Love in the Time of Faction

Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette

Metropolitan Opera

January 28, 2017

Our pair of convalescent lovers
Photo credit: Met Opera

It was (again) one of those evenings when the stage manager appears at the front of the stage to a palpable gasp of despair from every corner of the house. “Diana Damrau is recovering from a cold [pregnant pause] and so is Vittorio Grigolo…” A ripple of shock swept through the audience: No! The announcement continued, “and so they will be singing anyway. Enjoy the performance.” Thank goodness these two lead singers are normally exceptionally strong, which meant that despite their various states of convalescence, they sounded great both individually and together. Since they often sing together, the chemistry between them is evident.

Grigolo strikes his Romèo pose
Photo credit: Met Opera

Tenor Vittorio Grigolo is one of the most thrilling super divos to grace the Met stage of late. As per his usual, he chewed up the scenery, or rather he climbed all over it. There was hardly a pillar or a platform or a column that he didn’t run and jump and ramp up on. He literally bounced off the sets embodying a romantic super-hero with a voice to match his exuberant physical prowess. That soaring quality that we look for in a great romantic tenor was definitely there, but his voice was deeper this time out, chestier than I remember it. Perhaps that was due to the cold and if so it had a pleasantly manlier side effect.

Grigolo chews up the scenery
Photo credit: Met Opera

Grigolo had several moving moments, however he really took me by storm, emotionally, when he bounded pensively across the stage toward Juliette’s balcony in Act II to cry out, L’amour, l’amour!… Ah! lève-toi soleil. Young love is at the center of the opera and this moment puts its earliest gushing red flush in words, sets it to music. Grigolo’s boyish Neapolitan charms were on full display. He’s also just a pleasure to watch, gigioneggiando hither, thither and yon.

Soprano Diana Damrau often strikes the figure of a stately dame on the operatic stage with an equally stellar vocal technique. She is a master. Somehow in order to play the star-crossed young lover Juliette, she came off as fully rejuvenated, fresh faced and bubbly. She threw herself into the role energetically and with spunk. Even her costumes look great and were very flattering of her figure. In one way or another every time she breezed across the stage a cloud of muslin and gauze floated in a flurry all around her. This Juliette was celestial also thanks to the aura of lightweight fabric that always accompanied her. Damrau’s singing was also top notch, despite the cold.

A grand dame rejuvenated
Photo credit: Met Opera

Juliette’s famous waltz in Act I, Je veux vivre, was self-assured, defiant and flirty at the same time. She intoned with exuberance the verses in which she muses on girding herself against the assaults of love in favor of living life on her own terms. Laisse-moi sommeiller / Et respirer la rose, / Respirer la rose / Avant de l’effeuiller (Let me sleep and smell the rose, before despoiling it). The imagery of savoring the rose, rather than seizing it, poses a subtle affront to the classic carpe diem trope that has so often been employed by young men to coax their ladies into love. Damrau’s body language very cleverly sent one message while her words communicated another.

Mezzo-soprano Virginie Verrez sang a charming if not naïf rendition of Stéphano’s one big aria in the second half of Act III. With its refrain of Gardez bien la belle!, her take had less of an edge of assault, and instead came off as more of an innocent, playful taunt. The contrast was nevertheless felt inasmuch as it serves to introduce the climactic duel that closes the act and ends in deaths on both sides of the factional divide.

Stunning Italianate sets update the action to 18th Century Verona
Photo credit: Met Opera

This is, of course, the time honored story about the tragic star-crossed lovers of Verona. It’s first iteration dates back to Matteo Bandello’s novella, which was probably written between 1531-1545 and which had already been widely translated and imitated. Placed among his early works, Shakespeare’s own version dates to the end of the 16th century, which then provides the basis for the 1867 opera by Charles Gounod with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré.

At first encounter with the immaculately detailed sets designed by Michael Yeargin for Bartlett Sher’s new production, it would seem that the purists in the Met audience are finally getting what they always long for: a hyper-realistic period piece with all the fixings. And they really allow you to revel in the beauty of the scenery on stage. As you file into your seat the curtain is already up so you can feast your eyes on the beautifully detailed depiction of a very Veronese piazza with its palatial facades and abundant traces of Roman relics including a single column set up in the middle of the square.

Love in the time of factions
Photo credit: Met Opera

Once the show gets going, however, it becomes clear – primarily only through the costuming decisions made by Catherine Yuber – that the action has been set not in the early Italian Renaissance but rather it has been updated to the 18th century. The Capulets are dressed in coats and stockings that make them look more French, like the Bourbon monarchs who held power in Italy and elsewhere in this period, than like Italians of the time. The Montagues are dressed decidedly different. Romeo and his gang of hoodlums come off as belonging to some kind of rebel class of slightly later Jacobin revolutionaries sporting leather coats and frilly shirts unbuttoned (showing off hunky pectorals). But aren’t we supposed to still be in Italy? What does this production accomplish by setting the story of these two timeless lovers against the tensions of later (French?) political classes?

A world in which poetry and violence collide
Photo credit: Met Opera

The program notes tell us that the choice was to set the story in a “mythical Verona” that would represent “a beautiful but dangerous world where poetry or violence might erupt at any moment.” There was also some intended reference to Fellini’s Casanova but did not seem to fully work with the overall plot. While the sets may have been Italianate, the costumes were decidedly French. They seemed to pit the ancien régime off against a clan of Jacobin-looking revolutionaries, Capulets and Montagues, respectively.

The Met orchestra sounded terrific and from the moment that it launched into the big tragic chords of the overture to Gounod’s romantic masterpiece under the baton of Gianandrea Noseda, the turmoil and tumult rocking the world outside slowly faded away. Mind you it doesn’t turn out well for anybody involved. While in the play the tragedy leads to the reconciliation of the feuding families, Gounod’s version closes on the couple expiring together, which is a more definitive and dramatic ending, certainly more fitting for the operatic form.

– Lui & Lei

The couple expires and the story ends
Photo credit: Met Opera

Bizet’s Little Known Nuit Enchanteresse

Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles

(New production)

Metropolitan Opera

January 30, 2016

A friendship at the core of the love triangle.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

For the first time in 100 years, Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles makes its return to the stage of the Met in a new production by Penny Woolcock. The opening notes of the overture brought us underwater, as behind a massive translucent screen acrobats dived down and back up, with clever projections by 59 Productions creating ripples and bubbles as the divers swam through. Truly an enchanting start.  The curtain then opens on a shantytown, a fishing village of sorts on the outskirts of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, or at least that’s where an enormous billboard at the rear of the stage situates us. It features an advertisement for the local cash crop: pearls. Inspiration from the Deep of Eternal Beauty, it reads; followed by an address for the Sinhalese Jewelry and Gem Exchange, written in big contemporary capitalist letters on a billboard that dwarfs the rest of the stage for the duration of the first act. And in fact all of the local residents are apparently enslaved to this industry. The opening choral number is a joyous song about dancing in recognition of their indigenous divinity. But no one can afford to move. They’re all seated like indentured factory workers on the clock. No time to dance now!

The priestess arrives, the billboard dominates the scene.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

The composer was only 25 when he wrote Les Pêcheurs de Perles. Its irresistibly gorgeous score, here shining under the baton of Gianandrea Noseda, is rife with tranquil exoticism, all peace and quiet, an extended lullaby of breathtaking melodies. The first big musical hook is featured about halfway through Act I and its depth of expression catches you off guard. The male duet, Au fond du temple saint, makes this opera rather unique, placing male friendship at the heart of the story:

Jurons de rester amis!

Oh oui, jurons de rester amis!

Oui, c’est elle! C’est la déesse!

En ce jour qui vient nous unir,

Et fidèle à ma promesse,

Comme un frère je veux te chérir!

C’est elle, c’est la déesse

Qui vient en ce jour nous unir!

Oui, partageons le même sort,

Soyons unis jusqu’à la mort!

Here, the two friends recall how they both fell in love with the same priestess and were able to move past that and reinforce their own bond by swearing to remain friends and share the same fate until death do us part. It’s a love triangle buoyed by a heartfelt male bond that goes way back. And musically, it represents one of the soaring high points and recurring melodies of the opera, though it’s not the only one.

Till death do us part.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Everyone is always so crazy about this big bromance duet, but I can’t get enough of Nadir’s next big number, his nostalgia-laden aria, Je crois entendre encore. In context it also introduces several important clues into the character of Nadir while deepening some of the themes of the opera.

The lead up to his big aria begins with the arrival of the new priestess in town. The chorus welcomes and beseeches her: “Ah! come, let your chants drive away / the spirits of the water, / the fields and the woods.” Zurga, the newly appointed leader of the town, swears her in, forcing her to swear that she will abide by the following commands: “To keep away with your chants the dark spirits of night, to live friendless, without a husband or a lover?” To which Leila responds, “I promise!”

The priestess after taking her vows.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

In the Je crois entendre encore aria that follows on the heels of this ceremonial exchange, Nadir expresses all the opposite sentiments regarding the magic that happens only under the enchantment of night – the very same archetypal night that the townsfolk and pearl fishers fear so much.

I think I can still hear, (Je crois entendre encore)

hidden under the palm-trees,

her tender and sonorous voice

singing like a dove’s.

O bewitching night,

exquisite rapture ...

Rather than fret over and fear the “dark spirits of night” from which Zurga and the chorus begged the priestess to liberate them, Nadir stares directly into the abyss and finds rapture and bliss. He’s apparently a free-spirited young man who likes to walk on the edge. He’s not afraid of what the night has to offer.

Under the light of the stars

I can almost see her

slightly opening her long veils

to the tepid evening breeze.

Starlight is all he needs to suggestively pursue the satisfaction of his desire and to envision his long lost love. But that doesn’t change the fact that, as my dad always says, “Nothing good ever happens after dark,” because in the end his brand of intrepid exploration under cover of night inevitably leads to his (temporary) demise.

Nadir under the influence of night.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Nadir’s  hubristic transgression, his overstepping, his pursuit of the priestess after dark in the forbidden sacred grounds, seems to be the cause, at least in the popular imagination, of the tidal wave that wipes out most of the village. Nadir is the Dionysian force in the story. His illicit desire for the priestess sends the natural order of things out of equilibrium and the consequences are dire for everyone involved. It jeopardizes friendships, love interests, community politics, even his own life, since it leads directly to the climax on the pyre where he is set to be burned alive.

Matthew Polenzani not only completely owned his duet with Zurga, he took that big first aria, Je crois entendre encore, to a whole other level. He’s the one who has the guts to stare into the abyss of the night and its mysteries. And this depth of melancholic feeling came out in his performance. Polenzani proved himself to be incredibly versatile. He embodied Nadir’s long lyrical lines with delicate tact and gentle emotion. I always thought that this tenor’s voice was a little bit on the lightweight side, but here his lightness turned into delicate effortless nostalgic emotion and worked perfectly for the character. He was all vulnerability and tender passion.

The first half of the opera may be an extended lullaby melodically, but that’s not to say that it isn’t without its dramatic tensions. The image in the billboard back in Act I is proleptic of the action at the end of the Act III. The billboard is a picture of placid nature with the waters in perfect balance. It serves as a reminder of just how tenuous the beauty of nature can be. When its Apollonian order goes out of balance civilization is in trouble. Once the temple is corrupted by the unchaste desire of its priestess, Nature reacts. The tidal wave is unleashed and the shantytown ends up under water.

A chaste priestess with erotic feelings of her own.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Diana Damrau is the raison d’etre of this opera being produced at the Met. She’s such a big star that the Met just asked her what she would like to sing and she picked Pecheurs de Perles. This opera is a great display of the soprano’s lyric coloratura, here laced with eastern ornaments. Leila’s character is strong, passionate and fragile at the same time. Beautiful. She has her first big moment at the beginning of Act II with the aria O Dieu Brahma featuring long beautiful lyric lines. She is priestess but it seems that she also has feelings of her own to tend with. A bit like a Norma figure, to some extent.

Leila prepares for martyrdom.
Photo credit: Ken Howard 

Leila’s duet with Zurga at the beginning of Act III, Va, prends aussi ma vie, once the storm has subsided and everybody is picking themselves back up and drying off. Leila bursts into Zurga’s bureaucratic party office and she purposes a fierce martyrdom for her lover. As the tensions rise between the two of them, there is a big plot twist at the end of the sequence: we find out that he is the fugitive whom she saved when she was a child and so he mood swings yet again, this time from a mad fit of irrational rage out of jealousy to that of mercy, indebtedness and forgiveness.

Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecen has fire and conveys a sensual brutal intensity that’s always a pleasure to hear (and see). His Zurga was an emotional roller coaster. One moment merciful, the next he’s condemning everyone to death. And vice versa. He’s willing to endanger himself and the whole community in order to liberate the lovers with whom he is suddenly again sympathetic. Kwiecen’s duet with Leila in Act II was particularly gripping though as he shined for his singing as much as for his dynamic and charismatic acting.

Zurga's fiery mood swings.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles was a real find. It is one of the truly beautiful and satisfying operas that would make a great gateway drug for newcomers to opera. Short and lovely, big yet simple to follow dramatic moments, highly pleasurable. I hope the Met will continue to bring it back in order to bait new opera fans as well as scour the archives for another number like this one to expand the repertory with other startling gems like this one. Bravi, bravi, in verità!

– Lui & Lei

Spectacular seaside effects by the visionary 59 Productions team.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

The pearl fishers dive for the local cash crop.
Photo credit: Ken Howard 

Friendship is an insurmountable chasm.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Love will find a way to transgress the impossible.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

The pyre awaits the lusty lovers.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

A post-apocalyptic execution scene.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Igor in the Poppy Fields (with PTSD)

Borodin’s Prince Igor

Met - February 21, 2014

Prince Igor prepares for war with the Polovstians.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

Lei: Whose Prince Igor is it? Is it even Prince Igor anymore? Where does one draw the line when directorial cuts and additions, score rearrangements and libretto departures transform an opera into something radically different from the "original"? Borodin's libretto is extremely rich and goes in so many directions that at times it’s hard to really pin down a cohesive narrative thread. The fragmentary nature of the opera explains why every production of Prince Igor constitutes a departure from Borodin’s intentions, including the opera’s 1890 debut that featured the posthumous composition and rearrangement of large portions of the work by two other composers (Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov).

Lui: Director Dmitri Tcherniakov claimed that with this production he intended to return to the source material and restore Prince Igor “as Borodin left it,” which is somehow ironic because at the end of the day the Met's new production is a unique and original take on a visionary yet still fragmentary score. It was most successful in its oneiric transitions between the first two scenes of Act I. Prince Igor's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the aftermath of the battle finds us slipping in and out of consciousness with the injured prince after his army has been defeated and he and his son have ended up prisoners of the Polovtsian tribe they had attacked. Switching between projections onto a huge diaphanous screen at the front of the stage and peering through it at the action played out behind it in a spectacularly beautiful field of poppies, we struggle to make sense out of things right along with the wounded prince as he begins to pick up the pieces of what is left after his calamitous, hubristic fall. I've never seen anything so dreamy on the stage before. It was wildly effective, although if you don't know the story there was little in these directorial decisions that helped to clarify the plot. To me that was the beauty of it.
 

Nymphs frolic in Prince Igor's field of joy.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

Lei: Beautiful, yes, but does it work with Borodin's libretto? Or is the director just telling his own story? Why is Igor so happy in the poppy field with the nymphs dancing and singing beautifully around him about how great the Khan is? Does he think he's the Khan they're talking about? Or does he really like the music? Or the poppies? The Met's synopsis says that in this scene Igor "has a vision of the overwhelming joy of living life to its fullest." I may be too literal, but according to the libretto and the score here Igor is a captive prisoner assisting the display of power of the Khan who defeated him in battle and is now rubbing in how great he is and how sexy his beautiful dancers are. Maybe here Tcherniakov's Igor is just tripping out due to the effects of PTSD and imagining happy things. It was really a pleasure to watch, just a lot of freestyling with respect to what was being sung.

Lui: The dancers slowly emerge out of the tall grasses and poppies and dance around him like woodland nymphs, more in a hippy-happy apotheosis of joy and exaltation than the eroto-martial glorification of the greatness of the Khan that the score and the text suggest. The whole sequence in Tcherniakov's vision represents a powerful awakening for the Prince as he begins to come to terms with his new reality. Only in this take on the famous dance does he seem to glimpse a new joyous freedom, in the wake of his trauma, disgrace and defeat. Unlike the mighty Greek hero Ajax, whose madness in the aftermath of war takes over and eventually precipitates a tragic suicidal end, Prince Igor is slowly set on his road to recovery. And it begins, in this rendition, with some serious tripped-out introspection. Where does one find the strength to get back on the horse once you've fallen off. How does one go about picking up where you left off. The end then takes us to a particularly startling resolution of these questions.

The vaguely medieval meeting hall in Igor's native Putivl.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

Lei: Compared to the extraordinary visual effects of the poppy field scenes, the barren interior of the vaguely medieval hall used in the Prologue and Act II was far less visually engaging and also did not really work for the eclipse episode that in other productions can be so spectacular (think the 2013 Bolschoi production). Putting aside the visual thrill, it was surprising that the key narrative moment of the eclipse was so understated – it being the bad omen Igor in his hubris decides to ignore when he goes to war leading his troops into disaster. Act III was a more dynamic yet depressing assembly of war-zone debris and fires, looking uncomfortably contemporary like images coming out of Ukraine these days.

Vladimir and Konchakovna's oneiric Act III flashback.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera 

Lui: It would have been great if the production could have maintained its initial oneiric quality, but techniques of this sort really only returned toward the end when, in a daring flashback interpolation, the Prince and his son stage their escape together and we get to glimpse the pain Vladimir experiences when he is forced to separate from the princess Konchakovna, with whom he had fallen in love during their time in the Khan's captivity.

Lei: Bass Ildar Abdrazakov was a great Prince Igor, owning the character in all of its nuances and delivering consistently powerful, deep and smooth singing. Abdrazakov is highly charismatic and a great actor, particularly effective in rendering Tcherniakov’s introspective tormented take on the prince. However, I wish his character had more singing time. It is a good thing that this production chose to reinsert a long Prince Igor monologue in Act III so we could hear more Abdrazakov.

Yaroslavna and Prince Galitsky duke it out.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

Soprano Oksana Dyka as Igor’s wife, Yaroslavna, had the most stage time and more singing than anybody else. She really carried entire portions of Acts II and III. She was consistently solid, piercingly clear and powerful though she did not display many nuances or earth-shaking passion. Though this may have something to do with Tcherniakov's take on their relationship. In his version, she is the Penelope under whom Igor's reign fell into ruin. Upon Igor's return she is the last person he wants to see. Rather than reunite, he is so self-absorbed in his disillusionment that he does everything but spit on her.

Tenor Sergey Semishkur and mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili portrayed the young rebellious lovers in the sub-plot tryst between Igor's son Vladimir and the Khan's daughter Konchakovna. Semishkur sounded too weak and shrill and was not a very convincing young ardent lover. It seems like the current famine of good tenors has spread to the Russians too. On the other hand, Rachvelishvili's singing was fiery, fluid and passionate. Her acting was particularly impressive in Act III, when she quickly covered half of the stage on her knees running after Vladimir all while lyrically imploring him not to go.

Prince Galitsky is a terrific villain role: he abducts and deflowers young maidens, attempts a coup d'etat, ingratiates his subjects with free booze, betrays Igor's trust and generally wines and dines all night long with his raucous crowd of Rigolettian courtiers. Mikhail Petrenko had great stage presence, displaying Galitsky's schemings and wrongdoings with energetic defiant swagger, but unfortunately his singing did not match such accurate acting. His delivery was so weak it was hard to even hear him, and generally lacked the expressiveness this role demands.

Khan Konchak extends his hospitality to Prince Igor.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

I am usually a big fan of bass Stefan Kocán but was underwhelmed by his portrayal of Khan Konchak who came across a bit stiff, not fully conveying the buoyant power of the character. I hope Kocan will be able to grow in this role with the kind of confident fluidity we saw him exhibit as Gremin and Sparafucile earlier this year. Also, I was not very convinced by the choice to make him an ugly, old, bald general sporting an absurd, yellow, nineteenth-century military uniform – Kocan’s natural slavic charms could have been used so much better to portray the exotic and powerful Khan.

According to a Belarusian friend who caught the opera with us, true Russian opera is more about the collective than the individual, and the collective was indeed the real star of the night. The Met Orchestra lead by Pavel Smelkov and the massive magnificent choruses delivered the most beautifully intense musical moments of the entire performance. I'm not sure what happened to Gianandrea Noseda. I was looking forward to an Italian conducting this Russian masterpiece that he also helped arrange for this production, though it seems like he will be conducting the rest of Prince Igor's run.

The defeated anti-hero comes home.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

The directorial choices for the finale were terrific, completely overturning what is done in more standard productions. Usually, Prince Igor is the defeated anti-hero who caused his people’s ruin and is saluted as a savior and an inspiration in an uplifting display of Russian nationalism. In Tcherniakov’s version, there is an added bit during which Igor, rightly uncomfortable with the celebrations, rings a makeshift bell and starts literally picking up the pieces of his devastated town and putting them back together, one by one, inspiring his countrymen to do the same without any fanfare. It’s not about glorious blazing victory, but rather acknowledging failures and mistakes: putting one’s head down and pushing through to start anew. Tcherniakov's take really emphasizes Igor's individual perspective by showing a glimpse of a sequel and making him a more credible hero as a man who has only just begun the process of resurrection after his defeat. The fact that the music accompanying such a dramatically idiosyncratic finale was taken from another Borodin composition that had nothing to do with the opera is not an insignificant detail. Nevertheless, while it was definitely not part of Borodin’s “original” vision, Tcherniakov's ending was highly tragic, human and real.

The sullen finale.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

Lui: The questions still stands. Whose Prince Igor is it? No matter where you draw the line, to say that Tcherniakov overstepped it is an understatement. After all, he took wild liberties not only with his staging, but also and more importantly with the libretto and score. During the Polovtsian dances, for example, they just as well could have sung the phone book in Cantonese, considering how little the action on stage corresponded with the breathtaking choral parts. In the final scene, the director moved to the Act I poppy field the husband-and-wife reunion duet and replaced it with a Borodin number that was not even composed for this opera. And so, this particular production is not necessarily Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor, but Dmitri Tcherniakov's. Regardless of how close an approximation he and his collaborators attempted to make of the original score, Tcherniakov made this one his own different (albeit beautiful) animal.

Against all odds, Igor "living life to its fullest."
Photo Credit: Sara Krulwich/New York Times