Opera Review: Three on a Match

Il Trittico at the Metropolitan Opera.
by Paul Pelkonen

Barge-music: Juan Pons in Il Tabarro, Part I of Il Trittico.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2007 The Metropolitan Opera.

Long before Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez brought Grindhouse to your local movie theater, Giacomo Puccini conceived the idea of three disparate operas, performed together in the course of one evening. The three operas have had mixed fortunes since their 1918 premiere. They have been performed together, seperately, and paired off with works by other composers (Suor Angelica has been paired with Salome!). With this spiffy new Met production by Broadway director Jack O'Brien, this new Trittico scores three solid goals over the course of a long evening.

Opera Review: Down I Go

David Daniels as Orfeo.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2007 The Metropolitan Opera.

The dress rehearsal of Orfeo et Euridice at the Met.
As part of my subscription for the 2007-2008 season (more on what I'm seeing in a future edition of this blog) I was lucky enough to get tickets for the Monday dress rehearsal of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, one of the hottest tickets in the final weeks of the spring opera season. I know that we critic types aren't realy supposed to write about dress rehearsals, bit it was such a significant performance that I am going to share my thoughts below. Yes the review is running a little late, but, here it is. Enjoy.


The star of this new Orfeo is the superb countertenor of David Daniels. Daniels specializes in baroque opera, singing with a high-pitched "head voice" (not unlike Jon Anderson of the rock band Yes). In 1997, his performance as Arsamene in Handel's Xerxes at the City Opera (opposite Lorraine Hunt Lieberson) was almost single-handedly responsible for the baroque opera revival that New York has enjoyed in the last ten years. Ms. Lieberson was originally supposed to sing Orfeo in this new Met production. She died last year, and Daniels stepped in to sing her commitments. The production is dedicated to her memory.




Gluck's opera retells an ancient myth, one of death and rebirth. Orpheus is the greatest musician the world has ever known. When his wife dies, he goes down into the Underworld to reclaim her. Unfortunately, he disobeys the edict of the Greek gods and looks at and speaks to Eurydice. When he does, she is lost to him forever. The opera adds a happy deus ex machina ending, where Eros restores the lovers to life. Historically, Orfeo marked a turning point for opera, away from the filigrees of the baroque era and toward the clean classicism of Mozart and Haydn.

David Daniels gives a powerful performance in the title role, with notes of Elvis and Buddy Holly in this modern staging. His countertenor remains a smooth-flowing, flexible instrument that can negotiate the highest parts of Handel and Gluck with dizzying speed and accuracy. Heidi Grant Murphy, descending (literally) from the heavens, brought perk and energy to the role of Amor, the God of Love who makes all things possible. Latvian soprano Maija Kovalevska blended well with Daniels as Euridice.

The new production is spare, with choristers arranged on three stadium tiers above the action, commenting and singing like an old-fashioned Greek chorus. They are dressed as various historical figures, from Queen Elizabeth I and Abe Lincoln to Babe Ruth and John Lennon. The Met's choral forces were a powerful storm surge in this opera. Mention must also be made of the ballet forces. Director/choreograher Mark Morris created challenging choreography to dance, and they made the most of this ballet-heavy opera. James Levine led an exuberant reading of the score in the pit.

Opera Review: Start the Revolution Without Me

Andrea Chenier at the Met.

The historic Andrea Chenier.

The final performance this season of Umberto Giordano's most famous opera, Andrea Chenier, featured a strong performance by Canadian heldentenor Ben Heppner in the title role, opposite the emotional Maddalena of Violetta Urmana. Heppner is known primarily as a Wagner tenor (he is scheduled to sing Tristan at the Met next year) but has roots in verismo. (His first complete opera recording was an RCA Turandot conducted by Roberto Abbado) Here, he was in excellent lyric voice, conveying the title character's mix of poetry, politics and passion with a full flood of tone underpinned by a strong, flexible voice.

Violeta Urmana began her Met season with a tremendous performance in the title role of La Gioconda in September. On Wednesday night, her Maddalena presented a suitable followup. She sang a beautiful, heartfelt "La mamma morta" (an aria which became famous in the 1990s after being featured in the Tom Hanks film Philadelphia and portrayed Maddalena with nobility and tragic resignation. Her final vocal face-off with Heppner's Chenier recalled the final act of Siegfried a vocal apotheosis of joyous love laughing in the shadow of la guillotine.

Veteran baritone Juan Pons was rock-solid as Gerard, the servant, turned revolutionary. The Spanish baritone, following up his superb December run in Rigoletto captured all the facets of this character who is almost as complex as Verdi's jester. Gerard starts the story as an idealistic revolutionary, striking down Maddalena's family of French nobles and whipping the people into a frenzy.




As Chenier skips five years and develops, the French Revolution devolves into the Reign of Terror. Citizen Gerard (as he is now known) becomes a zealous politician, corrupted by his desire to possess Maddalena. This motivates him to write out the false confession that sentences the poet to death. However, there is a redemptive side to Gerard. In front of the tribunal at Chenier's trial, Gerard chooses to recant his testimony in front of the entire court, putting his own neck on the line. (His withdrawal of the evidence is ignored, and Chenier is sentenced to death anyway. Vive la republique!

All three singers needed all of their strength on Wednesday night, because conductor Marco Armiliato was off his leash in the orchestra pit. The conductor recalled the later years of Herbert von Karajan with his mix of slow tempi and stentorian volume, both of which threatened to wear out and drown out the singers. (In a show of maestro-itis, Armiliato came out and took a solo bow in front of the curtain, something that most Met conductors are loathe to do. To their credit, the audience in the Balcony and Family Circle greeted him with faint applause.)

Both Heppner and Urmana are well equipped to cope with such adverse conditions, but other singers had trouble penetrating this wall of sound. Despite the orchestral overkill, strong character performances were given by David Cangelosi (as the spy Le Incredibile), Kirstin Chavez (as Bersi) and most movingly, mezzo-soprano Irina Mishura in the small but scene-stealing role as the widow Madelon.

Right: Portrait of the poet, Andrea Chenier.
Left: The Radical Arms, 1819 political cartoon by George Cruikshank


All images courtesy Wikipedia.

Opera Review: Peking Bling

A Note From the Management (G sharp): It's catch-up day here at the Superconductor blog...there is lots to write about and I hope you've got your reading glasses on. Two opera reviews and maybe a CD review if I have the energy. So, without further ado, hoodoo, or to-do, awaaay we go...

Turandot at the Met

Everyone onstage: the finale of Turandot. 
Photo by Ken Howard © 2007 The Metropolitan Opera.

OK. Let me start this review by saying that Turandot has a special place in my heart. It was the first opera I ever saw (at the City Opera in 1983) with my parents, and I fell in love with the three riddles (it helped that I was reading The Hobbit at the time) and the antics of Ping, Pang and Pong, the three masque characters who provide this opera with comic relief. That said, for the past 20 years, I have been (more or less) annoyed with Franco Zeffirelli's creaking, cacophonous, overbaked production of this opera, which has held the stage at the Met since 1987.


OK. Enough about the production (for now) The performance:

Despite the technical issues with Ye Olde Beijing, the cast sang very well. Andrea Gruber, heavily made up like the Bride of Frankenstein, sang with a ringing tone, firmly establishing her icy presence as the murderous Princess Turandot. She hit all the big notes in "In Questa Reggia" and charged into the riddle scene, holding the center of the stage despite the distracting-annoying choreography-business that kept taking the eye away from the drama of the opera.

Opposite her, Richard Margison sang with beauty of tone, cutting through the big choruses but never spiraling down towards shrillness. I have seen this singer many times and always found his voice annoying, but not on Monday night--it appears that his voice has aged well and mellowed a bit in recent years. And yes, Virginia, he nailed "Nessun Dorma".

Despite the ferocity of the two leads, the star of the evening was Hei-Kyung Hong, following up her superb Eva in Meistersinger with a sweet, heartbreaking Liu. She floated the pianissimos, (Tebaldi-style) and brought on the heartbreak with her big suicide scene in the final act. It is the sign of a good Turandot (which this was, despite the production) when that scene becomes the emotional climax and core of the whole night, enabling listeners to (for once) ignore the bling and onstage business and focus on the opera.

Unfortunately for the whole cast, their excellent performances were hamstrung by a production that epitomizes pretty much everything that is wrong with big opera productions--bloated sets, bad sight lines and poor decisions on the part of the producer and director. Some examples:

• A stage design that does not allow people in the Family Circle seats (at the very rear and top of the big house) to see Turandot herself in the first act, nor the Emperor in the second. Apparently, one is only worthy to be in the Royal Presence if one buys more expensive seats. Opera lovers don't sit in the Family Circle because they're cheap--we sit there because those seats, for either $15 or $26, give you the best, warmest sound in the entire house. As Deborah Voight told me in 1997, that's "where all the singers are aiming."
  
  
• The pop-up palace in Act I, (not to mention the pop-up gong, probably added so Luciano Pavarotti wouldn't stagger into it while entering the dark, stairway-filled set) shatters one's suspension of disbelief.
  
  
• Having so many choristers on the cramped set denies the actors playing Liu, Timur, and Calaf an opportunity to act and react to the goings-on. It's pageant without dramatic meaning. No meaning + no terror = no impact.
  
  
• The walkways. Last point, I promise. In building his version of legendary Peking, Zeffirelli decided to add walkways which resemble Japanese nightingale floors--the kind used as burglar alarms in Japanese castles--they crack and creak (loudly) when you walk on 'em. That's especially amusing in the first act, when the children's chorus comes onstage carrying the lanterns and singing a soft melody. They are then drowned out by the Met's own version of Snap, Crackle and Pop!