BWW Reviews: Netrebko and Beczala A Potent Duo in IOLANTA Debut at the Met

By: Richard Sasanow Feb. 04, 2015

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.

Divas are sometimes great to have on the roster at a place like the Met because they may champion a work that there wasn't a chance in hell that the company would mount without them. Occasionally, you end up with a stinker--like Massenet's ESCLARMONDE, which did neither Joan Sutherland nor the Met any favors. Then there's IOLANTA, a Met premiere that soprano Anna Netrebko has turned into a must-see, must-hear tour-de-force for the company. It's a wonderful work that begs the question, "Where have you been all our lives?"

The current production--by the crack Polish director by Mariusz Trelinski, in his Met debut, and his design team of Boris Kudlicka (set designer), Marek Adamski (costumes), MarcHeinz (lighting) and, perhaps best of all,Barek Macias(video projections, particularly the deer)--was mesmerizing and exciting in turns. It gave an excellent showcase to Netrebko and her colleagues, conducted by Valery Gergiev with the stellar Met Orchestra.

She delivered a finely nuanced performance--as the blind princess who looks for and finds true love, regains her sight and kind-of lives happily ever after. She's a wonderful actress and sounded so much at home in her native Russian that she was able to give her considerable best. Sort of an INTO THE (RUSSIAN) WOODS (particularly in this production, which, ta-da, takes place in the woods). She's protected by her father, King René (the excellent Russian bass, Ilya Bannik, stepping in for an ill colleague) who has her raised in a secluded garden surrounded by servants who make believe that her blindness is a normal state of affairs. The princess is cured by Ibn-Hakia, a Moorish physician (Elchin Azizov, in another fine debut), abetted by the healing love of a loving knight.

And, oh that knight, Vaudemont! Polish tenor Piotr Beczala, who has taken the slow but sure route to building his career, becomes more indispensable with every new role he takes on at the Met. He looks right, he acts right, and, most importantly, he sounds like a hero. As Duke Robert, who was betrothed to Iolanta as a child and lets her off the hook for her true love, baritone Russian Aleksei Markov was marvelously sonorous.

IOLANTA was only Act One of the Met's double bill, paired with Bartok's BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE (libretto by Bela Balazs), given in its original Hungarian for the first time at the house, in a co-production with Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera. It's another fairytale-based opera, but couldn't be further from the Tchaikovsky, though director Trelinski and Dramaturg Piotr Gruszczynski combined some physical elements in the two stories to give it so cohesion.

The story is creepy--it could have been a prototype for all those cop shows on TV with damsels in distress, or even Hannibal Lecter. More importantly, it's challenging musically, even when it has a powerhouse performance like the one being given by Nadja Michael as Judith, Bluebeard's (a scary yet stolid bass Mikhail Petrenko) latest conquest. You wanted to yell "Get out before it's too late," but she would have been oblivious to your warning, as she keeps touching jewels and other items covered in blood. Curiosity would, indeed, kill this cat.

According to the Met, the BLUEBEARD libretto indicates "nothing more specific than a massive, dark castle hallway with seven doors." There was nothing much of a castle but more of a prison from the Stalin era, which fit pretty well for the story. I found a little less tension in the story telling than I would have liked, but Michael, in particular, had me from 'hello.'

One-acts have inherent problems, unless we're talking about CAV-PAG or Puccini's TRITTICO. Shorter operatic works are neither fish nor fowl: too short for an evening, too difficult to fit comfortably with most other one-acts. Imagine Strauss's SALOME with Puccini's GIANNI SCHICCHI, but that's what the Met did in 1944! Obviously, they thought a little comic relief was in order. They did a similar bill of BLUEBEARD and SCHICCHI for the opera's premiere with the Met during a summer season in 1974. (I've also heard SCHICCHI with Poulenc's LA VOIX HUMAINE).

Just as SALOME deserves to be heard on its own, so does BLUEBEARD. For now, I guess, we should be grateful just for the chance to hear it.

The Met's new productions of Tchaikovsky's IOLANTA / Bartok's BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE will be broadcast in the Met's LIVE in HD series. February 14, 2015, 12:30 pm ET

U.S. Encore:

Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 6:30 pm local time