NORTH AMERICA NEW YORK CITY The Met's new production of Luisa Miller, which crept rather furtively into view on October 26, does have its problems. The overriding trouble is the extent to which the usually interesting and often brilliant stage director, Elijah M
oshinsky, misjudged just what kind of opera he was dealing with in this 1849 threshold to Verdi's middle period (Stiffelio through La Forza del Destino). The company's previous production, first staged in 1968 by Nathaniel Merrill and conducted by the late Thomas Schippers, got it right. Verdi and librettist Salvatore Cammarano's adaptation of Schiller's Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) is high romance, the music as well as words beginning the drama at the break of a sunny day in early-seventeenth-century Tyrol and ending it with the lovers dying of poison. Moshinsky transferred this pastoral tragedy to mid-nineteenth-century rural England, with Dickensian villains and a bourgeois chorus not quite sure whether to hail a landlocked H.M.S. Pinafore or lynch Peter Grimes.
Thus it was on the show's opening night that, following the orchestra's exuberant account of the simply structured but intricately detailed overture under James Levine, the curtain rose not on a welcoming, bucolic scene but on a fog-bound town square, the first of a grim procession of pictures designed, in his Met debut, by the much and deservedly awarded New York designer Santo Loquasto. Also at this point, before the chorus arrives, Moshinsky "puts paid," as the British say, to Luisa's virginity by having her and Rodolfo emerge from her house after an obvious night of love. Then, of course, the director has forced Luisa to "pretend" to complain a few moments later that Rodolfo hasn't shown up with the crowd that's wishing her happy birthday. Cammarano's emphases on her innocence and the kind of music Verdi gave her should have "put paid" to any such directorial notions. Another miscalculation by Moshinsky was that, in the opera's original time and place, Rodolfo's father, Count Walter, had absolute authority to wreck his son's alliance with Luisa for the sake of a marriage with Duchess Federica. In Victorian England, on the other hand, Walter's power would have been less absolute.
At least musically, one got a solid if not quite flawless idea of the opera. No matter how early-Verdi vehement the orchestra became, Levine made sure the bass-reinforced chording rounded things off satisfyingly, and the choruses helped set the various moods firmly. In the title role, Marina Mescheriakova was a passive actress but an affecting singer. Her lyric soprano, less challenged than in last season's Il Trovatore, is still too small for Luisa's occasional outbursts, but the filigree in her Scene 1 cavatina and in her portion of the following trio sparkled delicately. Neil Shicoff sang a bit roughly but always readily as Rodolfo, shredding and patching the opera's most famous aria, "Quando le sere al placido," and he acted the role fearlessly to the flamboyant hilt. You have to believe the guy when he holds a sword to the supposedly faithless Luisa's throat, or when he staggers in poisoned agony. At the first performance, Nikolai Putilin's baritone didn't quite fill the demands, either lyrical or heroic, of Miller, the old soldier whom Verdi never would let fade away; heard on November 10, joined by some new cast members, he showed considerably more power, security and accuracy. Both times, however, he proved a minimal actor. On the first night, Denyce Graves produced lots of vocal velvet, giving the role of Federica much more than it gave her. Hao Jiang Tian's big bass hectored roughly on Walter's behalf; Phillip Ens smirked like a snake but sang like a comprimario as the treacherous Wurm, and Maria Zifchak sang quite nicely and movingly as Luisa's friend, Laura.
The performance on November 10 was warmed principally by Sondra Radvanovsky in her first Met appearance as Luisa. Here was a voice perhaps twice the size of Mescheriakova's, admittedly without quite the gentle sparkle of that lady's but with a genuine feel for the crest of a Verdian phrase. And Radvanovsky can act the paint off those dingy sets. There hasn't been such a realistic series of death-gasps on the Met stage since Mirella Freni's Adriana Lecouvreur, and it was nothing to laugh at. One little suggestion, however: in the complex and otherwise beautifully executed unaccompanied Act II quartet, she might reduce her volume so that it doesn't sound like a soprano solo with the others singing in the next room. As for the other cast changes, tenor Martin Thompson sang Rodolfo more neatly but acted less excitingly than Shicoff; Wendy White fell short of her usual standard as Federica, but Paul Plishka, his long-serving bass on good behavior, gave Wurm an abundance of wickedly nuanced menace.
Puccini's Madama Butterfly joined the Met's 2001-02 repertory on November 1 with a debut by Fiorenza Cedolins as Butterfly, replacing for unstated reasons the previously announced Daniela Dessì. Cedolins is no stranger to the arduous role, and if her acting was stereotyped, or perhaps faxed in, her singing had the right Puccini style and temperament. However, her voice was not big or incisive enough for this music in this size theater. The result, particularly in the context of Giancarlo del Monaco's prosaic production, was monotony. Alleviation came with Richard Margison's ringing Pinkerton (sung one night after his Pollione in Norma) and Kim Josephson's sensitive Sharpless. The orchestra had ragged moments under Marco Armiliato.
When Verdi's La Traviata entered the Met season on November 5, it was the occasion for June Anderson's first Violetta with the company. One could enjoy her technical security. The special requirements of Act I were met more handily than most sopranos manage: runs were fluent and unbroken; the trills in "Sempre libera" were real, not ghosts; and she sang dead-on the unwritten but legitimate top E-flat as the curtain collapsed in adoration. But even in this scene, and during much of the evening, her voice was hard, yielding little to the role's many emotional nuances. She did warm key phrases in the duet with Germont and in the more delicate paragraphs of Act III. But it was mostly a cold, albeit efficient performance. In a cast populated largely by familiar and welcome faces, Vinson Cole returned to the Met with a quite elegant, if not sufficiently Italianate, Alfredo, and Juan Pons sang Giorgio Germont with too much bluster at first, then settled into a finer brand of authority. Conductor Maurizio Benini was particularly pleasing in the way he differentiated in texture the openings of the preludes to Acts I and III.
Claudio Monteverdi's 1640 masterpiece, Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, returned to New York City Opera this past fall after a quarter-century's absence. The landmark work, whose Odyssey-derived libretto by Giacomo Badaoro was reshaped by the septuagenarian
Monteverdi in fits of ruthless genius, reappeared here in an almost new production first seen in summer 2000 at Glimmerglass Opera. Raymond Leppard's more conventional, musicologically discredited performing edition was used in 1976, but in the new production at both Glimmerglass and City Opera, that edition was replaced by the more respectable editorial work of Jane Glover, who conducted it at Glimmerglass. Daniel Beckwith, the conductor of the City Opera performances, further amended Glover's edition, repositioning a vocal sequence, inserting a scene-change orchestral bridge from Monteverdi's last and greatest opera, L'Incoronazione di Poppea, and going so far as to compose an interlude himself based on material from Monteverdi.
So much for background. The production (seen Oct. 30 and Nov. 4) is full of wonders, directed by the experienced John Cox, with Spartan-spare, cantilevered scenery and lavish, classical costumes by Johan Engels and shrewd lighting by Mark McCullough.
Beckwith, first of all, marshalled an alert, sensitive continuo group of eight musicians (including himself) that supported the singers' every mood, and the string orchestra (for instrumental movements) boasted the extra spice of two recorders. His cast was headed by Stephen Powell as Ulisse and Phyllis Pancella as Penelope. Powell, a perfect actor for such a role, with its equal demands for heroism and sentiment, is City Opera's finest lyric baritone and could hold his own easily next door at the Met.
Pancella's mezzo is not the largest in town, but for this music she filled the bill richly and sensitively, punctuating Penelope's long, tragic opening scene with intense reiterations of "torna Ulisse." Anyone who's seen her knows her gifts as a wild comedian (Dvorák's Kate) and breath-stopping menace (Beeson's Lizzie Borden), but here she held herself to the merest hint of polite cynicism in front of the greedy suitors, who assume Penelope's a widow. And in the final scene, when Penelope is convinced at last that Ulisse is no imposter, Pancella's sudden unstiffening of stance and her smiling entry into the closing duet (an italianized "yes, yes" worthy of both Homer and James Joyce), there shouldn't have been a dry eye in the State Theater.
There were, in fact, no duds in this big cast. Special salutes, however, because of prominence, go to Katherine Goeldner's feisty Minerva, Keith Phares's ardent Telemaco, Marion Capriotti's tender Ericlea, John Duykers's hilarious-pathetic Iro, John MacMasters's touching Eumaeo and Wilbur Pauley's Antinoo, the most devious of the suitors, with his deep bass really loaded.
LEIGHTON KERNER
SAN FRANCISCO San Francisco's ardent Wagnerites, well-served by their opera company's previous managements, now have reasons for some concern. Only one work by the object of their affection -- and that the early and relatively brief Der Fliegende Holländer -- figures on the announced five-year programming (to begin in 2002-03) of incoming general director Pamela Rosenberg. They had reasons, therefore, to cling to this season's Die Meistersinger, given seven times during October, as a pre-famine feast. Most of those reasons, as it happened, were good.
Barring a questionable detail, John Coyne's sets easily could have passed for snapshots of medieval Nuremberg -- best of all, the spacious, beautifully colored church interior for Act I and the broad, uncluttered riverbank for th
e final songfest. Neither Coyne nor director Hans-Peter Lehmann, however, could quite untangle the glorious tangle of activity throughout Act II, with performers disappearing and re-emerging from behind freestanding scrims and a towering upstage vertical that bore uncomfortable resemblance to a destroyed structure of recent tragic memory. The great contrapuntal brouhaha that ended that act became more mess than mélée; Sachs's rescue of Walther at the end had to be taken pretty much on faith. The opera's final moment, the apotheosis of artist over critic, was cluttered beyond Wagnerian intent by having the disgraced Beckmesser return to the fold and deliver a penitent hug to the triumphant Sachs. (Sorry, folks, but music critics don't work that way.)
James Morris sang his first Sachs -- out-of-town preparation, he freely admitted, for assuming the role at the Met a month later. For reasons good and otherwise, his performance (heard Oct. 13, the second night) was unadulterated, unsurprising, all-purpose Morris: the voice nicely colored, the intonation pure, the stage presence noble, the words immaculately shaped -- and the drama, the rich throb of humanity that elevates this role above any you can easily name, sadly understated. That human throb came through more tellingly in René Pape's eloquent, loving Pogner (also Met-bound). Thomas Allen's Beckmesser came across as an even greater surprise, with a thread of pain beneath the comedic shenanigans that provided a further dimension to a personage too often relegated to slapstick status.
Robert Dean Smith -- Kansas-born but in his U.S. opera debut -- was the Walther, Janice Watson the Eva: an appealing, bright-voiced pair who, for once, looked and sounded as young as they were supposed to. As David and his Magdalene, Michael Schade and Catherine Keen were no less splendid and contributed especially elegant support in the great Act III quintet.
But that wondrous ensemble -- and, indeed, everything about the texture of Wagner's irresistible comedy that makes transcendent and all-too-brief its five hours in the opera house -- owed most to the musical leadership of the company's music director, Donald Runnicles. Half a minute into the much-loved and thrice-familiar prelude, with every orchestral detail fixed into place and the music's spirit surging forward, you suspected something remarkable was taking shape. Give or take small details here and there, you were right.
ALAN RICH
HOUSTON Houston Grand Opera opened the 2001-02 season with a fine production of Rigoletto. Verdi created a fascinating figure in the title role, a character who elicits our sympathy but also our disdain. Modern stagings often emphasize his tortured psyche. Frank Corsaro's HGO interpretation focuses on the psychology of Rigoletto's relationship with his daughter, Gilda. Corsaro, who has directed this opera before, arranges the opening as an end-stage in Rigoletto's story. Over the portentous chords of the curse motif, Rigoletto appears in a straitjacket. The rest of the opera, in Corsaro's scheme, plays out Rigoletto's tortured images of his daughter. Gilda first appears as a child, with a doll that even the mature Gilda occasionally carries. So does her father, whose daughter-fixation becomes obvious. Fortunately, the idea doesn't become heavy-handed. At key moments in the story, rear doors slide apart quickly to reveal a figure bathed in stark white light. The effect is used judiciously, when the music changes or lingers on a climax, and it lends structure
to the continuous stream of multi-movement duets. Both of Monterone's entrances, for instance, are marked by the device.
But what makes the production memorable is some first-rate singing, mostly from Laura Claycomb, as Gilda, in her HGO debut. The role tends toward idealization, but Claycomb offered a flesh-and-blood Gilda of passion and spirit. This came across in the soprano's outstanding acting but even more in her singing. With a fresh voice of great musicality, Claycomb covered the role's extended range with nary a break. Her "Caro nome" was breathtaking, full of sensitive phrasing and color. At the end of the aria, instead of staying on the notated E for the extended trill, she ascended an octave in an arpeggio and finished with a perfect trill on the high E. She also excelled in ensembles. In the rousing duet with Rigoletto closing Act II, "Sì, vendetta," Claycomb firmly staked out Gilda's independence. At the final cadence, her leap from a quick G to a high E-flat, so often awkward-sounding, made more dramatic sense, for it seemed to express Gilda's physical struggle to escape her father's painful grasp. Kudos goes to the director, of course, but it takes a good singer-actress to bring it off, and Claycomb rose to the occasion.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, also making his HGO debut, had mixed success in the title role. While declamatory passages showed appropriate force and vigor, as in "Sì vendetta," lyrical sections often sounded pinched and nasal. The problem was compounded by the role's high tessitura, and the area above middle C proved troublesome for the baritone, as in "Pari siamo" and "Ah! veglia, o donna." Yet Hvorostovsky conveyed the physical magnetism needed in Corsaro's concept of the jester as "a master of debauchery." Another successful presence was Maddalena, sung in a velvety mezzo-soprano by Stephanie Novacek. Roberto Aronica, as the Duke, was often wooden, as in his mechanical rendition of "La donna è mobile" and "È il sol dell'anima." George Cordes (Monterone) and Raymond Aceto (Sparafucile) lacked the dramatic weight to make their characters convincing. Monterone, in fact, looked younger than Rigoletto, and hence the curse lost some of its bite.
Music director Patrick Summers did a fine job with the HGO orchestra in the pacing of set pieces and transitional sections. The HGO chorus also acquitted itself well, although the fast-paced "Zitti" in Act I needed greater coordination with the orchestra.
Strong orchestral playing, this time from the Houston Symphony in its last appearance with HGO, characterized the other opera in the fall repertory, Tannhäuser. Directed by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, the production has garnered acclaim at previous venues, from Seville to Rio de Janeiro, and rightly so. This striking version might be said to improve an opera that Wagner himself considered problematic through his late years. His musical fixes for the Paris premiere in 1861, an event that turned into a scandalous rebuff of the composer, added sparkle to the score but accentuated the abrupt changes that already marred the work. Herzog's interpretation, using the Dresden version, succeeds in pulling the audience into the story. Maurizio Balò's sets and Franz Blumauer's costumes presented strong, solid colors to distinguish evil from good. Venus's realm, in bright red, featured giant, billowy drapes and super-size tassels. These fantastic blobs were my favorite stage element. The knights' realm, in contrast, had shades of gray. With everyone in white (except Venus), figures assumed a proper gravitas for an ethical quest. One of the few details in this abstract conception was a projected moon that turned into a Gothic rose window in silhouette. The passing of time and the aging of Tannhäuser's spirit were marked by the change from autumn and fallen leaves to winter and gentle snowflakes. Perhaps the most curious effect was a pervasive breeze that wafted through the drapery of costumes and scenery. In keeping with the ideas of Wagner and German Romanticism, the ambiguity of this breeze encouraged reflection: was it the power of hope, the optimism of quest, the balm of nature?
Even more than its sister production, Tannhäuser featured spectacular singing. Danish tenor Stig Andersen, who performed Tristan at HGO two seasons ago, thrilled the audience with his compelling portrait of the conflicted knight. Vocally, he mastered the challenging role, making it sound easy. Dramatically, he put a human face on Tannhäuser that is rarely seen, and he brought out the changes in his character over the course of the work. In Act I, for instance, Andersen conveyed Tannhäuser's surging enthusiasm through the ascending strains of the hymn to Venus, culminating in the E-flat-major outburst, "Stets soll nur dir." And in his riveting interpretation of the Rome narration in Act III, Andersen's wracked body and sensitive declamation brought home the knight's agony. This was a Heldentenor with soul.
Similarly Tina Kiberg, as Elisabeth, broke stereotype and gave us reasons beyond her angelic image why Tannhäuser would be attracted to her. Kiberg sang superbly, offering rich color and shading in the role. The maturity of her sound worked against the idea of Elisabeth as a young, virginal woman. But her first big aria was suitably radiant, the second suitably pious. Michelle DeYoung, as Venus, had the vocal equipment to carry the part, but her stiff demeanor detracted from the seductiveness of the character. Bass Stephen Milling portrayed the Landgrave with a depth and leadership reminiscent of Sarastro, his Mozartean ancestor. Baritone Guido Paevatalu was persuasive and musical in the role of Wolfram von Eschenbach. Unfortunately, he seemed to tire in Act III, and "O du, mein holder Abendstern" suffered from lapses in intonation.
MARCIA J. CITRON
INTERNATIONAL LONDON Haydn's L'Anima del Filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice has a performance history so sparse that it might more fairly be described as a non-performance history. It all began in 1791 in London, where Haydn, the most admired composer of the day, was commissioned to write a work for the rebuilt King's Theatre in the Haymarket. Due to a rival venture that enjoyed royal backing, the new auditorium was temporarily denied a license, so Haydn's score was taken out of rehearsal and put on the shelf. And there it stayed. No one seems to have made another attempt to stage it, in fact, until 1951, when it was presented at the Maggio Musicale in Florence with Maria Callas (taking part in her only world premiere) as Euridice and Erich Kleiber conducting. So when it arrived on the stage of Covent Garden on October 15, it was effectively 210 years late.
The problem with the opera's main title -- The Philosopher's Soul -- is that no one seems quite sure to whom it refers. Is it Creonte (Creon, Euridice's father in this confusingly elongated version of the story), who sings an aria revealing a vaguely philosophical cast of mind at one point, or the Genio (Sibyl), who counsels Orfeo to be philosophical about his loss? It's also not quite certain whether Haydn finished the piece or not. After the inconsolable Orfeo has had a cup of poison forced upon him by some rampaging Bacchantes, they set off for their island of delight only to be drowned in a sudden storm. The music rises to a windswept climax before tailing off into a soft D-minor close, which could be interpreted as an arresting dying fall.
It may be inferred from all this that Haydn's final opera is not exactly a sure-fire winner, but purely as a musical experience it has much to offer, including some solemn choral scenes, striking orchestral passages and virtuoso vocal writing. It was a shame that Jürgen Flimm's production, with designs by George Tsypin, made such a visual mess of it. With its armies of grotesques and dancing extras, its choruses gazing on indifferently from windows opened in side walls, its general ugliness and clutter, this was a feeble and perverse visualization of a piece that needed clarity, not contrariness.
Christopher Hogwood made his ROH debut in the pit, and though the sounds made by the regular orchestra had a proper hint of period flavor to them, there was little sense of dramatic impetus from that quarter. The evening also marked another late arrival -- that of Cecilia Bartoli, only now making her Covent Garden stage debut. She doubled as Euridice and the Genio, who comforts and counsels Orfeo after his wife's death. Bartoli proved well worth waiting for. Her voice easily made its presence felt in the auditorium, and she engaged vigorously with the text. Her tendency to worry some of the coloratura passages as a terrier does a bone could be wearing, but at least it showed commitment. All the notes were emphatically there. She was less successful as the Genio, whose single, flamboyant aria took her up into higher regions that sound far less natural territory for her than does her richer mezzo range. Roberto Saccà coped impressively with the low-lying tenor role of Orfeo and matched Bartoli point for point in expressive power. Gerald Finley maintained a dignified presence as Creonte, though the character himself scarcely grabs attention -- which may explain why Gluck and his librettist left him out of their version of this tale.
English National Opera's first new production of the season was Prokofiev's War and Peace (October 27), staged by Tim Albery, who demonstrated the crucial ability to deploy a chorus effectively that Flimm's Haydn farrago so woefully lacked. The piece itself is increasingly regarded as one of opera's all-time great epics, the composer seizing its opportunities with imagination and making a surprisingly coherent narrative out of Tolstoy's filleted novel. A lengthy, thirteen-scene version of the score was played, but with music director Paul Daniel offering his finest work with the company thus far, the opera didn't seem a moment too long. The orchestral and choral response was of the highest quality.
Albery's vision glances at the historical context of the opera, written in response to the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941, and to the myth-making that surrounded Stalin, which encouraged the building-up of the character of the people's hero, Field Marshal Kutuzov, as his representative onstage. In Ana Jebens's costumes, the peasantry throughout wore clothes that were non-period-specific, in contrast to those paraded by high society, who maintained the fashionable modes of the time. Visually, in Hildegard Bechtler's rather basic designs, some of the epic scenes borrowed from the optimistic iconography and color schemes of Soviet poster art, but this particular set of references was not labored. This is not the kind of lavish War and Peace that the Kirov and the Met (with a little help from their friends) can mount, but it has its strengths. The subtleties of Tolstoy's social interaction were wonderfully caught in Albery's production, with unforgettable cameos from company members Susan Parry as the frivolous Hélène Bezukhova and John Graham-Hall as her worthless brother, the seducer Kuragin. There were also remarkable performances from guests, notably Andrew Shore, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Helen Field and Ryland Davies. Choreographer Vanessa Gray recreated the formal dances of the time in some crisply delivered routines.
But it was in three central interpretations that the evening fulfilled its potential for greatness. Both as a vocal presence and in dramatic bearing, Willard W. White commanded the stage as General Kutuzov. Prokofiev gives him one of the best tunes in the opera, and White made the most of it. Peter Sidhom sang a bitter, fanatical Napoleon, one whose every vocal gesture suggested the man's malevolence and destructive power. Simon Keenlyside was a profoundly moving Prince Andrey, a character whose inner world Prokofiev explores with a fine sense of sympathetic observation. All three artists showed how to combine rich, flowing tone with the clearest diction to direct expressive purpose. Sandra Zeltzer, on the other hand, had quite a few problems with words as Natasha, and her blowsy tone never suggested the innocent teenager whose feelings are getting out of hand. John Daszak sang an amiable Pierre, capturing the character's generosity of spirit though not his essential strength (a soft-grained tenor does not really work in this role). But overall this was a remarkable evening.
GEORGE HALL
WEXFORD Last fall's season at Wexford Festival Opera was the Irish company's fiftieth. As has become customary, it presented three works unlikely to be found at your local opera house. To enhance the productions' accessibility, projected titles were newly added. Wexford's appeal has been distilled from a smooth brew of unfamiliar repertory with solidly promising up-and-coming singers from all over. Nowadays, many are from Eastern Europe and Asia.
Massenet's 1897 Sapho (Oct. 23), itself an artful blend, capitalizes on the vogue for verismo (Sapho followed Puccini's La Bohème by a year) within the framework of emotional intimacy that made Manon a hit thirteen years before. The music is melodically smooth and graceful but moves right along, as befits a work considered modern during the Belle Epoque, relating its story economically but pausing long enough to give each character some telling moments of reflection. The plot, taken from Alphonse Daudet (whose writing also fueled Cilèa's L'Arlesiana, new that same year), concerns Jean, a provincial lad who comes to Paris to make something of himself, only to fall for Fanny, a worldly artists' model. Learnin
g of her free and easy past, he turns against her, but she has come to love him seriously and tries to get him back. Though she temporarily succeeds, it finally dawns on her that the relationship will never work, so she slips quietly away.
Massenet's canny sense of theatrical timing is a director's delight, except perhaps at the end of the first scene, when Jean succumbs to Fanny's allure with almost cartoonish immediacy. Director Fabio Sparvoli moved his characters tellingly in the spaces defined by designer Giorgio Ricchelli, making this the most natural and fluent of this season's Wexford trio. The opulent clutter of the opening scene, in a dark-paneled Victorian salon, contrasted pointedly with the severity of Jean's simple apartment, its gray walls turning nearly black when Giuseppe di Iorio turned down the lighting. A rural outdoor scene showed Provence as lovely, with its furrowed fields, but one felt its dullness in comparison with Paris. Alessandra Torella's costumes captured the elegance of the period.
One can't help thinking of La Traviata (and also of Zazà and La Rondine, both of which came somewhat later), but another model for Massenet was Carmen, starting with the heroine's flashy, Gypsy-costumed first appearance. As Fanny Legrand, the model known as Sapho after one of her poses for the sculptor Caoudal, Wexford veteran Giuseppina Piunti entered with the confidence of a winner. Hers was a firm grasp of the Massenet soprano mystique, from the sensuous to the melodramatic to the desolately sad, as she curved her clear, steady, evocative voice around the grateful contours of a wide-ranging characterization. Dramatically, she moved with style and economy, saving her energy for a big outburst against her artist colleagues at the end of Act III, Scene 1, and a tense showdown with her lover, Jean, in the next scene. In the episode after that, Fanny has to swallow her pride and visit Jean at the home of his disapproving parents in Provence. The softness of her pleas, here and in the final scene with Jean, conveyed pathos with dignified control.
As Jean, American tenor Brandon Jovanovich showed a steady voice of lyric/dramatic scope. He sang his opening solo in attractive, open style, suggesting the young man's lack of Parisian sophistication. As time went on, he was inclined to give more voice than the music or the size of the theater required, though what he gave was securely positioned and interpretively responsive to this limited, self-centered chauvinist of a character. As Irène, the Micaela-like cousin with a secret soft spot for him, an Albanian artist, Ermonela Jaho, showed touching delicacy and a reedy, finely controlled filigree of sound. Her appeal, though quieter than Fanny's, was no less convincing in the hands of this gifted lyric soprano. Another outstanding voice was that of Luca Salsi, a hearty bass from Parma, as Caoudal. Jean's parents, though they looked young for their roles, were smoothly represented by Agneta Bienkowska and Massimiliano Gagliardo. Jean-Luc Tingaud controlled the ebb and flow of Massenet's malleable, expertly timed score with a sure-footed sense of style.
Alessandro Stradella (1644-82) is one of few composers to become the protagonist of someone else's opera. The trouble is, Stradella's eventful life, abruptly ended by a hired assassin, was a lot more fascinating than the boy-gets-girl silliness cooked up by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese for Friedrich (von) Flotow, the composer of Martha. In their 1844 version of Alessandro Stradella (Oct. 24), called a "Romantic opera" (a precursor of operetta), our hero does endure a series of scrapes in order to elope with his beloved Leonore, but his "Jungfrau Maria" hymn proves so persuasive that it softens the hearts of the bumbling assassins sent to stalk him, and all ends happily, with a little religious uplift thrown in.
Julian McGowan's sets, which might do as well for a road-company Gondoliers, made the same sort of happy caricature of Venice that Flotow's music does. (Given that two centuries had passed, Flotow wisely refrained from quoting any of the real Stradella's Baroque strains.) This time the director, Thomas de Mallet Burgess, succumbed to the temptation to throw as much on the stage as possible, and choreographer Lynne Hockney was hard put to keep anyone from falling into the orchestra pit. Clever surprises lightened the confusion from time to time, especially when the assassins emerged from disguises as a statue and a sheep, or Leonore's bridal train turned out to serve as a tablecloth. Stodgy principals seemed at odds with this hedonistic setting. During the overture, Romanian tenor Stefano Costa walked into the onstage dressing room to be attacked by a squad of white-uniformed -- dental assistants? No, they were makeup artists.
In the opera proper, Costa led off with a taxing solo, dispatched with steady, compact tone and solid technique. There was never much sunshine in his voice, and the only time he seemed to be having fun was during the hilarious Act III quartet, which he, Leonore and the two comic assassins performed on a bicycle built for four. Those doing the lustiest singing left the pedaling to their colleagues, who reacted with exhaustion whenever a hill came along. A Russian soprano, Ekaterina Morozova, sang Leonore with wiry accuracy but not a great deal of sparkle. This left the show to be stolen by conspirators Malvolio (resonant Czech bass-baritone Frantisek Zahradinícek) and Barbarino (Wexford-born tenor Declan Kelly, a bel canto talent), who clowned and sang with uninhibited gusto. Russian bass Andrei Antonov kept them staid company as Bassi, their sinister employer. On the podium, Daniele Callegari took care of Flotow's sweet, smooth-flowing melodies, and the chorus had a grand if crowded time.
Dvorák's 1889 Jakobín (Oct. 25), a genre comedy, scores its points within the confines of a Bohemian village. Bohus, who left home to live in Paris, comes back incognito with his wife, Julie, to learn that he's under suspicion of having supported the French revolution. This sits poorly with the conservative locals, especially Bohus's father, Count Vílem, who insists his son is dead and plans to make the craven Adolf his heir instead. Adolf does his best (worst) to make sure Bohus isn't recognized in time, but since this mellow tale is supposed to be a comedy, he can't get away with it. The work offers plenty of warm, agreeable tunes but suffers from a surfeit of peasant choruses and an over-serious final act, weighted with sentimentality.
Paul Edwards's stage pictures began with a backdrop panorama of the village sitting on its mountainside. This awesome prospect deflated the conventional sets that followed. Bohus and Julie, hippies of their day, returned home from sinful, artistic Paris still wearing their Bohemian outfits -- the wrong kind of Bohemian for this hometown crowd. They remained in this "disguise" for the entire opera, which meant that Julie went everywhere sporting a headpiece of three-foot-high black feathers. No wonder these free spirits weren't welcomed with open arms. At the final curtain, they played out a "déjà vu all over again," trudging past the town, suitcases in hand, as they had at the beginning; the dramatic point of this must remain director Michael McCaffery's secret.
The work was sung in Czech, challenging its international cast. Markus Werba, an Austrian baritone, sang Bohus with warmth of tone and feeling; Julie, played by Russian soprano Tatiana Monogarova, shone in her moving plea to the stern old Count on Bohus's behalf. The secondary romantic couple, Terinka and Jiri, given good opportunities by Dvorák, brought abundant lyricism from Bulgarian soprano Mariana Panova and her tenor compatriot Michal Lehotsky. Terinka's unwanted suitor, the town burgrave Filip, a Beckmesser type, required and got vocal and dramatic virtuosity (he had to stumble around costumed as a hornet) from Italian bass Mirco Palazzi. The figure of central authority, however, had to be the Count, and Ukrainian bass Valentin Pivovarov measured up, using his generous sound to convey the old man's sorrowful rigidity and eventual acceptance of his wayward son. Alexandre Voloschuk was the sympathetic conductor.
In addition to being woven of Romantic cloth, these three operas share another common thread: all three involve a theme song. In Sapho this is a Provençal tune, reminding Jean of the conflicting pull of home. In Stradella it's the hymn with which the onstage composer makes everything all right. In Jakobín it's a Czech lullaby, sung by Julie to the Count, that reminds him of his late wife and of Bohus as a child, triggering the reconciliation. The orchestra for this Wexford season was the youthful, enthusiastic, generally shipshape National Philharmonic of Belarus. The audience, a dependable one for this festival -- "over 10,000 people, of whom over a third come from abroad," according to Festival president Sir Anthony Reilly -- was openly supportive throughout.
JOHN W. FREEMAN
BERLIN Franz Schreker's Der Ferne Klang (The Faraway Sound) was given its world premiere in 1912 in Frankfurt. The opera tells of a search for the unobtainable: in a provincial German town, Grete, the daughter of a debt-ridden gambler and a coldhearted mother, loves the artistic Fritz, who abandons her to seek the mysterious "faraway sound." Ten years later, Grete has become the leading attraction of a Venetian brothel. Among her admirers she spots Fritz, who has roamed the world unsuccessfully. When he realizes what Grete has become, he leaves her a second time. After another ten years, in another European metropolis, Fritz's opera is given its premiere -- and it fails. Grete, now a streetwalker, meets the desperate composer a last time. Suddenly realizing that she may be the "faraway sound" he has sought all these years, he dies in her arms.
What sounds like a highly melodramatic movie scenario is in fact the plot of one of the most successful contemporary operas of the early twentieth century. It made thirty-four-year-old Schreker famous overnight. In 1920, having written three more operas, he was named director of the Berlin Academy of Music. The growing influence of the Nazis forced him to quit that position twelve years later; Schreker, who died in 1934, was put on the list of "degenerate composers."
With the opening of Der Ferne Klang (Oct. 21), Berlin's Staatsoper made an important, eagerly awaited contribution to the current Schreker renaissance in Germany. The fascinatingly rich, multi-faceted score combines the theatrical intensity of Richard Strauss with the subtle coloring of Debussy. Yet it's unmistakably Schreker throughout; founded in the tradition of Wagner, the score extends musical textures to the sounds of everyday life, evoking train stations and cafés. Schreker uses the "faraway sound," suggested by harp and celesta, as a leitmotif. Conductor Michael Gielen, the brilliant Staatskapelle and phenomenal Anne Schwanewilms (as Grete) brought down the house; among performers in numerous supporting roles, Hanno-Müller Brachmann (the Count/Rudolf) and Stephan Rügamer (The Chevalier) were most remarkable. However, the staging raised a few questions about director Peter Mussbach's intentions.
Mussbach, who will take over the Staatsoper as intendant in 2002, did not bother to tell Schreker's story but instead came up with his own, showing the downfall of a deeply disturbed, sexually abused woman. Even during the overture, he already had Grete masturbating and acting disturbed; later, she was raped by her father's drinking buddies while her father watched. Der Ferne Klang, for which Schreker himself wrote the libretto, is in part autobiographical. (The composer suffered in an unhappy love affair with a girl called Grete.) In Mussbach's view, however, Fritz (tenor Robert Künzli) is almost nonexistent. Erich Wonder's sets, mostly in shades of dark-blue and gray, were inspired by Expressionist paintings; in Andrea Schmidt-Futterer's costumes, greedy men with grotesque, mask-like faces and lusty, shabby women in frills and feathers were reminiscent of Otto Dix figures.
Aside from Mussbach's limiting, annoying obsession with the heroine's sexuality, this was one of the most noteworthy of Berlin's recent premieres, thanks to Schreker's score and Schwanewilms's committed performance.
JOCHEN BREIHOLZ
CONCERTS AND RECITALS NEW YORK CITY Daniel Barenboim's ardor for Richard Wagner's music is well established. He has conducted regularly at Bayreuth for two decades, recorded a large chunk of the canon, even broken Israel's taboo by playing the prelude to Tristan und Isolde there, albeit as an encore. Leading a guest appearance by Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a concert performance of Tristan und Isolde at Carnegie Hall on October 20, Barenboim treated Tristan less like the sacred-cow harbinger of Modernism than as a self-contained expression of emotion. Nor did he build a careful evening-long architecture. Even the famous "Tristan chord," which opens the music-drama (and reputedly the door to atonality), was played more like a light flaring into our world than as a notorious musicological statement to be resolved four hours later.
Barenboim cared more for illumination than for abstraction or structure. Words were heard, and they counted; passions were outlined, even underlined, with such clarity that Wagner's "endless melody" took on compelling new internal shapes. His dense poetry about the enigmatic duality of day and night, love and death, was wedded to the score on this evening in ways that made immediate emotional sense. Tristan became a Romantic opera about proud young people helplessly enmeshed from the start in a doomed desire, seeking the peace of oblivion. Philosophizing and four-square pedagogy fell away, as every twist trapping the lovers was made musically manifest.
The cast was not graced with any new Melchiors or Flagstads. What it did have was an Isolde in Waltraud Meier who made pure sound seem irrelevant. Her voice often was covered, almost hooded, her top notes had neither sheen nor size -- and it did not matter. She instantly became the young Irish princess, the frustrated sorceress, the committed adulteress, the yearner for the night of death. With Barenboim coiling his orchestra around her, she so grabbed and held the audience that at the end, after her transfiguration, long seconds of sympathetic silence passed before one overly eager enthusiast began the applause.
Christian Franz's Tristan, hardly Meier's equal in artistic achievement, sometimes seemed strangled by the notes. Still, he rose to the challenge of his Act III delirium in convincing fashion, making up for a lot of what had preceded. Veteran John Tomlinson sang King Marke, as nakedly emotional as his young queen. His large bass was sometimes woolly and betrayed an occasional wobble when forcing low notes, but he was unfailingly touching.
Small-voiced Andreas Schmidt, the Kurwenal, spookily reminded one of Fischer-Dieskau on occasion, but he lacked that artist's depth. Young mezzo-soprano Nadja Michael sang Brangäne and unfortunately forced her voice explosively onto climactic notes. She didn't have to: it is naturally ample, clearly heard when she floated her "Habet acht!" from behind the orchestra. Brian Davis was persuasively angry, if tight-sounding, as Melot, and the smaller parts of the Shepherd, the Steersman and the Sailor were cleanly sung by Mark Eldred, Michael Brauer and Marcel Reijans.
If neatness is your criterion in Wagner, then Barenboim's Tristan was not for you. The emotions of each moment propelled his performance toward its transcendental end. It may or may not have withstood rigid logical analysis, but it was a draining, cathartic experience, well worth enjoying.
ALAN WAGNER
North America: The Domingos' undistinguished La Traviata in Los Angeles; Larin and Borodina in San Francisco Samson et Dalila revival; Pittsburgh is first on Steingraber Don Giovanni's busy dance-card; in Toronto, Opera Atelier's Zauberflöte pays tribute to Schikaneder, "the Jim Carrey of the eighteenth century"; Leiferkus and Swenson in Dallas's first Simon Boccanegra; Seattle Rusalka; Portland Pêcheurs de Perles; Cleveland Figaro; Stamford Roméo et Juliette; New York Floating Box world premiere; Bohèmes in Hartford and Annapolis; Trovatore in Charlotte, NC; Manon at Indiana University; Eastman Opera Theatre offers Susa's Transformations.
International:Zurich sees a first-rate Khovanshchina and Cura in a "Star Wars" Otello. In Paris, Jacobs conducts Figaro at the Champs-Elysées; a Zemlinsky-Ravel double bill at the Bastille. Carlos Álvarez triumphs as Rigoletto at Madrid's Teatro Real, Flórez's Elvino enlivens Vienna's Sonnambula, and Guryakova's Marguerite graces Moscow's Faust. Ore's "shadow opera" makes its debut at Oslo's Ultima Festival; Music Theatre Wales bring The Lighthouse to London. Konwitschny throws a cocktail-party Don Carlos in Hamburg; Boieldieu's La Dame Blanche in Düsseldorf; Bellini's Straniera in Catania; Sondheim's Sweeney Todd in Sydney.
Concerts and recitals:in New York, Barenboim's Wagner concerts continue with Walküre scenes at Carnegie Hall; Upshaw, Relyea, Levine and the MET Orchestra perform Schoenberg; Finnish flag-waving at Avery Fisher Hall from Groop, Hynninen and Segerstam; Bolognese Memet at Metropolitan Museum; Masur and Leiferkus in shattering Shostakovich. Graham and Abbado perform Chausson in San Francisco, where Kirchschlager and Skovhus cry Wolf, and von Stade, Netrebko, Groves, Croft, Heggie and friends celebrate Camphill Communities. Hampson and Rieger play Mahler in Paris, where Vienna Staatsoper presents Ariadne. Barcelona's bel canto "Sorceress" returns after 163 years; Pearlman paces L'Orfeo for Boston Baroque.
NORTH AMERICA LOS ANGELES For the second performance of Los Angeles Opera's undistinguished La Traviata this season, the man in the pit was not Plácido Domingo, the company's artistic director and the conductor announced for four of ten performances of Verdi's opera this fall. On October 21, Domingo was at the next stop on his busy international schedule, and LAO chorus master and conductor William Vendice was saddled with the thankless task of performing for an audience very likely drawn in by the opera's familiar title and Domingo's stupendous name. In any case, Vendice's propulsive leadership was the most interesting aspect of a second-rate presentation. (Domingo belatedly discovered, well after opening night, that his schedule permitted him to relieve Vendice for both the third and the final performances. Sadly, LAO seems to be making a habit of using glittery names as a lure, then withdrawing them or using them only here and there -- videlicet the company's season-opener, Queen of Spades, with and without Valery Gergiev as conductor and Domingo as Gherman. Such a policy compromises the performances and generates public cynicism.)
This Traviata did showcase two attractive young singers with fine voices, soprano Ana Maria Martinez (Violetta) and tenor Rolando Villazón (Alfredo), but both were out of their depths. Martinez was like a deer caught in the headlights during "Sempre libera," getting off all her high notes as quickly as possible while looking terrified. The rest of her performance lacked emotional resonance. Villazón sang with conviction, but his stage presence radiated an artificial, cloying charm. The Germont of baritone Jorge Lagunes, pallid to begin with, was not helped by Marta Domingo's bland stage direction, in which the main characters made little connection with one another. Inconsistent in style and quality, the sets and costumes by Giovanni Agostinucci are shared by L.A. with Washington Opera and Belgium's Opéra Royal de Wallonie.
DAVID GREGSON
SAN FRANCISCO Samson et Dalila is a tricky opera to bring off -- and it is Saint-Saëns's own fault, since he made the Biblical hero such an insufferable whiner and gave all the best music to the vengeful temptress Dalila. In order to make Samson seem plausibly heroic, then, one needs a tenor of uncommon vocal might and expressive nobility: a Jon Vickers or Plácido Domingo. Domingo, in fact, sang in the premiere of this San Francisco Opera production back in 1980, opposite Shirley Verrett. Taped for television broadcast and now available on DVD, his was that rare performance in which Samson's dignity is never in question.
For this revival, Sergei Larin took the lead, and he was in many ways an admirable Samson. He tried hard not to snivel too much, and he even brought an appropriate sense of self-righteousness to the part, particularly in the opening scene, when he rouses the Israelites to rebellion. Had he not faced the likes of Olga Borodina, Larin might have been able to redress the opera's inherent dramatic imbalance. But it was clear from her very first phrase that this Dalila had the muscleman wrapped around her little finger. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a more seductive presence than Borodina's in this role. She reeled Samson in artfully, concealing steely strength behind her gorgeous, pliant tone. "Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix" became just another of her many weapons of deception, rather than the opera's centerpiece -- a welcome change. Borodina's consistent intensity of purpose made Dalila's quest for vengeance appear sympathetic, even honorable.
This series of performances marked the SFO debut of René Pape, as well as the twentieth anniversary of Timothy Noble's first appearance with the company. Pape's tightly focused bass is a marvel, and he made a dignified impression as the Old Hebrew who tries to warn Samson of Dalila's wily ways. One hopes that San Franciscans will soon have the chance to hear him in a more substantial role. Noble, singing the High Priest of Dagon, was also terrific, spitting dramatic fire from his first entrance onward.
Conductor Emmanuel Joel set urgent tempos throughout, painting in broad strokes rather than fussing with details. It was the right approach; this opera can seem to sag in places (particularly the extensive choral numbers in Acts I and III), but there was never any slackening of tension here. The orchestra responded enthusiastically to Joel's direction, and the result was often electrifying, as in the recklessly fast coda to the famous bacchanale.
Visually, the production was something of a mixed bag. Carrie Robbins's costumes may have been considered fashionable when the production was unveiled some twenty years ago; they are not now. Surely a Dalila as stylish as Borodina would not don a housecoat -- even such a glittering one -- for a seduction on the Temple steps. And Timothy Noble's feathered headdress in Act III seemed right out of Cher's wardrobe.
Douglas W. Schmidt's sets apparently aimed for an opulence redolent of Cecil B. de Mille, but they only intermittently scaled the heights of gaudy grandeur. The Temple of Gaza in the final scene did evoke an atmosphere of monumental decadence, and Samson's destruction of the massive edifice was effectively done. (The result was unsettling, coming only a few short weeks after 9/11.) Dalila's tent in Act II -- the simplest set -- turned out to be the most impressive. Backlit by darkly radiant clouds, the structure's panels of colorful fabrics were strewn defiantly against the sky. And lounging on her divan below, Borodina looked as exquisite as an odalisque by Matisse. It was the visual highlight of the evening, and it only served to underscore the mezzo-soprano's dominance in this production. Given the fine performances by Larin and Noble, it would be unfair to say Borodina stole the show, but it was her presence that made this a Samson to remember.
ANDREW FARACH-COLTON
PITTSBURGH Mozart's Don Giovanni, which opened Pittsburgh Opera's season in the Benedum Center (Oct. 13), was a flagship production for the company's new leadership. Although artistic director Christopher Hahn and music director John Mauceri officially started a year ago, this is the first season that they have planned together from start to finish. Their stamp was immediately evident in the sleek, modern sets by Riccardo Hernandez (part of a co-production with New York City Opera, Opera Pacific and Tulsa Opera), the no-nonsense staging by Thor Steingraber and a new level of casting, in which no member was less than adequate and several were of genuine star quality. Despite some small lapses and arguable decisions, this was one of Pittsburgh Opera's best efforts.
On the musical side, the use of Barenreiter's New Mozart Edition was in keeping with Mauceri's crisp, clean approach to the score and with his technical efficiency (which included keeping his orchestra right with the singers even when they made egregious musical errors). Mauceri has definite ideas about this score, often emphasizing its dark side -- reflected visually in Chris Binder's dim lighting designs -- and harking back to Mozart's own roots in the Baroque by incorporating Michael Borowitz's incisive harpsichord, not only in recitatives but in some musical numbers as well.
William Shimell was a lithe, virile Don. At his entrance, he wrestled with the formidable Donna Anna on the roof of her house, then climbed down a rope ladder that might have daunted a lesser man. In this staging, the Don showed more remorse than most, both at the unplanned murder of the Commendatore and later on, in confrontation with the dead man's ghost. Shimell's lean, taut baritone is essentially right for this part, but he used it roughly, degenerating into a toneless parlando in the recitatives and distorting his champagne aria almost beyond recognition. He managed a seductive sound in "Là ci darem" but not in his labored rendition of the serenade. Shimell played well off his Leporello, Patrick Carfizzi, who sang with a rich bass-baritone but with naïve phrasing and bland characterization, oblivious (perhaps intentionally so) to the physical and vocal traditions of the role.
The three women in the last day of the Don's life not only sang well but delineated their roles strongly. Christine Goerke's Donna Anna dominated every scene in which she appeared, with voluminous, voluptuous sound and statuesque physical presence. Her Act I narration and vengeance aria gave more than a few hints that this Anna had been genuinely seduced, despite her protestations. She had the stamina for the dramatic moments, though she ducked the staccato high notes in the big roulade at the end of "Non mi dir." Goerke was beautifully partnered with tenor Charles Castronovo, an elegant Ottavio who made "Il mio tesoro" the vocal highlight of the evening.
Pamela Armstrong's Donna Elvira was smaller-scaled than this role demands, but she conveyed the requisite passion and fury, and she negotiated the technical hurdles of "Mi tradì" with assurance. Rinat Shaham's timbre was more soprano than the mezzo described in her biography in the program -- all the more appropriate for the peasant girl Zerlina, who in this case showed spunk as well as charm. Hugh Russell was a lightweight Masetto, James Patterson an insufficiently deep-toned Commendatore.
ROBERT CROAN
TORONTO Opera Atelier performs Baroque opera not through an effort of historical reconstruction but through a spirit of affectionate affinities. Their work, richly visual, highly stylized and choreographed, is more like a reverie on elements of Baroque theater. Ten years ago, their production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte successfully suggested how such an approach could illuminate a familiar but difficult work. Now, a decade later, they have reconsidered and redesigned the production (Elgin Theatre, Oct. 25), using the greater resources and experience that success has afforded them, but the spirit of surprise and invention seems somehow missing, leaving only a sense of arch preciousness.
The new version honors Emanuel Schikaneder -- whom Opera Atelier's artistic director Marshall Pynkoski calls "the Jim Carrey of the eighteenth century"-- more than it does Mozart. There was scarcely a hint of the sublime, because the music here seemed secondary. An extremely full version of the spoken text (in Andrew Porter's English translation) was performed, but with deadly pacing and the over-deliberateness of singers, rather than actors, delivering dialogue. Every low-comedy possibility was prolonged, nowhere more so than in the grotesque campiness of Gerald Isaac, in the unusual doubling of Monostatos and the pre-Papagena Old Woman. With so much of the humor falling flat and so little of the narrative adequately animated, the evening seemed broken-backed and interminable.
Gerald Gauci's handsome drops, Dora Rust D'Eye's rich but rather over-decorated costumes and Kevin Fraser's glowing lighting created an apt context for an eighteenth-century Flute. Jeannette Zingg's choreography seemed intrusive. (Does the march of the priests really work better as a ballet with waving palm-leaves?) Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, its sound somewhat muted in a pit, at least provided the right elegant instrumental textures, though David Fallis's conducting also lacked drama.
The individual performances were uneven. John Tessier's gentle, clean tenor suited Tamino, but the rigidity of Pynkoski and Zingg's production concepts -- all artificial attitudes, as if posing for an etching -- denied the role its humanity. Meredith Hall's pallid, pitch-challenged Pamina was similarly two-dimensional. Daniel Belcher's warmly sung Papageno provided a lively presence, until his arsenal of tricks -- the birdcatcher as a libidinous child -- ran dry. Erin Windle's Queen of the Night was over-cautious and unexciting; with no audible audience demand, she chose nevertheless to encore the second aria. Gary Relyea's Sarastro, spookily made up to resemble Osama bin Laden, was small-scaled and vacillated between gravitas and woolliness. The best of the women's voices belonged to Gillian Keith's sparkling Papagena, in her brief duet appearance.
URJO KAREDA
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the final review Urjo Kareda contributed to this magazine, prior to his death on December 26, 2001. An obituary will run in OPERA NEWS in March.
DALLAS Until the eleventh hour, Dallas Opera's orchestra was on strike. Instead of the normal two weeks of rehearsal, Graeme Jenkins had only days to get his musicians into shape and to spare his audience the fate of hearing the rich score of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra performed by major singers -- with two pianos in the pit. Whew.
What emerged on opening night (Nov. 3) was pretty much a musical success. This odd production, borrowed from Covent Garden, seemed to enfold one concept, or several, within economic exigencies. Scenic designer John Gunter devised a set composed of two large doors, one palace wall, one big column and one descending picture of Genoa. For reasons never made obvious, everything tilted 30 degrees to the right. A stagehand shifted the column back and forth between scenes. The proscenium arch was surrounded by a large, broken frame. What all this meant was anyone's guess: that Genoa was a fractious, skewed society? That political turmoil results from and feeds into cosmic imbalance? That Dr. Caligari was nearby? There was at least one lovely directorial touch. At the end of the prologue, the curtain remained up, and as the orchestra played an interlude, the choristers who surrounded Boccanegra -- recently elected Doge -- peeled away, like petals from a flower, to reveal the grown Amelia, twenty-five years after her mother's death.
Deirdre Clancy's costumes combined generic Renaissance wear (for plebeians and patricians) with standard nineteenth-century attire for principals. (Boccanegra in Act III actually looked like Verdi, which makes sense, since he sings on behalf of a united Italy.) Every item seemed to come from some costume trunk. None of this mattered. What did matter were the singing and the high musical standards set by cast, conductor and orchestra. Although nothing can really make sense of the opera's plot, after so many revisions by its composer, the music existed on an almost ethereal plane.
In the title role, Sergei Leiferkus sang with rich, mellow tone, enacting the roles of corsair, lover, father and civic leader with appropriate panache, tenderness, dignity and authority. The "Plebe! Patrizi!" ended with heart-breaking "pace" and "amor," as Boccanegra attempted to bring the warring factions into some kind of political harmony. Bass Robert Lloyd was menacing and lush as Fiesco. With his great aria "Il lacerato spirito," five minutes into the opera, the audience knew that everything was going to be all right. Franco Farina, as Gabriele Adorno, had the advantage of volume, but too often his top notes were pinched and the middle register tightened. At the bottom, his voice was resonant and compelling. Gordon Hawkins humanized the villainous Paolo.
The vocal triumph of the evening belonged to Ruth Ann Swenson, who is moving into heavier and deeper roles after her bel canto successes. With shimmering high notes (piano as well as forte), firm legato and strength at all points along her vocal range, Swenson sang splendidly solo, as well as in her duets and the trio with Adorno and Boccanegra. She is on her way to becoming an estimable Verdi soprano.
WILLARD SPIEGELMAN
SEATTLE Any production as beautiful as Seattle Opera's 1990 Rusalka deserves a revival, and the company brought Dvorák's best-known opera back in a restaging that also marked a farewell. Rusalka, with its exquisite fairy-tale sets by Günther Schneider-Siemssen, was the company's last production in the Seattle Opera House, where Seattle Opera was founded nearly four decades ago; that hall will now close for a comprehensive makeover, reopening in the summer of 2003 as Marion Oliver McCaw Hall. The prevailing air of nostalgia over this Rusalka was enhanced by the otherworldly, painterly sets that evoke the nineteenth-century landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich. Trees and branches in fantastic shapes frame the glistening lake, lighted eerily and effectively by Neil Peter Jampolis (a company regular ever since his Werther in 1989). The battlements and lights of the Act II castle shone dimly through the mists. The otherworldly aura perfectly supported Dvorák's score, with its yearning, heartbreaking melodies and its portents of doom.
Audience members might also have waxed nostalgic over memories of the original 1990 cast, which starred Renée Fleming and Ben Heppner -- both at the beginning of their stellar careers, fresh of voice and full of ardor. Keeping up this standard in any revival would be a challenge; the company nonetheless assembled a respectable cast for the 2001 production. Musical standards were served well by the wide-eyed Gwynne Geyer in the title role, with the stalwart Canadian-born tenor Alan Woodrow as her Prince. There is some steel beneath Geyer's sweetly-produced soprano; there's considerably more steel (though not a great deal of subtlety) in Woodrow's handsome, ringing tenor. The principals and the strong supporting cast -- including Peter Rose as a most imposing Vodnik and Joyce Castle in rare form as Jezibaba -- were well served by the presence of Czech maestro Martin Turnovsky in the orchestra pit. Turnovsky gave this richly beautiful score its full due, with stylish conducting that made the music soar. The staging, by Bernard Uzan, was another matter. Both Geyer and Woodrow were hampered by recent injuries; Woodrow was still recovering from surgery following a torn quadriceps muscle, sustained the day before he was to go on as Siegfried in Seattle Opera's 2001 Ring. The pair moved cautiously about the irregular floor of the set, a circumstance that likely stifled some of the production's spontaneity. Even given this carefulness, most of the staging seemed stiff and occasionally illogical. It's hard to understand why Rusalka and the Prince would almost never face each other in their final scene, with Geyer at her most spectrally fetching as she glided across the shimmering lake.
Uzan upped the kitsch factor with the introduction of quaintly adorable supernumerary owls and baby owlets, which trotted onstage for Jezibaba's conjuring scene and cavorted with the Wood Nymphs (well sung by Terri Richter, Molly Fillmore and Priti Gandhi). Linda Pavelka did a deft comic turn as the Kitchen Boy. All this lightened the gloom, as did Castle's take on Jezibaba -- a nicely judged combination of the terrifying and the hilarious. How apt that the production played through Halloween.
MELINDA BARGREEN
PORTLAND Portland Opera overcame adversity to present a pleasant evening of exotic escapism and sweet lyricism with Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de Perles (Nov. 3). Financial and artistic considerations sent the company from creating a new production to using an existing one to scrambling together a combination of the two. Then illness forced a late soprano switch.
Cynthia Haymon proved an excellent, versatile Leila. Her soprano can be full and sensual, as expected from one renowned as Gershwin's Bess, yet more often she scaled down the voice, singing florid passages with leanness and accuracy and floating some heavenly pianissimos. As Nadir, Tracey Welborn sang with a heady, focused, vibrato-less tenor that divided listeners' opinions. Sensitive and exquisite in Act I's "Au fond du temple saint" and "Je crois entendre encore," Welborn was often inaudible in later ensembles. His restrained, Gallic approach contrasted with the generous, full-throated one of Richard Zeller, who sang Zurga with an ample, rounded baritone. As the high priest Nourabad, bass Matthew Lau sounded dark and implacable. The Portland Opera chorus, directed by Carol Lucas, sang brilliantly and brashly. Conductor Lionel Friend seemed to encourage their forthrightness, for his orchestra as well played with thrust and clarity but was short on atmosphere and charm.
The original scenery designed by Morris Ertman for Edmonton Opera and additional scenery designed by Alison Nalder for Portland looked like the creation of a single mind. Hand-carried tiare Tahiti flowers were the only vegetation, but the set evoked the tropics. A bare, curvy platform wound around pools of water that reflected shimmering light off a backdrop of silhouetted, Moorea-like peaks. Two columns, one erect and one fallen and broken, suggested the ruined temple. Stars and an outsized moon came out at night.
Stage director Michael Hunt set the action in the nineteenth century, with the result that Nadir entered costumed like Stanley looking for Livingston. Most of Hunt's work was effective and sensible. A mirthful exception was the Act II storm: the Ceylonese ran for the shelter of umbrellas, scarcely credible behavior in rainy Portland, let alone for tropical natives.
MARK MANDEL
HARTFORD, CT With a rousing La Bohème, Connecticut Opera kicked off its sixtieth-anniversary season showing every sign of healthy adjustment to its new identity. Throughout much of its history, the company existed to showcase visiting stars, and never mind the production values. To Hartford's Bushnell Auditorium came fans eager to catch Pons, Corelli or Sills in person; and to Hartford's Bushnell came Rudolf Bing one evening prior to taking the helm of the Met -- he was sizing up Zinka Milanov for a possible return to the Met after a few years' absence.
The only international diva on this year's roster, Denyce Graves, was reserved for a solo concert. For the past few seasons, general and artistic director Willie Anthony Waters (who also conducts most performances) has headed a less stellar, more balanced ensemble in reassuringly conventional stagings of the meat-and-potatoes repertory.
If the singing is consistently solid of late, the cast for this Bohème (seen on November 10) definitely exceeded the norm. The standout was Cuban-born tenor Raúl Melo, whose brilliant high notes, boasting an exciting "ping," won the audience from the outset. While maintaining elegant lyricism, Melo threw himself into the antic staging and made an ardent, responsive partner in the love scenes despite a fairly staid demeanor. He has performed widely in Germany and smaller U.S. companies, and one can only wonder how this alluring sound and suave delivery have escaped the notice of major American houses.
Jane Jennings, who recently joined New York City Opera, was eagerly awaited in the part of Mimì after last season's La Traviata with the company. Attractive, intelligent and endowed with a fairly cool vocal timbre, Jennings sang sensitively though just a bit shy of the sweetness of an ideal Mimì. Her lyric soprano was flexible and alert to the text, with some finely detailed shadings (though her Italian diction needs improving). At the vocal climaxes in Acts I and III, she had sufficient power, but her tone tended to lose focus. Her interpretation brought appropriate shyness to the early scenes, along with a touch of mischief. If this Mimì laid on the coughing and pathos a bit thick, it's probably the fault of the no-holds-barred physicality of Renaud Doucet's staging, which regularly threw characters to the floor to make dramatic points.
James Bobick was an ideal Marcello, singing with comic point, emotionally volatile and vocally splendid in the Act IV duet with Melo. Bass-baritone Herbert Perry contributed a spry, richly resonant Colline. Kenneth Overton was ebullient as Schaunard, and Irwin Densen hammed effectively in the dual roles of Benoit and Alcindoro. Alison England's vividly projected, sympathetic Musetta made the most of the hyperactive stage business.
The production handled the busy Act II crowd scene with dexterity. Sets by Paul Shortt achieved a certain period atmosphere and Parisian flavor. Costume designer Charles Caine used color sparingly, setting off Musetta's expensive outfit and Mimì's new hat brightly against prevailing shades of gray, as if making a naturalist point in an opera that, for all its romanticism, often revolves around money.
Lighting in Act I seemed capricious, slightly marring the moonlight effects. But in general this was an efficient production, a fine example of ensemble opera, with its hyper-emotionalism kept in check by Waters's judicious conducting. The orchestral forces obliged him handsomely, as did the chorus.
DAVID J. BAKER
CLEVELAND Cleveland Opera opened its twenty-sixth season on October 19 with a revival of its 1996 production of Le Nozze di Figaro. The settings by Peter Dean Beck were quite effective, particularly in Acts I (for once depicting a small storeroom under a stairs) and IV. David Bamberger's stage direction was along traditional lines but included many delightful details, such as Cherubino's taking a nervous sip of water before "Voi che sapete," Bartolo's dancing feet in the Act II finale, and Antonio's boorish lisp.
The ensemble of singers was particularly strong throughout, vocally and dramatically. Jeff Mattsey's rich baritone voice has all the colors and range needed to make an ideal Figaro. His interplay with Pamela Hinchman's Susanna was natural and loving. She sang with a clear, easy production, her voice still fresh at the final curtain. Jennifer Casey Cabot, the only returnee from the 1996 production, was a radiant Countess, every emotion registering in her voice and face. Andrew Eisenmann's Almaviva caught the Count's nasty side well, but his voice had trouble registering the role's warmer moments, robbing him of some needed charisma.
Mezzo Layna Chianakas's Cherubino was perhaps the most naturally boyish I've seen. Josepha Gayer captured Marcellina's moods well without resorting to excessively broad gestures. Lawrence Long portrayed both Bartolo and Antonio. He negotiated well some very quick costume changes, and his characterizations were completely different. The entire company's diction was excellent.
Anton Coppola conducted with good balances and style. His tempos were always right, but there were frequent minor lapses of ensemble. The performance, a wonderful beginning for an important anniversary year, was preceded by cast and audience singing "God Bless America."
ALAN MONTGOMERY
STAMFORD, CT
Connecticut Grand Opera and Orchestra, an energetic young company still seeking to establish itself, unveiled a new production of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette for two performances at Stamford's Palace Theatre (undergoing renovation) in early November (seen Nov. 10). The work features plenty of youthful zest and ensemble esprit de corps, recommending it to a company this size, yet it's fraught with perils -- not least a specific musical style that even French singers seldom practice anymore. The company grappled ably with the music's challenges, but the production couldn't shake a certain amateurish quality; though they got the job done, Paul Zacharek's simple sets and Thom J. Peterson's no-frills costumes suggested a high school production of Kiss Me, Kate, and the acting seldom rose above that level. The stage director, Experience Bryon, stubbornly refused to let singers simply stand and sing, even when it's clear (as in Mercutio's Queen Mab air) that's what they're supposed to do.
It's one of the most familiar stories in theater, yet much of Bryon's busy staging was poorly thought out, as if she'd never encountered the story before. At the ball, half the Capulet men turned out to be Montagues, who knew the Mab song well enough to perform an elaborate pantomime while Mercutio sang. Tybalt saw Roméo and gave chase -- by running in the opposite direction. In Capulet's garden, Roméo, still pursued by his mortal enemies and sought by his friends, didn't hide but dreamily lay down, center-stage, to contemplate his lady love. Rather than concocting potions or praying, Frère Laurent was first seen administering communion -- to himself. Whenever the members of the company's resident chorus weren't tripping over themselves, they raised their arms heavenward, beseechingly, like oppressed workers in a Soviet propaganda film.
The musical performance went much better. The company's general director, Laurence Gilgore, led the ensemble in a smooth reading of the score, with traditional cuts, well-rehearsed and briskly paced yet, for the most part, respectful of the singers. He seemed to enjoy the melodramatic bits most, with the result that the evening's strongest scene came not in any poignant expression of love (such as the lovers' four crucial duets) but in Act III, when Mercutio and Tybalt are killed in a flurry of swordplay. In this lightning-flash glimpse of the production's real potential, every member of the company responded to Gilgore's enthusiasm.
David Miller sang Roméo, replacing the previously announced Bruce Fowler, who was ill. It can't be easy to find a tenor who knows this role well and looks good in tights, too, but Miller does, and he walked off with the show. His clear, dark voice easily cleared the big-aria hurdles, with a recognizably French lyrique style. Riding over ensembles, he showed plenty of power. In early scenes, he relied too heavily on his youthful appearance to convey Roméo's character, but as the evening progressed, his dramatic conviction grew.
Czech soprano Marina Vyskvorkina sang Juliette with a strong, silky soprano (the best-projected voice in the cast), excellent coloratura technique and an old-fashioned acting style, like a Great Lady making an Appearance. She's extremely good-looking, which doesn't hurt in this role. Another attractive young singer, baritone Jonathan Hays (Mercutio), having been upstaged in his Queen Mab air, registered strongly in Act III, his highly theatrical stance and gestures recalling a notable Shakespearean Mercutio, John Barrymore.
Australian mezzo Sally Wilson was so effective in Stéphano's ballad, full of character and gleaming tone, that one regretted her omission from other scenes in which Stéphano should appear (being chased through Capulet's garden) or could plausibly do so (filling out Roméo's entourage at the ball). Mezzo Kellie Van Horn, as the Nurse (here called Gertrude), sang warmly in a drastically abridged role. Other roles were less happily taken. The men in the cast engaged in their swordplay with zest, and everyone earned a passing grade in French.
WILLIAM V. MADISON
NEW YORK CITY Eva (soprano Sandia Ang) has troubles. She can't get her parents to stop calling her by her Chinese name, Yee-Wa. Her mother (mezzo Ryu-Kyung Kim) won't leave the apartment they share, and, although they buried him in Scene 1, Eva's father (baritone Zheng Zhou) keeps interrupting the English classes she teaches. Every member of this family is hiding secrets and painful sacrifices. As a result, they're all floating: "Wake up in the morning / We don't know / Where we're from / Or where we'll go."
Seen at the penultimate performance (Nov. 3), Jason Kao Hwang's new opera, The Floating Box: A Story in Chinatown, was given its premiere at the Asia Society as part of the reopening festivities for the headquarters of the Society, where Hwang is composer in residence. Catherine Filloux's libretto, inspired by interviews she and Hwang conducted with residents of New York's Chinatown, does a remarkable job of identifying and dramatizing Eva's attempts to understand her origins, making specific the essential conflicts of immigrant experience in simple, often poetic language. Filloux's discovery of immigrant photo collages, attempts to unite divided families, led to the production's most eloquent visual element: projected images by Clifton Taylor that moved like ghosts themselves across Alexander Dodge's handsome unit set. Filloux hasn't yet learned that scenes require different lengths and weights depending on content, and sometimes her language is more portentous than poetic. (More flashes of humor would have been helpful, too.) But it's a strong text, with a great deal to say.
Hwang's score, especially in earlier scenes, tends to an almost Bergian dissonance that, for all its technical security, seems rather predictable. He's more impressive when he lets his music breathe a bit, indulging a more lyrical sweep, and his use of traditional Chinese instruments -- the pipa, a kind of lute (played by Min Xiao Fen), and the two-stringed erhu, gaohu and zhanghu (all played by Wan Guowei) -- is imaginative and exciting. The erhu is capable of creating some of the most poignant sounds imaginable (one character complains that its music is "too sad"), and in Hwang's score it becomes a voice of lost homeland and lonely yearning. Juan Carlos Rivas conducted the eight-member orchestra; he should have placed his percussionist farther back, since enthusiastic drumming sometimes covered more delicate orchestral effects. The orchestration also included accordion, flute, clarinet, cello and vibraphone.
Jean Randich directed a cast of first-rate acting-singers. As Eva, Ang seldom left the stage for an instant. Throughout her demanding role, she displayed an appealing lyric soprano most comfortable in the highest ranges of the score; her slender beauty was a plus. Zhou managed to be otherworldly and down-to-earth by turns as the Father, an erhu virtuoso in China reduced to galley cook in New York. His powerful singing lent special dignity to his character's plight; one saw that, long before his death, the Father was a living ghost. He sacrifices his music to remain in a country where his daughter's future (as he imagines it) is limitless.
Korean-born Kim had a funny turn as Eva's teacher; as the Mother, she was simply splendid. This is the opera's juiciest role, taking the character from vibrant young wife to fretful old widow (well costumed by Linda Cho), and it's hard to imagine a more sensitive performance. Clearly based on careful observation, Kim's physicality was never overdone; when, in Scene 7, she portrayed the Mother's younger self, one saw the roots of the old woman to come. Her singing was no less accomplished, especially in Scene 6, when the Mother's indomitable spirit bursts through her despair, and in the final scenes of mother-daughter reconciliation.
The Italian Cultural Institute and the City of Bologna, under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, presented The Art of Thinking, a short play, and Giovanni Battista Sammartini's chamber opera, Memet (1732). The two works met with success in an "environmental" production, in the rooms of a palazzo in Bologna, last year. Seen at the Metropolitan Museum's Temple of Dendur (Oct. 27), the production offered sad illustration of the hazards of transporting such a piece from one environment to another, long after the original performances.The play, by contemporary author Anna Mangiarotti, was meant to set up the evening's conceit: the audience were supposed to be Italian nobles attending a reception at the home of Francesco Albergati Capacelli. As several young New Yorkers in costume milled about the room, two American actors impersonated Marchese Albergati and his lady, Elisabetta La Caminer: they discussed love, theater and eighteenth-century figures these two real-life characters knew. Unfortunately, the connection to Sammartini of even familiar names (Voltaire, Goldoni) was never made clear, in conversation as artificial as the narration of a son-et-lumière. (The actors, though not the singers, were miked.) This must have worked better in Italian. Joanna Bonaro, as Caminer, showed abundant stage presence, as if warming up for Les Liaisons Dangereuses; Kevin Mitchell Martin, as Albergati, was flat, characterless and ill prepared. He also narrated the opera itself, which turned out to be a concert in costume, and it's one measure of the talents involved that they could be overshadowed by a tedious narrator.
Only one singer displayed any fire -- and somehow she (and the audience) was deprived of her entrance aria, announced in the program but omitted in performance. When soprano Silvia Bossa finally emerged, in Act II, to sing Solimano's showstopper, "Su di metalli e di sonare trombe," the whole enterprise made sense at last, as if a bona-fide star had just walked into a college glee-club rehearsal. This wasn't perfect vocalism, but it was bravura singing, the ornamentation blazing, with real eighteenth-century style -- not merely technique. She seized both stage and score, then walked off with a smile that suggested she knows she's capable of much bigger things.
Soprano Daniela Uccello, as the heroine Irene, approached Bossa's level of professionalism, but Irene's music is less stirring, and unfortunately the score doesn't permit a Silverpeal-Goldentrill standoff. Significantly, only Bossa and Uccello sang their roles from memory. Tenor Mirko Guadagnini (Memet) and soprano Laura Lanfranchi (Zaide) were young, good-looking and underpowered. Countertenor Michel van Goethem (Demetrio) suffered from huge breaks in his register; notes at either extreme of the scale were brayed. Augusto Ciavata conducted San Marino's Orchestra Camerata del Titano with such spirit and aplomb that one wished he'd directed the staging, too.
Sammartini's score, written to be performed in a private home in Bologna in 1732, is similar to Handel's London operas but lacks their richness and substance. Still, it's a pleasing entertainment, with gratifying vocal music and three shapely sinfonie, and Irene's character displays refreshing spunk. The plot is the usual romantic geometry, A-loves-B-loves-C-loves-D-loves-E-loves-A, set in the Turkish court: the tyrant Memet is about to execute everybody when -- he changes his mind, and they all live happily ever after. Stripped in this performance of recitative and other material, the opera is difficult to judge on its own strengths, but it recommends itself to conservatories and young ensembles with limited resources. This production, said to be the first since the opera's premiere, was the result of research and reconstruction by musicologist Maria Teresa della Borra.
WILLIAM V. MADISON
ANNAPOLIS, MD Annapolis Opera's buoyant production of Puccini's La Bohème (Nov. 2 and 4, seen Nov. 2) marked another milestone in the spread of opera in the Washington, DC-Baltimore metropolitan area. The company's promising, versatile and already tested bevy of young singers confirmed that a small troupe on a restricted budget could pull together an invigorating, high-quality production -- even in Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, a former high school, where space was at a premium.
Despite some rough edges and hesitant entrances in coordinating singers and orchestra, conductor and artistic director Ronald J. Gretz kept everything all of a piece and sprinting at a pace that supported the singers' irrepressible esprit. This success was all the more remarkable given the complexities of Puccini's ever-regrouping vocal ensembles, flurries of patois and proliferating crowd scenes -- challenges that could defeat the most ambitious company. The only casualty of these cramped conditions was the tendency, adjusted by Act II, for orchestral volume to override the voices. (The "pit" was level with the audience, a capacity crowd, whose view of the stage was partially blocked by Gretz.)
All elements of the production bolstered Puccini's personal brand of verismo: fear and anger impelling his bold strokes in vocal lines, gestures of outrage and impulsive actions -- matched by voluminous swaths of affective orchestral sound -- all yielding cogently, even instantly to a dramatic logic calling for the subtlest emotional inflection. Scenery was compressed into accordion-style folds, and the garret, Café Momus set and houses along Paris's multi-hued Left Bank were suggestively outlined, leaving fine details to the audience's imagination.
The company often took Puccini's verismo a step further. In her waltz, Musetta (soprano Jennifer Ayres) indulged in the extremes of mocking arrogance, her flirtatious comments agile in all registers. And in the choreographed horseplay of Act IV, Colline (bass Christopher Flint), Schaunard (baritone Christopher Hutton), Rodolfo (tenor Scott Priest) and Marcello (baritone Andrew Krikawa) cleverly exaggerated Puccini's comedy.
Five of the six leads were making Annapolis Opera debuts. Priest was a Rodolfo fluent in emotional rhetoric and idealistic in his lyricism. Soprano Marcie Ley was a believably frail Mimì. Krikaa summoned his sonorous baritone to forge a Marcello of fervent temperament. Hutton's Schaunard radiated charm, while Ayres portrayed a Musetta who knew how to apply her sultry allure at every turn. Annapolis veteran Flint plumbed every ounce of Colline's humorous ego.
CECELIA PORTER
CHARLOTTE, NC As its contribution to this Verdi year, Opera Carolina chose Il Trovatore as the first production of the 2001-02 season. As the October 20 performance demonstrated, Verdi's music was in good hands.
All the principals acquitted themselves with vocal honor -- some even with distinction. Susan Foster's Leonora was particularly enjoyable, displaying enough vocal weight to master Verdi's broad, arching melodies while coping adroitly with the flexibility demanded, reminding the audience of the essentially bel canto character of the role. Her acting was sincere and believable -- for example, her contribution to the "Miserere" was dramatically effective as well as finely sung. Sondra Kelly's Azucena was only slightly less enjoyable. Verdi reserved some of his most stirring moments for this character, and Kelly rose to the challenges with aplomb.
Kevin Bell was a Ferrando of ample voice. Jeffrey Springer, as Manrico, however, was uneven. He displayed fine tone, to be sure, but his opening serenade was somewhat tentative, and his acting, appropriate enough while he was singing, turned wooden when he was not. He needs to work on the difficult art of listening believably onstage. He did seem to gain confidence as the evening wore on, and his "Ah sì, ben mio" was a highlight, beautifully phrased and more than compensating for the fact that he couldn't quite manage the climactic interpolated high note at the end of "Di quella pira."
The most effective singing of the evening from a male principal was that of Mark Rucker (Count di Luna). He possesses a beautifully modulated tone of sufficiently wide range to be classified as a true Verdi baritone, and his burnished sound was a pleasure throughout. And though his acting may have been a bit monochromatic, so is the character.
The conductor was Opera Carolina's general director, James Meena, who demonstrated (as he did in last year's Roméo et Juliette) a firm hand at the musical helm. He secured fine playing from the Charlotte Symphony in its capacity as pit band and captured the visceral excitement of Verdi's score in such passages as the finale of Act III, Scene 1, and the final duet of the doomed lovers.
The problem with the evening was Michael Capasso's stage direction. As refreshing as it was to see a traditional production, unencumbered by some outlandish "concept," some unfortunate staging choices were made. Why would Manrico murder two of di Luna's soldiers at his first entrance? This is hardly an appropriate deed for a hero. Later in that same scene, the half-hearted onstage duel lacked realism. What is more, the handling of the chorus was often awkward, particularly when soldiers hid from the nuns behind woefully inadequate vegetation, drawing snickers from the audience. Also, for di Luna to stab Manrico (rather than have him executed) and slit Azucena's throat at the end of the opera negates the ironic triumph of the revenge of the Gypsy and weakens the horror of the Count's "E vivo ancor!" If one is aiming for a traditional staging, one might honor Cammarano's (and Verdi's) stage directions.
Still, the music reigned supreme, as it should, and was well served by Meena and his colleagues.
LUTHER WADE
BLOOMINGTON, IN In its entirety, Massenet's Manon borders on epic proportions, but brutal cuts in the Indiana University School of Music production (Musical Arts Center, Oct. 19) mutilated the work's structure and much of its detailed ambiance, with occasional losses of clarity. Manon and des Grieux emerged more or less intact, but Lescaut's role was drastically reduced, and Guillot and his lady friends almost disappeared into the background. Major excisions included the entire end of Act I and much of the Cours-la-Reine scene. Guest director David Gately's staging, generally effective, concentrated on personal relationships, but there were significant lapses. The apartment in Act II contained two "petites tables," giving Manon some difficulty when it came to choosing which to address for her aria. De Brétigny failed to appear after des Grieux's abduction, and about a third of the chorus failed to appear in the Cours-la-Reine scene. (They all made it to the gaming tables in Act IV, though.) For the ballet sequence, Guillot seemed able to afford no more than four dancers, although the onstage instrumental ensemble numbered eight: no wonder Manon walked out.
Robert O'Hearn's attractive set designs (created for the school in 1994) have aged well, and they were aided by Michael Schwandt's effective lighting. In Acts I and V, handsome exteriors, à la Watteau, complemented the sumptuous Hôtel de Transylvanie, but these sets were in strong contrast to the bohemian simplicity of des Grieux's Parisian apartment and to the rather Lutheran-looking church of St.-Sulpice.
The musical performance was among IU's most all-round satisfying. Conductor David Effron lovingly crafted orchestral passages: unhurried, full of romantic sweep and abandon, yet tightly controlled, subtly interpreted, with many a fine nuance. Effron was fully sympathetic to the needs of the singers. Maija Lisa Currie's Manon was quite convincing in her innocence, less so as the character becomes more experienced. Vocally, Currie was at ease, providing a luxurious voice, nimble and subtle as required. Eric Small's des Grieux was stiffly acted, but he sang with a sweetly nasal tinge, his voice ringing out, and he grew into a searing intensity as the performance progressed. Both Currie and Small easily reined in their voices for the more delicate moments of the score. Jonathan Stinson, as Lescaut, acted handsomely. He sang with impressive baritonal opulence and nicely detailed inflection. Timothy Kuhn was a bland presence as de Brétigny. Harold Wilson played the Comte des Grieux with solid maturity and vocal ease, but he appeared uncomfortable onstage. Nathan Payas mercifully underplayed Guillot and sang well.
The cast pronounced the text with French accents that seemed to come from some distant département; projected titles lagged behind the singers, which didn't aid comprehension. A small but enthusiastic audience greeted the performance warmly.
CHARLES H. PARSONS
ROCHESTER, N.Y. For its fall production (in Kilbourn Hall), the Eastman Opera Theatre presented Conrad Susa's 1973 Transformations, a two-act "musical entertainment" inspired by Anne Sexton's eponymous poetic revamping of Grimm fairy tales in a way that echoes the poet's turbulent emotional life. Set in the activities room of a hospital psychiatric ward, the opera calls for eight versatile singers, all nameless patients, all required to handle a kaleidoscopic multiplicity of roles during the reenactments of the various tales. The score's eclectic blend of musical styles and deceptively thin orchestration (clarinet, sax, trumpet, trombone, bass, keyboards, percussion) serve the ever-shifting, multi-threaded action surprisingly well, building to an unforgettably poignant, lyrical climax during the final "Sleeping Beauty" episode.
EOT's new music director, Benton Hess, maintained a strong grip on the metamorphic complexity of the work, achieving pinpoint coordination and near-perfect balances between voices and instruments (heard Nov. 4). Steven Daigle's smoothly choreographed staging made effective use of elements in Mary Griswold's antiseptic hospital set and costumes and ably accommodated the drama's many levels and moods; Nic Minetor's lighting added some aptly hallucinatory touches. Transformations is an ensemble work par excellence, with everyone given the spotlight during one or more of the tales. When their big moments came, the student singers -- including sopranos Ali Grandey and Allison Coop; tenors Kirk Dougherty, Nate Voekler and Aaron Beck; baritones John Fulton and John Hudson -- all proved themselves eminently capable of handling their complicated assignments. As the patient modeled after Sexton, soprano Tiffany Blake gave a truly virtuoso performance, conveying the troubled psyche behind the role-playing, all the while singing with immaculate tone, good support and breath to spare.
E. THOMAS GLASOW
INTERNATIONAL ZURICH Zurich's Opernhaus opened the 2001-02 season on September 23 with what might appropriately be called a "Star Wars" Otello, directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf. Vladimir Fedoseyev conducted a performance that, despite its spaceship setting, remained earthbound. Daniela Dessì's Desdemona and José Cura's Otello dominated the proceedings; Alberto Mastromarino stepped in at the last moment for the ailing Ruggero Raimondi as Iago. The company really came into its own with a blazing account of Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina (Oct. 21), in Rimsky-Korsakov's standard performing edition. It emerged as one of those spine-chilling events opera is able to achieve only rarely.
Even more than the better-known Boris Godunov, Khovanshchina communicates the conflicting ideas, intrigues, hopes, fears and sufferings of the Russian people. On this occasion, with the tragedy of Afghanistan looming, the opera transcended its Russian roots, speaking to mankind's eternal, tragic inability to resolve conflicts compassionately. Designer Karl Kneidl encircled the stage with a seemingly endless corridor of doors that suggested the interior of a prison. A couple of staircase landings, leading nowhere, served as the only decorations. The two Khovanskys and their Streltsy (musketeers), Prince Vasily Golitsyn and Tsar Peter's guards dressed in period uniforms; all the other participants, including Shaklovity, Dosifei and his Old Believers, wore modern dress. The rear of the stage was dominated by huge, rather hazy video vistas of present-day Moscow, its streaming traffic and an occasional open landscape. The last act suggested a woodland clearing, but there was no funeral pyre: the Old Believers congregated at center-stage and, bathed in blazing light, were slowly swallowed up into the floor.
Director Alfred Kirchner concentrated on etching strong characters, sharpening dramatic encounters. He was especially successful in depicting Andrei Khovansky's insatiable lust for Emma and his attempts to get rid of Marfa; Kirchner also staged a touching exchange between Dosifei and Marfa in Act IV. Crowd scenes achieved full power without excessive activity. Such no-nonsense direction, emphasizing the characters and letting the music speak for itself, has become rare in European opera stagings today.
From the moment the orchestra launched into the prelude, Fedoseyev never let the momentum slip; he drew wonderfully committed performances from his musicians and singers, including the choruses. In addition to the regular Zurich Opernhaus choir, the Moscow Chamber Choir was imported; coached by Jörg Hämmerli and Vladimir Minin, they contributed valiantly, with ethereal pianissimos and forthright outbursts. Fedoseyev made the music seem to flow inexorably and modeled Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov's dark orchestral colors with exquisite finesse. Other conductors may stir up greater intensity, but Fedoseyev prefers sensitivity. I can't remember another performance of Khovanshchina that betrayed so much tenderness beneath the outward glitter, pomp and despair.
All roles were cast with singers who are regular members of the company or frequent guests -- as is the case with Nicolai Ghiaurov, a veteran Ivan Khovansky who on this occasion made his role debut as Dosifei, more comfortably situated for his instrument these days. If his voice has lost some of its former power and sheen, he compensates for it through his immense authority, exemplary diction and wonderfully smooth, radiant phrasing. Another frequent guest, tenor Viktor Lutsiuk, sang ardently, even incisively as Andrei, here looking like Vladimir Putin's younger brother. The role of Ivan fell to Matti Salminen, a company stalwart; his every utterance sounded like a public edict, though he proved capable of subtle nuance, even in the outer limits of the role's dangerously high tessitura. Rudolf Schaschning portrayed a Westernized, slightly decadent, fear-ridden Prince Golitsyn; even more impressive was Michael Volle's ice-cold, opportunistic Shaklovity, with a cynical snarl to his imposing baritone. An elegant singer, Yvonne Naef (Marfa) possesses a beautiful voice, but she is hardly the sumptuous, sensual contralto the role needs. A rare production with projected titles (the Zurich opera house never offers translations for works performed in Italian, French, German, English or Czech), this Khovanshchina ranks among the finest achievements of intendant Alexander Pereira's tenure, a great performance of a truly awe-inspiring work.
HORST KOEGLER
PARIS One of the hottest tickets in Paris this season was for Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, conducted by René Jacobs in a new production by Jean-Louis Martinoty at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (seen Oct. 23). Jacobs describes his approach to the work as neoclassical, stripping away post-Romantic excesses in terms of tempos and orchestral techniques. Concerto Köln made as good a case as is possible for an orchestra of authentic instruments. The overture began at breakneck speed, which was exciting but meant the loss of a good deal of orchestral detail, rather contradicting the conductor's claims of clarity in his approach. Throughout the evening, he set dance-like tempos, so that the music bubbled along with infectious gaiety; never has Mozart's comedy seemed quite so joyous. The downside was a lack of what one might call indulgent grandeur. Some sense of the way in which the composer's music transcends Beaumarchais's comedy would have been welcome. Despite its reduced volume, the orchestra frequently covered the singers -- for example in Bartolo's aria, though Antonio Abete sang with sufficient resonance at other moments. The harsh timpani strokes were particularly jarring, and the rampant early brass instruments were loose cannons in the orchestral balance. Continuo player Nicolau de Figueirdo's ideas of Mozartean improvisation were no doubt mild in comparison with the composer's own, but de Figueirdo is no Mozart. A similar situation occurred in the vocal ornamentation: all possible appoggiaturas were included systematically, and any pause mark in the score brought a Bellini-style cadenza. The letter duet became a first cousin to "Mira, o Norma," and recapitulations were jollied up with numerous passing notes. This music is so well known that any ornamentation aggressively draws attention to itself, and for every felicitous turn of phrase, there were two or three that fell short of Mozart's divine inspiration.
Despite such reservations, vocally and dramatically the evening was a success. Martinoty set his production in the eighteenth century, with flattering costumes by Sylvie de Segonzac. The scenic design by Hans Schavernoch was dominated by large paintings of the time that emphasized the new realism of the characters on the eve of the Revolution.
Leading the cast were Patrizia Ciofi (Susanna) and Lorenzo Regazzo (Figaro). Ciofi acted gracefully without falling into the trap of excessive pertness, and her soft-grained soprano was in fine form, climaxing in a beautifully sung "Deh, vieni." Regazzo's virile, angry Figaro was equally well sung and contrasted nicely with the tightly-knit baritone of Pietro Spagnoli, a handsome Count Almaviva. The Countess was Véronique Gens, in unusually rich, full voice; her "Dove Sono" earned the evening's biggest ovation. That moment aside, this was a very young lady, prone to gales of Rosina-like laughter, keeping her romantic disappointment firmly under wraps. Monica Bacelli sang both Cherubino's arias with firm, nutty tone and showed a huge improvement over the Tamerlano she sang here last season.
Jacobs claimed that the arias of Marcellina and Basilio are essential to the structure of Act IV, and Peter Hoare (a nicely uncaricatured Basilio) and Sophie Pondjiclis (a hearty Marcellina) seized the opportunities to enrich their characters. Jacobs even sanctioned a group of like-minded feminists who joined Marcellina to bring her aria to a rousing conclusion. One could hardly improve on Carla di Censo's confused, sweet-voiced Barbarina, Serge Goubioud's nervous Curzio and Alessandro Svab's gardener Antonio, who made a spectacular entrance from the orchestra pit.
The season at Opéra de Paris continued with a revival of the double bill of Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg and Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, staged by Richard Jones and Anthony McDonald and first seen in 1998. The link between the two works is a fairy-tale world where cruelty is exposed, perhaps not surprising, given that one libretto is based on Oscar Wilde, the other Colette.
The Zemlinsky staging is a fine piece of work, set in a surreal royal palace with giant asparagus growing outside, and peopled by feckless, uniformed English schoolgirls. The towering achievement was Robert Brubaker's interpretation of the dwarf. Manipulating a grotesque puppet attached to his arms and feet, he sang the tortuous pages of this Expressionist piece with bronzed courage. Physically unprepossessing, Zemlinsky had, like his hero, suffered unrequited love (from none other than Alma Mahler). It was difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the Infanta of Mary Mills; she sang well enough, but the character was made into an unlikable, callous creature. Paula Delligatti sang the sympathetic character of Ghita with glowing soprano warmth. The intonation of the women of the chorus suffered from matinée blues, but otherwise the ensemble entered wholeheartedly into the cruel antics of the production. Dale Duesing, as the organizer of the Infanta's birthday celebration, completed the cast; he acted well, but the role sounded uncomfortably low for him.
L'Enfant et les Sortilèges was in comparison disappointing. Ravel's masterpiece is difficult to stage, and Jones and McDonald chose to produce the child's nightmare as big-scale dramatic tableaux. Some of these were witty and amusing, but the frightening, claustrophobic world of a bedroom, where toys suddenly come alive, was lost. Vocally, the performance was marred by Gaële le Roi as the Child. A charming high soprano, she possessed nothing like the weight of voice required to project clearly the relatively simple but crucial lines allotted to her. The rest of the cast were similarly negligent in terms of projection of the text, with the notable exception of Felicity Palmer as a caring Mother, an outrageous Chinese Cup and a sexy Dragonfly, and Jean-Paul Fouchécourt as the Frog, Teapot and a cross-dressed, emerald-green-clad Mathematician, caning his pupils with spiteful delight. Désirée Rancatore possessed all the coloratura necessary for Fire and the Nightingale, but she remained charmless, while Nicolas Cavalier did some good work as the Armchair and a Tree. The orchestra played well under the baton of James Conlon, relishing the unusually rich orchestration of both pieces.
STEPHEN MUDGE
MADRID The orchestra at Teatro Real had barely started playing the prelude to Rigoletto (Oct. 28) when the curtain opened to reveal another, bright-red curtain. Alone on the huge stage, a sardonic buffoon sat on the edge of a dilapidated sofa. Carlos Álvarez looked the audience straight in the eye, already capturing the depth, irony and detachment that would grace his imposing performance of one of the peaks of the baritone repertoire.
Five years ago, Riccardo Muti offered Álvarez the opportunity to sing his first Rigoletto at La Scala, but the Spanish baritone didn't feel he was ready yet. Now he is ready, and his interpretation was glorious. But Teatro Real's production appeared to be built around him, and this didn't always prove wise.
Álvarez's voice has been compared with that of Leonard Warren: it is utterly Verdian, with multi-layered vowels and strong, expressive consonants. He is a fine, resourceful actor, who can sacrifice the beauty of his voice for the sake of expression in "Cortigiani" or soften his volume to blend with lesser singers in the Act IV quartet. In this production, the baritone's acting talents and complicated characterization must show through tons of plaster and makeup. In the garden scene he was forced to bare his torso, revealing an armor-like latex body suit and a realistic mountain of a hump (better suited to a horror film) that rose over his head. It seemed inappropriate for Rigoletto to go bare-chested and open-trousered in front of his daughter and Giovanna, but Álvarez's gifts and concentration made one forget some of the absurdities in the staging.
As Gilda, Isabel Rey rose easily to the upper notes. Her voice is pleasant, and her portrayal of a rather matronly damsel kept the action moving forward. She is a generous team player, but at the end, she failed to project her character as a grieving, individual entity, and one didn't really care about her suffering except as it affected Rigoletto.
Massimo Giordano, substituting for Giuseppe Sabbatini, who was ill, displayed a fresh, agreeable voice as the Duke but looked too young and inexperienced for the role. All along he looked more like Gualtier Maldé playing the Duke than the Duke playing Gualtier Maldé. He hit most of his notes, but he is still much more of a follower than a leader: in "Bella figlia dell'amore," for example, the three other singers reacted to the score and the conductor, rather than playing off the Duke's shameless seduction.
The voice of Askar Abdrazakov, as Sparafucile, filled the theater, although, as often happens with the role, his lower register was less round than Rigoletto's, so that the assassin was less scary than the jester. Among so many muscular, youthful performers, Enkelejda Shkosa sounded and looked older and more tired than Maddalena ought to be.
Graham Vick's staging was powerful and quick-paced, but, like many avant-garde directors, he wanted action and image to illustrate every word in the text. As a result, far too many things were happening onstage, especially in Acts I and III. The Duke's bedroom was so packed with guests, each indulging his own perversion, that Giordano had to shove people to the side in order to move around the place. The sets, however, were simple and effective. The moving round, concentric panels followed an interesting principle: (relative) realism on the inside of the moving circles, symbols and conceptual images on the outside.
Conductor Daniel Lipton led a smooth, inspired performance, in which orchestra and chorus took a back seat to the singers, in "old-style" manner. In the Act IV storm, Vick drew the red curtain, so the tempest and Gilda's murder took place out of sight, yet Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid seized the opportunity to shine, generating excitement in anticipation of things to come.
ROBERTO HERRSCHER
VIENNA Director Marco Arturo Marelli sees the clue to Bellini's La Sonnambula, which this season had its first new production at Vienna State Opera since 1935 (seen Oct. 23), in "anima," an anagram of the heroine's name, Amina. Her beloved Elvino projects his dead mother, whose photo has a prominent place on the stage, onto Amina, and her sleepwalking trips to Count Rodolfo are her subconscious way of breaking out into her true self as a prima donna -- her final aria starts before the proscenium curtain. The whole action takes place in the foyer of a large spa hotel, complete with nurse-attended guests on the upper balcony. (They try hard to get a glimpse of Amina as she changes into her wedding dress behind a sheet decorously held by her fellow waitresses.) We are expected to believe that she had no idea that the grand formal reception was in her honor, even though most of her fellow employees must have rehearsed their welcoming chorus well beforehand. Likewise, the disappointed receptionist-barmaid Lisa must have kept a stiffer upper lip than she showed in the course of the evening. There is precious little of the country idyll -- Rodolfo addresses his nostalgia to a landscape picture above the bar, and the famous bridge is a snowdrift blown in through the terrace windows (carelessly left open by Elvino in his jealous rage) and capped with the wreckage of the piano at which he had been composing earlier. As always with Marelli, there were plenty of well-thought-out details to the action. Dagmar Niefind-Marelli provided the stylish mid-twentieth-century costumes.
Stefania Bonfadelli, who has been heard here as Elvira in I Puritani, as well as in smaller roles, replaced the ailing Natalie Dessay and confirmed earlier impressions. She possesses a well-schooled voice of very attractive timbre, which she uses beautifully. Even her highest notes remained pure, but they were rarely more than that. Only her final cavatina, "Ah! non credea mirarti," was movingly sung, and the fast passagework was dutiful rather than brilliant. Egils Silins brought little to Count Rodolfo; his voice is becoming more muffled, and I have never heard "Vi ravviso" so dully performed. Simina Ivan was a competent Lisa, given more action than usual, and Nelly Boschkowa was a sympathetic Teresa -- here the hotel manager as well as Amina's mother. Conductor Stefano Ranzani was singer-friendly but unimaginative. Old conductors such as Tullio Serafin could make so much more of those apparently trite accompanying figures.
The true delight of the evening was Juan Diego Flórez's elegant etching of Elvino's long lines with the most delicate dynamic shading. The way he launched the duets "Prendi, l'anel ti dono" and "Son geloso del zefiro" had me mentally racing through my collection of historical recordings for suitable comparisons and not finding many to compete.
CHRISTOPHER NORTON-WELSH
MOSCOW Despite her blossoming international career, Olga Guryakova remains loyal to her home theater, Moscow's Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater, to which she returned on September 29 for a new production of Gounod's Faust. Her lyrical soprano, with its full, blooming resonance and striking reserves of color, made an ideal match for the music of Marguerite. She imparted a quiet animation to "Il était un roi de Thulé," an aria that can often sound dull, and gave the jewel song a dash of brilliance while conveying its sense of girlish wonderment. Still another treat was the chance to hear her in the often-cut spinning-wheel aria of Act IV. She was well partnered by the Faust of Akhmed Agadi, whose trim tenor has a crispness and flexibility suitable for French opera. He brought to his performance a keen dramatic presence and stylish phrasing, crowning "Salut! demeure" with a smooth diminuendo on high C. Roman Ulybin's rather nasal, Slavonic-sounding bass made for a generally effective Méphistophélès, but the staging emphasized outright malevolence over insidious urbanity. Andrei Baturkin's clear, well-formed baritone has the makings of a first-rate Valentin, but his shaping of the musical lines was slapdash. Natalya Vladimirskaya's Siebel needed more youthful grace, but Ella Feiginova's Marthe had character. The ensemble was not always perfect, but the thoughtful approach to the score by the conductor Samuil Fridman kept it sounding interesting.
Nowadays it is all too typical for stage directors to seize on elements of Faust that obscure the period charm of Gounod's romanticized approach to Goethe's classic, and such was the case with the gloomy production by the French team of Françoise Terrone and Philippe Godefroid. As a preamble to her unwanted pregnancy, Guryakova was called upon to assume an embarrassing, sexual position, prone on the stage floor, and in the prison scene, wearing a bald wig, she appeared crazed. The soldiers' chorus (not for the first time) was given an anti-war spin, sung against the background of a World War I-type burial ground, with white crosses as far as the eye could see. Terrone's sets, no pleasure to look at in general, were especially unwelcome in Marguerite's garden, with a tree that looked like the decaying remains of an enormous swan.
At any performance of Falstaff, there must be men in the audience who secretly root for the success of the hero's love-making adventures, however forbiddingly the odds are stacked against him. Perhaps with such spectators in mind, Dmitri Bertman conceived his new production of Verdi's comic masterpiece at Helikon Opera, only the second ever by a Moscow company (the Bolshoi did it in 1962). This Falstaff had the looks of a rock star: shoulder-length blond hair, tight fitting breeches and a sleeveless, chest-baring vest. Setting the hearts of Mmes. Ford and Page atwitter was child's play for this stud, and he even managed to elude retribution for the outrageousness of his amorous initiatives. He stayed away from anything resembling a laundry basket, to say nothing of the Thames itself, extricating himself from his Act II predicament by commandeering Ford's Ford roadster and making a swift getaway. Neither was he the brunt of any shenanigans at Herne's Oak; he simply watched from the safer vantage of an oversized birdbath. Unfortunately for Bertman's imaginative scenario, the opera that Verdi actually wrote kept rearing its irrepressible head, most disconcertingly when the music ingeniously described action that was nowhere to be seen on the Helikon stage. A typical case in point was the close of Falstaff's scene with Ford when, instead of the two men exiting insieme, the merry wives unexpectedly appeared, Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page giving each other nasty looks to establish their status as rivals for Sir John's attentions. And all those wonderfully grotesque outbursts from the brass instruments somehow seemed beside the point with such a fetching hero. The sets by Igor Nezhny and Tatyana Tulubyeva perhaps tried to compensate for the reduction in Falstaff's bulk by featuring gigantic items of food and culinary articles, including a huge tankard that turned out to be a portable toilet. But they made for a very cluttered stage. Symptomatic of Bertman's excessive reliance on props was the prominence of a plastic codpiece that came into the possession of the men, by turns, as an apparent symbol of virility.
Musically, the performance benefited from strong leadership by the young Greek conductor Theodore Currentzis, one of the last conducting students of the legendary Ilya Musin (who also taught Valery Gergiev and Yuri Temirkanov). The singing (heard Oct. 3) was spotty. Andzhei Beletsky sang Ford in a strong, fluent baritone, bu