Concert Review: The Price of Reinvention

Soprano Natalie Dessay returns to Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Natalie Dessay. Photo © Sony Classical.

Natalie Dessay is no stranger to adversity. Throughout her career, the French soprano has battled ahead, undergoing surgery to keep her voice in fighting trim and dazzling audiences with a high coloratura that was at home in Donizetti, Mozart and Richard Strauss. Ms. Dessay retired from the operatic stage in 2013, with her last Metropolitan Opera appearances coming in a tumultuous run of Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Four years went by until her return, which came on Wednesday night upon the hallowed boards of Carnegie Hall.

Summer Festival Preview 2016: The MET Live in HD Screenings

Because watching movies of opera productions on a screen for free couldn't possibly diminish the opening of the actual opera season a month later....
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Mozart (Tom Hulce) celebrates a field goal in this scene from the
award-winning Milos Forman film Amadeus. Image © 1984 The Saul Zaentz Company/Orion Pictures.

This August, the Metropolitan Opera will fill Lincoln Center 's outdoor space with seats and turn Josie Robertson Plaza into a venue for repeats of the company's  omnipresent Live in HD series. This is an enjoyable summer festival event, free to all and stunning passers-by and curious tourists. Here's the slate for this year's festival which opens not with an opera but with an Academy Award-winning movie. And yes, we tell you which operas to catch and which ones to skip...or at least bring a good bottle of wine.

The Met Turns Up the Heat

Summer programming from The Metropolitan Opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Thousands watch Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna in Carmen.
Image © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera is currently in the middle of its summer recital series, with three concerts around New York City next week. Upcoming concerts include appearances in the Bronx's Crotona Park (Tues, July 23)  Clove Lakes Park in Staten Island (July 25), Manhattan's Jackie Robinson Park (July 30) and Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens on Aug. 1.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Giulio Cesare

The Met imports a British production of Händel's most famous opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Cocktails in Egypt: David Daniels (right) and Natalie Dessay as Caesar and Cleopatra
in the Met's new production of Giulio Cesare. Photo by Dan Rest © Lyric Opera of Chicago.

The Metropolitan Opera continues to showcase the performance and production of baroque opera. Here, the company imports David McVicar's 2005 production of Giulio Cesare (alternate title: Giulio Cesare in Egitto) to the big stage as a vehicle for countertenor David Daniels (in the title role) and soprano Natalie Dessay as Cleopatra. This is the last new production of the 2012-2013 season.

Despite the British origin of this work (it premiered in London in 1724) the plot of Giulio Cesare has nothing to do with Shakespeare or the ruler's assassination on the Ides of March. Handel's opera retells the doomed romance between the Egyptian queen and the Roman military leader. The two leads have great opportunity for florid vocal display, with eight arias each.

Giulio Cesare is not some rarity dusted off by historical archivists. The work is considered to be Händel's finest, with musical invention, multiple orchestras at one point and other innovations that made it the most popular  stage work in 18th centiry London. It was one of the first baroque works to be revived in the 20th century (in a version using a baritone Caesar.) The Met will present an authentic 18th centurty style performance, conducted by Harry Bickett.

Giulio Cesare opens April 4, 2013.

Violetta Succumbs to Illness

Red dress drama as Natalie Dessay cancels rehearsal.

While the Clock Ticked: a scene from La Traviata.

The Metropolitan Opera's revival of La Traviata (scheduled to take the stage on Friday night) just got a little more interesting. French soprano Natalie Dessay pulled out of today's dress rehearsal, claiming that she was ill.

According to the singer's Paris management, the singer is suffering from a cold.

Another source confirmed, saying that the singer was not feeling well and "didn't want to push it."

Soprano Hei-Kyung Hong, who is currently the contracted cover for the run of performances, sang the dress rehearsal, which was not open to the general public.

 The Met's production of La Traviata opened on Dec. 31, 2010, to a mixture of acclaim from critics and bafflement from traditionalists. The show is mounted in a claustrophobic, curved room, and places great emphasis on Violetta's rapid deterioration, with a large clock at one end of the room symbolizing time running out for the Verdi heroine.

Originally directed by Willy Decker, this show is noted for its heavy physical requirements for singers, including a tough confrontation with Giorgio Germont in the second act and the "couch surfing" scene, where Violetta is hoisted into the air by the chorus, balanced on what appears to be a red IKEA® "Klippan" sofa.

The singer's management added that Ms. Dessay "intends to sing all of her performances."

La Traviata opens Friday. To read more about the production, check out out the Superconductor preview.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: La Traviata

Natalie Dessay slips into the little red dress.
by Paul Pelkonen.

Lover boy: Matthew Polenzani returns as Alfredo Germont in the Met's revival La Traviata.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera

Willy Decker's stripped-down La Traviata was the most controversial production at the Met last year. For its first revival, French soprano Natalie Dessay takes on the role of Violetta, a courtesan who finds love just as her time is running out. Matthew Polenzani returns as Alfredo, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky is Giorgio Germont. Fabio Luisi conducts.

The feeling of dread is heightened by Mr. Decker's staging, originally presented at the Salzburg Festival. The opera is presented on a unit set with one exit: a steep, bare stage with curved white walls that might be in a hospital or asylum. The room is dominated by an enormous clock, and haunted by Dr. Grenville, a silent, death-like figure who is onstage for most of the opera. The party-goers of Paris (male and female) are in tuxedos, faceless figures in Violetta's empty life.

La Traviata is Verdi's most intimate tragedy. A setting of Alexandre Dumas fils La dame aux camilles, this is an opera about suffering, illness and time running out. Verdi was inspired to set the younger Dumas' play by his longtime relationship with Giuseppina Strepponi, a former opera singer. For this work, Verdi wrote some his most memorable music. Highlights include the brindisi in Act I, the soprano showpiece Sempre libera, and Di provenza il mar, Germont's appeal to his wayward son.

Recording Recommendations
Verdi's most heart-rending opera has been lucky on disc. So we're giving four recommendations.

Coro e Orchestra de La Scala, cond. Antonio Votto (DG, 1963)
Violetta: Renata Scotto
Alfredo: Gianni Raimondi
Germont: Ettore Bastianini
The glories of this 1963 recording are the young Renata Scotto (in prima voce as Violetta) and the rock-solid presence of baritone Ettore Bastianini as the elder Germont. I still recommend it, especially at bargain price.

Bavarian State Opera Orchestra cond. Carlos Kleiber (DG, 1977)
Violetta: Ileana Cotrubas
Alfredo: Plácido Domingo
Germont: Sherrill Milnes
Carlos Kleiber was an extraordinary conducting talent who made very few recordings. This was one of his best, a studio-made, note-complete Traviata with a sensitive heroine in Ileana Cotrubas. The redoubtable team of Sherrill Milnes and Placído Domingo recorded a lot of operas together in the 1970s, but they manage to convince the listener as father and son.

Coro e Orchestra de La Scala cond. Riccardo Muti (Sony, 1992)
Violetta: Tiziana Fabbricini
Alfredo: Roberto Alagna
Germont: Paolo Coni
Expert Verdi conducting and a compelling performance by Roberto Alagna as Alfredo. Tiziana Fabbricini is a very good, involving Violetta who is helped by the live, theatrical recording made in Italy's most famous opera house. Reissued last year.

Vienna Philharmonic cond. Carlo Rizzi (DG, 2005)
Violetta: Anna Netrebko
Alfredo: Rolando Villazón
Germont: Thomas Hampson
I will also put a word in for this entertaining live recording from the Salzburg Festival. Anna Netrebko, captured in great form as Verdi's bird in a gilded cage. Rolando Villazon before he lost his voice. And like the Muti set, this has the immediacy of a live recording.
Return to the Metropolitan Opera Season Preview!

Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Opera Review: To Insanity, and Beyond!

Lucia di Lammermoor returns to the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Natalie Dessay and Joseph Calleja in the Met's revival of Lucia di Lammermoor
Photo by Ken Howard © 2010 The Metropolitan Opera

Most performances of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor center on the Mad Scene, also known as Act III, Scene 2. This 17-minute series of arias is a musical and dramatic tour de force for the soprano. In the right hands, it is a total show-stopper.

Mary Zimmerman's attractive production of Lucia moves the opera's action to the Victorian era before literally dissolving into the heroine's tortured mind. (Think Jane Austen on acid.) But its greatest strength is that it goes beyond the superficial warbling of the leading lady and explores Lucia as what it really is: a rock-ribbed, full-blooded family drama with as much excitement and stagecraft as the mature works of Giuseppe Verdi. Small wonder: Donizetti's librettist Salvatore Cammarano wrote the book for Il Trovatore.

Opera Review: The Blood-Spattered Bride

Natalie Dessay in Lucia di Lammermoor.
by Paul Pelkonen

Natalie Dessay on her wedding night in Lucia.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2007 The Metropolitan Opera

With her performance in the Met's scintillating new production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, French soprano Natalie Dessay joined the front rank of the world's great soprano singers. The diminutive coloratura sang one of opera's most famous roles with passion and pin-point precision on Monday night. She was sweet and girlish in the opening act, yet with a hint of something under the surface that indicated the instability and madness that is Lucia's fate.