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

Guilt, Alienation and Other Wagnerian Disorders

Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde

Opening Night Gala

Metropolitan Opera

September 26, 2016

An Isolde for our times
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lei: As for every yearly outing to the Met opening gala, I strutted to the Met all dressed up, but unlike other years, my sense of anticipation was somewhat tamed. More than excited, I was bracing myself for five hours of Wagner. Talk about a sparkly beginning to a new season! Still, I’m for trying everything once, Wagnerian operas included, so here we go.

Lui: In the category of best-dressed female attire at the Metropolitan Opera gala, it was a rather lackluster soiree (present company excluded). As far as I could tell the men took the evening. I saw a number of fabulous, colorful tuxedo jackets that ultimately outshined the feminine fashion on display – and one of said tuxes was even paired with a big blue feather fan.... I mean, really, where have all the ball gowns and tiaras gone? Please, please come back to me.

Metropolitan Opera in grand fashion
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lei: Seriously, when at a gala the gentlemen sport more eccentric attire than the ladies something’s wrong. But back to Wagner: from the very start of the overture we knew we were in for something very dark and stormy. We were presented with projections, as though through a periscope, of a modern-day tempest-tossed ship at sea. Through the arc of the opera things do not getting any lighter: we are brought into the ship (in a claustrophobic, dollhouse-like Act I); to the deck of the ship and an adjacent shipyard storehouse (at night, in Act II); and finally to a dark medical room, with occasional trippy excursions into Tristan’s gloomy hallucinatory neuroses that include a burned-out childhood home and a profoundly guilty conscience (in Act III).

The somber alienation of modern love
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lui: Mariusz Trelinski’s was a very somber, dark, shadowy production, with tones that felt film noir-y. I would place it temporally some time in the late twentieth century, given a fixation on a series of modern technologies like some kind of sonar radar, without a bleep anywhere to be found on the event horizon. In act III the stage featured vital life signs monitors and a huge projected electronic grid. Definitely not the latest technology, not contemporary world stuff, but close. These seemed to represent all the rational systems of weights and measures modern scientific thought attempts to impose on reality – the very reality that our two love-drugged protagonists want nothing more than to escape.

The stairwell in the dollhouse set
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lei: The director definitely added a whole layer of Tristan’s tormented psyche by using recurring projections of a little boy suffering trauma (parents’ death caused in his mind by a fire he was somehow responsible for) and a recurring figure of a man in a white uniform (representing possibly the consoling surrogate father figure of King Marke that will also be a cause of grief since Tristan is in the thick of “stealing” the unsuspecting king’s bride-to-be Isolde). While the projections were a bit distracting, they did have their sense in terms of giving us the director’s take on what’s wrong with Tristan. A massive guilt trip makes sense as a force pushing him to just get away from reality and take his lady Isolde with him. Her character is a little bit more linear, even though one would wonder why any woman in her right mind would fall for a tortured suicidal mopey guy as Tristan, love potion or no love potion.  

Lui: By Act II it becomes clear that it the story of a couple under the impression that the world is will and idea until the world reveals itself to operate on its own rules. And so they opt for complete retreat into the only world that is the true embodiment of will by the ultimate act of will. So these two lovers desire nothing more than infinite night, which seems to be more than a mere death impulse. Love pushed them to the brink not only of life but also of consciousness. Tristan goes beyond any simple desire for death or suicide as in Act III he goes on a voyage into his soul, an inner personal exploration of his mind and his past into what it seems to mean to possess a self. Which leads me to believe that Wagner (and this director in turn) mean to suggest that there may be more to the mysteries of existence than this life lived in the moment under the sun’s shimmering light of day has in store.

The eclipse of sun and moon
Photo credit: Met Opera

Lei: That’s all very deep and soul-searching, but Isolde and Tristan showed very little physical chemistry in this production. Sure, their singing was sublime and their duets at times truly wonderful. But their acting did not mirror either the absolute love or the all-consuming, irresistible passion that the music and the libretto denote. Stemme and Skelton looked like they were on an awkward first date at best, but definitely not as if they couldn’t live without each other. When in Act II they are surprised by the King’s men, there is nothing scandalous or outrageous about their being together. From the libretto it sounds like they were found half naked with their limbs intertwined but here they were just hanging out in a hangar full of toxic waste barrels – oh yeah, Tristan emphatically took his tie off and Isolde got rid of her coat, whoooa, sexy times!

All hands on deck: Romance on the bridge
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lui: It seems to be suggested that they engage in some kind of intimacy when the translucent scrim comes down at the end of Act II, Scene I, but the seduction of Wagner’s music is so hampered by this bit of stagecraft that all of his hard-core Dionysian sensibilities are completely muted. The nookie nookie on the ship’s deck behind the projections of the sun eclipsed by the moon was potent symbolism, but it took the audience away from the moment. What’s with this prudery? They want to blot out the light of the dutiful sun with the indulgence that the dark side of the moon promises, but the magic of what makes Wagner great is gone. The composer opens up this Venusberg-style space for us in his music and demands our indulgence in it; especially considering absolutely excessive decadent length he forces us to endure of it. They just did it better in the chthonian 1970s and early 1980s productions, which are much closer to the spirit and the music if you ask me. In Trelinski’s take the lovers seemed alienated not only from the world but also from themselves and each other. Maybe this is a sign of the times: the Wagnerian condition of alienation is also a uniquely modern one.

Lei: On top of the total lack of sexual tension, costumes by Marek Adamski were particularly ugly and uninspired. The production is already dark and stark with not much to watch. It lasts forever. Why not give the poor public something to engage the eye a bit more? I get the modern vibe, but still. All men were in either military uniforms or indistinct workmen, sailor-like garb. Isolde wore shapeless PJs in Act I, and an ill-fitting double-breasted trench coat in Acts II and III. Granted, in the so-called outbursts of passion, the ugly coat was taken off to reveal a plain unflattering velvet gown. And she wore combat boots with it. I get the Birgit Nilsson line that the secret weapon for a Wagnerian soprano is to wear comfortable shoes but still… At least Isolde had a luminous bright blonde wig – the only ray of sunshine in the whole stark thing.

Hot and steamy? Amidst the toxic waste
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lui: It was heartening to hear some of the New York audience boo the production. But it was pretty clear that the ones in our section were just the old stick-in-the-mud purists. I’m not sure that type of operagoer is willing to do the heavy lifting it takes to decode this kind of experimentation, with the emphasis on “willing.” We’re not Wagner types and so it is already an imposition to get us to sit through five hours of his work. So it’s all heavy lifting for us. A little less, a little more when it comes to trying to wrap your mind around the mental masturbations of the director never did me any harm.

Lei: It is a majestic opera and easily my favorite Wagner outing to date (Die Meistersinger and Tannhäuser being the first two). I’m starting to see how Wagner imbues his plots with less emotion and more cerebral concerns. There is very little in the way of viscerality but he sure knows how to explore an idea or two through music. I can see why he blew the minds of so many poets and artists. You sit and trip out on his slow but steady jaunts through a big cosmic theme. These operas are anything but action packed, but the intellectual punch they pack is considerable.

Lui: Which is why I’m surprised that so many Wagner diehards are offended when a director rises to the challenge of raising Wagner’s game with an honest new setting of his pieces. Wagnerian operas are ripe for it and beg for further intellectualizing elaborations in their settings. This composer adds layers of metaphor and philosophical reverie to his core narrative material and then dramatizes not the action but the abstraction he has imposed onto it. And then we all sit through it, with only a portion of the superhuman endurance it demands of its orchestra and singers.

Eros and Thanatos with Isolde in the hospital ward
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lei: The singers all sounded great and they all carried out their Herculean tasks admirably. Nina Stemme is undeniably a little powerhouse, a force to be reckoned with from beginning to end, sounded particularly lovely in her duets with Tristan and her final Liebestod was pretty spectacular in its exalted lyricism. Tenor Stuart Skelton had many wonderful moments, especially when he threw his little conniption fits. Bass Rene Pape is always good, and as King Marke here he was guttural, stern but round sounding, human but commanding.

Wagnerian love, a modern condition
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lui: My only wish every time I see Wagner is that there isn’t more sheer pleasure taken in the singing as an aesthetic end in itself. Rather than poetry he is a prose composer. What he demands of his singers is sizable force and endurance rather than lustrous beauty and finesse. Although these operas seem to consist of a lot of yelling in German over a lot of music, I nevertheless come away feeling that most of that music was ineffably gorgeous and abundantly pleasurable, despite the fact that I never come away humming any of the tunes themselves. Tonight’s musical takeaway though was the Tristan chord and several of the other stock phrases or mottoes that very unambiguously punctuate this piece. It is said that the music was born first, and then the words, which I can believe since the musical ideas really guide you through the plot far more than the words or even the story.

Lei: Based on a superficial exposure to no more than three or four different recordings of this opera, Sir Simon Rattle seemed to favor a rather languid, or dreamy take on the score. His tempos often felt slowed down, drawn out, as though to match the pacing of the orchestra to the oneiric vision of the stage direction and seamless flow of the set transitions from one convoluted early scene to the next. The transitions during the long semi-conscious death sequence in Act III were also sufficiently dreamy. Everybody involved had us all hanging on the cusp of consciousness.

Betrayal of the "father" by the son
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lui: Wagner is definitely not in a hurry to get anywhere. And so why should we be? If there is one thing he is good at it is dilation and delay. Or as Rossini said in a letter to Emile Naumann in 1867: “Monsieur Wagner a de beaux moments, mais de mauvais quarts d’heure.” In Tristan und Isolde by the end he truly makes his points effectively, but by no means economically. Our Monsieur is long-winded but breathtakingly beautiful, I’ll give him that. He takes a very long time to make his points. All the better if a director gives us a little something to work with while we get there.

Lei: After seeing Tristan und Isolde I do finally get Wagner’s lure. I am not a convert by any stretch but I see how it could be someone’s piece of cake. There’s something about these waves of beautiful complex intense music that wash over you and carry you places for several hours. The sung-through business though leaves me more lukewarm, it’s definitely a challenge for singers and impressive to hear and does have some peak moments. But also so much space-filling fluff in which characters go on and on elaborating on themes and ideas. Wagner’s work is so wordy and cerebral. I prefer concise, to-the-point visceral passion, less words but more effective and memorable ones. But that is the bel canto lover in me speaking.

Wagner goes noir
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Lui: This was more satisfying by far than last year’s Otello though. Despite its liberties, I left feeling exalted and stimulated by such an intense evening at the Met. Wagner may be a bit wordy in his orchestrations and overly verbose in his libretti, but tonight came off like a tightly clenched fist. A city like New York deserves its edgy fresh takes on the classics, if nothing else then to prove the value of the traditionalists’ approach. A healthy balance of this slightly more intellectually challenging fare plays well against big period pieces in tights and powdered wigs, cuirasses and broadswords does the city and most of all the art form a world of good.

Lei: Fair enough – now that I checked the Tristan box, it’s time for some real pleasure: I am definitely extremely excited to get my Rossini fix with Italiana in Algeri and Guillaume Tell this month!

– Lei & Lui

Of alienation and modern love
Photo credit: Ken Howard

The Flute Lost its Magic

Die Zauberflöte

A singspiel by Wolgang Amadeus Mozart

Met - October 11, 2014

Photo credit: Met

I was so looking forward and ready to like this Die Zauberflöte. It had a lot of good things going for it on paper. For starters, it was finally performed in its original German version, very welcome news after the Met butchered this opera over the last few years by offering a reduced English version as a Christmas holiday treat for families. I (somehow) get the need to sell tickets but please please Mr. Gelb do not tamper with Mozart ever again. It’s really perfection as originally conceived and, also, English translations of any opera sabotage its musicality. Honestly, how hard it is to push the little subtitle button in front of you? Thank goodness this year the “approachable” English kids show is Hansel and Gretel (which I don’t care for). I was also excited to catch Adam Fischer doing Wolfie again (loved his semi-staged Nozze a couple of summers ago), not to mention bass René Pape as Sarastro and soprano Pretty Yende as Pamina.

Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

Tonight, however, it was one of those rare times where no matter how solid the musicians and singers, the production managed to negatively affect the whole experience. The biggest problem was the lack of cohesion throughout. True that the Flute is a hodgepodge of improbable elements: we’re in a mythological age and magic land where there are wild animals, African slaves, professional bird-catchers, classical temples, Egyptian gods and western music. This opera, however, also offers the opportunity to an imaginative director to create a wonderful magic world and unfortunately Julie Taymor’s production just missed the mark. The supposedly unifying theme was provided by giant transparent structures in the shapes of triangles, circles and squares, functioning as the core of the sets framing each scene. While maybe a good idea in principle, these things felt like clunky cheap worn out plastic, badly illuminated by neon and also disturbingly noisy, squeaking and creaking at every scene change. Some of the choral scenes in the last act felt unfinished, with a plastic temple so far back that I almost felt the Met’s stagehands peeking behind it and what looked like bright white plastic tent material on the floors and walls. The Papageno/Papagena reunion happened over a (noisy) mobile plexiglass staircase. When squeaky plastic seems to be the dominant theme of a production something is wrong.

Photo credit: Met

Costumes, too, were disappointingly all over the place, some of them refined and elaborate (the Queen of the Night and Tamino, both Japanese-inspired), others put together at the last minute by a team of children armed with scissors and cardboard (the temple chorus, at times even sporting a ridiculous rainbow across their chest), others again out of a Mexican lucha libre match (Monostatos, who also wore inexplicable high heels, essential to rape maidens?).

Photo credit: Met 

I enjoyed only a handful of special effects in Taymor’s production: the kabuki puppetry (particularly in the dinner scene, where shiny food magically appears floating in the dark), the trials by water and fire (with the loving couple going up and down through a fluid sheer silk column) and the spirits’ different appearances (now floating on a flying bird, now on the shoulders of other characters).

Photo credit: Sara Krulwich / The New York Times

Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

While generally singspiel is not my favorite, it does work with the complicated symbolic plot. All singers were, though not extraordinary, consistently solid across the board. Mozartian tenor Toby Spence as Tamino delivered convincing expressions of pure love and virtue. Baritone Markus Werba as Papageno had good comic presence and was entertaining, at times silly (I could live without the “my name is Geno, Papa-Geno” gag, that’s definitely not Mozartian) but all in all pleasant. Too bad poor Papageno was wearing a green ill-fitting pyjama that had nothing to do with the rest of the costumes (and seemed to have been recycled from a different production). René Pape, today on double duty impressively switching from Verdi (as Banquo in Macbeth’s matinee) to Mozart, as Sarastro in the Flute’s evening performance, was simply glorious, exuding charisma every time he was on stage, with his commanding and seductive bass. I just felt really bad for Pape having to wonder around the stage looking like a huge yellow piñata with a Japanese hat on. I get the sun metaphor, but still...

Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met

Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

Soprano Ana Durlovski as the Queen of the Night had good technique but her voice was just not strong enough for the Met, which is a shame because the whole show shines a bit less brightly if her big second act showstopper “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” doesn't blow the roof off the place in a super-human fit of vengeful rage. Young soprano Pretty Yende was the loveliest Pamina, with a beautiful clean sound and at times really soaring and filling the Met, way more than the Queen of the Night. Yende did share with Pape the prize as worst dressed of the evening, with an ill-fitting electric blue gown plastered by a color block apron stripe in the front. I felt relief for Pamina when in the final scene she finally ascends to the temple in a simple elegant white tunic. 

Photo credit: Met

The boys performing the three spirits (Connor Tsui, Sebastian Berg and Andre Gulick) delivered some unbelievable singing, eery and powerful. It was truly impressive (and slightly uncanny) to hear these piercing sounds from such young singers, whose costumes, for once, kind of worked with the characters (white body paint, diapers and long white beards). The three ladies (Amy Shoremount-Obra, Renee Tatum and Margaret Lattimore) were also vocally strong and had good comic presence, though at times Taymor had them mess around too much with masks sitting on top of their fully dyed blue faces and one single oversized hand - go figure.  

Die Zauberflöte’s score is fantastic, multi-faceted and expressive through a broad range of characters: illuminated priests, lusty slaves, pure innocent love, raging evil queens, happy bird-catchers and a variety of spirits and fairies. Ivan Fischer’s conducting was brilliant - if I closed my eyes it sounded all blissful, wonderful and inspiring, unfortunately the production and costumes just did not work as well as they could have given the world of  possibilities that this opera offers.

Photo credit: Marty Sohl / Met

- Lui & Lei