Review: Met Audience Goes Wild for Hvorostovsky at Season TROVATORE Premiere

Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky hadn't even opened his mouth, as the Count di Luna, when the audience went wild at the season's premiere of Verdi's IL TROVATORE. It was as if he had just sung Sondheim's "I'm Still Here"--after announcing earlier this year that he had a brain tumor and was cancelling most of the TROVATORE performances--and was proving his perseverance in the face of mortality. The result was an energized performance unlike any other I've heard from him, which in turn carried over to other aspects of the evening.

TROVATORE ("The Troubador") is usually lumped together with LA TRAVIATA and RIGOLETTO as the masterpieces of Verdi's middle period, but I've always found it a weak sister in the trio--not musically, of course, but certainly dramatically. Sometimes it seems downright ludicrous, though the blame may be laid to Verdi, who insisted on having the most outré aspects of the source material retained for the opera, rather than the librettists Cammarano and Bardare, according to the program notes.

This time around, however, the opera hung together better than usual, in the production by Sir David McVicar (with the aid of stage director Paula Williams), thanks to a fluid performance from the Met Orchestra under Marco Armiliato, the achievements of the chorus under Donald Palumbo and the committed work of the principals in the cast. They included star soprano Anna Netrebko as Leonora, South Korean tenor Yonghoon Lee as Manrico and American mezzo Dolora Zajick as the Gypsy Azucena, who's at the center of this story of revenge, betrayal and other kinds of operatic fun. Because of their efforts, I almost never thought about the Marx Brothers and how they ridiculed the work in "A Night at the Opera." Almost.

Against the handsome background of Charles Edwards' unit set--updated to the 18th century Spain of Goya from the 15th century of the original-and lighting by Jennifer Tipton, with costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuel (Netrebko had hers redesigned by the Met's resident costume designer) there was some grand, though inconsistent, singing to be heard.

Lee was perhaps best of the lot, with his clarion voice throwing off "Di quella pira," as if it were a trifle, rather than the tenor-killer Verdi wrote, and doing some lovely work with Zajick on "Ai nostri monti,"in their jail cell as they longed for home. But he could use some dramatic coaching, for his acting remains pretty rudimentary, with stock hand gestures that look plain silly, even by opera standards. Azucena remains one of Zajick's best roles--though she excelled as Ulrica in last season's UN BALLO IN MASCHERA--but she took almost two acts to warm up; when she did, she commanded the stage. Bass Stefan Kocan, however, was a vibrant and lithe-footed Ferrando from the start.

As for Netrebko, she is new to this production and, perhaps, could have used further assistance with it, leaning face-first against walls to connote anguish so many times really didn't make it. The portrayal was nowhere as successful as her thrilling Lady Macbeth last season--but, then again, the character wasn't written with the assist of Shakespeare! (I also saw the telecast of her TROVATORE performance at Salzburg earlier in the year, in a very different kind of take on the opera, and she sounded much better.) I find her most vocally persuasive in arias where she goes for the jugular--music that's the most dramatic with the least ornamentation; for example, her "Miserere" in Act IV was far more impressive to me than the "Tacea la notte" earlier in the opera.

Still, it was Hvorostovsky's night to howl--and hopefully, there will be many others to follow.

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Additional performances: October 3mat, 7, 10eve, 17eve; February 3, 6eve, 9, 13mat.

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