Metropolitan Opera Preview: La traviata

The little red dress returns. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A boy, a girl and a timepiece. Marina Poplavskaya (right) in La Traviata.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2010 The Metropolitan Opera.

This stripped-down Willy Decker staging of La Traviata (introduced at the very end of 2010)
eliminates the elegance of 19th century Paris for a bare, clinical room, a single curved bench and a giant clock that ticks down the remaining minutes in the life of Violetta, the courtesan who is at the heart of Verdi's most intimate tragedy.

The Lady Vanishes

Marina Poplavskaya fades out of Figaro.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Marina Poplavskaya has faded from the picture and stepped down from the 2014
Metropolitan Opera season opener. Photo of Ms. Poplavskaya from the 2013
production of Eugene Onegin by Ken Howard © 2013 by the Metropolitan Opera.
Photo alteration and solarization by the author.

The Metropolitan Opera, currently locked in a standoff with twelve of the sixteen unions that make up the workforce at America's largest opera house, has announced that Marina Poplavskaya has bowed out as the Countess Almaviva of the season-opening run of Le Nozze di Figaro.

The announcement from the Met press office arrived on Twitter yesterday.

Opera Review: Meet the New Aristocrats

The Met's second cast takes over Eugene Onegin.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Marina Poplavskaya takes over in the Met's new production of Eugene Onegin.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

It is sometimes instructive to see the second cast. That maxim applies to the mid-season return of Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw's new Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera. The revival opened last week. On Monday night, the cast: baritone Peter Mattei (Onegin) soprano Marina Poplavskaya (Tatiana) and tenor Rolando Villazón (Lenski) gave their third performance together. They brought fresh energy and perspective to this production, which opened the Met's season in September of this year.

Opera Review: Where's the Kaboom?

The Met revives Dez McAnuff's “atomic age” Faust.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Failure to detonate: Piotr Beczala (left) and John Relyea confer over a nuke
in Act V of the Met's revival of Gounod's Faust. Photo by Cory Weaver © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera’s current version of Charles Gounod’s 1859 grand opera Faust has, (like the atomic bombs that inspired its director Dez McAnuff) emerged once more from the opera house’s top-secret laboratories for another round of testing. On Thursday night, the performance failed to reach critical mass.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Faust

The Met continues further testing on its "atomic" Faust.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Atomic babe: Marina Poplavskaya in Faust.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera.

Dez McAnuff's 2010 production of Gounod's Faust re-imagined Gounod's opera about a scholar who sells his soul to the devil as a metaphor for the creation and testing of the atomic bomb in the mid-20th century. While the spare staging featured an elegant Faust and Mephistopheles trading in lab coats for spiffy suits, audience and critical fallout was decidedly mixed.

Opera Review: How to Ignore an Atomic Bomb

The Met's nuclear Faust avoids a meltdown.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Marina Poplavskaya, René Pape and Jonas Kaufmann in Dez MacAnuff's re-imagined Faust.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera's new staging of Faust shouldn't work.

The production, by director Dez McAnuff, updates the opera to an underground atomic research bunker, sometime before the end of World War II. The staging is in modern dress, and key plot points are somewhat altered. And like many Met stagings in the Peter Gelb era, it's "co-produced" with another house--in this case the English National Opera. But the result does work--and is the most satisfying Faust to be delivered at the Met in several decades.

Angela Ankles Faust

Marina Poplavskaya to sing Marguerite in new Met production.

Angela Gheorghiu,
in between cancellations.

Angela Gheorghiu is out of the Metropolitan Opera's current run of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, but the dark-eyed Romanian diva continues to make headlines. The latest: she has dropped the bomb on her commitment to sing Marguerite in the Met's new production of Gounod's Faust. The cause was cited as that old stand-by: "artistic differences."

The cancellation is the latest by Ms. Gheorghiu, a soprano who rose to international fame after she was cast (by Sir Georg Solti) in a 1994 Covent Garden production of La Traviata. The string started in 1998, when she and her husband, tenor Roberto Alagna, attempted to inflate their fees to appear in Franco Zeffirelli's second Met production of that same opera. They were replaced by soprano Patricia Racette and Argentinean tenor Marcelo Álvarez, and the show went on anyway.

More recently, Ms. Gheorghiu pulled out of the Dec. 31 2009 prima of the Met's new David McVicar staging of Bizet's Carmen. An early 2010 run in La Traviata (that same Zeffirelli production) featured the singer, although conductor Leonard Slatkin was fired withdrew for personal reasons after the prima.

The Roméo cancellation is the most recent. Ms. Gheorghiu pulled out of all seven performances of the opera this season, citing what was reported to be a month-long case of the flu. Her replacement is the experienced Korean soprano Hei-Kyung Hong, who was initially engaged to "cover" these performances.

A gilded cage: a scene from the ENO Faust.
Photo by Catherine Ashmore © 2010 English National Opera.

Faust was one opera that Ms. Gheorghiu actually sang at the Met recently, taking the role of Marguerite in the company's laughably bad 2005 staging of the opera, the one that featured a cadre of choristers waving tricolor French flags and René Pape attempting to look "menacing" in a rubber devil suit. It has never been repeated.

Its replacement is this new staging by Canadian director Des MacAnuff. Mr. McAnuff updates the opera to the 20th century and makes Goethe's medieval mystic into a mad scientist working to finish the atomic bomb, is bound to be some improvement. It is a collaboration between the Met and the English National Opera, and has already run in London to generally positive reviews.

Ms. Gheorghiu will be replaced in Faust by Russian diva-on-the-rise Marina Poplavskaya, who made an excellent impression at the Met this season in new productions of Verdi's Don Carlo as well as the lead role in La Traviata. Hopefully, Ms. Poplavskaya will be able to sing in French as well as she does in Italian.

For more about the Met's 2011-2012 plans, check out this preview of the upcoming season.

Opera Review: Guilt Without Gilt

The New La Traviata at the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Couch surfing: Marina Poplavskaya in La Traviata
Photo by Ken Howard © 2010 Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera's new Willy Decker production of La Traviata was a complete success on Tuesday night, from the stark, simple staging to the bravura performance of Marina Poplavskaya as Violetta. Gianandrea Noseda conducted, leading the performance with a specific vision for the work that matched the production and showed a thorough understanding of this subtle, complex score.

Verdi's most intimate opera benefits from the Decker approach: a bare, curved, white room set on a steep rake. Its only adornments: a long white bench, the occasional couch, and a gigantic clock, solemnly reminding the viewer that this is an opera about a woman whose time is running out. It is a vast improvement over the pouffes, gilt, and frou-frous that adorned the Met's past two Traviatas. Both were by Franco Zeffirelli. Each recalled the worst excesses of Busby Berkeley and Martha Stewart.

Despite some early problems adjusting her big voice to match the dynamic level of the orchestra, Ms. Poplavskaya settled in and delivered a nuanced portrayal of Violetta. Whirling about the stage in high scarlet pumps and a red dress, she went from being every man's fantasy to every man's victim--a potent interpretation that will resonate in the minds of opera lovers for years to come.

But there is more to this performance than singing coloratura while balancing atop a couch. Ms. Poplavskaya plays Violetta as Verdi intended, capturing every facet of this jewel of a part. She tossed off the fearless fioritura of "Sempre libera" in the first act, moving her big voice with an impressive agility above the stave. As the evening progressed, (and her world collapsed) she seemed to wither away both vocally and physically. Yet her singing did not suffer: she broke hearts with the equally challenging "Addio, del passato" in the final act.

The breaking heart in question, Matthew Polenziani, was an ardent Alfredo, singing with a flood of warm tone. He coped admirably with Mr. Noseda's urgent, spitfire conducting. Alfredo is another victim in this production, of his father's bullying and the mob mentality of the Parisian party scene. The Act III re-staging of the ballet--which featured a male dancer (choreographer Athol Farmer) in Violetta's red dress and the crowd of black-tie revellers charging like a giant bull became a terrifying sequence.

As Germont père, Andrzej Dobber was a brutal figure, most notably when he struck his wayward son across the face in their Act Two confrontation. This Polish baritone took a stark, stern approach to the role that suited Mr. Decker's conception perfectly. Even the old favorite, "Di provenza il mar" sounded vaguely threatening when delivered in his growling voice. Bass Luigi Roni was onstage for most of the opera as Dr. Grenvil, playing Violetta's physician as a specter of impending Death. This, along with the giant, omni-present clock, underlined the mortal nature of La Traviata, elevating the opera to the status of Verdi's greatest tragedy.