Rooting for Amneris

Verdi’s Aida

Metropolitan Opera

October 2, 2018

The leading ladies go head to head
Photo credit: Met Opera

Aida is not among my Verdi favorite operas, it’s too schematic. Still, this time the Met secured an exciting cast, with most of the lead singers being top notch: Anna Netrebko in the title role, mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili as Amneris and baritone Quinn Kelsey as Amonasro. I never cared much for the tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko (here as Radamés), but I was willing to put up with him given the rest of the cast.

All of the PR buzz was, understandably, concentrated on Anna Netrebko’s ticket-selling powers. The Russian super diva has been moving towards heavier repertoire and, according to an interview earlier this year with Opera News, this was the “top in difficulty” for her, so it was particularly interesting to check her out:

“Verdi did almost a trick on the soprano in Aida, because after two acts, which are quite heavy and demanding, with lots of singing, low and also high, above the chorus — my god, the second act, it’s killer — and then suddenly Aida comes into the third act with a completely different voice [...] You will be in trouble if you don’t prepare a strategy for this act. The aria, the duet with Amonasro, the duet with Radamès — it’s like a non-stop marathon, and your body is saying, ‘Okay, well, aaaaagh — when will this be finished?’” (Opera News, March 2018)

While I admired Netrebko’s Aida, I was not overwhelmed by it. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her performance, it was flawless, her voice at the height of its power, full and lyrical. The problem is that I am not crazy about the character itself. Aida is a tragic heroine, yes, but without much fire in her. She is mostly torn between a secret love (for Radamés, Egyptian general) and duty (to her family and country, Ethiopia, at war with Egypt). She is in a subordinate and powerless position (a slave at the Egyptian court), is manipulated by her scheming father, and finally chooses to die quietly (in a sealed tomb with her lover). Aida’s signing is beautiful, but generally either distressed or nostalgic.

Aida, the suppliant
Photo credit: Met Opera

Netrebko did everything she could to give depth to the character, but no matter what she did, her Aida paled next to Anita Rachvelishvili’s Amneris, who quite frankly stole the show and made it clear that when the Egyptian princess is portrayed by an amazing singer, she is the most interesting character of the whole opera.

Aida assumes the pose of powerless subordination
Photo credit: Met Opera

The dramatic complexities of Amneris span different levels: she is madly in love with Radamés, but also hyper jealous, her main suspicion is (rightly) her slave Aida and she does not hesitate to use her power to trick and humiliate her. After the pharaoh gives Amneris’ hand to Radamés, her joy quickly turns to vindictive rage once she discovers that her bridegroom is betraying her love and country. This rollercoaster leads to the trial scene in Act IV where emotional temperatures rise even more: Amneris is torn between her deep love for Radamés and her wounded pride, she wants to use her powers to save him from a death sentence but only if he forgets Aida. When he refuses, she unleashes her rage:

Chi ti salva, o sciagurato,
Dalla sorte che ti aspetta?
In furore hai tu cangiato
Un amor che ugual non ha.                
De’ miei pianti la vendetta
Ora il cielo compirà.*

But only to repent in despair shortly thereafter:

Ohimè!… morir mi sento… Oh! chi lo salva?
E in poter di costoro                    
Io stessa lo gettai!… Ora, a te impreco,
Atroce gelosia, che la sua morte
E il lutto eterno del mio cor segnasti!**

She then begs passionately the high priest to pardon Radamés and, when that does not work, she curses him and storms off. I mean, come on! Give me more of this and less of wimpy celeste Aida!

In a way, Amneris’ explosive tragedy reminded me of certain operatic soprano assoluta characters such as Elisabetta (in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux) and Bellini’s Norma, who are torn because of the conflicts between their public power and private passions.

Amneris on the verge
Photo credit: Met Opera

In the hands of Anita Rachvelishvili, Amneris came to life as a passionate, viscerally intense woman on a mission. Her fluid smoky instrument ranged from light and lyrical in Act II when she dreams of her loved one, to threatening and menacing when she tricks Aida, to then fully unleash with fury, doubt and despair in the turbulent trial scene in Act IV, with such an intensity that I felt shivers down my spine. Rachvelishvili’s acting was terrific too, her body so perfectly in sync with the emotions of her signing – here are her thoughts on this moment:

Amneris is “just in love, that’s all. And she is jealous, like every in-love woman. She is so distressed that she is losing her only love. When it comes to the last judgment scene, I concentrate all my energies. You have to express yourself not only with the voice but with everything, the body — put out all of your emotions, all of your pain, in the maximum way possible, so that audiences feel what she feels in that moment.” (Opera News, January 2018)

A manipulative Amonasro guilt trips Aida
Photo credit: Sara Krulwich / NYTimes

Hawaiian baritone Quinn Kelsey was one of the most exciting discoveries in last year’s Met season (in Trovatore and Lucia). His voice is of a rare grounded expressive beauty, big and effortless and with impeccable Italian diction. As Amonasro, he unfortunately does not have too much to do but his Act III duet with Aida delivered thundering fireworks when he threatened his daughter of terrible things unless she coaxes critical military info out of Radamés. I cannot get enough of this baritone, definitely looking forward to seeing him again later in the season as Germont.

Radamés is a man in demand
Photo credit: Met Opera

In the heroic role of Radamés, tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko was just okay. He could get there technically but his instrument just lacks warmth, thus confirming my theory of the current crisis of heroic tenors. Seriously, who else is out there who can tackle these roles (other than Kaufmann who’s been calling sick for years at the Met)? It’s just so depressing when a heroic character comes across as bloodless.

Disappointing tenor aside, this Aida sure delivered a great night at the opera, with the classic grand production looking timeless, the chorus in top form and the orchestra doing justice to the score under the baton of maestro Nicola Luisotti.

– Lei

The Met does grand opera
Photo credit: Met Opera

With the star power to match
Photo credit: Met Opera

(*) From the fate now hanging o'er thee / Who will save thee, wretched being? / She whose heart could once adore thee / Thou hast made thy mortal foe. / Heaven all my anguish seeing, / Will avenge this cruel blow!

(**) Ah me! death's hand approaches! who now will save him? / He is now in their power, / His sentence I have sealed — Oh how I curse thee, / Jealousy, vile monster, thou who has doomed him / To death, and me to everlasting sorrow!

Passion Italian-Style in WWII Paris

Puccini’s Manon Lescaut

Metropolitan Opera

November 25, 2016

Manon reminisces about simpler times
Photo credit: Ken Howard/Met Opera

The Met’s new production of Puccini’s first big breakthrough opera from 1893 is back for its second year in a row with a new cast. When we saw this production on the opening night of its run last winter, Roberto Alagna had stepped in to save the day due to an “unexpected” cancellation by the chronic canceller Jonas Kaufmann, opposite the gorgeous Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais. Back then it was our first Manon Lescaut and we liked it fine, though we did not feel it was something worth writing home about. This year, maybe because of the new (superior) cast or due to some Wagnerian exposure, we actually liked this Puccini highly melodramatic opera much better.

Manon unleashes her diva
Photo credit: Ken Howard/Met Opera

With the new cast, the dynamic tension between the characters shifted ever so slightly. Carlos Alvarez brought out his rich and lyric tenore spinto. His voice is vibrant and fits squarely in the Puccini canon. He played a cocky, headstrong des Grieux, with his male assertiveness coming across in his brutal attack on certain notes in key dramatic moments. His No, pazzo son in the climax of Act III turned out to be one of the most moving moments of the evening. I found that the threat of separation between the two lovers tugged on my heartstrings. Alvarez’s performance was gripping and the fact that I was virtually moved to tears completely blind-sided me. I usually find Puccini too sentimental, too saccharine, too sappy for my tastes, and yet he still manages to sneak up on me especially during scenes like this one that feature big bursts of muscular emotions set to music.  

When it comes to Anna Netrebko, it seems like she was born to sing this role. There is something about the way she embodies Manon that seems at first blush to be entirely out of character but that ultimately brings to the fore elements that you don’t usually see from other singers. While Netrebko and her voice seem a touch too mature for the Act I incarnation of this innocent country maiden who is on her way to a convent, she played her Manon as a fresh faced ingénue who was completely unaware of the innate diva-esque powers of seduction that she naturally possesses. It was a revelation in many ways, not least of all because she owned the role vocally, even while only feigning innocent naïveté. So by injecting her larger than life diva quality even in these nascent moments of Manon’s early blossoming, Netrebko endowed the character with something very special, not to mention fitting for what this young woman may in part also be deep down.

Manon possesses her inner diva
Photo credit: Ken Howard/Met Opera

In the first act, she discovers what she is capable of. In the second, she finds herself in a quandary of sorts. Having been forced by her opportunistic brother to leave the man whom she really loves, she uses her natural gifts to carve out a very posh niche for herself in the rarified Parisian world of the rich and famous in which she seems to serve as little more than a glorified whore. Clad in her plush full-length furs and surrounded by a slew of Art Deco luxuries, Netrebko dreamily croons In quelle trine morbide about missing the simpler life she enjoyed with des Grieux, her more passionate lover, the man whom she abandoned without even saying goodbye. She pines for those times when she had fewer toys but soaked up a whole lot more love, long kisses and amorous embraces.

In this case, Manon is actively a trickster. She knows exactly what she is doing when she manipulates des Grieux back into her embrace in Act II. She is a dangerous seductress using the only weapon in her arsenal as femme fatale, and that is her antico fascino che accieca. Poor des Grieux immediately falls for it, to his own knowing chagrin. Netrebko plays the moment beautifully. A slippery snake who knows the power she holds over men. Des Grieux then really sees through her deceit and artifice when she reverts back to her opportunistic materialist self after they are alerted that her arrest is imminent. Rather than high tail it out of there, she goes back to her boudoir for the jewels and the gold, and Alvarez breaks into one of his most heart wrenching numbers in the first half of the opera, Ah, Manon, mi tradisce il tuo folle pensier, which he belts out with a manly desperation. She continues to play him and he is distraught. It is in moments like this one that makes me think that Puccini really nailed it. This whole movement in the music and the narrative very concisely captures the spirit of Prévost’s novel, in which Manon is a cold blooded heartbreaker and des Grieux let's his crush get the better of him at every turn, yet he just can't help himself, and so he always goes back for more. Crazy he is indeed.

The Column of Trajan and the painting visible in the boudoir backdrop
Photo credit: Ken Howard/Met Opera

Set against the backdrop of a Nazi occupied France, Richard Eyre’s distinctive take on the opera opens in Amiens, France, only this time the year is 1941. The village of the original has been transformed into a provincial French township and the fashion has been adapted to match. On the whole the updated setting enlivens the story, despite initially feeling like another futile experiment in the modern history of operatic Regietheater. Upon further reflection, however, some of these directorial decisions do in fact add several insightful layers to the story as it stands. Not only does it come off completely sexed up – the costumes and sets look great – but it also introduces deeper motivations for such plot points as to why Manon is headed to a convent in Act I and as to why the arrival of the gendarmes in Act II is extra heartbreaking, not to mention the deportation twist in Act III.

Manon flirts with her sugar daddy
Photo credit: Ken Howard/Met Opera

Talking with a scholar of French literature and culture during one of the intermissions, I was taken by a particular insight that sheds some light on how we might go about decoding some of the liberties Richard Eyre took with this concept, especially considering the bold decision to set the opera in a France under German occupation in the year 1941, rather than the late 18th century (the novel is set in the first half of the 18th century, Puccini moves it to the second half of that century). The suggestion is that Manon is Jewish and like many rural Jewish girls of the time she is being shipped off to a convent in order to escape persecution – a relatively common occurrence. Then in Act II when the soldiers burst in to abscond with her, it is because Geronte has not merely denounced her for lechery, but rather that he has reported her Jewishness to the authorities. And so in barge the Nazis. A particularly cruel form of revenge for having found her in the midst of a tryst with her former lover and his prior rival. It’s a very powerful reading, and it very likely is what the director and his team were going for.

Not every aspect of the production fits into this reading and for it to work at all you have to use your imagination, particularly in Act IV. But the broad outlines of this notion seem to be there, and the direction makes every attempt to make it all mesh. The Act III role of the prostitutes and prisoners who are being shipped off as slave laborers to the new world would then seem to provide a parallel to the rounding up of individuals to be sent off to concentration camps. In fact, they are all systematically stripped down one-by-one during the humiliating roll call portion of the act and dressed in sad gray smocks with numbers stenciled on them, so Holocaust references would not be a stretch.

The Nazi deportation forces cart her off to the camps
Photo credit: Ken Howard/Met Opera

By the time we get to the final act, however, Eyre’s staging of Act IV only functions on the level of metaphor. The lovers find themselves in a wasteland, both the work of their all-consuming passion and of the war that has been raging on in the meantime. This is one of the main points in which the words being sung in the Italian are incongruous to the action on stage, and I usually find this practice harder to condone. The long slow death of the beloved nevertheless plays out against the backdrop of a war-ravaged cityscape and, when sung by the likes of Alvarez and Netrebko, it is a harrowing experience for all involved. An appropriately Wagnerian finale, a Liebestod in the Italian fashion, as Puccini intended it.  

The slithery snake sneaks up on her prey
Photo credit: Ken Howard/Met Opera

Rob Howell’s signature rotund set design (with striking similarities to his work in the Met’s current productions of Carmen and Le nozze di Figaro) cleverly includes in Manon’s courtesan quarters in Act II a mock up of the Column of Trajan in Rome that features an array of Kama Sutra poses and a screen with an enormous image of Cupid pinching Venus’ nipple from the iconic painting by Agnolo Branzino, The Allegory of Venus and Cupid. The part of the painting that is on full display includes the right side of the composition in which the monstrous figure of Temptation holds forth in one hand the promise of love and pleasure in the form of a honeycomb; in the other she holds the menacing prick of her scorpion tail. These elements provide a kinky backdrop against which Manon's big courtesan scene unfolds. It displays clues to the pain that will inevitably follow in the wake of love's great transitory pleasure, especially as these two lovers sing of lips that wound and heal – dolcissimo soffrir, indeed!

The set for this act must also include a great big bed and this makes Puccini powerfully unique. The libretto and the writing are among the most Dionysian outside of Wagner, but Puccini is Italian and so the quality is distinctly more warm-blooded. Just to read the text for the big love scene when des Grieux and Manon are reunited is to go on a trip to Venusberg that is not otherworldly, but profoundly of the here and now. It’s deep, if you let it work its magic on you. It can be a bit misleading for its verismo undertones, but to understand Manon Lescaut, it seems to me that you have to know not only Cavalleria rusticana, but also Tannhäuser and maybe even Tristan und Isolde, which makes it a perfect pairing for this season at the Met.

The wasteland provides the backdrop for the final movement
Photo credit: Ken Howard/Met Opera

Manon Lescaut’s Act II contains one of the deepest most Dionysian expressions of operatic abandonment in the Italian canon that I have seen. And it is only thanks to Wagner (of all people) that I have come to this understanding. This opera can take you places if you let it and it does contain raw bits of the Puccini works to come. The beginning gives you a glimpse of what is to come in the first act of La boheme. Act III gives you a glimpse of the winning formula that brought us the E lucevan le stelle movement in Tosca. And there are other prolepses of what is to come in Puccini’s later work. But his attempt to descend into the Dionysian in the second half of Act II and what happens in Act IV all amount to something very deep. This is not Verdi, and it’s not Wagner, nor is it the later Puccini. Richard Eyre’s production does not entirely disappoint.

– Lui & Lei

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