NEW YORK CITY To open the Berlioz bicentennial year, the Met called on one of the world's leading opera directors to stage a new production of Les Troyens. Francesca Zambello's vertiginous track record, from Japan to London's West End, by way of most major opera houses in between, and her mastery of epic scale (in such works as Boris Godunov, War and Peace and Billy Budd) have eclipsed the unpleasant memory of her controversial Met Lucia di Lammermoor (1992). The new Troyens, which opened on February 10, found her in the grandiose rather than radical vein, expanding the dimensions of the Met stage in several directions.
Memories of her coffin-strewn Lucia surface briefly in the Act I ensemble following the news of the massacre of Laocoön and his sons. Here the Trojans come to grips with their horror -- and literally with the three victims, as dancers body-surf over the chorus.
This detail flows from one of Zambello's apparent ambitions: to reinvent the crowd scene as we know it. This means interaction with the soloists and among chorus members, who often get pressed into close formation. The opening curtain finds the Trojans intertwined as if in a mass grave, or possibly a group nap, from which they proceed to disentangle themselves. Too often, the heavy foot traffic seems unmotivated, an impediment to dramatic focus -- especially at climactic moments such as Enée's urgent first entrance, the vision of Hector or Cassandre's distraught reactions to the procession of the giant horse. In the rapt love duet, Didon and Enée weave through a mob of embracing couples, just when the music emphasizes their total isolation.
Another Zambello preoccupation is a seamless, cinematic overlapping between acts. (Here, the five are treated as three.) This can result in liberties with the libretto (such as the quickie pantomimes during the "Royal Hunt and Storm" interlude and after the love duet), as well as excessive underlining of points. Young Ascagne's conversion into a randy Cherubino seems gratuitous. The most egregious elbow-in-the-ribs moment is the trivializing pantomime performed by the outraged Tyrians at the final curtain, as they gesture rudely with the Trojans' gifts. In its broad outlines, though, this is a workable, suitably grandiose mounting of an important opera, a staging that tries to retrofit some of the lopsided dramatic dimensions. Awkwardly or not, connections are established across the five-hour evening. The director integrates all resources into a general sense of historic mission and moral struggle. The late Maria Bjørnson's sets provide an architectural framework that starts as a constellation of abstract shards (read: disintegration) and ends Acts II and V by suggesting the roof of Rome's Pantheon. The backdrop in Carthage hints at blue sky and golden wheat, which soon lose their pristine, primary hues.
Costumes by Anita Yavich, attractive and less elaborate than the layered Minoan finery of the Met's previous Troyens, make the Trojans look medieval, and drape the Carthaginians in timeless white. Doug Varone's choreography, zestfully performed, helps avoid the longueurs that plague some productions in the Act IV dance sequence.
Zambello directed the singers effectively. Deborah Voigt brought Cassandre's big gestures of frustration to searing vocal life but rarely suggested the character's vision and inner torment. The converse could be said of the affecting Didon of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. The mezzo's sensitive phrasing and vocal coloring -- not to mention her magnificent way with the French text -- took us to the heart of Didon's character. Hunt Lieberson needed only a bit more volume to extend the scale of her portrayal in scenes such as her cursing of the departing hero. Not even a vocal accident or two could mar Ben Heppner's resplendent performance as Enée. His progress since recording the role [LSO 0010] included an unexpected sensitivity in some of the lyric phrases that we thought had been retired with Jon Vickers.
Dwayne Croft (Chorèbe), Matthew Polenzani (Iopas) and Gregory Turay (Hylas) sang their lyrical music warmly. Assigning the gruffer timbres of Elena Zaremba to the florid role of Anna and Robert Lloyd to that of Narbal proved less effective.
Levine's orchestra and chorus usually hit the mark in the spine-tingling ensembles that any Troyens needs, and the conductor was at his most persuasive in the flexible lilt of the love duet. Still, given his experience and affinity for the score, the results might have been more consistent. Some of the women's chorus in Act II, as well as the ceremonial music in Didon's last scenes, seemed wooden. To restore the Act I finale to its intended grandeur, the chorus should be put back in its place -- where it can't drown out Cassandre and the orchestra.
DAVID J. BAKER
Faust was back, and so were the Alagnas, on March 3, when the Met dusted off its 1990 production. Judging by a full house and salvos of applause, old friends are still best friends. But what is one to make of those Rolf Langenfass designs? His gnarled fantasy land of Gothic decay seems worthier of Busoni's Doktor Faust than of Gounod's version. Stage director Peter McClintock steered the principals through the tortuous maze of the garden scene, while in the more open public spaces, choreographer Gillian Lynne got up a kermis straight out of Brigadoon. A survivor of the original Harold Prince staging was a soldiers' chorus of wounded, traumatized veterans.
A capable cast did its best to relieve these glum surroundings with some Belle Epoque warmth. Roberto Alagna played a cheerful Faust who approached even the exposed high C in "Salut, demeure" apparently sans terreur. His tuning has improved, apart from a couple of high notes on the sharp side, and he sings French as naturally as he registers emotion with his voice. His tenor has an individual, grainy timbre, though its slightly baritonal cast is belied by a relatively unimpressive lower register. His love duet with Angela Gheorghiu was shapely, expressive and smoothly blended. Few sopranos have succeeded so well in showing Marguerite's progress from innocent amazement (at Faust's interest in her) to erotic awareness. In the church and prison scenes, with her clear top voice and sensuous lower range, she continued to unfold the character expressively.
James Morris, a seasoned Méphistophélès, was fitted with a Halloween costume that left him no choice but to play the role obviously. Rather than going for a suave Gallic approach, he took the Slavic route, singing broadly and putting a snarl in his tone. There were flashes of wit and irony, and his exchanges with the blowsy Marthe of Catherine Cook spiced up the garden scene with a pinch of music-hall humor. Dwayne Croft, though he managed Valentin's Act I aria creditably, had been announced as suffering from sinusitis, so in Act III he was replaced by Mark Oswald. In the fatal confrontation with Méphistophélès, Oswald's cockier, less dignified characterization suited the staging, which made him clamber over the awkward set, and he put a threatening tone into his death scene. Katarina Karnéus sang Siébel's romance with vibrance, verve and focused point, while Alfred Walker took an agreeably lively turn as Wagner.
The Met's Faust removes one cliché, Marguerite's spinning wheel, from "Il était un roi de Thulé," where it doesn't belong. It does belong with her spinning song, "Il ne revient pas," but that music, along with Siébel's "Si le bonheur," is banished. The Walpurgisnacht and its ballet are gone altogether. Despite these cuts, the somber tone of the production makes a long evening seem even longer. Perhaps sensing this, conductor Bertrand de Billy, after a torpid introduction, kept things moving right along. The waltz at the kermis went a mile a minute, and the garden scene never dragged. Along the way, de Billy still took care of such details as the postlude of the garden scene and its echo after Valentin's death, with their poignant falling violin phrases.
JOHN W. FREEMAN
CHICAGO
Once upon a time, not so long ago, opera companies -- especially the big, well-to-do opera companies -- thrived on Verdi. In those days, of course, we had voices, wide-ranging voices equally responsive to the composer's demands for extroversion and introspection, drama and finesse. Not incidentally, those also happened to be the days when the operas of Handel were relegated primarily to history books.
We knew the Baroque extravaganzas were important, but we had few singers who could cope with their extended ornate lines, range extremes and stylized mode of expression. And we certainly didn't know what to do with the heroic roles originally intended for castratos. Me
zzo-sopranos in warrior drag stretched aesthetic credibility drastically, and octave -- even two-octave -- transpositions on behalf of tenors or basses compromised essential timbre contrasts.
Now we have splendid countertenors offering what must be reasonable facsimiles of the castrato aesthetic. Now we have period specialists who enforce both the letter and the spirit of eighteenth-century musical laws in the pit. And, ironically, we now have very few singers equipped to deal with the expansive emotional and technical niceties of Verdi. All this became strikingly clear in February, when Lyric Opera of Chicago stretched its resources for a decidedly problematic, drastically uneven Un Ballo in Maschera yet mustered a brilliant, seemingly effortless introduction to Partenope.
Ideally, Ballo requires five great singers for the central roles, plus a couple of sinister yet dapper basses for immoral support. On February 23, Chicago found a splendid Ulrica in Larissa Diadkova, whose neatly focused mezzo-soprano feared neither range extreme, and who projected the mystery of the medium -- certainly no Gypsy in this new production -- with equal parts elegance and eloquence. Hers, in more senses than one, was a class act. Too bad Ulrica appears only in a single scene.
The others had to contend with various degrees of miscasting at worst, misuse of natural resources at best. Returning to the company after a twelve-year absence, Neil Shicoff as Riccardo did a lot of huffing and puffing in a vain attempt to make his essentially lean tenor sound fat, and for all his introspective ardor, he ignored most of Verdi's demands for dynamic shading. Continuing on her treacherous journey from lyric soprano to spinto and beyond, Veronica Villarroel as Amelia managed to float some lovely pianissimo tones in passages of ascending ecstasy. These were offset, unfortunately, by shrill forte outbursts and a tendency to chop long phrases into small pieces.
No doubt tired of hearing that his velvety baritone isn't a massive instrument like Leonard Warren's or an incisive one like Tito Gobbi's, Dmitri Hvorostovsky concentrated on making a mighty noise in his first attempt at Renato. The blustery result suggested a sad miscalculation. In an odd case of anti-type casting, Oscar, the flighty pageboy, was entrusted to Maria Kanyova, whose repertory will soon embrace both of Mozart's Donnas plus Puccini's Cio-Cio-San. The advantage of unusually substantial tone at mid-range was counterbalanced by flubbed fioriture and strain in the stratosphere.
For the low-voiced conspirators -- crusty challenges the golden-age Met used to entrust to the likes of Giorgio Tozzi and Nicola Moscona -- Lyric Opera drafted a couple of talents from its training program. Both Wayne Tigges (Sam) and Christopher Dickerson (Tom) were promising, but both remained stubbornly generic.
Mark Elder, the seasoned conductor, seemed intent on keeping Verdi's sprawling passions neatly under wraps. Although he allowed Villarroel a few tempo liberties, he stressed crisp articulation and forward momentum to a fault. The chorus had more success than the orchestra in following his taut and speedy beat.
If the musical elements of this Ballo -- the first at Lyric Opera in a decade -- were disappointing, the dramatic perspective proved genuinely annoying. Olivier Tambosi and Frank Philipp Schlössmann, the director/designer team responsible for the controversial Jenu°fa at the Met this season (and before that at Covent Garden and in Hamburg), often played perversely against both score and libretto. Consciously ignoring the traditional Boston-vs.-Stockholm questions, they officially moved the inaction to "a kingdom where the crown has become too big for the ruler." The time, according to the program, simply became "once upon a time."
Within this evasive milieu, the set depicts "aristocratic architecture from the past." There are no exteriors. Amelia must search for the crucial magic herb not in a mysterious field near a scaffold but in a dingy room that happens to contain a guillotine. Riccardo, who bears a striking resemblance to the Little King (from Otto Soglow's New Yorker cartoons), watches a prophetic play-within-the-play at the outset. He meets his fate in the finale amid a whole corps of identical Little Kings. Borrowing an irrelevant gimmick from history and from Göran Gentele's famous production for Royal Swedish Opera more than forty years ago, Tambosi suggests that the hero is more interested in Oscar (always dapper in top-hat and tails) than in poor Amelia. During their heated love-duet, the nominal lovers never touch, much less embrace. It's all trendy and dark, modern and silly. Also very deep, and, yes, very shallow.
If Ballo turned out to be just a bit ridiculous, Partenope, seen the night before, flirted with the sublime. There couldn't be many revelations in this version of Handel's inspired comedy of eros, for Chicago had recycled the celebrated production originally designed for Glimmerglass in 1998 and transplanted soon thereafter to New York City Opera. The convoluted libretto, a treatise on love, war and confusion in the semi-mythological land that was to become Naples, inspired Francisco Negrin to choreograph a clever network of quasi-symmetrical maneuvers focusing symbolism and character definition while playing loose with time and place. John Conklin provided an intriguing unit set, and Paul Steinberg created color-coded modern-dress costumes.
Harry Bicket conducted, yet again, with a fine combination of scholarship and bravado. And his spiffy cast, delicately balanced and sensitively integrated, featured virtuosos who could meet Handel's florid challenges with ease and move about the shifting emotional ambiguities with cheer.
David Daniels, countertenor in excelsis, returned to the befuddled heroism of Arsace, magnetizing attention with lush tone and breathless flexibility. He raced through the tortuous cantilena of "Furibondo spira il vento" with something less than reckless abandon, but erring on the side of caution probably reflected wisdom. Bejun Mehta, countertenor almost in excelsis, sounded remarkably suave and whimsical as his reticent rival, Armindo. Elizabeth Futral toyed exquisitely with the pyrotechnics of the titular Queen and played the femme-not-so-fatale as an adorably nymphomaniacal Barbie Doll. Kurt Streit exulted in the mock-macho tantrums of the would-be conqueror, Prince Emilio, and, apart from a little trill problem, traced the vocal curlicues deftly. Patricia Bardon, a noble mezzo-soprano from Dublin, sighed nicely as Rosmira, the long-suffering seconda donna in borrowed trousers, and Mark S. Doss exuded dignity as the courtly/priestly major-domo, Oronte. If only Chicago could have found such an ensemble for Ballo....
MARTIN BERNHEIMER
SEATTLE
What makes Norma the most demanding role for soprano is not only the fiendishly difficult vocal writing but the dramatic challenge of portraying a woman betrayed by both lover and best friend; a m
other torn by the need for revenge; a powerful warrior-queen who is also a priestess. Seattle's cast of distingushed singers gave an unquestionably fine vocal performance of Bellini's Norma (March 8), but as drama, it failed.
Several reasons for this failure spring to mind: the old-fashioned, wooden direction of Peter Kazaras (the first time the tenor has directed at a major opera company); the utter confusion of visual signals afforded by an abstract set, conventional costumes and Walt Disney-style lighting-effects; conductor Eduardo Müller's often sagging tempos; and Christine Goerke's inability to encompass and express the emotional complexities of Bellini's greatest creation. When Norma sings "La mia voce tuonerà," she must at some point prove it by "thundering forth." We must feel the menace in her words when she first learns that Pollione has betrayed her; the tenderness toward her children must be visible, as well as audible. The Act II confrontation with Pollione makes no sense unless we really believe Norma when she asks, "Non sai tu che il mio furore passa il tuo?" (Don't you know that my fury surpasses yours?) Goerke, though she sang with justifiable confidence, was too bland to project priestly power or nobility. She failed to become the "sublime donna" of the final scene, because she lacked the "sublimi accenti."
With her enormous voice, Polish contralto Ewa Podles´ (Adalgisa) might literally have brought down the house; as it turned out, she brought the house to its feet in a standing ovation. She was the thrilling vocal/focal point of this production. "Sgombra è la sacra selve," taken at a leisurely pace, barely prepared one for what was to come. But when she answered Pollione's question, "E il nostro amor?" (And what of our love?) with the words "Ah, io l'obliai" (I have forgotten it), the sound was electrifying, unforgettable. Many such moments followed. In order to keep a perfect balance of voices, Podles´ was right to rein hers in for the duets with Goerke in Act II.
As Pollione, Antonio Nagore sounded secure throughout. Kevin Langan, as Oroveso, revealed the richness of his lower register in "Ah! del Tebro." Seattle Opera's chorus did splendid work throughout the opera.
JOHN F. HULCOOP
HOUSTON
Not twelve hours after the space shuttle Columbia exploded over North Texas, Houston Grand Opera -- in NASA's hometown -- had the awkward task of presenting The Merry Widow. At Jones Hall, a block away, the Houston Symphony Orchestra wasn't playing its scheduled concert -- not because of the tragedy, but because musicians were striking for the evening to protest proposed salary cuts. But at the Wortham Center the show did go on -- after HGO general director David Gockley appeared onstage to dedicate the per
formance to the dead astronauts. The performers then threw themselves into Franz Lehár's frothy evocation of high-life Paris a century ago, and soon tragedy seemed far away.
The deliciously curvaceous art-nouveau sets, by Michael Yeargan, were the same ones seen on the December Great Performances telecast from San Francisco Opera. Ditto Thierry Bosquet's opulent turn-of-the-twentieth-century costumes: black and white dominating Act I, turquoise and powder-blue Act II, red and black Act III. Lotfi Mansouri's production was staged in Houston by Stanley M. Garner, but in Christopher Hassall's English translation -- with some Houston allusions edited in. Baron Zeta's description of his native Pontevedro as a place of mosquito-infested bayous, bumbling politicians and nonstop downtown construction certainly got guffaws.
Susan Graham's Hanna Glawari was every inch the grounded and fun-loving woman untainted by either sudden wealth or tragedy, yet viscerally frustrated by the elusive Count Danilo. Her hearty mezzo radiated both heat and light, but she took the famous "Vilja" about three metronome marks too slowly. (HGO music director Patrick Summers got the tempo right in the orchestra's later reprise.) What presumably was meant to sound dreamily romantic came off as merely sleepy. Mezzo-friendly downward transpositions were used for this, Hanna's entrance aria and the Act II "Soldier Boy" duet between Hanna and Danilo. Bo Skovhus -- tall, trim and Nordically handsome -- got Danilo's arrogance right, as well as his awkwardness. It's too bad he sometimes forced his otherwise gorgeous, finely muscled baritone.
Dale Travis's Zeta nearly stole the show, fussing and blustering with a goofy mix of German and Russian accents, his bass-baritone steeped in wine and cream. With her rich, plummy soprano, Laquita Mitchell was an appealing Valencienne. Jason Graae's Njegus was an irresistible bundle of fidgets and shtick. Chad Shelton's often strained, vinegary tenor made him a less appealing Camille de Rosillon.
Summers's conducting didn't evince much feel for the Viennese bounce and swing essential in all these waltz rhythms. But after some Act I overzealousness in the February 1 performance, the orchestra played deftly and beautifully, and the chorus, prepared by Richard Bado, was fabulous. Peggy Hickey's elaborate choreography was flashily performed.
SCOTT CANTRELL
INTERNATIONAL
VIENNAA fully staged production of Luigi Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero presents a peculiar problem: its duration of forty-five minutes and its serious subject matter would (one hopes) preclude its being paired with another opera, such as Gianni Schicchi. Rather than dilute Dallapiccola's message by placing the
opera on a double bill, Vienna's Volksoper underscored it by using the opening chorus of Bach's St. Matthew Passion as prologue and epilogue. The result was a one-hour performance that resonated far longer.
The title character is a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, but he serves as a timeless symbol for all oppressed peoples. On the eve of his execution, his Jailer gives him cause to hope -- but is ultimately revealed to be the Grand Inquisitor. As the Prisoner is led to the stake, he curses hope as the worst torture.
Young German director Tatjana Gürbaca began her career only two years ago, but the clarity and sensitivity of her vision could serve as an object lesson to many an older, concept-obsessed colleague. Gürbaca has set the opera (seen Feb. 28) on the road of life, a huge hump of asphalt highway that spilled forth from the horizon. As the house lights dimmed, the amplified beating of a human heart dissolved into the ground bass of Bach's "Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen" (Come, ye daughters, share my mourning). Costumed by Ingrid Erb as displaced people, the chorus trudged in place, single file along the dim road. While the Prisoner's Mother described her recurring nightmare, a mob raised fascist salutes to a figure on a pedestal, their shadows magnified on a scrim. Putrid yellow-green smoke rose in the distance as the Prisoner made his way along the road, accompanied by an Old Man and a Child. The Mother gave the Old Man a prayer, the Boy a paper airplane. The Jailer, a subtle manipulator, gave that airplane to the Prisoner, who ran with it until he fell, exhausted. In his vision of freedom, the Prisoner was engulfed by a writhing throng that parted to reveal the Grand Inquisitor, who crumpled the airplane. After the Prisoner was led away, Bach's chorus resumed, accompanied by the haunting image of the Boy playing with the airplane. The lights dimmed on a bare stage as the musical pulse faded back to heartbeat.
Harrowing in the Prisoner's fevered hallucinations, Morten Frank Larsen displayed a lyrical, metallic-edged baritone, effortlessly shifting into eerie falsetto with his repetition of the word "fratello." Veteran tenor Kurt Schreibmayer can no longer mask the wobble in his upper range, but he used his baritonal instrument in a commanding, assured performance as the Jailer/Grand Inquisitor. Khatuna Mikaberidze unleashed a volcano of emotions and rich mezzo tone as the Mother. Under music director Thomas Hengelbrock, the superb Volksoper Orchestra emphasized the details in Dallapiccola's difficult, highly descriptive twelve-tone score, and the massive chorus (augmented by members of the Vienna Boys' Choir) gave a performance of uncommon poignancy and power.
LARRY L. LASH
GRAZ
Displaced by a two-week residence of the Kirov Opera (see OPERA NEWS OnLine), Graz's opera troupe headed across town to the 560-seat Schauspielhaus to offer subtle competition to the Russians' bombast: a new production of Ariadne auf Naxos (seen Feb. 14).
Matthias Fontheim, the Schauspielhaus's artistic director, set the opera in the here-and-now. The action unfolded on a stage stripped of all scenery, and it spilled even into the upper reaches of the auditorium. The Major-Domo became a female stage manager, who was sufficiently blasé about the dual performance that she couldn't tell the singers from the comedians. But confusion should reign in this opera, an element emphasized by the wide-eyed consternation of the Composer and his cast when a stage crew brought on a raked platform -- onto which was driven a new automobile. (This could have been "Ariadne auf Lexus.") Zerbinetta and her troupe gamely devised ways to incorporate the car into their act. Throughout the prologue, the production maintained an infectious zaniness, but ideas ran thin during the opera proper. Ariadne remained dow
nstage-center, in a huge, ugly gown, until Bacchus's entrance; apparently, she was a patient under the psychiatric observation of Najade, Dryade and Echo. After Zerbinetta and company cavorted through their big scene, nothing much happened.
The role of the Composer might have been written for Stephanie Houtzeel's gorgeous lyric mezzo. Playing the part as an impetuous, pony-tailed nerd, she delivered a paean to music thrilling in its ardor, unforgettable in its sheer beauty. Bombshell-blonde Margareta Klobucar created a sexy, saucy, gum-popping Zerbinetta. Vamping with a cigarette holder, she displayed an ample, bubbly coloratura voice, lingering dangerously on the high Fs of "Grossmächtige Prinzessin," running out of steam only in the final moments of this Herculean scena.
As Ariadne, Carole FitzPatrick had all the right intentions, but her instrument sounds older than its years and lacks the tonal beauty, heft and line to ride the waves of Strauss's score. As Bacchus, Stephen Gould showed a large tenor capable of lyric sweetness, but he needs to learn not to shout (especially in a house of this size). The eccentric, slightly sleazy comedians also included Alexander Puhrer's hunky, solidly-sung Harlekin; Andries Cloete's astoundingly acrobatic, helium-voiced Brighella; Wilfrid Zelinka's sonorous Truffaldin; and Juraj Hurny's seasoned Scaramuccio. One couldn't hope for better nymphs than Sonia Zlatkova (Najade), Songmi Yang (Driade) and Ann Helen Moen (Echo), who blended sublimely.
Philippe Jordan, the company's music director, lovingly molded a performance of poetry and magic, rich with tiny orchestral details. Jordan's sensitivity to singers and command of the score belie his age (twenty-eight). His enthusiasm and his commitment to ensemble opera are joys to behold.
LARRY L. LASH
LONDON
Colin Davis returned to Covent Garden to conduct Royal Opera's Die Zauberflöte (seen Jan. 30). Davis's Mozart these days seems precisely measured yet entirely spontaneous. Old-fashioned it may be in its avoidance of period gestures or mannerisms, but it seems to go to the very heart of the music and registers as wise, benign and humane.
David McVicar's production sensibly junked the concept of a black Monostatos -- Adrian Thompson's sinister, bewigged courtier came surrounded by a group of similar grotesques. Though it began with a proper, sizable serpent in pursuit of Will Hartmann's somewhat vocally insecure Tamino, McVicar's staging, to designs by John Macfarlane, was no pantomime but a serious look at a serious piece -- encompassing fairy-tale fantasy and earthy humor within its considered parameters. The overall look was eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with black-marble surrounds and imagery from the cosmos. As a coherent blend of the many constituents that go to make this one of the most diverse and enigmatic of repertory pieces, this visualization was as successful as any. It looks as if McVicar has given London audiences another addition to the long-term repertory.
Diana Damrau's Queen of the Night had a patchy first aria but an absolutely flawless second. In between, she flounced around the stage as a great queen should. Dorothea Röschmann sang a Pamina of outstanding charm and delicacy, and she proved an actress of some personal magnetism. Franz-Josef Selig had all the notes for Sarastro; his refulgent tone started out with something of a wobble but later stabilized. Thomas Allen seemed luxury casting for the Speaker, though his voice is less incisive than of yore. But he's still a commanding presence. Ailish Tynan made her mark as a Papagena of demotic immediacy and naturalness.
Yet Simon Keenlyside's Papageno stole the show. There was something Chaplinesque in the pathos of his comedy that made him unusually lovable, and the crispness of his German, as intelligently inflected as any in the cast, brought him a winning directness. Something of an acrobat as well as an outstanding actor, he made Papageno his own, as only a great artist can.
Two well-known American artists made their Royal Opera debuts in a revival of Bill Bryden's 1990 production of Janácek's The Cunning Little Vixen (Feb. 21). Dawn Upshaw, familiar here from appearances at Glyndebourne and many London concert engagements, sang the Vixen, and Joyce DiDonato bowed as her partner, the Fox.
Upshaw actually entered slung over the manly shoulder of Gerald Finley's Forester, as he brought her back to keep at his lodge as a pet at the start of the second scene (the "baby" vixen of the first scene was sung by Caroline Wise). Thereafter, she offered savvy stagecraft and attention to the busy detail of a production in which animal behavior is observed to a nicety and reproduced to a degree that avoided all suggestion of the cute-furry-folk approach. (Well, almost all.) Upshaw maintained the Vixen as the central figure of the piece, changing moods as often as the piece switches scenes. It was an artful, engaging portrayal, though marred by the limited size of her instrument and its equally limited range of tone color.
DiDonato, on the other hand, with a rich, bubbly mezzo with plenty of flesh on it, was able to present an all-round successful portrayal of the handsome, swaggering mate that the Vixen acquires during Act II. Her vibrant personality could light up the stage with a handful of phrases or gestures, and unlike Upshaw's, every one of her words came through clearly.
The opera was sung in English, as it always has been in this production, and most of the large cast was made up of British singers with long, respectable careers, mainly in character roles in local venues. The animal scenes were as vividly and attractively done in this production as in any I've seen. Stuart Hopps's vital choreography incorporated several dancers, quite a few children and some acrobatics, as well as balletic movements. William Dudley's designs, a mixture of forest iconography and clever mechanics, gave the work visual magic to complement Janácek's enchanting score.
The purely human scenes -- those with the middle-aged drinking partners at the village inn, with their petty rivalries, disappointments and disillusion -- can hang fire. But here, played and sung with real understanding of their poignancy by Jeremy White (the Priest), Stuart Kale (the Schoolmaster) and Francis Egerton (the Innkeeper), they made a vital mark. They also afforded an effective counterpoint to the equally stern laws of life and death in the forest, where White and Kale made further appearances as the evicted Badger and the Mosquito. Also linking the two worlds was Finley, in superb voice and able to convey at the same time the Forester's affinity with and dislocation from both his environments, with sensitivity and to moving effect.
John Eliot Gardiner -- an infrequent visitor to the Covent Garden pit -- showed his mettle in Janácek's multi-colored scoring and kept the music nimble and light on its feet. The orchestra had an outstanding evening.
GEORGE HALL
CONCERTS AND RECITALS NEW YORK CITY Karita Mattila followed up a triumphant run in the Met's new Jenu°fa with a smashing recital at Carnegie Hall (Feb. 24), a venue she termed "adorable" in a brief but happy curtain speech at the end of a generously scaled program that ranged from songs in French, Swedish, Russian and Czech to a High Hollywood ballad. The soprano was in glorious form, bursting with charisma yet scrupulously disciplined; she glowed, she sizzled and she charmed but she also delivered every note of the musical goods. She strode fearlessly into the opening Duparc set, bathing "L'invitation au voyage" in delicious late-afternoon warmth, reveling in the overt drama of "Au pays où se fait la guerre" and etching the heartbreak of "Chanson triste" with touching reticence. The evening was rich in the imaginative strokes that color this artist's opera characterizations: in Duparc's "Romance de Mignon," for example, she gracefully guided her audience's focus with a gesture at once generous and highly theatrical, indicating with a slight shift in position that it was M
ignon, not Mattila, who was silently listening to Martin Katz's peerless playing of the postlude. She also shone in her Sibelius selections, whether soaring through the unaccompanied melismas of the insect's flight in "The Dragonfly" or descending into two-fisted poutiness in "Spring Is Flying." Both artists maintained wrenching dramatic tension in "The Girl Returned from Meeting Her Lover" by keeping Sibelius's three-verse dialogue between daughter and mother simple and straightforward; no trick voices or impersonations were needed here. Standouts in the Rachmaninoff set that opened the second half of the program were the chesty, tragic desperation Mattila brought to "An Excerpt from Alfred Musset's 'Loneliness'" and the erotic glow with which she lit "The Muse." After a quicksilver traversal of Dvorák's Gypsy Songs -- including a stone-melting "Songs My Mother Taught Me" -- Mattila offered a double encore of the title song from the 1947 Hollywood romance Golden Earrings in English and Finnish, gleefully vamping around the Steinway in headscarf and bare feet. The crowd, as they say, went wild.
It was a great week for recitals at Carnegie Hall. On March 2, six evenings after Mattila's big night, Simon Keenlyside, Angelika Kirchschlager and Craig Rutenberg offered a program built around songs and duets by Schubert, Schumann, Cornelius, Wolf and Brahms. All three artists performed beautifully, the easy camaraderie they shared giving the recital a relaxed, informal air entirely appropriate for a German Romantic evening. When Kirchschlager retired to her corner an item too early -- evidently forgetting that the next number was a duet, rather than a solo for Keenlyside -- the baritone retrieved her gently, winning a blush and an apologetic giggle from the mezzo as she returned to center stage with him. The balance between songs familiar and unfamiliar was judged intelligently, the beauties of such favorites as Schubert's "Suleika II," Brahms's "Ständchen" and Wolf's "An die Geliebte" set off handsomely by the less familiar songs -- though if all performances of Schubert's "Lambertine" were as devilishly eager as Kirchschlager's was on this occasion, it would surely be better-known. Keenlyside made the most of every opportunity that the program gave him, delivering gentle adolescent comedy (Wolf's "Der Knabe und das Immelein"), the mercurial workings of a young lovers' quarrel (Wolf's "Der Jäger"), thrilling narrative urgency (Schumann's magnificent "Ballade des Harfners") and rueful introspection (Brahms's "Auf dem Kirchhofe") with equal conviction. Kirchschlager's selections were a slightly less flashy assortment, with most of her songs presenting edgy, intense characters. But the sunny sweetness of Wolf's "Begegnung" was an apt vehicle for the mezzo's twinkling, unaffected charm, and "Suleika II" was shaped voluptuously, its yearning text pointed with wit and sophistication. (What listener could resist Kirchschlager's spun-silk declaration, "Seine Liebe sei mein Leben"?) The duets on the program were especially fine, with her dusky mid-range tones perfectly balanced against his poetically lean timbre in the bucolic tenderness of Schumann's "Er und sie" and the sexy combativeness of Brahms's "Der Jäger und sein Liebchen." Rutenberg offered splendid support throughout the evening, nowhere more handsomely than in the ringing atmosphere of "Ballade des Harfners."
F. PAUL DRISCOLL
NORTH AMERICA: Plowright and Gorra make Met debuts; Los Angeles Opera revives an honest Barbiere; Pittsburgh's Midsummer is a sold-out dream; Welch-Babidge rides to the rescue of Opera Colorado's Lucia; Florida Grand Opera's Salome; Skylight's grab-bag Donizetti in Milwaukee; Honolulu's Eugene Onegin; Trovatore in San José, CA; Opera Lafayette brings Rameau to Maryland; and Cold Sassy Tree in Charlotte, NC.
INTERNATIONAL: Dario Fo stages Helsinki's Viaggio a Reims; Bologna's new Ballo; Faust opens Rome Opera season. From Sweden: Stockholm's Folkoperan presents Lucia; Göteborg's mad moderns and Don Giovanni. The Kirov comes to Graz; Stuttgart's lamentable Giulio Cesare; and Vienna Staatsoper's un-lovely Favorite.
CONCERTS AND RECITALS: New York appearances by Lauren Flanigan, Heidi Grant Murphy, Bernarda Fink, Thomas Hampson, Wolfgang Holzmair and Christoph Prégardien, plus Colin Davis in works by Berlioz. In Paris, Berganza in concert; Uria-Monzon and Gietz are Béatrice and Bénédict.v
NORTH AMERICA
NEW YORK CITY
The closing-night performance of the Met's new production of Jenufa (Feb. 13) featured new cast members in three out of the four principal roles (Karita Mattila repeated her radiant performance as the title character). Taking on the formidable role of Kostelnicka was Rosalind Plowright, in her Met debut. She counterbalanced her tall, slim, attractive appearance with a toughness of bearing and a well-focused vocal quality that intensified commensurately with the demands of the drama. Plowright's Kostelnicka seemed not much older than Jenufa, her stepdaughter, and consequently we sensed a woman not so far away from her own romantically active years, someone still well aware of the dangers inherent in the charms of a philanderer. This added an additional layer of urgency to her actions that, coupled with the impressive emotional range of her singing, was acutely compelling.
As Laca, Richard Berkeley-Steele was hot-blooded and impetuous. Tightly wound and vibrant-voiced, he proved quite credible when frustration drove him to take a knife to Jenufa's cheek. In Act II, his scenes with Plowright generated considerable sparks, adding some unexpected heat to the Laca/Kostelnicka relationship. By Act III, when he reaffirmed his enduring love for Jenufa, this Laca, now battle-scarred, mature and more in control of his impulses, had undergone a transformation that matched Jenufa's in its depth.
Berkeley-Steele's raw vitality had a perhaps inevitably diminishing effect on the Steva of Adam Klein. What could be so compelling to Jenufa about the drunken rogue who mistreats her, if the supposedly less flashy stepbrother who pines for her was so virile and magnetic? Klein, lacking the physical comfort in the role displayed by Christopher Ventris, his predecessor, worked hard and sang well, though his sound took on a recessed quality in the upper range. His best moments came in the Act II confrontation with Kostelnicka. Singing earnestly of how he could not possibly marry Jenufa now, he seemed to tap into something authentic, with impressive, unforced results in both his singing and his demeanor.
JOSHUA ROSENBLUM
Turandot as a Met staple is a relatively recent invention. In decades past, the opera was considered a diva vehicle, and the lack of suitable candidates kept it off the Met stage for the three decades between Maria Jeritza's last house Turandot and Birgit Nilsson's first. Ever since the debut of Franco Zeffirelli's crowd-pleasing 1987 production, though, Turandot comes back every couple of seasons, often cast with tag-teams of Chinese princesses. The emphasis now is less on an extraordinary performer at the opera's center than on the eye-popping décor that provides its frame.
This season's thirteenth Turandot (Feb. 27) proved a case in point, providing the audience with more visual than vocal thrills. Audrey Stottler's Chinese princess posed little threat to anyone's memories of Nilsson, but she made clear why this role has become her calling card in opera houses around the world, producing a huge sound that all but drowned out the full force of the chorus and orchestra. In its middle range, the voice displayed a modicum of sweetness, but above the staff, it turned strident and fell short of pitch. Attempts to vary the texture with piano singing were weirdly unintegrated into the musical context.
Stottler's is not a graceful stage presence. In the final duet, she was further hindered by a shaky tiara that teetered, then toppled off her head. Richard Margison, her Calàf, gallantly kicked it aside, providing a sense of connection between the two protagonists that previously had gone missing. Elsewhere, Margison was dependable (a cracked high C in the riddle scene aside) and unromantic. One should be grateful for Margison's solid competence in this heroic role, but he remains a puzzlingly colorless performer, lacking vocal and dramatic fire.
Mexican soprano Olivia Gorra, making her company debut as Liù, provided the evening's chief excitement, winning the hearts of a crowd that included a sizable contingent of her compatriots. Gorra, an attractive woman, possesses a generous lyric soprano with a quick vibrato and a smoky quality in its middle range. There was some shortness of breath, likely caused by opening-night nerves, in the closing phrases of "Signore, ascolta." The aria nonetheless earned a hefty ovation, and Gorra settled down to give an assured, committed performance, displaying the passion that the opera's two leads lacked.
Robert Lloyd brought pathos to Timur's threnody at the death of Liù. Conductor Marco Armiliato approached the opera as a sonic tour de force, drawing rapturous textures from the Met's sterling orchestra and chorus.
FRED COHN
LOS ANGELES
You can stage bel canto comedy for sight-gags and shtick; you can stage it for wisdom and beauty. At Los Angeles Opera, Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia has had it both ways. Michael Hampe's staging, created during his tenure as Intendant at Cologne Opera and first seen in Los Angeles in 1997, returned to woo and win the hearts of nine audiences during February at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with the notion that the best way to stage comic opera -- perhaps tragic opera, as well -- is to tell the truth about it.
Mauro Pagano's sets (built at Tokyo's Kunitachi College of Music) were roomy and uncluttered; one got the feeling that real people might live there. The action remained seductively comic without once transcending the limits of the opera's wise words and insidiously lovable music. Much of this production's strength stemmed from Hampe's blocking, both simple and imaginative. Confronted with the situations dealt with in Rossini's enlightened nonsense, you and I might cross the stage in similar fashion.
Aside from Vladimir Chernov's dashing, insinuating Figaro, the principals were new to the company. John Osborn's gossamer-toned Almaviva caressed the ear in his audible moments -- which, alas, were few. Bruno Pola was a Bartolo fatuous but not without a thread of dignity; Simone Alberghini, as the conniving Basilio, seemed somewhat underpowered. The Rosina, Romanian mezzo-soprano Carmen Oprisanu, was one of the production's two real finds: a honey-voiced singer with splendid command of vocal acrobatics, graceful to watch, unerring in her comic sense and never forgetting that this very funny, most lovable lady is also a human being, capable of anger as well as joy. The other find, Dietmar Koenig as the servant Ambrogio, managed his triumph without singing a note, punctuating his every appearance with a show-stopping repertory of grunts.
Smaller roles were nicely dispatched, notably Suzanna Guzmán as a fuddy-duddy Berta. The opera was given more or less complete, lacking only Almaviva's final aria "Cessa di più resistere" (which, truth to tell, does delay the fall of the curtain with some not quite first-rate music). Gabriele Ferro's conducting revealed no prodigies of intrinsic subtlety, but managed a rather nice bounce withal.
ALAN RICH
PITTSBURGH
Pittsburgh Opera has been wary of presenting anything written more recently than Turandot on its regular subscription series, but Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (seen Feb. 1) defied conventional wisdom (and spoke for the adventurous spirit of artistic director Christopher Hahn) by selling out -- more than 100 percent, counting turnbacks -- for all four performances. True, the Byham Theater is this company's smaller venue, and several other factors entered into the success -- among them the popularity of Shakespeare's play; support from area English teachers who sent their classes; supertitles that made the English words clear to everyone out front; and energetic marketing. But the most significant factor is that this was a very good show.
The coproduction with Central City Opera benefited from Paul Curran's lively, imaginative staging -- updated to the Edwardian era and emphasizing sexuality above innocence in the plot -- as well as a uniformly excellent cast, plus John Mauceri's special aptitude for this repertory. Mauceri not only led an accurate, clean reading in the pit but managed to differentiate in color and atmosphere the individual musical worlds Britten created for the fairies and mortals who inhabit the stage.
The fairies have the lightest music, high voices accompanied by delicate-sounding instruments. Celina Shafer's Tytania shone with a rare combination of tonal strength and glittering coloratura, highlighted in her Act II aria, "Be kind and courteous." She was matched in verbal clarity if not vocal heft by the spunky Oberon of countertenor Daniel Taylor, whose authoritative actions and pronouncements jelled with the lively spoken words of Justin Brill's Puck and the the trebles of the local Children's Festival Chorus to make a convincing catalyst for the goings-on.
At the other end of the spectrum were the very funny mechanicals, notably Raymond Diaz (replacing an injured Kevin Glavin) as a Bottom who could really sing and Opera Center tenor Javier Abreu as a hilariously campy Flute.
The serious singing in this opera goes to the quartet of lovers, who could hardly have been more fittingly cast. Vocally opulent, they romped through Curran's rather minimal sets with athleticism and a spirit of fun. Madeline Bender's slightly wavery soprano seemed quite appropriate for Helena's insecurities, and Elizabeth Batton's near-contralto tones gave sensuality to Hermia. Fine as they were, the women were dominated by their tall, handsome and vocally commanding male counterparts. Eric Cutler's ringing tenor made one's ears perk up for each of Lysander's songful phrases, while Paul Whelan's supple movements and sumptuous baritone transformed the randy Demetrius into an incipient Don Giovanni. (Whether these young artists would project as well on a larger stage remains to be seen.) Phillip Skinner (Theseus) made up in decibels and swagger what his bass sound lacked in refinement, and Gloria Parker's pale mezzo and arrogant demeanor as Hippolyta lent an air of disdain to everything around her.
ROBERT CROAN
DENVER
While more than one American opera company finds itself wading through cash shortages, Opera Colorado recently found itself drowning ... in water. Last Thanksgiving, firefighters doused a blaze in the jewelry store directly above company headquarters in Denver -- resulting in a thorough drenching of files, computers, donor mailing lists and opera posters. For two months, staff members were forced to work elsewhere, which put a serious damper on Opera Colorado's year-end fund-raising activities. But that was just the beginning of a small flood of bad luck.
Less than a month before the curtain was to rise on the season-opening production of Lucia di Lammermoor, two principal singers dropped out for health reasons, leaving director James Robinson scrambling for replacements. Quickly, Robinson signed Jennifer Welch-Babidge for the title role. Luring her to Denver necessitated some schedule-juggling, since the soprano was in the midst of singing Blonde in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Met. Then, the day after rehearsals began, Robinson was forced to find a new Edgardo, when Joseph Calleja was grounded by a sinus infection. Tenor Jorge Antonio Pita was signed. (Welch-Babidge and Pita are scheduled to sing these roles when Robinson brings this production to New York City Opera in September; this staging already has been presented in Houston, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh.)
Welch-Babidge brought remarkable intensity to her portrayal, nearly making one forget she was also singing -- quite a trick in the mad scene. Her acting was refreshingly under-the-top. Eschewing the usual bag of tricks employed by wild-eyed, grinning sopranos in this dramatic scene, she instead projected a heart-tugging image of a nice young girl who'd lost her man and was now losing her mind. Sure, she was wielding the blood-soaked murder weapon (an impressive-looking sword), but that didn't make her portrayal any less sympathetic. All the while, she sang with power, finesse and near-perfection in a performance of captivating brilliance.
Pita sang with authority, overcoming a stiff, self-conscious presentation. He offered fine work in his big moment, Act III's "Tombe degli avi miei." Scott Hendricks's Enrico matched Welch-Babidge's rare combination of enthralling voice and convincing characterization. A few patrons' eyebrows doubtless were raised when he undressed his sister in preparation for her forced marriage, but this jolting device helped to underscore the girl's vulnerability and Enrico's power over her. Here as elsewhere, Robinson vividly explored this opera's psychological warfare.
Among the supporting roles, Paul Putnins's Raimondo was a standout, though his pretty-boy looks seemed out of character. Fine work came from the chorus, particularly the men, garbed in an odd assortment of macho leather jackets and dusters. In the pit, Stephen Lord led the Colorado Symphony with assurance, rarely letting the action drag.
Some in the audience objected audibly to designer Christine Jones's massive mountains, mostly invisible through Scott Zielinski's minimal, floor-level lighting (though he offered a brazen mix of bright blue and orange during the mad scene). The overall look of Donizetti's dark, depressing tale was -- well, dark and depressing. But if you want happy, try Don Pasquale.
Despite such quibbles, the near-capacity opening-night crowd at the Buell Theatre of the Denver Performing Arts Complex cheered as one during the curtain calls, clearly thrilled with the high level of singing and acting -- and perhaps relieved that no more disasters had struck Opera Colorado.
MARC SHULGOLD
FT. LAUDERDALE
Salome would seem to cry out for radical modern staging, but don't look to a regional opera company for that -- not in these cautious times. It's too bad, because Florida Grand Opera could do a good job of reconceptualizing Richard Strauss's thriller-diller. The decadence of Herod's court would strike a resonant chord in hedonistic South Florida, where, in 1987, for the company's first Salome, Marilyn Zschau made a splash by going topless in the dance of the seven veils. This time around, Nina Warren opted for a body stocking.
There were a few naughty touches in the Bliss Hebert-Allen Charles Klein production, particularly the portrayal of Herodes (Allan Glassman) as something of a leather queen, with a skimpy, harnesslike get-up under his flowing lavender robe. He groped four long-haired chorus boys, who later got in Salome's way as she danced. The finale had a dubious change, apparently intended to drive home the idea of Herod's thuggery. He pulled out a knife and stabbed his seductive stepdaughter, rather than ordering soldiers to crush her with their shields, as the libretto stipulates.
Aside from such fiddling on the margins, FGO's Salome was a conventional, effective treatment of the opera. It featured a sensational performance of the title role by Warren, who has made a career of playing the princess of Judea.
Warren, seen in the first of two performances at Fort Lauderdale's Broward Center, following four performances in Miami, had settled into the role that Strauss said required "the body of a teenager and the voice of an Isolde." A thirty-eight-year-old mother of three, the soprano is more Wagnerian than nymphet, but she was still a richly dramatic figure, slithering across the stage in her steamy opening scene, writhing on the lid of Jochanaan's cistern, arching her pelvis to the pulsating orchestra.
Strauss's thick orchestra makes Salome a daunting part, but Warren projected her voice brilliantly. Amid the pillars and steps of a cavernous set (from which the Soldiers and some other characters struggled to be heard), she was remarkably clear and vivid, her high, luminous phrases soaring over the orchestra, like a surfer hanging ten on a gigantic wave of sound. Music director Stewart Robertson was the attentive conductor.
A canny diva, Warren made her dance suitably strenuous, as each of the veils slipped teasingly off to Strauss's dissonant tone poem, but she didn't wear herself out. There was plenty in reserve for the marathon solo that began with her Salome listening at the lip of the cistern ("There is no sound") and, after a rollercoaster of erotic cries and whispers, returning again to spellbinding, sickly silence as she kissed the severed, bloody head. It was a horrific, authoritative performance.
His bare torso dusted a ghostly white, Ned Barth was a fine, passionate prophet, his big baritone denouncing the daughter of Babylon with righteous anger. Glassman was a kinky kick as Herodes, and his bickering with Herodias (Janice Meyerson, cackling with evil glee at her daughter's wiles) was perfectly perverse. The contentious Jews, led by Paul Mow, sported fantastic turbans. Among the principals, only Thomas Studebaker came up short, with a pallid performance as Narraboth.
JOHN FLEMING
MILWAUKEE
Donizetti's Le Convenienze ed Inconvenienze Teatrali is an unusual work. It surpasses even Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera and Così Fan Tutte in its title's resistance to translation into standard English, and it has come mercifully to be billed as Viva la Mamma! Donizetti wrote both the libretto and music for it (not his standard practice), and most unusual of all, he wrote its leading role for a baritone in drag. Viva la Mamma!, then, is a slight but charming comedy of a formidable stage-mother who will do anything to advance her daughter's career, whether selling her jewelry to finance the impending production of Romilda ed Ersilio or saving the show by singing a role vacated by a temperamental artist. The opera provides the ever clever device of a show-within-a-show and the ongoing fun of a cross-dressed character. (Think Tootsie.)
If only Skylight Opera had taken Donizetti's little comedy seriously (seen Feb. 8). Instead, the company treated it as a vehicle for an "irreverent comic romp through Skylight history" (translation: grab-bag costuming and cluttered setting, mixing items blatantly scavenged from previous shows); and for unsubtle commentary on the current financial crises of opera companies across the land. Neither idea much heightened the fun. The production was very loosely acted and thinly cast, with only John Muriello (a veteran of La Gran Scena Opera di New York), in the title role of Mamm'Agata, as a standout. Director Paula Suozzi opted for romp rather than restraint, mistook frenetic for funny and substituted crass for crisp. In the spirit of the visual production, choreographer Karl Miller borrowed steps from Aida, Chicago, Swan Lake and who knows what else to create a most unlikely but funny ballet burlesque. Onstage at the piano, dressed in blue jeans for the Act I "rehearsal" and an unlikely toga getup for the Act II "performance," the company's artistic director, Richard Carsey, brought solid musical order to the shenanigans around him.
JOHN KOOPMAN
HONOLULU
Hawaii Opera Theatre opened its season with Tchaikovsky's leisurely Eugene Onegin in a richly conceived production of vibrant scenes, lively staging and engaging singers. HOT's resident designer, Peter Dean Beck, devised a curving path among three pole-studded platforms that rotated with the plot's wheels of fate. The basic set transformed smoothly, the poles becoming tree trunks or marble columns as needed, and Beck's vivid lighting lent the tragedy warmth. Each scene opened with rotating poles and platforms behind a scrim image of trees, so that the tale appeared to emerge from the vast forests of Russia. Seemingly ingenious at first, the effect wore thin by Act III.
Director Dejan Miladinovic's detailed, careful staging yielded a memorable performance throughout, reaching its apex in the seamless flow of Act II. The production was generally insightful, with two exceptions arising in additions to Act III. Bringing Prince Gremin back onstage to end the ball not only cut off applause for Onegin's aria but added an awkward, silent close to the scene. And introducing a child at Tatyana's moment of decision shifted her decision from a question of honor to a personal choice between her lover and her child. Worse, the child's age obviously exceeded the length of her two-year marriage.
Aimee Willis's warm, bright lyric soprano filled Tatyana's demanding role easily, rising above even the largest ensembles and shifting smoothly from passion to heartbreak. Willis seemed less comfortable with Tatyana's complex character, appearing more effervescent than serious in Act I, more haughty than dignified in Act III. David Templeton's dark baritone carried less easily over ensembles, but its virility, along with his height, made for a commanding Onegin. An underlying stiffness marred his dancing, but Templeton balanced sensitivity and aloofness well.
With his gorgeous lyric tenor, George Dyer (Lensky) delivered the finest performance of the evening. With a silken yet ringing tone, excellent dynamics and fine control of line, he captured the role perfectly. Each aria topped the previous one, so that it was difficult to forgive Onegin for shooting him.
Bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos, as Prince Gremin, sang in long, arching lines, his voice glowing with burnished warmth, making love seem worthwhile even in the midst of tragedy. The vivacious mezzo-soprano Elena Bocharova, with a strong chest voice but weaker middle range, created a charming Olga. Mezzo-sopranos Judith Christin (Madame Larina) and Dorothy Byrne (Filippyevna) and tenor James Price (Triquet) contributed nuance and depth.
HOT's chorus, directed by Beebe Freitas and Nola Nahulu, occasionally stumbled over the unfamiliar Russian in rapid passages, but their tone and balance in general were excellent. Conductor William Fred Scott held the ensemble together firmly, delivering a graceful performance.
In an overall stellar production, the only major disappointment was Gregg Lizenbery's choreography. Staunchly balletic, the numerous dances remained unintegrated, even impairing the tale. In Act I, for example, the serfs and aristocrats reversed roles, the serfs dancing ballet while the aristocrats danced folk, and in Act II, the cotillion-turned-ballet proceeded without Onegin and Olga.
RUTH O. BINGHAM
SAN JOSÉ, CA
As one of the most celebrated Azucenas of her day, Opera San José founder and general director Irene Dalis knows first-hand the work's daunting vocal and dramatic demands. So it's not too surprising that her nineteen-year-old company, the smallest professional opera outfit in the U.S., triumphed with its premiere performances of Verdi's formidable tune-fest. Seen on February 15 with one of its two casts, Opera San José's Il Trovatore featured excellent singing from most of the five principals (all young resident artists) and a resourceful, compelling staging worthy of a world-class house --let alone the intimate 500-seat Montgomery Theater.
In mezzo-soprano Michele Detwiler, the performance boasted a riveting Azucena. Detwiler invested the pivotal role with raw intensity, impeccable musicianship and superb diction, keeping the audience on edge with her every appearance. Whether spinning a sinister "Stride la vampa," scaling the heights of "Condotta ell'era in ceppi" or yearning nostalgically in "Ai nostri monti," she insightfully probed the disturbed extremes of her character's part.
As Leonora, soprano Julie Makerov provided an affecting portrayal of her character with a full, rounded vocal tone and skilled acting. Although she sounded insecure in the upper range of "Tacea la notte placido," she displayed quicksilver agility in the cabaletta "Di tale amor." In Act III and IV, her high notes sounded well supported and she offered an especially poignant "D'amor sull'ali rosee" that peaked with a beautifully floated, limpid cadenza.
Her Manrico was tenor Jonathan Hodel, who really came into his own only in the higher-lying passages of "Di quella pira," in which his voice shone with requisite squillo. Otherwise, Hodel's performance suffered from an unfocused, colorless tone, wide vibrato, patchy intonation and stiff, stand-and-deliver posturing.
Adding a frisson to the vituperative exchanges between Azucena and the Count di Luna was the casting of the mezzo's husband, baritone Jason Detwiler. He displayed forceful stage presence, superb acting skills, clear diction and impressive vocal color, ranging from snarling, macho outbursts to tender lyricism. Especially notable were his ardent, beguiling way with "Il balen" and the impassioned, menacing tone he brought to the Act IV supplication scene with Leonora.
Kirk Eichelberger (Ferrando) showed a stentorian but wonderfully supple instrument that ranged from basso profundo to lyric baritone. His fluid account of the opening scene's recitative and arias, which often seem too expository, sounded taut and compelling. The chorus, prepared by Thomas Shoebotham, shone with rousing, Verdian singing and colorful characterizations.
Director Lorna Haywood maneuvered her cast assuredly, keeping the blocking purposeful and clear, apart from a cluttered Act II finale in which Manrico's rescue of Leonora was crowded by too many choristers on too small a stage. Giulio Cesare Perrone's versatile, flexible sets, enhanced by lighting designer Pamila Z. Gray's tasteful, imaginative effects, put the theater's limited space to efficient use, making for swift scene changes. Julie Engelbrecht's gallant, late-reconquista costumes handsomely evoked the period.
Despite a small pit that could only accommodate twenty-six players, the orchestra managed a suitably grand effect, with conductor Anthony Quartuccio bringing out leggiero nuances, lyrical phrasings and vivid colors of Verdi's score, while also building up thrilling climaxes that never overwhelmed the vocal lines.
CARL BYRON
COLLEGE PARK, MD
The premiere of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie at the Paris Opera, on October 1, 1733, provoked a violent controversy between advocates of Lully's operas and supporters of Rameau's; this tragédie lyrique continues to give glorious testimony to opera in France's grand siècle. Conductor and artistic director of Opera Lafayette Ryan Brown led his forces in a sublimely visionary account of Hippolyte on February 2, at the University of Maryland's Smith Center. Without costumes, sets or even minimal props, Brown drew from his outstanding singers and orchestra, the Violins of Lafayette (which he founded in 1994), a wrenching pathos that spells sheer human emotions. As Rameau expressed it, these, in turn, are direct emanations of the natural world, its multifarious array of sounds permeating the score of Hippolyte in clearly defined instrumental sonorities. One needs little imagination to conjure up the calls of amorous nightingales, the whispers trailing from Diana's murky grove or the boisterous tumult of Neptune's churning sea.
Nature, at its most tempestuous, came to life with Brown's often vigorous pace, pungently delineated in shifting metrical pulses and in phrasing etched with diamond-cut precision. This approach made dramatic action seem to emerge palpably, rousing the opera's mythological characters from their stock images forged by Rameau's librettist, Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, in melding together elements of Euripides's Hippolytus plays, Seneca's Phaedra and Racine's Phèdre. This dramatic momentum also overrode the sense of stasis ordinarily produced by an entrenched formality of Baroque opera -- the division of the whole into distinct tableaux. Above all, Rameau's musical embodiment of human feelings and elemental Nature, most forcefully expressed in his intoxicating harmonic modulations, impel the drama onward as powerfully as if it had the built-in structural continuity of a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk.
The members of Opera Lafayette share generous experience in performing French Baroque music, its mindset rooted in the French language itself. In small ensembles or scene complexes of epic magnitude, the singers excelled even at the farthest reaches of melodic ornamentation. In the title roles, Robert Getchell had all the intensity that Hippolyte's passion called for, while Gaële Le Roi artfully conveyed Aricie's devoted, yet troubled adoration of her lover. Jennifer Lane gave Phèdre psychological complexity laced with turbulent romantic desire. As Thésée, Bernard Deletré paired monumental force with dignity of presence.
As the Fates, Tony Boutté (also Tisiphone), François Loup (also Pluto and Neptune) and David Newman (also Arcas), turned their trio (ending Act II) into an affair as riveting as the dense chromaticism of Rameau's setting. Susan Bender was a persuasive Diana, Barbara Hollinshead a winning Oenone. Miriam Dubrow (Matelote and Chasseresse), Jennifer Ellis (Prêtresse and Bergère), Joan McFarland (Grande Pretrêsse) and Robert Petillo (Mercure) likewise offered exemplary performances.
Apart from the chief roles, soloists also formed a vital, ever-supportive chamber chorus, providing narrative and moral-ethical commentary in the manner of ancient Greek drama. As hunters and huntresses, zephyrs, shepherds and shepherdesses, various ensembles evoked the engaging pastoral charm of Arcadia. And, along with overtures and descriptive "symphonies," a profusion of courtly marches, menuets en rondeau, ritournelles and chaconnes brought orchestral playing that was never less than elegant and compelling -- the key, that is, to this successful performance, where Baroque allegory and its network of symbolic implications intersected with human passion at its most overwhelming.
CECELIA PORTER
CHARLOTTE, NC
For a regional opera company such as Opera Carolina even to stage a contemporary American opera, much less to take part in commissioning one, is a valiant leap of faith. Perhaps emboldened by the success of the company's production of Susannah a few years ago, the leap was made (in conjunction with Houston Grand Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, San Diego Opera and Baltimore Opera) in the production of Carlisle Floyd's Cold Sassy Tree, based on the popular novel by Olive Ann Burns. The novel is a richly episodic tapestry of life circa 1900 in a small Georgia town, Cold Sassy Tree, the odd name of which the citizens want to change to something more progressive -- such as Commerce. Floyd's success in condensing the rather disjointed novel into a workable libretto is remarkable, accomplished by focusing on the unlikely love story of the crusty, elderly Rucker Lattimore (called Blakeslee in the novel) and his much younger employee, Miss Love Simpson, which is paralleled by the tentative affection between his grandson Will Tweedy (the opera's -- and book's -- narrator) and the mill-worker Lightfoot McClendon. Characters and incidents have been eliminated or simplified, but the result is a coherent plotline that works well onstage. The novel's narrative richness is replaced by the score's musical richness. The orchestration is full, the harmonies distinctly twentieth-century but not in the least jarring; the vocal lines, ranging from declamatory (including spoken lines) to tuneful, focus on character revelation. Some moments are readily identifiable as arias, and the melodies, if somewhat fleeting, are effective enough to invite repeated hearings. As one might expect from a composer of Floyd's experience, the entire work is skillfully crafted, and the musico-dramatic tension develops powerfully throughout the evening.
Opera Carolina's performances were more of a community affair than usual: the company invited local book clubs to include the novel in their schedules and to compare it with the libretto. The company's general director, James Meena, made some twenty-five talks about the opera to such groups, which greatly expanded the usual preproduction symposia. The hard work paid off: single-ticket sales were almost double those for previous productions of American opera (including Susannah and The Crucible) and earned more than any other opera production in the previous three years (including such staples as Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Le Nozze di Figaro and Il Trovatore).
Another aspect of pre-production proved unusually dramatic: the opera's elaborate sets were destroyed when the warehouse in which they were stored was inadvertently demolished. The race to build and ship in new sets was more a cliff-hanger than anything onstage. Arriving in the nick of time, the sets (designed by Michael Yeargan and seen Feb. 22) were handsome, if rather difficult and noisy to change.
The orchestra played well under Karen Keltner, and the cast, including veterans of earlier productions as well as a sprinkling of local singers, acquitted themselves admirably. Especially effective among the locals was Dan Boye, as the brash Clayton McAllister, Love's rejected suitor, but it would be hard to fault any of the portrayals of even the smallest parts. As for the leads, Margaret Lloyd's Lightfoot was appealingly sung and acted, as was John McVeigh's Will Tweedy, the difficult role that holds the work together. Not surprisingly, he was more effective as a young man than in his scenes as a fifteen-year-old boy.
Marie Plette handled the high-lying part of Love Simpson with vocal aplomb, though the anguish of the character's revelation of her past could have been plumbed more deeply. It was easy to see why Floyd chose Dean Peterson to originate the role of Rucker. Not only did he sing the role with a sonorous tone but his acting was particularly effective, as he moved from crustiness to the tenderness of his love. The character is memorable, and so was the portrayal.
LUTHER WADE
INTERNATIONAL
HELSINKI
Finnish National Opera can look back with pride on its first decade in its gleaming modern opera house, which saw the world premieres of several new Finnish operas and a Ring directed by the late Götz Friedrich that is perhaps the most satisfying of his various treatments of the cycle. FNO's new production of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims (seen Jan. 17) ranks with the best of these achievements, a tribute to a company with the imagination and perseverance to pair this frothy yet musically superb product of Rossini's final years as an opera composer with the directorial talents of the Italian playwright and Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo. Fo's skills as a Rossinian are a matter of record -- indeed, his succinct career as an opera producer includes little but Rossini -- but the combination of him and Il Viaggio was not a foreordained one. He's known for his leftist politics, and Il Viaggio was written to commemorate an event with reactionary consequences: the 1825 coronation of the repressive French King Charles X. How to reconcile the two? Fo decided to rewrite about 25 percent of the libretto.
One wishes he hadn't, but the brilliance of his exuberant production far outweighed the ill effects of his textual changes, as his unique identification with Rossini's comic gift carried the day. Il Viaggio is a work with little conventional action and indeed was never intended to be a repertory work, which is why Rossini reused much of its music in his next opera, Le Comte Ory, and sequestered the rest, to be reconstructed only in the early 1980s. Yet in Fo's hands, this story of an internationally diverse group of eccentric noble personages, who want to go to Charles's coronation in Rheims but find themselves stranded at a spa inn, became one of the liveliest shows I've seen in years.
The frenzy began at once, with health-conscious guests frolicking in the restorative waters. Later, when one least expected it, a statue came to life or a group of tutu-clad ballerinas sauntered across the stage or a fluttering dove distracted a singer from performing in an ensemble. Fo made clever use of the space above his simple wooden set, the poetess Corinna poised delectably above the lovesick Lord Sidney as he pined for her below; more prominently, the space was used for acrobatic feats, including a rope act that looked so dangerous I had to avert my eyes. By contrast, Fo sometimes kept the characters utterly still, a shrewd way of varying the action for Rossini's structural repeats. Much of what went on was truly hilarious, and, surrounded by appreciative but less demonstrative Finns, I sometimes felt I was giggling in church.
Fo rewrote the national references in Don Profundo's patter song -- adroitly dispatched by bass Damon Nestor Ploumis -- but only in the finale did his changes go over-the-top. When the guests entertain themselves with national songs, Fo's added references to colonialism in "God Save the King," Haydn's "Kaiserhymne" and the Spanish anthem reduced them to exercises in political correctness and spoiled this amiable suggestion of a united Europe. Later, one saw goose-stepping marchers and Brecht-style protest signs (in Finnish). And the decision to turn Corinna's final oration into a prophecy of the gloom and doom under Charles undercut the spirit of this charming piece.
Il Viaggio demands a large, able cast, and FNO assembled a fine array of young singers from home and abroad for the task. Mezzo Lilli Paasikivi showed fine technique as the Polish countess Melibea. Anna-Kristiina Kaappola sang with eloquent simplicity as Corinna, and the excellent baritone Juha Kotilainen was impressive as Baron Trombonok. Ritva-Liisa Korhonen had the right bourgeois appeal as the innkeeper Madama Cortese, and Hannu Forsberg sang strongly if rather nasally as Lord Sidney. There were two fine tenors -- Gert Hennig-Jensen, whose Belfiore showed real ardor in pursuing Corinna; and Mario Zeffiri, who sang with stylish grace as the Russian Count. Corinna Mologni brought a nicely resonant lyric soprano and a charmingly spacey manner to the role of the fashion-conscious Mme. Folleville, who sings an elaborate cabaletta about rediscovering a hat. Conductor Maurizio Barbacini's effervescent reading was faultlessly paced, and all of Rossini's repeats were observed -- for Fo to do with as he wished.
GEORGE LOOMIS
BOLOGNA
For the new production of Un Ballo in Maschera at the Teatro Comunale, director-designer Denis Krief employed a single, almost clinically neutral set, using minimal props to suggest the changing scenes (a desk for Riccardo in Act I, two armchairs for Renato and his wife in Act III). Lighting was conceived for psychological rather than realistic effect, and the chorus was kept at a distance when not directly involved in the action. The result was a strong focus on the main characters and their relationships, shedding new light, for example, on the jokey interplay between Riccardo and Oscar and lending an Ibsenesque intensity to the marital crisis that lies at the heart of the opera. Krief seemed keen for us to identify with Amelia in particular, spotlighting her figure and setting her apart from the others even in the final scene, where it was she, rather than Riccardo, who communicated most directly with the audience. On January 29, the striking Russian soprano Olga Romanko made the most of this highlighting, her face and figure conveying to perfection the noble suffering of an unhappy woman. Vocally she was less commanding -- her Slavic accent obscured words, and she had pitch problems at first in the upper register -- but the rich steadiness of her middle range and her unfailing sincerity of expression allowed for much intense phrasing as the opera progressed.
By contrast, the men in her life emerged less impressively. It was difficult to warm to Carlo Guelfi's bluffly authoritarian, bluntly phrased Renato, and Ramón Vargas's Riccardo appeared a somewhat immature lover, with his head pressed against Amelia's tummy in the big duet. He was charmingly playful -- the barcarole was staged as an operetta-style set-piece, with the chorus rowing merrily -- but never truly authoritative as an enlightened governor. This made for a less than moving final scene, but in the rest of the opera his singing, though unremarkable in volume, was expressively pertinent and gave considerable pleasure: all the technical challenges were met with ease, and his line had the chiseled elegance of a master of bel canto.
The singing of Malgorzata Walewska (Ulrica) was less focused, though she did not lack charisma; Cinzia Forte was frankly mediocre as Oscar. The choral singing also was disappointing, too hazy in diction to make much impact. Daniele Gatti's conducting, on the other hand, was consistently stimulating, if not always emotionally involving. He had consulted the critical edition of the score and rethought tempos and phrasing in a manner that was refreshing and made dramatic sense, and the orchestra responded with arresting alertness.
STEPHEN HASTINGS
ROME
In the season-opening production of Faust at Rome Opera, director-designer Hugo De Ana showed no lack of ideas, but few were original and many were tasteless. A huge, rotating, Plexiglas cube dominated the stage and served primarily as a container of props (such as tropical flowers for the "garden scene"). The costumes suggested fin-de-siècle decadence, and for the ballet scene, Faust was whisked into an even more degenerate 1930s Berlin brothel. A few solutions revealed the sensitivity De Ana has shown in other productions -- he strongly conveyed the desolate solitude of Marguerite in her often-cut "Il ne revient pas" -- but more often he seemed afraid of an uncluttered stage. He distracted the audience with irrelevance even during the soldiers' chorus, when he introduced circus mimes. His few strokes of originality (such as having Faust age again at the end) were unconvincingly realized.
Musically, the performance was more than adequate, with only minimal cuts, though little sense of style emerged. The phrasing of the male singers in particular was coarsened by strongly accented French. Roberto Scandiuzzi had plenty of volume and physical presence as Méphistophélès, but the character's sense of humor was too heavily underlined to be really amusing, and the voice too sounded consistently thick. Giuseppe Filianoti, a handsome tenor, possesses the necessary range and legato for Faust, but his singing lacked dynamic variety, and the rapid tempo adopted for "Salut, demeure" undermined the aria's enchantment. Alberto Gazale's healthy baritone voice is ideal for Valentin, but his phrasing too wanted poise and point.
More interesting was Darina Takova's Marguerite. The voice is not always perfectly limpid and steady, but it boasts a wide range of colors, which the soprano used to moving effect, investing the character with real humanity. There was much to appreciate, too, in Marina Comparato's ardent Siébel and Martha Senn's elegant Marthe.
Conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti, the company's music director, was warmly applauded by a packed house (Feb. 2) and guaranteed some nicely-honed orchestral playing, but his conducting lacked the rhythmic buoyancy and the smooth transitions of the finest exponents of this work.
STEPHEN HASTINGS
STOCKHOLM
Young Danish director Kaspar Holten transformed Folkoperan's Lucia di Lammermoor (seen Feb. 13), a romance set in Walter Scott's seventeenth-century Scotland, into a violent tale of medieval Viking bloodfeuds, underlining the early connections between Scotland and Scandinavia. Holten took advantage of instrumental interludes to stage erotic and violent moments for a relentless, Braveheart-style evening. As Øland costumed the Highlanders in sober tartans and tattered leather and furs, with Lucia in spotless white linen. The tragedy unrolled against Christian Friedländer's rude stockade, made up of movable units quickly rearranged by the cast for rapid scene changes. Kevin Wyn-Jones's moody lighting and fog countered Donizetti's cheerful lyricism.
The staging emphasized the brutality of the setting. Early in the overture, a frightened Lucia slipped into the stockade to meet Edgardo. While a sneering Normanno observed them, they kissed but were startled by a noise (the orchestra's loud chord). Their unease set an ominous tone that never abated. The mud- and blood-spattered Highland warriors, eager to protect the treaty value of the clan's trophy, Lucia, were quick to threaten violence at the least offense. Normanno's scheming provided a focus for the dull-witted Enrico's instinctive ferocity. Highly anxious to begin with, the hapless Lucia slid into a growing hysteria that climaxed with her onstage murder of her bridegroom, drawing gasps from the audience as she calmly pushed him over the edge of the gallery. (He landed with a loud thud.) She spilled quantities of stage blood in her vividly suicidal mad scene, and Edgardo's death soon contributed to the bloodbath.
Kerstin Avemo was a fragile, demented and lovely Lucia. She sang with a secure, rich and crystalline top and clean, expressive coloratura, but a husky breathiness obscured the bel canto line in her middle range. Ulf Lundmark was an intriguingly bumbling, gruff-voiced Enrico, easily manipulated by his Iago-like trusty. Björn Margulies dalla Santa was a charismatic, menacing Normanno but oversang his climaxes. (All the tenors tended to bellow on top.) Joaquin Muñoz (Edgardo) sang acceptably but was placid as both lover and fighter. Arturo's casually violent greed was well served by Staffan Jennehov's reedy tenor. Arrayed above the stage, the orchestra was conducted by Kerstin Nerbe with suppleness and sensitivity.
SUSAN BRODIE
GÖTEBORG
Göteborgs Operan offers broad programming: on February 14, while crowds applauded A Chorus Line in the main theater, a smaller group trickled into the studio theater for a late performance of MOD. A triple bill devoted to jealousy and madness, MOD featured Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King, Benjamin Britten's Phaedra and Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung. The program looked intriguing on paper, but as presented these intense works didn't make the expected impact.
Performed without intermission in a cabaret setting, the three monodramas were linked by a narration about love's devastation, delivered from the audience by actor Håkon Palm as the kind of inappropriately talkative stranger one instinctively avoids. The playing space, designed by Monika Frelin (who also designed costumes), held about eighty spectators at small round tables; while awaiting the performance, one could order refreshments and study the glowing, five-branched walkway that undulated through the room. Music stands and piano and harpsichord dotted the perimeter of the playing area, and at one end of the room stood the exterior wall of a white house. On the walkway at the opposite end of the space was a woman's dressing table, and a canopy of four crimson streamers was festooned overhead.
First and best on the program was Eight Songs. Based on texts by Britain's mad George III, the songs trace a trajectory of the monarch's deterioration as he tries to teach his birds to sing. Baritone Torgny Sporsén gave a riveting, physically compelling performance. Climbing out the window of the house and down the wall, he harangued the audience, interacted with wind players, crooned and danced a bluesy foxtrot and gradually decompensated, smashing a violin before he climbed back up the wall and into his lair. Whether running, leaping or slithering over the walkway on his belly, he maintained a crackling level of intensity while executing an extraordinary array of both conventional and extended vocal techniques.
After this tour de force, Britten's Phaedra, a dramatic cantata for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble, written in Baroque recitative-and-aria form, seemed a subdued afterthought. Pia Svorono gave a charged portrayal of the suicidal queen's despair over her ill-fated passion for her stepson, but the more introspective work simply couldn't match the theatrical impact of the Maxwell Davies. Svorono is a fine singer and a convincing actress, but Britten's austere vocal lines wanted the sumptuous tone and emotional abandon of a Janet Baker, for whom the work was written.
Erwartung would have made a stronger impression had it come first on the program, and the use of a recorded instrumental accompaniment sorely diminished the work's immediacy. But soprano Grith Fjeldmose gave a coolly intelligent, increasingly hysterical performance as she wandered the room in search of her lover. As the score grew in intensity, the scarlet streamers descended from the ceiling to become a long-tendrilled gown, a glowing shroud that covered her bland beige dress. Finn Rosengren directed the excellent instrumental ensemble for all three pieces.
More conventional repertoire was represented by Czech director David Radok's new production of Don Giovanni (seen Feb. 23). Radok offered a succession of arresting stage tableaux that didn't hang together. The production's historical schizophrenia was ultimately confusing rather than intriguing.
Ivan Theimer's sepia-toned painted backdrop of an eighteenth-century streetscape seen during the overture (and again during the epilogue) gave way to an empty, black space with a mirrored rear wall. The raked wooden stage was cryptically demarcated with red squares and flanked by four scaffold-like obelisks. In the near-absence of furniture, a parade of masked choristers carried on caskets that were used as a bed or a table, or even contained a body. Upstage, the image of a skeleton was projected sporadically throughout the evening. Katarína Hollá costumed most of the performers in eighteenth-century dress in subdued colors, with masked or white-faced choristers in black and barefoot peasants in white and spring green. Though Elvira wore a ruffled, iridescent-red gown showing lots of leg, Anna was primly dressed in black, with a slit across her bosom; for her scenes with Giovanni, she changed into black leotard and a petticoat frame. When they weren't carrying props, six bewigged female dancers en travesti alternated between textbook Baroque dances and jagged, balletic movement of the Cullberg school.
The production recalculated some character relationships: as a foil to Giovanni's casual wantonness was Elvira's Fatal Attraction determination to win over her erstwhile lover. Donna Anna seemed the befogged victim of her own attraction to the Don. With an elaborate wig, Don Ottavio took over the role of comic sexual dupe that traditionally belongs to Elvira.
Giovanni first appeared early in the overture, rising up from the floor, clad only in black undershorts. He dressed languidly, smirking archly at the audience until offstage voices drew his attention. There followed a busy sequence of processions and excursions into the orchestra pit (Giovanni and Leporello's favorite place to hide). Various stages of undress figured in distracting tableaux: Giovanni seduced of one of Elvira's maids during the catalogue aria, leaving her underwear behind as he carried her offstage. Elvira's other maid accompanied his Act II serenade with an exquisitely graceful striptease. The images were beautiful yet irritatingly self-indulgent.
Despite the peculiar staging, individual performances were satisfying. The three women offered distinctive personalities but voices of unusually similar weight. Carolina Sandgren, with incisive tone and clean coloratura, was a Donna Elvira to be reckoned with. Audience favorite Ann-Christine Larsson was a placid Donna Anna, Linda Tuvås a suitably winsome Zerlina. As the sexually omnivorous Giovanni, tall, gaunt-faced Åke Zetterström had an intriguing physical presence but a less commanding personality than John Lundgren's sonorous Leporello. Sweet-voiced, baby-faced Markus Schwartz was an appealing Masetto. Mattias Ermedahl was the foppish Don Ottavio.
Arnold Östman chose stylishly fleet tempos, which in the fifth performance of the run still left singers to scramble; orchestral details, such as the lovely cello obbligato in Zerlina's aria, were less than clear.
SUSAN BRODIE
GRAZ
Graz is the official Cultural Capital of Europe this year, and St. Petersburg is celebrating its 300th anniversary: what could be more natural than to bring together the two milestones? The Kirov Opera visited Graz's opera house for eleven evenings, including performances of a coproduced opera staging and two orchestral concerts (Feb. 11-23).
Domenico Cimarosa wrote his opera Cleopatra in 1789, when he was court composer for Russian empress Catherine II (who did not care for him), before he came to Vienna to work for Austrian emperor Leopold II (who did). In this short comedy, Marc Antony is about to leave Egypt to fight Octavian; Cleopatra tries all her feminine wiles to keep him at her side. Finally, she sees only one solution: to join him and to command her army to fight alongside his. With plenty of wit and clarity, Jonathan Miller directed this pleasant but slight piece, written for four singers and chorus. Miller made the eponymous heroine the epitome of the empty-headed blonde determined to get her own way, and Larissa Yudina brought to the role a bright, "little-girl" soprano. Anna Kiknadze displayed an attractive light mezzo as Antony, while tenor Dmitri Voropayev (coping well with a long coloratura aria) and mezzo Yelena Mirtova portrayed their servants. Mikhail Agrest's conducting would have benefitted from some of Miller's lightness of touch.
After the break, the Cleopatra set (a labyrinth of brown walls) was swept aside, leaving a bare box relieved only by an obelisk pierced by round holes. The work was Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, thus fulfilling the Kirov's promise of "300 years of Russian music." Together with conductor Valery Gergiev and a superb chorus, Miller fully realized the desperation of the Thebans and the oppressive atmosphere as the fateful evidence of the tragedy mounted. Yuri Alexeyev was a rather impassive Oedipus, occasionally showing strain in the role's cruel tessitura; Slata Bulicheva proved more passionate as Jocasta. Klaus-Maria Brandauer was the excellent, laid-back narrator.
The Kirov series opened with The Queen of Spades in Alexander Galibin's staging, in which black-and-white curtains (cleverly designed by Alexander Orlov) move around the stage both to separate the scenes and to convey the characters' emotional states. On March 14, Viktor Lutsiuk was the impressive Gherman; his bright, open tenor fully met the heavy vocal demands of his role. Irina Loskutova was a rather mature Lisa, with a good sense of line. Yevgeny Nikitin sang a fine, very baritonal Tomsky, Alexander Gergalov a noble Yeletsky. Bulicheva was an attractive Polina, Marianna Tarassova a rather young Countess.
Tarassova was more successful the next evening as Lyubov in Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa. Tatiana Pavlovskaya (as Lyubov's daughter, Maria) tended to force her whitish voice, but her soft singing was lovely, especially in her closing lullaby to the dying Andrei, sung rather woodenly by Oleg Balashov. Mikhail Kit was a fine Kochubei, but vocal honors went to the magnificent Nikolai Putilin in the title role. I had heard him elsewhere as Tomsky but was unprepared for the richness of his portrayal; his big Act II monologue was a highlight of a very fine performance. Ilya Shlepianov's old production, restaged by Yuri Alexandrov in Alexander Konstaninovski's handsome sets (refurbished by Vyacheslav Okunev), was colorful, direct and full of energetic "folk" dancing. The chorus again earned special praise for its superb singing. Here as in Queen of Spades, Gergiev gave the kind of white-hot performance one expects of him. Particularly noticeable was his ability to give his splendid orchestra full rein while retaining sufficient transparency to let the singers' voices come through clearly -- no mean feat in the singer-unfriendly acoustics of the Graz Opera House.
CHRISTOPHER NORTON-WELSH
STUTTGART
Stuttgart's new Giulio Cesare (Feb. 1) proved a lamentable affair. The opera's formal structure was severely damaged by an hour's worth of cuts. Olaf Altmann's two set designs, on a revolving stage, were a catastrophe: the first was a huge black box, replaced during the sinfonia that precedes Cleopatra's "V'adoro pupille" by an equally imposing pyramid (with Cleopatra on top of it). Risking their necks, the principals clambered up and down the pyramid until, at the end, it sank into the stage, and the singers lined up at the footlights for their final chorus, "Ritorni ormai."
Even before the overture, the performance began, as the singers arrived in modern dress, disappearing one after another into a photo booth. Moving rhythmically, they returned to put on their costumes while the overture began. While enacting Handel's plot, they used stilted, exaggerated gestures until the end, when they resumed their contemporary clothes. (Costume designer Heide Katsler seemed to have spent her budget at the flea market.)
The performance's second liability was its musical director, Raymond Leppard. Despite his pioneering work at the dawn of the early-music movement, he elicited sluggish, unfocused and rhythmically limp playing from the musicians -- missing completely the work's heroic dimension. (It's hard to understand why Leppard was imported for this production, when Stuttgart boasts a first-rate local specialist in early music: Frieder Bernius, who has won international acclaim for his recordings of Monteverdi, Hasse and Jommelli.) Somehow, Handel's music proved strong enough to survive these many setbacks.
Director Martin Kusej seemed afraid of the music, keeping the singers constantly on the move. Reinhard Traub's lighting evoked no southern warmth, and rather than reflect the music's eroticism, the cast was forced to mountain-climb while pursuing their sexy strategems. It all seemed very calculated, and the opera seemed to have been transported from Egypt to the polar circle.
The cast, made up entirely of local singers, revealed little feeling for the Italian language or Handelian ornamentation. Helene Schneiderman sang a straightforward Cesare, with firm tone and incisive attack but not much sensual allure. Helene Ranada needed more power for Tolemeo's poisonous tirades. Catriona Smith sang Cleopatra with a slender, whitish voice, but her stagework with a live snake was fearless. Tichina Vaughn's voice is too lightweight for Cornelia, and she sang with a heavy beat and low-pitched intonation. Claudia Mahnke, who can do no wrong, contributed a near-ideal Sesto, her beautiful voice fuelled by boyish impetuosity. Helmut Berger-Tuna contributed a sedate Curio, Markus Marquardt a bellowing Achilla, Maria Theresa Ullrich a hip, slatternly Nirena.
HORST KOEGLER
VIENNA
Why revive Donizetti's La Favorite without a brilliant, charismatic singing actress capable of tackling the demands of the title role? The Vienna Staatsoper did so, creating a production around Violeta Urmana, best known for singing Wagner's Kundry. Urmana hit most of Léonor's notes, but without ease, bel canto line or the remotest dramatic concept. Attempts to lighten the voice were only partially successful, and some high notes amounted to little more than thin screams. Looking a bit embarrassed (and constricted) in her tight, low-cut gowns, she was a wooden presence, garnering open laughter when she repeatedly whacked Don Gaspar with her tightly-clutched wedding bouquet.
Though Giuseppe Sabbatini has carved a niche for himself in the bel canto repertory, his thick, throaty tenor sounds better-suited to verismo. As Fernand, his voice sounded dry and nasal (accentuated by his French diction), and several notes (both forte and pianissimo) cracked; one broke twice in a single breath. While less self-conscious than his beloved, he, too, remained a dramatic void. The evening belonged to the Alphonse of handsome, versatile Carlos Alvarez. With each performance, the thirty-six-year-old baritone seems to grow. His voice is darkening and acquiring greater depth without a loss of flexibility or tonal beauty, and he is a natural actor. His subtly phrased "Viens, Léonor, viens" justifiably stopped the show.
As Balthazar, Giacomo Prestia displayed a focused, stentorian bass voice, evenly produced from top to bottom, and was a noble, foreboding presence. Debutant Genia Kühmeier seductively sang Inés's aria in a crystalline soprano, and tenor Cosmin Ifrim's Gaspar was a firm-voiced bully. Fabio Luisi drew controlled, idiomatic performances from the committed chorus and orchestra.
The Staatsoper has had disastrous luck with new productions of late. At the second performance of Favorite (Feb. 20), the audience booed Thomas Gruber's set for the Isle of St. Léon: a white-vinyl lounge dotted with video screens showing crashing waves. A humongous gold crown filled the stage for Act II, and reappeared upside-down in the following act. The monastery scenes were decorated with seventy-two crosses. (There was little else to do but count them.) Director John Dew mixed periods from the seventeenth through twenty-first centuries (the opera is set around 1340) and disregarded continuity, inserting a second intermission, apparently to allow cast members to spray their hair gray. José-Mañuel Vazaquez designed the lush costumes, an ultimately meaningless hodgepodge.
LARRY L. LASH
CONCERTS AND RECITALS
NEW YORK CITY
Heidi Grant Murphy, always an appealing presence on the Metropolitan Opera stage, brought some unfamiliar numbers to Alice Tully Hall for a recital (Feb. 9), part of Lincoln Center's "Great Performers" series. Accompanied by her husband, Kevin Murphy, on piano, the soprano presented six songs by Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937). Light and ingratiating, the songs seemed perfectly suited to Ms. Murphy's gifts but unlikely ever to enter the standard rep: a few days later, this listener couldn't remember a single phrase. Most of the material on her program capitalized on her girlish voice and demeanor -- Schubert's familiar "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" skirted the depths of melancholy in the song's first verses, favoring the sunny joys of the closing section.
It wasn't until the final set, five songs from American musical theater, that the singer presented herself as a grownup -- with impressive results. "Why Did I Choose You," from Michael Leonard's The Yearling, is a quiet expression of conjugal tenderness; "If I Were a Bell," from Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls, lay too low but evoked plenty of sass. Her interpretations were mostly unfussy, and Mr. Murphy's playing proved similarly direct. As she matures, one hopes that she'll continue to seek out material that grows with her, but most of this program suggested she isn't looking very hard.
She sometimes gives the impression that no note is too high for her, with abundant clear, fresh tone, but her middle and lower registers are less powerful and breathier. (She could easily have transposed a couple of the Pierné numbers up: she'd have been more comfortable, and no one would've been the wiser.) She seemed somewhat fatigued by the time she got to her third and final encore, "Ständchen." Her command of German and French was excellent, her English in the Broadway numbers wonderfully un-operatic, her enjoyment of the comic numbers (such as Ahrens and Flaherty's "Times Like This," with its recommendation of canine over human companionship) thoroughly contagious.
Lauren Flanigan's capacity to astonish an audience sets her apart from almost any performer outside the circus, and Flanigan always works without a net. At the start of her Valentine's Day concert at the Metropolitan Museum (her debut at that venue), she promised her audience "a very wild evening of music," and she proceeded to make good, with nearly two hours of works united by a theme ("Women Write about Love") and by her enthusiastic admiration for them. Not much else united the works, whose authors ranged from Fanny Mendelssohn, Pauline Viardot and Cécile Chaminade on the one hand to Thea Musgrave, Susan Botti and Deborah Drattell on the other, with Peggy Lee and Billie Holiday ranged somewhere in between.
Even Flanigan's voice didn't unite these songs: she used at least three different means of production. For jazzier numbers, she relied on an admirably unpretentious, conversational voice that frankly begged for amplification. If she's going to sing jazz, she may as well do what those divas do and use a microphone; numbers at the top of the program also suggested she wasn't fully warmed up. By the time she'd gotten to a couple of Greek numbers, hybrids between pop and classical, her voice was more flexible, especially when she liberated her operatic sound, with its familiar, gleaming edge. Later, in a winning rendition of Holiday's "Please Don't Do It in Here," she belted like a Broadway baby.
The long program, presented without intermission, featured one world premiere (Drattell's frankly uninspiring "Sonnet 18"), two versions of one lied by Clara Schumann and numbers by both Lily and Nadia Boulanger. It was a great deal to absorb, and Flanigan was visibly fatigued at the end. She made nothing easy for her listeners or for herself. Yet the rewards were significant. A gifted artist bared her supremely idiosyncratic soul for us; it's no wonder most other singers look dull by comparison.
An excellent ensemble joined Flanigan, sometimes seeming to wing it. Flanigan kept her nose in her scores most of the evening, too; at times, one felt as if one were sitting in the singer's living room, while she jammed with friends. Noteworthy among these, Miriam Charney played classical, Liz Magnes jazz piano; Greg Beyer played a music stand as a snare drum, as well as more conventional percussion instruments; Nana Simopoulos (also a composer, whose song "Anases" was a highlight) played bouzouki, sitar and didgeridoo.
Much-recorded Argentine mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink made a welcome New York appearance on February 23 at Alice Tully Hall, accompanied by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, as part of Lincoln Center's "Bach Variations" series. She proved an immensely appealing artist, youthful and pretty in a magenta gown, with a warm, ample voice. Her dramatic temperament was abundantly evident as she offered up her selections: Ferrandini's Giunta l'Ora Fatal, a Marian cantata formerly attributed to Handel; Bach's Vergnügte Ruh', Beliebte Seelenlust; and her encore, an aria from Vivaldi's cantata Cessate, Ormai Cessate. The Marian cantata in particular is a work of searing intensity, as plausible an account as any of the Virgin's anguish at the Crucifixion, and Fink dug deep, with an interpretation that made one hungry to hear her in fully-staged roles. Her coloratura technique is strong, but not until the encore did her trill make a convincing case for itself. The Freiburgers matched her mood for mood, with vivid, sympathetic playing in these numbers, as well as in two purely instrumental pieces, Bach's Concerto in D minor (BWV 1043) and Continuo in A major (BWV 1055), though the latter was marred by troubles with the reed in Katharina Arfken's oboe d'amore solo.
Thomas Hampson joined the impressive Emerson String Quartet and pianist Craig Rutenberg at Carnegie Hall (Feb. 8). The death-obsessed program reminded one listener of Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall, who reads only books with "death" in the title. Featured were Smetana's Quartet No. 1 in E minor ("From My Life") and Barber's Dover Beach, with their intimations of mortality; and Schubert's "Totengräbers Heimweh" (Gravedigger's Homesickness), "Der Jüngling und der Tod" (The Youth and Death) and "Der Tod und das Mädchen" (Death and the Maiden) in both its lied and quartet forms. For his contributions, Hampson seemed to be working very hard to persuade us of his personal connection to the music, but the effort seemed futile, the connection insincere, not least because he had a score in his hands at all times. Despite the elegance and tonal beauty of his performance, his interpretation seemed unfinished, still in rehearsal.
The baritone was in considerably more confident form nine days later, when he returned to Carnegie to sing lieder by Hugo Wolf, with Daniel Barenboim at the piano. "Where else in the world in a blizzard would people come out for a Wolf concert?" Hampson wondered, as he began his encores. The question might have been turned back on him: what other baritone would force us to come out in what proved to be one of the worst snowstorms in the city's history? Yet few baritones could make the trek so worthwhile. Attendance was far from SRO, but there was no doubt that everybody really wanted to be there, and Hampson rewarded us with a series of intriguing, nuanced readings. Though his physicality was restless during his appearance with the Emerson Quartet, on February 17, he assumed his usual stance for recital work -- like a spike or wedge driven into the floor, his feet close together, his shoulders broad. While he remained almost motionless through the lieder, his voice prowled like a jungle cat, tawny, lithe and powerful. (All but three selections were composed in the same year, 1888, clearly a watershed for Wolf.)
His excursions into characterization weren't uniformly successful -- the youthful speakers in "Nimmersatte Liebe" and "Der Tambour" were too cute for comfort. Though he located the puckish humor in his third encore, "Abschied," he fared best in more melancholy material, such as the three "Harfenspieler" songs; best of all was the simplicity of "Nachtzauber." Barenboim's virile command of the keyboard elicited a variety of symphonic colors, seldom seeming to defer to the singer yet breathing with him and (almost) never overpowering him.
Lyric baritone Wolfgang Holzmair began his recital at the Metropolitan Museum (Mar. 8) by donning spectacles and reading a few preparatory remarks "in addition to the excellent program notes" already provided. Both sets of notes, spoken and printed, pointed out connections between the two groups of lieder to be performed: selections from Ernst Krenek's delightful Ein Reisebuch aus den Österreichischen Alpen (A Travel-book from the Austrian Alps, Op. 62) and better-known songs of travel by Franz Schubert. The printed notes (by Kathryn L. Shanks Libin) had established Krenek's interest in and debt to Schubert, and in any case no advanced degree is required to discern a connection between Krenek's "Gewitter" and Schubert's "Nach einem Gewitter" when they're sung back to back. Given a few clues, how much more satisfying to find out for oneself the relationships between the songs. Holzmair dropped the professorial manner as soon as he began to sing, yet he continued by other means to spell out everything. That is his style.
He cannot leave well enough alone, gesticulating, grimacing and acting out almost every line of every song, even when the music requires stillness. Any one of his dramatic underlinings might be tasteful, but the aggregate can be tiresome. It is as if he lacked confidence in the expressive power of his voice, the material or his audience. In no case was the lack warranted.
Holzmair's high-lying instrument was on this occasion at its cleanest and shapeliest. Krenek's whimsical yet stimulating songs (to texts by the composer, written after a holiday) hearken by turns to the influences he found in jazz, Schubert and the twelve-tone school, and there are genuine laughs to be had in the poetry. Surely by now Holzmair ought to have a greater understanding of the value of this music; by his reckoning, he has "been living with these songs for seven or eight years," though he read each one from a score. (For the Schubert numbers, he removed his glasses and made greater eye-contact with the audience.) He's an Austrian with evident relish for good poetry and the scenic beauty of his (and the composers') homeland; all these songs speak to him directly. But he won't let the material work its charms on us in the same way.
Russell Ryan did fine work on piano, emoting nearly as much as the singer in the big chords of Krenek's "Friedhof im Gebirgsdorf" but eliciting nicely detailed, delicate work elsewhere. The varying styles of Krenek's songs posed no obstacle to him, and he achieved genuine eloquence in the Schubert songs.
Similar eloquence was displayed by German tenor Christoph Prégardien the next afternoon, in recital with his frequent collaborator, pianist Michael Gees. One wished Holzmair could have attended, because with every song (a selection of lieder by Schubert and Schumann), Prégardien demonstrated the virtues of restraint as if consciously providing an object-lesson for his absent colleague. Trusting the music, Prégardien seldom moved, but when he did, his gestures counted for much. (Gees's manner at the keyboard is more extroverted, sometimes even hammy, but the sheer sound of his playing, rich and wonderfully varied in dynamics, never seemed overdone.)
Prégardien profited from his unusually meaty lower register -- on the few occasions where these songs called on him to reach for a high note, he sounded comparatively insecure and uncertain. Yet for the greater portion of the program, his tone was seamless, his diction precise, his rhythm impeccable even when slowing to a crawl. He opened with two sets of Schubert songs, and though it seemed counterintuitive to begin a recital with the end of Winterreise, his reading of "Der Leiermann" was poised and intensely moving and signaled the audience to expect the unexpected. He overdid the character of the Maiden in "Der Tod und das Mädchen," and neither singer nor pianist seemed inclined to dance through "Geistertanz." But their "Erlkönig" cannily built up suspense in increasingly dramatic ebbs and flows, and the achievement seemed especially remarkable, since the song is heard so often. In the second half, selections from Schumann's Liederkreis (Op. 39), the teamwork of Prégardien and Gees reached its peak in a delicate, absorbing "Auf einer Burg" that concluded with a piano decrescendo from the singer that would rival the fadeouts of the best sound engineers. Prégardien never abandoned a formal, almost banker-ish reserve. The Alice Tully audience made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers.
WILLIAM V. MADISON
EDITOR'S NOTE: Our report on performances by Colin Davis and the New York Philharmonic of works by Berlioz will appear in this space soon.
PARIS
The Divertimento Berganza was one of the highlights at the Opéra Comique this season (seen Feb. 10). The one-woman show, directed by Vincent Boussard, was part of a series entitled "Les Grandes Voix S'Amusent," in which great opera singers perform crossover material, with results varying from embarrassing to almost convincing.
Teresa Berganza began the evening with an exploration of male roles she had never sung. Her audience can now boast of hearing Berganza sing Don Giovanni's serenade, Werther's "Pourquoi me réveiller?" and Wolfram's "O du mein holder Abendstern." These were slightly blousy and wayward vocally, but the exercise was not without a certain bucolic charm, accompanied by flamenco guitarist José Maria Gallardo del Rey and his small, skillful chamber group. After this slightly wrong-footed start, Berganza returned to the stage clutching a microphone and launched into a program primarily composed of Spanish cabaret songs. The familiar velvety timbre was slightly saturated by the microphone, and potential pop divas should note that singing with a microphone requires practice. The glowing beauty of Berganza's mezzo voice was a little unvaried in these circumstances, lacking the roughness of dark tobacco and alcohol that some numbers cried out for. Boussard provided simple blocking for the singer, but the omnipresent music stand, permissible in liederabends, proved unwelcome in popular music. A heartfelt "Bésame Mucho" was touching, the imitation of Dietrich in "Lili Marleen" husky and endearing. To conclude her program, Berganza sang flamenco-style numbers (written by Gallardo del Rey himself) with a genuine synthesis of voice and the requisite popular style. The singer claimed to have waited all her life to perform this repertoire, and she looked radiant in spectacular gowns by Azzaro.
For her encores, she returned to the stage without the microphone and, recalling her legendary Carmen in this theater (where the work had its premiere), launched into the Seguidilla. Electrifying the capacity audience, she showed that this great operatic voice is at its best being just that. Warming to her familiar repertoire, she launched into a rare Rossini aria, showing her still formidable agility and rock-like steadiness. Her "Voi che sapete" was a performance of age-defying, honeyed beauty. An exceptional, treasured artist let her hair down, but she was even better with it firmly pinned up.
As part of the Berlioz bicentennial celebrations, the Orchestre de Paris invited Michel Plasson to conduct the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and the chamber choir Les Eléments in Béatrice et Bénédict (Feb. 15). Plasson is an eloquent defender of French music, and the orchestra played exceptionally well, relishing the composer's remarkable orchestration and forward-looking musical language. One of the evening's musical highlights was the magical duet "Vous soupirez, Madame," between Héro and Ursule, her handmaid, which ends Act I. The voices of Inva Mula and Elodie Méchain blended to create a moment of timeless beauty. Throughout the evening Mula sang with full, plangent sound, lacking only clear diction to give her performance personality. Superior French diction came from Méchain, who possesses a rich, dark mezzo of great quality.
The aptly named Béatrice Uria-Monzon joined tenor Gordon Gietz to sing the title roles. France's leading Carmen sang her big aria with suitably grand tone and filled the Théâtre Mogador with a warm, even flow of tone, at times bordering on the overripe, but nonetheless earning a great ovation. Gietz sang with winning dramatic commitment and excellent diction. With some artistry, he dealt with serious shortness of tone in his upper register, but this rendered climactic moments consistently disappointing.
The evening's comedy came from seasoned veteran Gabriel Bacquier, as the bumbling choirmaster Somarone. Relishing the stage at age seventy-nine, he ranted at the excellent chorus and orchestra (in a scene that recalled his Fra Melitone), and his drinking song showed that his voice can still project with panache. Good support came from the promising young baritone Jean-Sébastien Bou (Claudio) and bass René Schirrer (Don Pédro). Lionel Erpelding was the offstage narrator.
STEPHEN MUDGE
PHOTO CREDITS: © Beth Bergman 2003 (Voigt); © Johan Elbers 2003 (Heppner, Hunt Lieberson); © Dan Rest for Lyric Opera of Chicago 2003 (Chicago Verdians); © Chris Bennion/Seattle Opera 2003 (Norma), © George Hixson/HGO 2003 (Merry Widow); 87: © Volksoper Wien/J. Tscharyiski 2003 (Larsen); © Toni Muhr 2003 (Ariadne); © Chris Lee 2003 (Mattila)
OPERA NEWS, May 2003 Copyright © 2003 The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc.
From around the world
Francesca Zambello's epic Les Troyens seemed to stretch the dimensions of the Met stage in several directions. Gheorghiu, the Met's Marguerite Cassandre (Voigt) despairs at a doom she can see but can't stop (opposite page); brief happiness for Enée (Heppner), Didon (Hunt Lieberson) Chicago Verdians Diadkova, Shicoff Passionate priestesses: Podles´, Goerke
in Seattle's NormaHello, gorgeous: Skovhus and Graham in Houston's Widow "Harrowing": Larsen as the Prisoner "Ariadne auf Lexus"? Zerbinetta (Klobucar) with her troupe Keenlyside, a "Chaplinesque" Papageno "Bursting with charisma": Mattila
