Richard Sasanow - Page 27

I consider Mozart's DON GIOVANNI at the top of my list of favorite operas--the music starts to go through my head without much encouragement and gets stuck there. Yet, it's also one of the most problematic in performance, calling for a large group of A-list singers to do justice to the ripe and sometimes rollicking score--and frequently falling short. Luckily for current audiences at the Met, the cast is headed by Swedish baritone Peter Mattei, who already triumphed in Mozart at the Met this season in the new NOZZE DI FIGARO and there are enough other first-rate principals to make it work.

I don't know when the next time the Met is planning to bring back Tchaikovsky's final opera, IOLANTA (libretto by his brother Modest) into its repertory, but they should, and quickly. And if you have the opportunity, run to see it as fast as you can. It's not often that the Met puts on a opera and production so compelling and glorious to watch and hear.

With all its money problems, why hasn't the Met thought about doing some lesser known works in concert? Or, for that matter, marshalled some of its glamorous resources to put on the Verdi REQUIEM? For the time being, we have to be grateful for the New York Philharmonic and its Music Director Alan Gilbert for reminding us how powerful this music can be.

Once upon a time, the Met used to be able to pull off an operetta, like the Rudolf Bing-era FLEDERMAUS, with its Garson Kanin libretto and lyrics by Broadway's Howard Dietz. But for the second year in a row--after last season's dire FLEDERMAUS from writer Douglas Carter Beane and director Jeremy Sams--the company rolled the dice and came up craps. How bad is the new production of Franz Lehar's THE MERRY WIDOW (DIE LUSTIGE WITWE)? Let me count the ways.

Is there another staple of major opera houses that's as big a mess as LES CONTES D'HOFFMAN by Jacques Offenbach? If there is, I can't think of it--but it doesn't keep it from being wildly enjoyable in the right hands. The Met's current production is entertaining, in spite of itself.

For the second time in two seasons, casting has made me reconsider a Met production that I'd written off as past its expiration date. The first was Diana Damrau and Javier Camarena in Bellini's LA SONNAMBULA. This time around it's the wonderful Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva, who breathed new life into the Willy Decker LA TRAVIATA. She's a marvel, both as an actress and a singer.

Donizetti's MARIA STUARDA is a chamber piece blown up to grand opera proportions. That was the takeaway from the new production--that centers on a fictional battle royal between Elizabeth I (Elisabetta) and her cousin Mary (Maria) Stuart, better known as Mary, Queen of Scots--at Barcelona's historic opera house, the Liceu. It stars the sensational Maria of American mezzo Joyce DiDonato, the highly charged Elisabetta of Spanish mezzo Silvia Tro Santafé and Mexican tenor Javier Camarena's sonorous Roberto.

For New York opera-goers, what was the event of the year? Undoubtedly, John Adams's THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER, not only for the kerfuffle caused by the [unfounded] claims of anti-Semitism but for the opera's exciting debut at the Met. (The Met's contentious labor negotiations nearly edged it out, though.) As we head into the spring season, here's a look back at some of the performances that put a song in my heart, not in any particular order.

A funny thing happened on the way to Handel's MESSIAH: That would be Monty Python's LIFE OF BRIAN, transformed from the film by Eric Idle (the jokes) and John Du Prez (the music) into NOT THE MESSIAH (HE'S A VERY NAUGHTY BOY). This comic oratorio resulted in a very jolly evening, which The Collegiate Chorale brought to Carnegie Hall, under conductor and director Ted Sperling.

I never ran a marathon, but I sure sat through one the other night at the Met. Richard Wagner's DIE MEISTERSINGER clocked in at six hours--a quarter of a day--without a god or flying horse in sight. And while the composer referred to this as a comedy, it's not exactly “I Love Lucy” (nor, for that matter, LE NOZZE DI FIGARO).

As 'king of the overture,' Rossini certainly knew how to put an audience in a good mood and his GUGLIELMO TELL--better known as WILLIAM TELL--is no exception. With an elaborate introduction that most Americans over a certain age know from “The Lone Ranger” serials and other themes used in decades of cartoon features, it's still dazzling and great fun to hear. It's particularly so, when it's in the hands of an exciting ensemble like the orchestra of Turin's Teatro Reggio Torino, under music director, Gianandrea Noseda.

Puccini's LA BOHEME has that magical ability to change its shape depending on the cast. When Pavarotti sang, it became his opera, with a Mimi hard pressed to take the spotlight, even in her death scene. When Stratas, Carreras and Scotto (as Musetta) led the cast, it became a glittery ensemble of shooting stars. At this week's performance with rising star Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva as Mimi, there was no doubt that she was the evening's “it” girl, even though the other principal singers added mightily to the performance's success.

Bartlett Sher's production of Rossini's IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA is one of the best of the Gelb years at the Met, with its sliding-doors set by Michael Yeargan and luscious costumes by Catherine Zuber. It was great when it opened with an all-star cast--headed Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Florez and Peter Mattei--and remains sturdy even when some of the casting is a little wobbly.

Compared to Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek as Katerina Ismailova in LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK at the Met, Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner were couple of pikers in their film noir triumphs, “Double Indemnity” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” Westbroek kills her father-in-law with rat poison, strangles her husband with her lover's belt and, as the piece de resistence, drowns her lover's new girlfriend, while going under herself. And she has to do it all while effortlessly singing Shostakovich's demanding score. What a dame!

“To be blunt, Sergei is not a nice guy,” says tenor Brandon Jovanovich, talking about his current role at the Metropolitan Opera in Dmitri Shostakovich's LADY MACBETH OF MTENSEK. “He's the kind of fellow who's jovial and friendly one minute…and then you hear he's robbed a store. He uses and abuses people--we all know someone like that, don't we?” he adds, laughing.

With a pair of soulful arias by Vivaldi, mezzo Joyce DiDonato and her pianist David Zobel let the audience know right away that they were in for a different part of her artistry than we heard at her concert performance of Handel's ALCINA (also at Carnegie) a week earlier. With an emphasis on thoughtfulness rather than pyrotechnics, the result was less fun but nonetheless rewarding for the listener, with the program's “power to transport,” as the singer put it.

“Ideas of darkness and light, obscurity and illumination” are at the heart of the Benjamin Britten-William Plomer CURLEW RIVER. Called “a parable for church performance,” it was performed in New York at the Synod of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, as part of Lincoln Center's White Light Festival. This short but potent work is one part Japanese Noh theatre and another part English medieval mystery play, but altogether modern in its spirituality and visions of motherly love.

The Metropolitan Opera may have its spectacular Julie Taymor production of THE MAGIC FLUTE, but the real fun in town is the Mozart at the new Victory Theatre on West 42nd Street, where the South African Isango Ensemble is in residence.

The great mezzo Joyce DiDonato stripped for her art at Sunday's wonderful performance of Handel's ALCINA with the English Concert under conductor Harry Bicket. For the first act, when she was still at the height of her powers as a sorceress, she came out in a gorgeous black and gray gown with the puffy sleeves she favors. Act II, she lost the sleeves but not the attitude, as her power waned. For the final act, powerless, she lost her petticoat and showed some leg. Oh yes: She sounded glorious all the while.

Only someone who arrived convinced of the opera's bias could have found the Met's premiere of the John Adams-Alice Goodman THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER to be anti-Semitic. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that it's even-handed.