Prince Igor, and the demands placed on the Metropolitan Opera chorus are therefore considerable. Aside from managing a chorus of 120 singers, and the difficulties of learning the parts for a work of this scale in the Russian language and bringing them all together, there are also very specific requirements that need to be met to make them work. Chorus Master, Donald Palumbo, describes those as the tenors needing to be brighter and more metallic, sopranos being "a little fruitier", and mezzos really singing contralto. The way these elements are brought together is important in order to achieve that necessary sound world that is so distinctive in Borodin's Prince Igor, and that impact is clearly felt. On every level, with important contributions from all involved, this proves to be a stunning production of a major work.
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.
Richard Wagner - Parsifal
The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2013
Daniele Gatti, François Girard, Jonas Kaufmann, Katarina Dalayman, René Pape, Peter Mattei, Evgeny Nikitin, Rúni Brattaberg, Kiera Duffy, Lei Xu, Irene Roberts, Haeran Hong, Katherine Whyte, Heather Johnson, Ryan Speedo Green, Lauren McNeese, Jennifer Forni, Mark Schowalter, Andrew Stenson, Mario Chang, Maria Zifchak
The Met: Live in HD, 2nd March 2013
If it did nothing else The Met's new production of Wagner's Parsifal at least emphatically confirmed a few points. Firstly, Parsifal is one of the most unique, beautiful and truly spiritual works ever written for the stage. No great revelation there, but it's good to come out of a performance of this remarkable work feeling that it has been proven. Secondly, Jonas Kaufmann, singing the title role, is one of the best tenors in the world today - if not actually the very best. Again, although he has only sung this particular role once before, this won't come as a surprise to anyone. A third point that many people also already know, is that Parsifal is an incredibly difficult work to stage. Unfortunately, François Girard's production for the Met's production confirmed that point, and just as emphatically as the other two points were made.
Part of the reason why Parsifal is such a difficult work to stage of course is because it is not an opera in the strictest sense, and not even a Wagnerian music-drama. Wagner coined a new category for the work for its presentation at Bayreuth, calling it a Bühnenweihfestspiel ("A Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage"), which seems like a minor distinction (or a rather pompously Wagnerian one, take your pick), but in reality, with its religious subject matter, Parsifal is indeed closer to an oratorio than an opera. In terms of dramatic action, there's not much that happens over the course of the three acts that take up over four and a half hours running time. While there may be little in the way of incident, much of the dramatic action conveyed through narration in long recitatives expressing noble sentiments and grand choruses of heavenly praise, Parsifal is nonetheless a remarkably dense work, filled with Christian imagery, Buddhist philosophy and ancient mythology. The meaning, the mystery and the ambiguity of the work, as well as its sheer beauty, is given its fullest expression however in Wagner's music, the majestic summit of his career, some forty years in the making, completed in 1882 just six months before his death.
In the Met's production however, Daniele Gatti's conducting of the score tended towards a languorous levelling of pace and dynamic towards an enveloping somnolence. The only dimension that the viewer was likely to enter in this transcendentally spiritual work was that of unconsciousness. It wasn't dull, it wasn't boring, it was performed and sung magnificently and often with great sensitivity by a wonderful cast - but Parsifal is a work with countless levels of meaning and interpretation and there was no particular vision in either Gatti's solemn even-handed conducting of the work or in Girard's stage production. Set in a dark vaguely futuristic/timeless post-apocalyptic landscape, the knights dressed in modern black trousers and white shirts instead of armour, there was certainly a concerted effort to remove or at least downplay the traditional imagery and specific Christian elements in the work (in complete contrast to the recent Philipp Stölzl production that I saw at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin) in favour of a more universal spirituality.
This certainly worked for the First Act, reflecting the onerous task of the knights in their defence of the Grail, creating a sense of dark despair that weighs on Gurnemanz over the loss of the Spear, and emphasising the near overwhelming sense of pain that is felt by Amfortas in his eternal suffering from a grave wound that never heals. The black, cracked and scorched earth is further divided by a stream that has women on one side and knights on the other. Even Kundry cannot cross this river, which runs red with blood and widens at the end of the act, creating a powerful impression that feels in tune with the tone of the work and the wound of Amfortas, but the symbolism doesn't particular add anything to what is expressed in Wagner's score and libretto, nor does it encourage the viewer to consider the themes of the work anew. Returning to the same set in Act III - as dark, barren and desolate as it was in Act I - doesn't give any sense of the redemptive force of Parsifal's purity of purpose and sense of healing compassion.
Act II however is at least highly striking and original in its dark imagery of Klingsor and his vampy, ghostly Flower Maidens with spears wading in blood. Avoiding traditional interpretations of this scene, it at least contrasts with the seductiveness of Wagner's score or could be said to draw out its sinister undercurrents, but it's hard to imagine Parsifal being seduced by either the maidens or Kundry here. As the most ambiguous figure within the work, there is certainly a case for emphasising Kundry's different roles as a woman in the work - and the symbolism certainly suggested as much - but it's difficult to establish a sense of the character being anything more than all things to all men. She's a mother with deep reserves of love and compassion, a lover, a whore and a temptress a distraction from the man with purity of purpose. She doesn't need to be quite so open, but like all the other concepts in this production, it seemed unable to settle for any one interpretation or even unifying concept, leaving all possibilities there to be read as desired.
If there was a lack of vision in the production's visual and conceptual interpretation of the work, it often looked marvellous and at least provided a suitable platform for the singers to bring a much needed sense of humanity and meaning to the words. The Met's casting was the principal attraction here. Jonas Kaufmann was a memorable Parsifal, his performance here likely to be the standard that any modern production of Parsifal in the world today is likely to be judged against. His voice, his delivery and his interpretation made this an almost soulful performance. We had to really wait until the third act to get the full impact - his Act II duets alongside Katarina Dalayman's Kundry were less effective than those in Act III with René Pape's Gurnemanz - but this was glorious, dreamy singing and deeply persuasive of the real character and meaning of the work that was lacking elsewhere in the production itself.
It helped that Pape was able to reach deeply into his character also with a beautiful soft Wagnerian line free of bluster. He was strong in his long first Act narration, but unassisted by anything to work with in the production design and concept, it wasn't until the transcendental third Act that he was able to lift this to another level, presumably buoyed by Kaufmann's sensitive performance. Katarina Dalayman's Kundry was wonderfully sung, but I failed to gain any sense of who or what her character was supposed to be from this production or from her interaction with Kaufmann's Parsifal. Philipp Stölzl's recent Deutsche Oper production of Parsifal had its flaws certainly, but it at least put Kundry at the centre of the work and Evelyn Herlitzius explored the vocal and emotional range of the character more effectively. Dalayman's performance was by no means weak however, and there were no weaknesses to be found elsewhere in Peter Mattei's painfully agonised and deeply moving Amfortas, while Evgeny Nikitin brought a sense of real danger and purpose to his Klingsor that avoided all the evil-villain clichés - notwithstanding his being bathed in and wading in blood throughout the second Act.
You could go down as far as Rúni Brattaberg's Titurel the individual Flower Maidens here and you'd still not find a single weak link in the singing performances. Gatti's conducting, which I found more persuasive divorced from the images when I listened back to the performance on the radio broadcast, the beautiful playing of the work by the Met orchestra and the strong consistent singing of a fine cast, all did at least work hand-in-hand with Girard's direction and Michael Levine's set designs. Even if it lacked a visionary edge to match Wagner's majestic final testament, this was a mesmeric Parsifal that did justice to one of the greatest works in all of opera.
Giuseppe Verdi - Rigoletto
The Metropolitan Opera, 2013
Michele Mariotti, Michael Mayer, Željko Lučić, Diana Damrau, Piotr Beczala Oksana Volkova, Štefan Kocán, Maria Zifchak, Jeff Mattset, David Crawford, Robert Pomakov, Alexander Lewis, Emalie Savoy, Catherine Choi, Earle Patriarco
The Met: Live in HD, 16th February 2013
Diana Damrau and Željko Lučić appeared in one of the promotional slots during an interval in last month's Met Live in HD broadcast of Maria Stuarda to promote their appearance in the Met's forthcoming new production of Rigoletto. When asked whether they thought that Verdi's opera would benefit in any way from an updating of its 16th century Mantua court setting to a casino in 1960s Las Vegas run by members of the Rat Pack, Damrau and Lučić just laughed. Of course not. Verdi's brilliant work is strong enough to withstand most interpretations but, who knows?, it might just be fun to see it in the context of the colourful sets and situation developed by Broadway director Michael Mayer and his creative team
In the event that's exactly how the Met's new production turned out. Rigoletto doesn't gain anything at all by setting it in Las Vegas in the 1960s, but the idea has a certain merit and fascination in how it aligns characters from the opera to real Rat Pack figures. Here, the Duke of Mantua is a Frank Sinatra-like owner of a casino with a coterie of hangers-on willing to indulge his every whim, while comedian Don Rickles is the basis for the acerbic comedy of Rigoletto - or Rickletto, if you like. With Count Monterone a wealthy Arab sheik backer of the casino, Mayer's production is as an effective way as any of putting across the glamour and power struggles as well as the respective positions of the characters in Verdi's mid-period masterwork.
The production's greatest impact came, not unexpectedly, in the licentious First Act, the Old Blue Eyes Duke in a white dinner jacket, grabbing a microphone to "croon" 'Questa o quella' for his guests, accompanied by Las Vegas dancers with colourful fans. Visually, it looked magnificent, and it did get across all the necessary glamour and cruelty of the situation, with all the back-biting asides and casual sexism generated by the Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin-like members of the pack towards "dolls" anyone outside of their little group. A few subtle tweaks in the subtitles to reflect the swinging sixties dialogue worked well in this context, matching the intent and raising a few smiles without being too far removed from the original.
The setting didn't over-impose itself however, or else it ran out of ideas, fading mostly into the background after the colourful opening scene, and allowing the mechanics of the drama that is driven by Verdi's magnificent through-composed scoring and duets to assert its rightful position as the true engine of the work. Nonetheless, all the important dramatic points of the opera were made to fit into the setting fairly well, without too much awkwardness. The abduction of Gilda from Rigoletto's apartment in the casino's hotel using a lift worked best, the setting of the tavern in a strip club complete with pole-dancer perhaps a little gratuitous but workable, the dumping of her body into the boot of a Cadillac at the end a little less so. It was a nice touch, but it just made things a little difficult for Diana Damrau to get across the poignancy of Gilda's final moments in her 'Lassù in cielo', and it was hard to feel any sense of remorse in her father either. If that doesn't work, you've got a major problem with your Rigoletto.
It's the dramatic conviction in the singing however that ultimately determines the level of success of any production of Rigoletto, and while it was hard to fault the singing from any of the cast, that necessary commitment and direction wasn't always there. The Met's production at least benefitted from casting that mixed youth with experience, often within the same person. It was noted by both the singers and the director that Diana Damrau and Željko Lučić already had considerable experience in these roles and have often even performed them together in their time at Frankfurt. Piotr Beczala too has performed the Duke before - there's a Zurich production on BD/DVD - and is clearly quite capable in the role as well as being boyishly bright-eyed and charming. It seemed however that for the most part they weren't directed enough by Mayer - or indeed by the conductor Michele Mariotti - but left to bring their own experience with the characters to this production, with the result that they never seemed entirely comfortable with how that fitted into the Las Vegas setting.
Damrau - recently returning to the stage after giving birth to her second child - seemed to show a little more effort in her singing than before, but with such a wonderful and expressive voice, it was more of a problem that she didn't really seem to be able to connect with this Gilda and her dilemma come to life. These are relatively minor points since the singing from Damrau, Lučić and Beczala was just superb, but Rigoletto is indeed an opera where such considerations and attention can make all the difference. These are much richer characters than they were allowed to be in this rather superficial production. Curiously, there actually seemed to be more effort put into drawing the secondary roles, Štefan Kocán in particular standing out as the Sparafucile. With a deeply toned and wonderfully controlled bass, he was a refreshingly youthful assassin and consequently even more dangerous in a character role more often given over to veterans. Superficial but fun and wonderfully sung, there's nothing inherently wrong with the Met's Las Vegas updating of Rigoletto that a little more attention to the characterisation and a tighter hold on the conducting couldn't improve.
Gaetano Donizetti - Maria Stuarda
Metropolitan Opera, 2013
Maurizio Benini, David McVicar, Joyce DiDonato, Elza van den Heever, Matthew Polenzani, Joshua Hopkins, Matthew Rose
The Met Live in HD - January 19th 2013
I take it all back. Well, maybe not all of it. Musically and dramatically, I think Anna Bolena - done right - is certainly still the strongest and most convincing work in Donizetti's Tudor trilogy, but David McVicar's new production of Maria Stuarda - the second opera in of the three that he is directing for the Metropolitan Opera following last season's Anna Bolena - has persuaded me that the work is more than just a romantic love-triangle bel canto piece in period costume and a historical setting, and it's more than just an opportunity for a mezzo-soprano/soprano coloratura firework display between the two duelling divas playing the Queens.
The historical relevance of the rivalry between the Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots - the Tudor descendant - and Queen Elizabeth - whose legitimacy is questionable after the execution of her mother Anne Boleyn - is an important one, but their background also determines the character of each of the women to a large extent. This is indeed as much about two women as it is about two Queens, two women who have to live up to the weight and responsibility of history and their position, but they are not precluded from normal human feelings and reactions of pride, love and jealousy.
Based on a drama by Friedrich Schiller, the human drama in Maria Stuarda then hinges on a fictitious and fractious encounter between two women who in reality may have had a tense relationship, but never actually met in real-life. The imagined meeting at Fotheringhay Castle, where Mary Stuart was imprisoned, could realistically have happened - Elizabeth once passing quite close to the place while Mary was there - but although invented, the encounter is nonetheless a valid dramatic device that provides an opportunity and a release and expression of the very real rivalry and conflict that exists between the two women and their Protestant and Catholic followers.
Dramatic licence then and an invented love-triangle situation involving Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, may provide the context for those expressions to be brought together and for the respective personalities of the women - and their enmity for each other - to be aired, but where opera excels is in the emotional heightening of that reality through the music and the singing. It's Donizetti's score - conventional though it is in places - that gives further depth and personality to the characters, and hint at other aspects that lie beyond the remit of history books. Opera is good at this and Donizetti proves to be capable of raising the situation to the necessary heights in Maria Stuarda. The opera however still needs to be convincingly staged and sung, and bel canto opera presents considerable challenges for the director and the cast in that respect.
Working with an unfamiliar style of opera that has those special demands, David McVicar again - as with the earlier Anna Bolena - didn't attempt anything too radical, keeping the work in period and refraining from introducing any concepts that aren't evident in the libretto. This has some disadvantages - the opera, like most bel canto opera, tends to be rather static and devoid of any real action - but McVicar recognises that the strength and the real dramatic content of the work lies in the historical situation and that its import is best brought out by the singing. In fact, Maria Stuarda relies principally on a couple of key pieces - the famous confrontation scene at the end of Act I where the Queens spit insults at each other ('vil bastarda'), and the Act II scenes and arias leading up to Mary's execution. McVicar's handling of these vital scenes was flawless, the staging and lighting having the necessary impact that was almost spine-tingling.
That doesn't come about by chance however, nor does the full impact come across in isolation from the rest of the work. The build-up to the scenes and the character exploration that leads up to them is just as important and that aspect wasn't neglected by McVicar, or by set and costume designer John MacFarlane either. The effort put into this was perhaps most evident in the depiction of Elizabeth, in the choice of costumes and wigs, in the almost masculine swagger and in the actual physical size of Elza ven den Heever dominating over the much smaller Joyce DiDonato, but the little details that show her weaknesses and vulnerabilities also came across in movements and subtle moments of reflection that are tied closely to the music. If the attention given towards ven den Heever's Elizabeth (and her dedication at going so far as to shave off her hair in order to make that famous bewigged look all the more convincing) was more evidently worked upon, the characterisation of Mary by McVicar, and of course by Joyce DiDonato, as one of an intense sincerity of purpose that tips over into barely controlled passion, is just as important to strike the necessary contrast in personality, background and character.
That contrast between the women is of course also explored in the blistering arias and the explosive duet that make the work famous (leading to at least one notorious real-life kicking and punching match between the two original leading ladies in the opposing roles), but in the case of this production, the match is never an equal one - at least in terms of singing. It's not left up to two leading divas of competing equal ability to determine between them who is the most fiery, but it's one predetermined by the casting and the direction choices. There's really no contest or doubt about where the sympathies lie here, and no attempt to strike a balance - although Elizabeth is, as mentioned earlier, strikingly characterised in a way that is wonderfully human and real. Elza ven den Heever plays and sings the part well, but she's no match for the power of Joyce DiDonato's portrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Bel canto leading roles often demand a singer of extraordinary ability, needing technique as well as personality and a necessary degree of acting ability, and DiDonato proved here that she is one of the best mezzo-sopranos in the world in that respect. This was a thoughtful, considered and committed performance, one that demonstrates understanding of her character and finds a manner to express Mary's inner qualities though the weight and timing of delivery, through the coloratura and through the very tone and timbre of the voice itself. If the full impact is felt at the close of the opera - like Anna Bolena ending with another flash of red, but one her that is historically documented as Mary's choice of red martyrdom dress - it's mainly due to DiDonato's ability to make it utterly and chillingly real.
It's evidence, if any further evidence is needed, that such bel canto operas can only work - and have only ever been successfully revived - when there is an artist of sufficient stature, technique and ability to carry them. DiDonato is clearly up there. The jewel however requires a setting to allow it to shine, and there were no elements at all here to tarnish the lustre of DiDonato in any way. Matthew Polenzani's Leicester was adequately sung. It wasn't a role best-suited to Polenzani, and I've seen him perform much better than this - but as it is written, Leicester's part in the love-triangle never seems the most convincing aspect of the work, or the real motivation for the rivalry between the two queens, merely a pretext to draw them together. Joshua Hopkins as Cecil and Matthew Rose as Talbot also dutifully and more than adequately filled their roles in the drama, but everything that counted in making this production come together depended on Joyce DiDonato, and more than anything else, it was her performance that made this an impressive and even unforgettable Maria Stuarda.
Gaetano Donizetti - Anna Bolena
Metropolitan Opera, 2011
Marco Armiliato, David McVicar, Anna Netrebko, Ekaterina Gubanova, Ildar Abdrazakov, Keith Miller, Stephen Costello, Eduardo Valdes, Tamara Mumford
Sky Arts, The Met Live in HD - Oct 15th 2011
The Metropolitan Opera in New York chose the first of Donizetti's Tudor trilogy of operas, Anna Bolena, to open its 2011-12 season and also be the first of its Live in HD broadcasts for the season. With David McVicar now also directing Donizetto's second Tudor opera Maria Stuarda for the 2012-13 season (broadcast this weekend Live in HD), and presumably in line to complete the trilogy with Roberto Devereux next season, it seemed a good point to catch up with the earlier production since it is currently available for viewing on the Sky Arts channel in the UK.
Moreso than the other two works in Donizetti's Tudor trilogy, and indeed unlike most bel canto historical period dramas - Lucrezia Borgia and I Puritani, for example - Anna Bolena is a work that uses its history as rather more than just a colourful backdrop for the usual romantic intrigues leading to betrayal and despair. Those elements are certainly a part of what makes the story of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, human and relatable, but Donizetti's work also takes into consideration the wider historical perspective and nature of the characters - particularly in what is revealed about Henry from his earlier marriage to Catherine of Aragon. It also takes into account the vast historical impact and the constitutional crisis that his desire to dissolve his marriage to Anne Boleyn would have on the English nation.
The first Act of Donizetti's opera, opening in the oppressive atmosphere of the court of Greenwich Castle, establishes the context exceptionally well. Courtiers mill around, wary of the evident problems in the royal marriage that hasn't borne Henry a male heir, while Anne looks troubled, feels isolated, her thoughts dark and gloomy. Even her Smeaton's love-song ballad - the pageboy in love with the Queen himself - only reminds Anne of the way love can go wrong. Yet, she still can't sense the guilt that is weighing upon Jane Seymour, or the seriousness of the threat that is posed by her lady-in-waiting's affair with the King. Henry promises Jane "a husband, a sceptre, a throne", but for Jane her personal sense of shame can only be alleviated by the legitimacy of marriage and that will come at a price. In order to break with Anne, Henry recalls the exiled Richard Percy, believing he can find justification in Percy's prior relationship with Anne Boleyn to annul the marriage, but the unexpected presence of the love-struck Smeaton in Anne's bedchamber gives Henry the opportunity to go even further.
The dilemma is laid out very clearly in Felice Romano's libretto, but even more so in Donizetti's brooding score which captures all of the drama and the dark foreboding of what lies ahead. That needs to come across in the setting as well as in the music and the singing performances, and by and large David McVicar's production manages to get to the heart of those sentiments. It's resolutely period in setting and somewhat stiffly arranged, the sets amounting to nothing more really than walls and doors - big doors, mind you - but this is an opera that works as a piece, a work driven by the dramatic flow rather than adhering to the standard bel canto number format, and the director manages to maintain a consistency of tone and purpose, allowing room for manoeuvre and expression over and beyond the words in the singing and in the coloratura of the singing. And for that you need exceptional singing talent.
The singing here, while very good across all the roles and showing no fatal weaknesses, was however not what you'd call exceptional. Ekaterina Gubanova perhaps comes across best as Jane Seymour, singing well and with feeling, making you really care about her character's predicament and even pitying her not only for being in love with a nasty figure like Henry, but for having to admit it to Anne. She is very convincing in her dilemma, and her confession scene with Anna Netrebko's Anna is consequently one of the best scenes in this production. Evidently however, all eyes are on Netrebko, but for the most part she is curiously stiff and even strangely vacuous, never delivering a performance as good as the one she delivered in this role in Vienna only a few months earlier (available on Blu-ray and DVD). When it's needed however, she really gets her voice behind the extreme emotions and anguish of Anna Boleyn, if not always finding the variety of expression required in the coloratura, and even on occasion sounding a little hoarse on the high notes. Often it just sounds forced and operatically mannered, which is not something I've heard before in Netrebko's usually more expressive and considered delivery.
Bearing the weight of history and a role that could so easily be simplified into an operatic 'baddie', it's tough to bring any kind of degree of humanity and realism to the role of Henry. Donizetti and Romani recognise however that there is a man behind the crown ("May Henry be kind, even if the King is cruel") and they rather brilliantly capture that in the music and the libretto. It's particularly relevant in scene when Henry realises that Boleyn was "Percy's wife. Before Henry" and in his subsequent scene with Jane Seymour that seals Anne's fate, the whole sequence epitomising and encapsulating Henry's attitude, his male pride, his kingly pride and the realisation that he can use that information and privileged position to his advantage. These are crucial scenes to the work where a singer has to make Henry's dangerous authority and his ability to command a situation clear. Donizetti certainly nails it in the music, and fortunately so does Ildar Abdrazakov in the singing here.
Stephen Costello doesn't have the most melodic tone as Percy, but is firm and steady and his singing is not without considerable feeling for the role. The importance of Mark Smeaton shouldn't be underestimated in this opera and fortunately it was well-cast with Tamara Mumford in the trouser role, and the part was well-directed by David McVicar. There's a sense of the bloody reality of Henry's reign brought home in Smeaton's confession under torture, McVicar bringing a certain realism that emphasises the horror of the situation and the brutality of the period. That's balanced however with a rather more delicate touch in the symbolic fall of a blood red curtain at the execution scene. It's the little touches that often count with McVicar and he brought them to bear effectively where they were most needed in a work that elsewhere didn't quite have the urgency of the Vienna production.
Giuseppe Verdi - Un Ballo in Maschera
The Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2012
Fabio Luisi, David Alden, Sondra Radvanovsky, Kathleen Kim, Stephanie Blythe, Marcelo Alvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Keith Miller, David Crawford
The Met Live in HD, 8th December 2012
Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) is an opera of wild dynamism, marrying together scenes of jarring contrasts in a way that makes it difficult opera to stage dramatically and musically in any coherent or consistent way. It certainly not an opera I've seen handled convincingly on the stage, but David Alden's production for the Metropolitan Opera, if it doesn't quite bring it all together, at least points towards a way that might work. Not playing it entirely straight, not playing it up for laughs either, but playing it scene by scene the way Verdi wrote it.
Quite what Verdi's true intentions for the work were is of course open to speculation. The work, originally entitled Gustavo III, based on the real-life historical assassination of King Gustav III at a Masked Ball in Sweden in 1792, was notoriously banned by the strict censorship laws of the period in revolutionary Risorgimento Italy, who were unhappy about the depiction of an assassination of a monarch, forcing Verdi to rewrite and rename the characters involved. Even then, the changes applied to the new version, called Una Vendetta in Dominò, weren't enough to appease the censors in Naples, so a furious Verdi took the work to Rome where it was first performed with the setting changed to Boston in North America as Un Ballo in Maschera in 1859. The work is now performed, as it is here at the Met, in its original Swedish setting, but clearly Verdi was forced or felt the need to make compromises to the work in order to avoid censorship even in Rome.
None of this however is likely to have had much of an impact on Verdi's choices for the musical scoring of the piece and, seeking to show off his range and work with musical arrangements and arias more along the lines of La Traviata than the more through compositional style that he was gradually moving towards, Un Ballo in Maschera consequently has some of the composer's most beautiful melodies, striking arrangements and dramatic situations. Every dramatic situation is pushed to its emotional limits - whether it's the love of Gustavo for Amelia, the wife of his secretary, the friendship of Gustavo and Renato which is to fall apart on the discovery of the affair, or the hatred felt by the king's adversaries - all of it is characterised by Verdi with an extravagance of passion.
An extravagance of melody too which, accompanying the melodramatic developments of the plot's regal and historical intrigue, to say nothing of incidents involving gypsy fortune tellers, can lead the work to switch dramatically at a moment's notice between the most romantic of encounters to the deepest gloom, from declarations of love to dire threats of vengeance. The key to presenting the work coherently - if it's at all possible - is to try to ensure that these moments don't jar, and with Fabio Luisi conducting the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera here, musically this was a much more fluent and consistent piece than it might otherwise have been, without there being any alteration or variation to the essential tone of the work.
Inevitably, any director is going to look for a consistency of style in the approach to the stage direction, but that's probably a mistake with this work. It's not a mistake that David Alden makes. I must admit, having seen Alden's fondly humorous day-glo productions of Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Handel's Deidamia, I had a suspicion that Alden might settle for playing up the camp comic side of Un Ballo in Maschera - which is certainly there and probably a more convincing way of playing the work than attempting to do it completely straight if the Madrid Teatro Real production is anything to go by - but I was wrong. Alden plays every single scene in accordance with the tone established by Verdi, light in some places, thunderingly dramatic and brooding in others, but always operating hand in hand with Fabio Luisi to ensure that this can be made to work musically and dramatically.
Where the staging has consistency of theme and a consideration for a meaningful context for the work however, was in Alden's typically stylish and stylised production designs, created here by set designer Paul Steinberg and costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel. Evoking a turn of the twentieth century setting that takes the work entirely out of its historical context (notwithstanding the personages reverting to their original Swedish names), the production had the appearance of a Hollywood Musical melodrama, as lavishly stylised as a Bette Davis melodrama, but consistent within its own worldview, and it worked splendidly on this level. The set was a little overworked in places, with dramatic boxed-in angles and heavy Icarus symbolism in a prominent painting, but it clearly responded to the nature of the work, playing more to the sophistication that's there in the music than the often ludicrous libretto. Alden however even found a way to incorporate this into the production with little eccentric touches - such as the eye-rolling madness of Count Horn, which is not a bad idea.
Similar consideration was given towards the singing and the dramatic performances of the cast assembled here, which was - as it needs to be - forceful and committed. The combination of voices was also well judged, the Met bringing together a few Verdi specialists well-attuned to the Verdi line - Marcelo Álvarez (who I've seen singing the role of Gustavo/Riccardo before), Sondra Radvanovsky and lately, Dmitri Hvorostovsky - all of them strong singers in their own right, but clearly on the same page as far as the production was concerned. A few regular Met all-rounders like Stephanie Blythe and Kathleen Kim also delivered strong performances in the lesser roles of Madame Arvidsson and Oscar that really contributed significantly to the overall dynamic. This was strong casting that brought that much needed consistency to a delicately balanced work where one weak element could bring the whole thing down.
Alden and Luisi were clearly aware of this and played to the strengths of the charged writing for these characters. Act II's duet between Álvarez and Radvanovsky was excellent, hitting all the right emotional buttons, each of the characters delving deeply to make something more of the characters than is there on the page of the libretto. Hvorostovsky brought a rather more tormented intensity to Renato in his scenes with Radvanovsky's Amelia that seemed a little overwrought, but this paid off in how it made the highly charged final scene work. Un Ballo in Maschera is still a problematic work, but with Luisi and Alden's considered approach and this kind of dramatic involvement from the singers, the qualities of the opera were given the best possible opportunity to shine.
