Patriotism Goes Biblical at the Met

Verdi’s Nabucco

Metropolitan Opera

December 16, 2016

Grand opera at the Met.
Photo credit: MetOpera

The revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s production of Verdi’s Nabucco brought us pleasurably back to grand, grand opera at the Met. For works like this one, where the historical context plays such a central role in the plot, sticking to traditional sets (especially those as spectacular as the Met’s here) is a necessary choice. I’m all for modernizing and streamlining productions, but for certain operas, dazzling historical pomp is just what it takes. Once we saw a minimalist Aida with an alien-futuristic take by Fura dels Baus and it was beyond grotesque. But back to Nabucco: not only did this production that debuted in 2001 prove itself a timeless classic with stunning temples and gorgeous costumes but we were also lucky to assist a remarkable star-studded cast bring the whole thing to life with none other than the inimitable James Levine at the helm.

Abigail moves in for the kill.
Photo credit: MetOpera

Mezzo Jamie Barton played Fenena, Nabucco’s daughter. I always jump at the opportunity to her her sing especially since I was completely blown away by her Adalgisa in Norma last year in Los Angeles. But after hearing Barton in Nabucco it became clear to me that Bellini’s writing for Adalgisa just suits her voice in a whole other way. Here it was like listening to another artist, a perfectly fine singer, just not as transfixing. The same goes for tenor Russell Thomas as Ismaele, nephew of the King of Jerusalem. We were bowled over by him in that same L.A. Norma. Here he was good, just not as extraordinary as when we first got to know him. True that both Fenena and Ismaele are not as meaty when compared to other roles in Nabucco.

Soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska as Abigaille, Nabucco’s eldest daughter who discovers she’s of slave descent, was a force of nature to be reckoned with. Her sound is incredibly powerful though her Italian was often a bit muddled. From the beginning, however, she came across musically and theatrically as a woman on a mission, a power hungry animal in pursuit, a rebel with a cause.

Bass Sava Vemić as the high priest of Baal, an evil character pushing Abigaille to power, was making his Met debut. We first encountered this young singer in a Roberto Devereux where he played the most minor role but was the best and most powerful singer on stage after Mariella Devia. It was great to see him again. He sounded good but not quite as forceful as we remember him that late winter day. His voice came across a bit too young for the role, perhaps he still needs to figure out the Met’s acoustic. On the other hand, baritone Dmitry Belosselskiy as Zaccaria, high priest of the Hebrews, was a discovery, which is a testament to just how solid this cast was overall.

Tenor turned baritone steals the show.
Photo credit: Marty Sohl

Which brings us to the highlight of the night. The legendary Placido Domingo was strikingly expressive as Nabucco. I’m not sure that what we heard was necessarily a baritone, but he sounded full and raw, and played the emotional core of the opera like an open wound. Still going strong at his age, Domingo exceeded my expectations on every level. While some say that Placido should just stop pretending to be a baritone, after hearing him here, I cannot but disagree with them since, at least here, in a way, his lyrical expressivity as a life-long tenor translated very well into the baritonal role. No other singer on stage conveyed character as effectively as Domingo. He portrayed the journey of the hubristic king who falls into madness only to subsequently convert and become an enlightened ruler with a heart-wrenching humanity that found me tears more than once over the course of the evening.

Father-daughter dynamics turned on its head.
Photo credit: Marty Sohl

At the center of Nabucco is a father-daughter drama, around which revolves a series of satellite dilemmas that help to motivate and shape things the larger story of the captive Hebrew population and their desire for freedom. This is one of those rare operas in which the role of the villain is played not by an alpha male of one kind or another, but rather by a jealous, vindictive, power hungry woman. Who said that the history of opera was only populated by stories of men doing awful things to women?

And it all comes to a head in Act III. The individual threads come colliding together when Nabucco, the now disenfranchised father descends into his deepest darkest cave. Having lost his throne and his position as the patriarch of his people, he makes an incredibly moving reflective prayer-like plea. Having hit rock bottom, he touches a kind of madness that I can only liken to that of Shakespeare’s King Lear who suffers a similar fate at the hands of two of his daughters. Then of course, all of this is followed by Verdi’s big show-stopping patriotic choral interlude Va’ pensiero. Beautifully executed, it is staged in a golden halo of transcendent light that is as uplifting and gilded as the melody the terrific Met chorus gently sings. It is truly gorgeous stuff and perhaps the most stunning ode to nationalistic longing in the history of opera.

Biblical patriotism comes suffused in a warm halo of light.
Photo credit: MetOpera

In just the past few months we have encountered several of the most important and moving patriotic bits in the nineteenth-century Italian canon. Last October two of Rossini’s political hymns graced the stage in the same week in both L’italiana in Algeri (Isabella’s aria Pensa alla patria) and Guillaume Tell (the final chorus À nos accents religieux). In Macbeth, which LoftOpera so brilliantly brought to us in December, we got to hear Verdi’s breathtaking moment of collectively displaced reverie in Patria oppressa.

It has been a season rife with Risorgimento undertones, as all the great classics in the nationalist songbook were here. With the election cycle rattling away through it all in the background like an obnoxious New York radiator in the dead of winter, it has somehow felt fitting. If only today we were so lucky as to be blessed with a populism that sounded so melodious.

– Lui & Lei

 

The great king crumbles, moves us to tears.
Photo credit: MetOpera

All Hail, This Macbeth

Verdi’s Macbeth

LoftOpera

MAST Chocolate Factory, Brooklyn Navy Yards

December 10, 2016

All hail, LoftOpera's Macbeth
Photo credit: Robert Altman

The LoftOpera experience is always an extreme one, in abandoned industrial spaces that are steaming hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. But that is also one of the elements that makes this company so radically bold and unassumingly cutting edge. There is something subversive and secret-society-like about walking your way through deserted urban wastelands to look for an “OPERA” sign, of all things. Once you finally get into the venue, the contrast between the rawness of the surroundings and the superb artistic quality and sophistication of the performance is a thing of sublime beauty – and this time more than ever as they tackle their most ambitious project to date.

That comforting secret society sign
Photo credit: Allegri con fuoco

The indie company had initially announced Kurt Weil’s Mahoganny as their December show, but thank goodness something made them change their minds and they switched to Verdi’s Macbeth instead. Weil is interesting but Verdi is just grand.

But how do you do grand opera in a factory on a budget and still deliver? We could describe the sets, costumes, clever use of the space, projections, staging ideas, which were all very nice, but what truly made this show memorable was the music, performed by a stellar cast and a tight orchestra, led by maestro and music director Sean Kelly. Every singer on stage was extraordinary, from the leads to the chorus. I don’t know how they managed to assemble such a top-notch group across the board. Even big houses like the Met usually cast a mixed bag of singers where if you’re lucky the good ones make you forget the mediocre or bad ones. In this case LoftOpera truly orchestrated a perfect musical storm.

Born to be Macbeth
Photo credit: Robert Altman

Baritone Craig Irvin embodied Macbeth body and soul and rendered him as a man completely and utterly possessed. With a clear, handsome sound and impeccable Italian diction he intoned the Scot’s musical lines with dark and commanding delivery that boomed through the cavernous space. Irvin is a powerful singer-actor and from the moment he opened his mouth he had me hooked and drew me into Macbeth’s downward spiral of power, ambition and self-destruction. From our seats in the second row, he was Macbeth in his eyes, the way he carried his brow, in his mouth framed by a very fitting beard, down to the core of his being. This is not an easy role and Irvin not only delivered it but he also made it his own in a raging, almost diabolical way. It seems like this run is a role debut for him, which makes it even more impressive that he could embody it so brilliantly.

In director’s Laine Rettmer’s take, the tables are turned from the more common interpretation where it is Lady Macbeth who pushes her husband to evil deeds. This production introduces, during the overture, a backstory where the Macbeths lost their young son, which seems to suggest that grief and childlessness are some of the propelling forces here, and perhaps Lady M bears more of the burden than her husband. 

The sexual politics are reversed
Photo credit: Robert Altman

In fact, here it is Macbeth who pushes his wife to suicide during his Pietà, rispetto, amore. In this pathos invoking aria of realization and reflection on his guilt and the futility of his plans, he pushes a huge rock across the rear of the stage space, with his wife perched on top in the midst of her final breakdown. She commits suicide while he reflects on the vicissitudes of his fate. He came across as the more diabolical one, which was reinforced by other little directorial choices. Rather than focus on the indelible stains on his hands, this Macbeth wore Duncan’s blood stained stole as a royal accessory (instead of the traditional crown). As a symbol of his bloodguilt, the stole becomes a voluntary reminder that he could easily get rid of, yet he wears it with a certain hubristic pride. The deep dark pride of Irvin’s voice also vividly elevated this characteristic take on the story, not to mention his profound acting chops.

Lady Macbeth responds to the letter
Photo credit: Robert Altman

Soprano Elizabeth Baldwin as Lady Macbeth was vocally electrifying and delivered her several show-stopping scenes with gusto, power and agility. Her soprano has dark undertones and the wide range required for this role. In her opening Vieni t’affretta she truly gave it her all and held certain final notes for what seemed longer than usual, in an impressive virtuoso display. In the drinking song Si colmi il calice she was delightful and graciously balanced the joyful tune with the efforts to reign in her hallucinating husband. And her sleepwalking aria Una macchia è qui tuttora was cookoo and almost child-like. Generally, Baldwin’s acting came across as less aggressive than usual for this role, in line with the production’s take where she lost her child and her husband is the more evil of the couple.  

Bass Kevin Thompson as Banco was spectacular and possibly one of the most handsome and effortlessly powerful bass voices I have ever heard live. He reminds me of Rene Pape but with warmer and sexier undertones. Thompson’s instrument is smooth, deeply melodic and just hypnotically enthralling. And strong, oh so strong. I was sad to see him die so early in Act II as I just could not get enough of him. He was a commanding grounding force in the initial duet with Macbeth and delivered his last aria Come dal ciel precipita before getting assassinated with heart-wrenching and chilling effects. He also strikes a humble, caring presence when he dons the hat of father to his son in the culmination of Act II. This is a singer to watch out for.

The ensemble cast was killer
Photo credit: Robert Altman

Another terrific singer I wished had more to do was tenor Peter Scott Drackley as Macduff. While he had truly only one big aria, Ah, la paterna mano, he delivered it as though his life depended on it while he grieved over his family murdered by Macbeth. With perfect Italian, soaring expressivity and a clean sound, he created one of those moments where time stopped, and tears streamed down my face.

The chorus of witches unleashed
Photo credit: Robert Altman

The chorus was top notch, too, particularly in the Act I finale Schiudi inferno where it asks God to punish Duncan’s death. You could feel the emotions tingling in the soles of your feet, in your legs and running up your spine. It was spectacularly chilling, just as a true Macbeth should be. And in Act IV’s opening Patria oppressa, the chorus was magnificently moving in this patriotic bit Verdi snuck in (nothing to do with the Shakespearean original but hey it’s the Risorgimento in Italy).

Lady M tries again to wash her hands clean
Photo credit: Robert Altman

When it came to staging, the production made a great use of the MAST chocolate factory cathedral-like space. The sets per se amounted to little more than two rock-like structures strewn with moss, but the stairs that led to the upper level of the facility were equally used, as were the walls (for projections, mostly in the prophecy scene). Also, I particularly enjoyed how the group of witches emerged from the cavernous back of the “stage,” literally as ghostly figures emerging from darkness. A simple yet very impactful effect.

Yes, the venue lacked heating (I felt for Lady M when she poured a carafe of bloody water over herself in Act IV), but as we walked out into the industrial navy yard with the skyline glistening under the snow, we could only feel exhilaration. Because when Macbeth is done so well it’s just so damn good.

– Lei & Lui

Is that a dagger I see before me?
Photo credit: Robert Altman

The Mad Maiden of Orleans

Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco

Teatro alla Scala, Milan

December 23, 2015

Giovanna bears her cross triumphantly.
Photo credit: Brescia-Amisano/Teatro alla Scala

Lei: It’s always exciting to go to a show at La Scala where so many of the operas we love first debuted. This time even more so because Verdi’s Giovanna D’Arco was being performed again at La Scala 150 years after it was last staged there (in 1865, 20 years after its 1845 debut). And it’s not like it’s a La Scala issue, this opera is really rarely seen at any house around the world. Part of the reason seems to be the difficulty of finding singers able to tackle it. Which made this show all the more exciting. Vocal excellence! “New” Verdi! La Scala glamour! (and the pre-show Marchesino aperitivo with its cups of risotto alla Milanese remain a solid plus).

Lui: A much anticipated return to Milan’s Teatro alla Scala for the second installment in our holiday season opera tourism, this time for another rarity, a young Giuseppe Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco. Only his seventh opera, it’s really not the product of a green Verdi. Giovanna comes on the heels of Nabucco and Ernani and will be followed by Macbeth and Un ballo in maschera, among others, in quick succession.

Giovanna looks on as the king of her dreams is deposed.
Photo credit: Brescia-Amisano/Teatro alla Scala

Lei: First things first, here’s a recap of the little known plot, which diverges significantly from both the Schiller source material as well as history. We’re in medieval France, during the infamous Franco-Anglo Hundred Years’ War. Enter the king, Carlo (Charles VII), very worried that his troops may be defeated soon by the Brits and ready to give up his crown. He had a dream where mysterious voices told him to go into the forest and lay his sword and armor by a certain oak tree.

A father begins to suspect malfeasance.
Photo credit: Teatro alla Scala

The scene moves to the forest, where our pious maiden Giovanna lives with her intransigent and paranoid peasant father, Giacomo. Giovanna very much wants to fight with the French army and prays fervently to the Virgin Mary to procure her a sword and a helmet (una spada ed un cimiero). What a happy coincidence that the king left all his armaments next to the oak tree! So Giovanna is torn between demonic and angelic voices giving her conflicting instructions, but ends up happily putting on soldier gear and convincing the king to fight back. Her father is suspicious of all this and thinks she sold her soul to the devil.

Under Giovanna’s lead, the French crush the British in battle and the king and his lady-warrior fall in love, though Giovanna continues to hear voices and feels very sinful about the whole love thing. While everybody’s happy celebrating the victory, Giacomo publicly denounces his daughter of lustful behavior and witchcraft. Her terrified silence is seen as an admission and she’s turned to the English. When Giacomo hears her piously pray in the Brits’ prison, he understands her righteousness, frees her and even gives her his sword so that she can go back to battle. French army definitively wins, Giovanna dies on the battlefield and ascends to heaven in saintly fashion, the king and her father despair.

Giovanna in ecstasy.
Photo credit: Teatro alla Scala 

Lui: The production by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier was impactful and thought provoking. In their take, the protagonist is a disturbed young woman who has been transposed from the French Middle Ages to nineteenth-century institutional setting with a vaguely Freudian underpinning. Apparently suffering from some sort of schizophrenic hysteria induced by profound daddy issues, she aspires in her mind to a life of glory in the vein of Joan of Arc. And so, everything takes place in the confines of her room in the psychiatric ward, with armies, angels, demons, churches and statuesque equestrian kings all appearing as a series of vivid feverish visions.

Packing all this action into such a contained space emphasizes that everything is seen from Giovanna’s point of view. It’s all in her head. Rather than being a cop out, it is actually a clever trick to intensify the shaky plot of the opera. One of the ideas that inspired the directors were a series of early studies of hysteria conducted in the nineteenth century, documented by pictures of disturbed women going through extreme mood swings, including ecstatic contemplation. Interestingly, some historians have hypothesized that Joan of Arc’s saintly visions and voices were in fact due to some sort of mental illness (though many medical professionals disagree with such a diagnosis).

The patriarchy repents.
Photo credits: Teatro alla Scala

Lei: I wish I had seen a “traditional” Giovanna before in order to better appreciate the nuances and ideas of this one. The directors’ premise is that this libretto (based on Schiller’s Jungfrau von Orleans) has little to do with the historical character and is full of narrative holes (motivations of characters are not really fully developed), which gives them the freedom and even some grounds to interpret the story as the tale of a hysterical young lady having all sorts of Giovanna d’Arco visions and stories in her head.

The visionary hears voices.
Photo credit: Brescia-Amisano/Teatro alla Scala

There’s no doubt that Solera’s libretto diverges quite a lot from history: Giovanna is torn between angelic and demonic “voices” (when she really only heard saints and angels and was always adamant about her sacred mission), she has a love story with the king Carlo (totally historically ungrounded), she is condemned by a bigot father (false again, she was subject to inquisition by the church at the request of the English) and she dies on the battlefield (though everybody knows she was burnt at the stake).

And so, the libretto’s propelling emotional forces are the love between Giovanna and Carlo and, most importantly, the oppressive and obsessive father-daughter relationship of Giacomo and Giovanna. Leiser and Caurier’s psychoanalytical take made the dramatic tensions even more about sexual frustration (Giovanna wants Carlo but her father and the angelic voices pull her back) being the propeller for the heroine’s heroic deeds in the name of God.

Giovanna gives in to her baser desires.
Photo credit: Teatro alla Scala

Lui: I’m torn as to whether or not the production hit the nail on the head or just confounded matters unnecessarily. At the core the story in the libretto is relatively straightforward for an opera. It takes certain liberties with time and place but the general narrative flow only slightly borders on the avant-garde or surreal. Even the central father-daughter relationship is par for the course for Verdi, despite its unhealthy fixation on her virginity.

The production here takes those mildly avant-garde elements of time lapse and interiority and runs with them. On the whole I found the poetic license of the directors to be engaging and very satisfying, making the whole thing very deep and Freudian. Really poor Giovanna is a young woman repressed by her father. At the same time, there is a Don Quixote approach to the story where this simple peasant girl aspires to battlefield glory in the name of God and for the good of her country.

The religious warrior suits up.
Photo credit: Teatro alla Scala

In fact, in moments, as in the end of Act I, where she prays for the guidance of the Virgin Mary in her early quixotic desire to wage holy war against her enemies and to vindicate the king, I couldn’t help but think that the directors were also subtly drawing parallels with the religious warmongers of today. Giovanna has delusions of grandeur. Although her heart is seemingly in the right place, her desires are out of step with reality for a poor girl kept under lock and key by her father in some kind of convalescent ward. It was heartbreaking, oneiric, often surreal, and very intelligently carried out.

Lei: The orchestra was incredibly electric. I’ve never heard anything quite like it and from the first fiery bars of the overture when, after the soft start, the orchestra attacks the military triumphal themes, I didn’t know what hit me. So vigorous, fiery and intense. My first thought was that they were all on steroids, including maestro Riccardo Chailly who sported the energy of someone half his age. We were in very good musical hands. The pacing was thrilling. The opera sped along on overdrive, which contributed to the haunted feeling that Giovanna is not well, not in her right mind, but possessed, especially since the orchestra itself felt possessed.

Riccardo Chailly on fire.
Photo credit: Teatro alla Scala

Lui: The score was just fantastic, packed with sensational and breathtaking musical moments carrying a very fast paced plot. It was fun to discover that Giovanna contains a lot of Verdian musical nuggets that the composer will develop more fully in later operas. Most of the demonic bits reminded me of Macbeth, particularly in the forest and storm sequences with the forest chorus sounded a lot like Macbeth’s witches. Other times, Un Ballo in Maschera, Ernani and Traviata also come to mind. And so, Rossini was not the only one to “recycle” bits of his operas...

Lei: Verdi’s use of the chorus in Giovanna d’Arco is extraordinary. In this opera more than others the narrative importance of the chorus (magnificently lead by maestro Bruno Casoni) came across, making it really the fourth protagonist. It wore so many hats: poor folk, people broken by war, “voices” of demons and angels, British soldiers and French courtiers. The “voices” are particularly important as they play a central role in pushing Giovanna to action (and then martyrdom), even more in this production where everything is just in her head.

The chorus is an all-encompassing presence.
Photo credit: Brescia-Amisano/Teatro alla Scala

Lui: On stage and/or just off stage but still heard, they really do fill the role of something like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. They push the plot forward without actually becoming agents in the plot. They comment and they inflict themselves through moralizing or lazing or tormenting the protagonists in some of the most novel ways that I have ever seen in an opera, almost borrowing moves from Aeschylus’ Eumenides. The very particular way the chorus was dislocated in this production was pretty sensational too. I am still trying to figure out where the off-stage singers were as many times the voices felt like they were coming from the prima galleria. These unusual staging decisions added to the eerie surreal take on the story as a whole. I loved it. It produced such a unique musical experience.

Giovanna is tossed in a sea of torments.
Photo credit: Brescia-Amisano/Teatro alla Scala

Lei: The core cast was sensational. The three leads were extremely strong, with perfect voices for their roles. Anna Netrebko keeps getting better each time we see her. She displayed a superb vocal range and convincingly portrayed the fiery warrior but also the loving and mystical maiden, inspired and idealistic (and very cuckoo too). She’s always had power but now her sound is cleaner purer and her Italian more articulate. In fact, the Russian soprano sounded much better tonight than in her live recording of this same opera only two years ago in Salzburg. It is exciting to see such a great artist grow over the years. Netrebko’s acting was very specific and demanding, as she basically was always on stage one way or the other given the directors’ choice to have this be all in her head. She bounced around with youthful energy and intensely rendered Giovanna’s swings from crazed demented girl to warrior to determined martyr.

Declarations of love.
Photo credit: Teatro alla Scala

Francesco Meli as Carlo may be my new favorite tenor. He has a beautiful effortless sound, round and ardent, fills the space with a lyricism that’s very powerful too, as he held strong next to Netrebko (who usually drowns everybody out). As the gold plated king who had just descended from his equestrian statue mount, he was incredibly gripping. The whole opening three numbers are all his and he set the tone with an urgency that carried us through the rest of the night.

Verdian baritone Carlos Alvarez as Giacomo displayed a smooth legato, long lines and a wonderful musicality. His role of the paranoid almost demonic father is a complex one and he embodied it expressively, particularly touching in his final act of repentance when he realizes he entirely misunderstood his daughter. Bass Dmitry Beloselskiy in the minor role of Talbot, the English general had an impressive stage presence (he’s extraordinarily tall and muscular) and an even more astonishing voice, deep and dynamic yet extremely strong and effortless, riding with ease over the orchestra and chorus.

The patriarch who cannot be trusted.
Photo credit: Brescia-Amisano/Teatro alla Scala

Lui: The sets created by Christian Fenouillat were deceptively simple as they had as a base Giovanna’s room (with very few pieces of linear furniture), but as the plot unfolds all of the protagonist’s visions come to life in that same room. And that’s when the exciting stuff happens: the chorus popped out now behind transparent portions of the walls at the ground level now up above next to the ceiling, soldiers and spears broke through the walls during battle scenes, very vivid videos of lusty desires and saintly aspirations scrolled slowly across the walls, the massive cathedral of St. Denis emerged from the floor to then descend in thunder at the end of Act III, the statuesque golden king emerged from a trapdoor on his gold horse (very much like a monumental equestrian statue, as that’s how Giovanna imagines her ruler). And the very clever touch of having everybody but Giovanna and her father disappear as half of the stage literally sinks underground at the end of Act IV when she’s about to die and all her visions fade away.

A daughter burns at the stake in her mind.
Photo credit: Teatro alla Scala

Costumes by Agostino Cavalca very equally clever: all characters wore medieval clothes except for Giovanna’s father who, like her, belonged in the nineteenth century, emphasizing how the true and very troublesome dramatic core of the opera is the father/daughter relationship. And Giovanna, who navigates reality and fiction, had the most fluid and feverish transformation on stage during Act I: one moment she is a lost long-locked girl in a nightgown, the next she is cutting her hair, shredding her gown to a short tunic and donning gold armor and a helmet right over the top of her bed clothes, proudly pointing a sword towards the audience.

Una spada ed un cimier
Photo credit: Teatro alla Scala

Lei: I have never seen the merciless and hard to please public at La Scala go so unanimously wild with love and appreciation for all of the performers, musicians and directors. Maybe it was because Giovanna d’Arco is little known and rarely performed (and so the public does not have the tools to trash it like it does with more mainstream repertoire). Whatever the reason, this time there was none of the hooligan-like loggionisti behavior booing and shouting colorful insults left and right, rather, people were outdoing each other yelling “Brrrr-aviiiii!!!” at the top of their lungs and literally going crazy calling the cast back at least three times even after final bows. Not even at the stadium do you see such ardent displays of love and support! And that in itself was the most sensational and surprising sight of the evening.

– Lei & Lui

Unleash the ovations!
Photo credit: Teatro alla Scala

Giovanna's spirit rides on... and on.
Photo: Place des Pyramides in Paris, France

From Darkness to Light and Back

Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta & Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle

Metropolitan Opera

January 29, 2015

Opening night (after snow delay)

After surviving a false alarm of a snowstorm and dodging a handful of anti-Putin protesters picketing the Lincoln Square, we made it to the Met for the opening of a double bill of two dreamy one act operas in two unique new productions at the Met.

Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta

Iolanta: Eyes are only for crying
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

The story of a blind woman who has never been informed of her condition. This is Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta. She has been kept in isolation by her dominating father and has lived her whole life up to now thinking that we have eyes only for crying. When an unsuspecting stranger stumbles upon her home in the forest and he spills the beans about the beauty of sight, she is overcome by shock. It is a woman’s journey from darkness into light, with extremely poetic passages, such as the need to know what to desire before being ready to receive it, as well as love’s transformative force and a lot of nice stuff about the wonders of nature made even more wonderful by the force of light. We are repeatedly reminded that light was God’s first creation, and so religious symbolism is also very present, though I wonder if it is significant that the doctor who performs the miracle of restoring Iolanta’s sight is a Muslim gentleman. The opera is a cosmopolitan affair, set in France, sung in Russian, and featuring a Moroccan doctor who invokes Allah, go figure.

Seeing the light with her heart
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

The cast was pretty solid across the board. Polish tenor Piotr Beczala as the evening’s prince charming Vaudémont was strong and expressive, though his higher register is not the most soaring. Yet I generally prefer Beczala’s Russian performances (think last year’s Onegin) to his Italian roles (think Alfredo or the Duke), where his articulation does not always feel so natural. Russian baritone Aleksei Markov, as his friend Duke Robert, who is betrothed to Iolanta but in love with the sultry Mathilde, was the best male singer on stage. We discovered him as Germont in La Traviata last week and were really impressed by his instrument. Here his role was much more relaxed and carefree and his acting fit right in with his joyful, ardent singing as someone who is young and in love. And of course Anna Netrebko starred as Iolanta. She embodied the heroine with a remarkable innocence with her chesty voice that really flows with an effortless fluidity in Russian. It was impressive to see her succeed in this frail, tender, pure role after her uber-evil, unbridled force of nature performance as LadyMacbeth earlier this season. While the Russian soprano was vocally superb, particularly in her soaring duet with Vaudémont on the beauties of nature and light, I could not help but thinking that her voice is a touch too womanly for such a child-like character. Bass Alexei Tanovitski as the intransigent King Rene and baritone Elchin Azizov as the Moroccan doctor Ibn-Hakia were both solid grounding forces of the opera, though not particularly impressive.

The skiers arrive
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

In Tchaikovsky’s hands (and under Valery Gergiev’s baton), sung Russian is phenomenally beautiful, melodic and smooth. And considering its late romantic date (it debuted in 1892), the composer still gave us a number of moving melodic numbers, including several dramatic arias and a couple of memorable duets with tunes that really stick in your head. So much of it is really very dreamy and poetic, to the point of being a bit soporific as it plods along at a somnolent clip, despite the action packed second part of the short opera. In many ways, it reminded me of the dreaminess and symbolism of Debussy’s impressionistic masterpiece, Pelleas et Mellisande.

Trelinski's idea of paradise
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

The Mariusz Trelinski’s production was a bit disjointed, in the sense that it seemed to be set in a desolate wasteland of a space in the mountains or in the woods with uprooted trees strewn about around Iolanta’s little boxy wall-less house. So the general vibe was a stark kind of sadness, yet characters entered the scene remarking what a paradise the place is. I didn’t get it. It just didn’t work. Also, what was Prince Charming doing in that get up? Beczala shows up in leg warmers and a Uniqlo ultra-lightweight futuristic ski jacket and he just didn’t seem to fit in the otherwise 1930s mountain cabin setting. Not only that but he comes toting merrily a pair of skis, even though there isn’t a lick of snow anywhere to be found. He seems to have stepped not only out of the future (a future with high-tech affordable Japanese apparel) but also out of a different season. His winter to her spring. Finally, when Iolanta is cured and happily marries, the director’s idea of a visually exuberant and joyful ending is having uprooted trees get grounded and a massive chorus of waiters pop out. Maybe I don’t get Eastern European modern sensibilities, but that really did not work as a grand finale.

 

Iolanta's apotheosis
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

I understand that there is some kind of profound spiritual symbolism underlying Iolanta’s trajectory from darkness and spiritual insight into the light, no matter how disappointingly stark reality is once you can actually lay your eyes on it, but I just don’t see the full extent of these concepts very compellingly played out in this particular staging of it. Maybe it’s true what Anna Netrebko says about the opera in the liner notes to her recent recording of Iolanta for Deutsche Grammophon, namely, that it is not actually necessary to stage it. The beauty comes through in just a concert performance. The music says it all. Seeing with the heart, or, in the audience’s case, with the ears, is more transformative than seeing with the eyes, especially when what we have to look at is some half-baked trendy staging. A good production should heighten the sense of the libretto and the score, it should guide the audience to a deeper understanding of the subtleties and the storyline, highlight the ideas, elevate the emotions. When a production muddles the sense it can be most distracting.

Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle

Judith steps into darkness
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

Bluebeard’s Castle could also be considered a story about a woman overcome with the desire to see, the desire to know everything about her lover whom she follows obsessively into his scary castle, abandoning all light and hope behind her, almost in a Dantesque Inferno-entering manner. Through the dark woods she traipses. Judith’s journey from light and freedom into darkness and captivity is perfectly opposite Iolanta’s, neatly justifying the Met’s choice to present these two works together.

Bluebeard's enthralling power
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

German soprano Nadja Michael was stunning as Judith. She had dynamic stage presence, was very agile (not surprisingly since she was once a competitive swimmer), and managed to bring this character to life largely through her tormented and slightly possessed acting chops. Nadja Michael didn’t always have music to sing through which to express her character. Because the score is so relatively spare, she had to rely on her physical presence on the stage to tell the story. Russian bass Mikhail Petrenko as Bluebeard himself was strong too. While we first discovered him as Galitsky in Prince Igor last season, here he looked and sounded like a completely different (and much better) singer: darker, thicker, manlier and definitely scarier.  Bartók’s score does not necessarily give either of Judith or Bluebeard a lot to work with in terms of emotional vocal palette, however, they created the unsettling atmosphere of the piece in a way that I found riveting.

The journey through the castle begins
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

Welcome to my torture chamber
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

The production was very unusual. Mariusz Trelinski and his design team went for a horror film look that incorporates projections and electronic interludes that felt a little uneven but made for a very unique evening at the Met. A welcome change of pace. Though here too what was staged was often at odds with what is being stated or sung or declaimed in scary voices on and off stage, I found this take much more captivating than this same director’s approach in Iolanta. Bartók’s score lends itself to the creepy and campy and horror of Trelinski’s imaginative, often surreal staging. It had a very cinematographic feel, opening with a car approaching in the distance and stopping at the edge of a forest at the very back of the stage. A tall blonde woman, wearing a glamorous aquamarine silk backless evening gown, steps out of the car and follows a moody, dark-haired mystery man, wearing a tux with an undone necktie. They get through a dark, garage-like entrance, with glass walls dripping with rain (the walls are crying), and from there the downward spiral journey begins. We follow Judith in her quest through Bluebeard’s castle, from an art deco elevator suspended on the side of the stage, to a butcher-like torture chamber, a dreamy bathtub (supposedly representing the treasury, go figure), a Hitchcockian dining room with blood stained flowers, soaring views of a woodsy kingdom, a claustrophobic room tiled like a crossword puzzle (a lake of tears?!?) and the final other-worldly scene in which Judith encounters her own burial in the third person and the spirits of Bluebeard’s ex-wives.

 

An homage to Hitchcock's Rebecca
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

The Lake of Tears
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

The seventh chamber
Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

The singers, especially Nadja Michael, really sold this surreal and scary take. She had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. She really got bodily into the role of the possessed wife who as it turns out seems already to have died around the time that she ended up at Bluebeard’s castle, where it was already her destiny to end up a prisoner with the rest of his corpse brides and ex wives. And so her morbid curiosity to dig deeper into her new husband’s pathological secrets after penetrating his blood stained torture chamber and corridors with walls that cry suddenly makes some kind of sense once we get to the end. Though the ultimate allegorical force of the whole thing is never really fleshed out or spelled out. Trelinski gives us an out of body experience in an almost Lynchian key, rather than a meditation on the horrors of Europe in the midst of the Great War, which is the key in which I have heard it read in the past. The continent had been through so much that no one any longer wanted to see. In Bartók’s piece, a woman’s morbid curiosity pushes past the point of widespread denial, in what was definitely the scariest and most unusual opera we’ve seen so far.

 - Lui & Lei