Opera Review: March to the Scaffold

The Met's Summer HD Festival repeats La Damnation de Faust.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

 Let's make a deal: Méphistophèles (John Relyea, left) offers advice to
Marcello Giordani's Faust in Berlioz' La Damnation de Faust.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2008 The Metropolitan Opera.

Two key initiatives from the reign of current  Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb were on display at Lincoln Center Plaza on Thursday night. The first was the company's Live in HD program. The second: the company's recent association with director Robert Lepage. The occasion: a free outdoor screening of Mr. Lepage's 2008 production of La Damnation de Faust, the director's first and most successful show for the Met stage.

Opera Review: Cheaters Never Win

The Met goes medieval with Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Purple prose: Marcello Giordani (l.) and Eva-Marie Westbroek are doomed lovers in
Riccardo Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini. Photo by Marty Sohl © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

On Monday night at the Metroplitan Opera, New York’s best-equipped opera company unveiled its first revival of Riccardo Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini in 25 years. This 1914 opera has hovered at the fringes of the standard repertory for almost a century. It is only produced when there’s a star soprano determined to take on the challenge of playing the love-struck title role. This handsome production from Piero Faggioni allowed the audience to time-travel back three decades to see how grand opera was done back in the 1980s--when this production was mounted for Renata Scotto.

Opera Review: A Horse of Different Colors

The Metropolitan Opera revives Les Troyens.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Pyre woman: Didon (Susan Graham) goes to her death in Act V of Les Troyens.
Photo by Cory Weaver © 2012 The Metropolitan Opera.

Hector Berlioz' Les Troyens is the most ambitious of 19th century French operas. Clocking in at five acts and five hours (counting intermissions) the opera has divided opinion since its premiere, when Paris' Theatre-Lyrique would only present the second half of the opera as Les Troyens à Carthage. The first half, La Prise de Troie was never performed in the composer's lifetime.

DVD Review: The Master of Puppets

Anthony Minghella's Madama Butterfly from the Met

Patricia Racette as Cio-Cio San, holding her puppet child
in Anthony Minghella's Madama Butterfly.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2009 The Metropolitan Opera

This innovative staging of Madama Butterfly was the first staging of Peter Gelb's tenure as general maager of the Met. Staged by Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) set the tone for much that has followed: bright colors, stripped-down sets, and above all, a Big Name at the helm of a much-hyped new production of a repertory staple. But whatever weird turns the Met has taken in the last five years, this remains the visual record of an important Butterfly that marked the start of a new artistic era.


This two-disc set, released on Sony Classics earlier this year, preserves the Met Live in HD broadcast of Butterfly, starring Patricia Racette as Cio-Cio San and Maria Zifchak as her faithful housemaid Suzuki. It also serves as a fitting memorial to Mr. Minghella, who died one year before this telecast was filmed. Happily, this is a brilliant rendering of Puccini's opera, with dramatic and scenic focus on the tragedy at hand.

Rather than some attempt to recreate the landscape of pre-atomic Nagasaki on the Met's vast stage, Mr. Minghella took this work back to its Japanese roots, incorporating elements of Noh theater. Butterfly's hillside house becomes a "zoned" acting space, cut through with small, sliding shoji. Black-clad kuroko stagehands move, ghost-like through its movable walls. Colorful, authentic Japanese costumes are very much a feature, from the elaborate kimonos to Goro's bobbing kanmuri hat, worn to inappropriate, (and hilarious) effect by this glorified pimp. The most famous effect though, is the controversial use of bunraku puppets, most notably to play Butterfly's son, "Trouble."

This is a high-level performance of the opera, anchored by the veteran soprano of Ms. Racette. She understands every aspect of the character, creating a Cio-Cio San who rapidly travels the downward slide from innocent geisha bride to unwed mother and suicide. Her potent "Un bel di" is the keystone of the entire performance, but it is the seemingly spontaneous moments like her Act II interactions with Sharpless (Dwayne Croft) and Yamadori (David Won) that help this Butterfly soar.

Mr. Giordani is in good voice as Pinkerton, portraying one of the most ungrateful louses to grace the operatic stage. The Act I interactions with Goro (Greg Fedderly) and Butterfly's large family show the character's blithe ignorance of Japanese culture, which contrast with his noble, ringing tenor with just the right amount of squillo for "America, Forever!" Mr. Fedderly is just right as Goro, an absolute sleaze, decked out an overdone costume complete with bobbing kanmuri hat. As Sharpless, Dwayne Croft is a fine actor, although his once keen baritone sounds faded and dull.

When Butterfly's child is unveiled, the performance jumps to a higher energy level. Ms. Racette draws on new reserves of power as Butterfly's downward skid gets steeper. The fact that she is focusing all her maternal and musical energies on a puppet makes the scene even more moving and disturbing. The flawlessly sung flower duet with Suzuki acquires a demented, surreal aspect as the flowers are plucked from silent, black-clad stagehands. The image underscores the difference between Butterfly's forced optimism and the harsh reality of the final scene.

When Lt. Jerkwad (excuse me, Pinkerton) shows up with his wife in tow, the bottom drops out of Butterfly's heart. Ms. Racette sings the hollow realization with dark, dusky tones, undercut with terrible resolve as she sings her farewell to Suzuki. Patrick Summers is particularly good here, letting the silence speak for itself after leading two hours of stellar music in the orchestra pit. Finally, the anger and despair comes out as Butterfly chooses her honorable end. The ending is devastating in its power, as all performances of this great Puccini tragedy should be.

Opera Review: Little Death Apples

Eve Queler Encores L'Africaine.

We'll say this for librettist Eugene Scribe: 
he came up with an original way to kill off his heroine in L'Africaine.

Wednesday night's one-shot concert performance of L'Africaine was a great evening that may do much to return this neglected work to the regular repertory. Eve Queler celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Opera Orchestra of New York's first performance of that opera, with this performance at Avery Fisher Hall. Chiara Taigi sang the title role, with Marcello Giordani as the explorer Vasco da Gama.

The performance opened with an audio treat: a recording of Richard Tucker singing "O Paradis" at that 1972 performance . For his part, Mr. Giordani did his best to emulate that late tenor, singing the French text with a warm tone and making good use of his vocal reserves throughout the long opera. "O Paradis", in the fourth act was a show-stopper, but that famous number paled next to the intense cabaletta that followed.


Mr. Giordani also showed himself well suited to ensemble work, participating in Meyerbeer's complex, often contrapuntal trios, quartets and sextets. He brought nobility and charm to the role of Vasco, a gallivanting explorer who acts on impulse and repeatedly lands in deep manchineel several times over the course of the evening.

The plot of L'Africaine features Vasco caught between two loves: the noble Inèz (Ellie Dehn) and the title character, Selika. (Selika is not actually African--she is an Indian queen who rules a large island that may be Madagascar.) Ms. Dehn started the evening's vocal fireworks in the first act. She was equalled and exceeded by Ms. Taigi, who presented a formidable, silver-edged instrument that recalled a young Deborah Voigt. Sparks flew between the two divas, especially in their Act V confrontation.

As Nélusko, the slave who is secretly in love with Selika, South African baritone Fikile Mvinjelwa gave a strong performance, making this figure out to be a real, three-dimensional character and not some grotesque, racist parody. His Act III aria with chorus, evoking the legendary African storm gods (and sung just before a typhoon wrecks the ship) was a highlight of the evening. Mr. Mvinjelwa removed his tuxedo jacket before singing the number, giving his performance a "get-down-to-business" feel that matched his sturdy baritone.

Act III of L'Africaine as staged at the Paris Opera, 1864

The finale of the opera, in which Selika commits a sleep-induced suicide by laying down beneath the poisonous boughs of the only manchineel tree in Africa (the trees are native to the Caribbean) is a dream-like, extended sequence for soprano that may have inspired the Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung. Ms. Taigi, (changing into a third gown for her finale) proved to have the vocal stamina to sing this long, difficult scene accompanied by a wordless chorus and Mr. Mvinjelwa.

Throughout this long evening, much joy was to be found in Meyerbeer's music, which sounded familiar, even to an ear that had never heard L'Africaine. That might be because this smash opera, which premiered in 1864 (shortly after the composer's death) was a key influence on the development of Italian and French opera in the second half of the 19th century. The score anticipates beloved operatic moments like the tenor-baritone duet in Don Carlos, the barcarolle from Les Contes d'Hoffmann, and the slumberiffic finale of Wagner's Die Walküre.

As the final bars played, Ms. Queler brought her opera orchestra to a halt for the last time, putting the capstone on a life in music that has brought much joy to New York's opera lovers. Next year, Italian maestro Alberto Veronesi takes over the OONY. He will be building on the foundations of Ms. Queler's efforts.