The last time I was in Parma, Britten’s Il Torno della Gira was playing the Teatro Regio, with Italian surtitles probably not available at the work’s world premiere in Venice in 1954. Successful at the New York City Opera for a number of seasons (I remember Lauren Flanigan’s Governess, John Lankston’s Peter Quint), The Turn of the Screw has most lately been revived hereabouts at Symphony Space by Opera Moderne, a small, new-ish and, on the evidence of last Saturday’s performance, quite exceptional company. Across the board, the singers were able, musical, a pleasure to the ear, and the orchestra handled Britten’s teasing astringencies gracefully.

Besides outsize and malfunctioning titles, only a cluttered staging that seemed to take pleasure in making obvious what Britten carefully left unclear marred the evening. (Makeup out of the zombie jamboree was also intrusive.) Why bother with titles at all (and in such very large type) when an English-language opera is performed in a small theater for an English-speaking audience by English-speaking singers with first-rate diction? Because audiences expect it nowadays? Ladies and gents—get over it. Focus on the singers and the story. That’ll tell you all you need to know.

Like Britten, who made operas from two of his stories, Henry James throve on ambiguity, implying everything while never quite stating anything. Too, James delighted in contrasting the make-believe knowingness of children with the self-deception of adults. Does the child ever really know what she pretends to know (or not to know) in James’s What Maisie Knew? And, “What are you hiding, John?” Ellen Orford demands of the taciturn apprentice in Britten’s Peter Grimes—who dies leaving a larger question unanswered.

John foreshadows Miles in Turn of the Screw, but this time the composer let the boy speak, or sing, for himself—saying nothing clearly while singing very clearly indeed. “I am bad,” Miles insists. I waited for the Governess to reply, “How bad are you are this moment? On a scale from one to ten, where one is naïve and ten satanic?” But I waited in vain. (You can’t do a good Screw without a good Miles. Opera Moderne had a very distinctive and able one, Benjamin P. Wenzelberg.)

“The Turn of the Screw” was published in 1898 in the era of the High Victorian ghost story of subliminal sexual import (Dorian Grey, Dr. Jekyll, Dracula, Carmila). Rather more artistically than most of that genre (and appropriately from the brother of the historian-psychologist of mysticism and religion), James’s “Turn of the Screw” leaves vague such questions as whether the ghosts exist, who sees them, what motivates their visitations—and also the motivations of the virginal hysteric who may or may not be hallucinating. Not the least of the tale’s hints and obscurities is the matter, in that day barely broached, of the sexuality of children and the feelings adults might unconsciously harbor for them.

By the time Britten composed his opera, the cat of child sexuality was out of the bag, as was scientific discussion of the unconscious. As for sexual predation upon children or the innocent or the helpless, this had long been, and would remain, a red flag in Britten’s oeuvre, a significant trope—almost always ambiguous—in Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Lucretia, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Curlew River and Death in Venice. Who is being victimized here, the child or the adult? is also, of course, at the center of Salome, another creation of the naughty nineties.

Britten’s Turn of the Screw, being a stage work, necessarily makes distinct much of what James casually, though with infinite skill, hinted. In the story, the ghosts, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, whose wickedness is never quite defined, may or may not be figments of the imagination of the Governess—indeed, the children whom she hopes to protect accuse her of projecting her fantasies upon their innocent if unorthodox playtimes. Several films have been made from the story, most impressively The Innocents (1961), with Deborah Kerr, and though filmmakers have learned how to tell ghost stories and subtle tall tales through hints and distractions, the medium delights in feigning a spooky reality and supplying a “realistic” explanation quite alien to James’s, or Britten’s, aesthetic.

Thus, in the opera, Quint sings and Miles hears him, even acts on his improper suggestions, and sings of his “badness” in a song derived from a Latin mnemonic. We overhear a lovers’ quarrel among the ghosts derived from the barest hint of a whisper in James: Did Miss Jessel indeed drown herself on being seduced and abandoned by Quint? A glancing implication in the story, but in the opera she has a brief, lovely aria to that effect.

The gradual doubts of the Governess’s state of mind are made explicit: We hear her singing in reassuring concords with Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper. Only later, as the simple woman begins to doubt the Governess’s hold on reality, does their music grow subtly more distant, less parallel. Britten might have got the idea, though hardly the musical language, from Donizetti. More obviously, he parodies Beethoven in the piano sonata that Miles practices.

At the Opera Moderne performance on May 26, the Governess was sung by Anna Noggle, a handsome woman with a sizable soprano and good dramatic instincts, who gave the evening a nicely progressive unease. Julia Teitel’s thrilling mezzo suited Mrs. Grose, the kindly housekeeper driven to suspect the ghosts, then the children and at last the sanity of her ally. Grose has a way of biting off words that should be bitten in order to hit us with them effectively that, combined with her womanly timbre, made me a fan.

Vivian Krich-Brinton seemed a bit mature for Flora (the punk hair, too, seemed anachronistic), her technique adult in a good way, perhaps too good. Wenzelberg (lose the middle initial, kid—and switch to “Ben”) sang the haunted Miles with a voice high and thin but true and sweet. Peter Quint is a role difficult to imagine in any voice but that of Peter Pears at his most seductively weird. Glenn Seven Allen did not try to match this, but gave us a fierce, disordered madness, demonstrated by controlled outbursts and long, serpentine chromatic runs.

Elspeth Davis knew when to pull out the stops and let the dark yearnings of Miss Jessel fly. Conductor and music director Pacien Mazzagatti (Crazycats? Can that really be his name?) shaped a fluid, emotionally varied performance with a very tight and able ensemble.

The meaning of Marie Yakoyama’s lighting design was not always evident and may owe something to recent horror movies. Rebecca Greenstein’s makeup was perhaps predicated on a stage larger than the Symphony Space: Little Miles should not have looked like a ghoul, Mrs. Grose like a sufferer of some charcoal fungus, Peter Quint the victim of a tattoo artist with a scarlatina kink.

Luke Leonard, obliged to place the action in front and behind the orchestra (which therefore stood in for a rural tarn), was clear to a fault, dissipating itself in blackfaced ghostly doubles, clutching hands behind a scrim and the one truly startling moment, when ghostly Peter Quint (whom we have been led to believe is either a ghost or a pederast) seizes the Governess for a major smack on the lips. No wonder she was confused about his intentions; so was I.

Opera Moderne will be presenting Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis next November for, I believe, its New York premiere. Keep an ear out for it.

And speaking of the Recent Unpleasantness, the excellent Billevesées brings some insider knowledge to the ongoing discussion, specifically the relationship among the Met, the Guild and Opera News.

The dialogue (left to right):

“I must draw the Curtain or his screams will alarm the House. You have no fello feeling, my dear fellos; pray unlace the dear love’s Stays, and lay him on the Couch.”

“I am so frighten’d I can hardly stand!”

“Mind you don’t soil the Dear’s linnen!”

“I dread the consequence! That last air of Signeur _________ has thrown him in such raptures, we must call Doctor ________ immediately!”

If the embedded player does not appear above, please go to the arte.tv website to view it.

Photo © Hans Jörg Michel

12:00-3:30 WFMT American Opera Network: Hinkel Schiess stages BORIS GODUNOV for Chicago in a huge refrigerator with the Russian scenes in the freezer and the Polish scenes in the vegetable crisper. Worth a listen for Furlanetto; 2 F.K. Except no one told Schiess that this edition eliminates the Polish scene, so he has the cast assemble on-stage for 45 minutes improvising Doo-Wop.

11:00-2:00: From the workshop of Robert LePale, a giant flyswatter to take care of flying pests like hornets, Dutchmen, and the like. LRT KLASIKA, 3 F.K.

1:00-5:00 CBC TWO (Start times are staggered because it’s always 1:00 somewhere in Canada.) 1 F.K. because aficionados are so happy to see it staged at all that they’re not going to bitch. Two boxes of breakfast cereal sit on a shelf. The Rice Krispies want to be Cheerios aNd the Cheerios want to be Rice Krispies. But because they are ‘unopened,’ (oh, the sexual symbolism simply oozes!) nothing happens, which makes PELLEAS ET MELISANDE seem downright bombastic by comparison.

1:00-4:00. A scullery-based production of LA CENERENTOLA seemed too obvious, so Guy Legnano and his Jolly Canadians have turned off all the lights and play it in the dark. ESPACE MUSIQUE, no data to rank

1:00-5:00: Emil Tooch’s take on LE NOZZE DI FIGARO is that it all take place on a stove where tempers are simmering, except for the Countess, who is imprisoned in the oven. BBC, 3 F.K.

1:00-4:00: Not having a prior body of productions to rebel against, Harry Wooster had to look at the scores of Weingartner’s DIE DORFSCHULE and Orff’s GISEI. Whispering privately to the conductor, he said, “You just play it and I’ll make sure nobody bumps into anybody.” DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR, no data to rank.

1:00-5:00: Carmen Truderei has placed two dozen old-fashioned washing machines on stage. The cast puts their titos in the wringer and they all scream “Clemenza” for three hours. DWOJKA POLSKIE, 3 F.K.

1:00-5:00: With a ‘faux set” of lovers, and with emotions running hot and cold, it seems only right that COSI FAN TUTTE be staged in a sink. Alfonso seems rather drained by it all, but Despina is on tap. FRANCE MUSIQUE, 3 F.K., just to deal with Camilla Nylund.

1:30-5:00: NPR World of Opera Vivaldi’s L’ORACOLO IN MESSINA, 2 F.K., has been re-worked by Tewfil Lorchawa to reflect the tribulations of a woman who drops her glasses down the garbage disposal.

1:00-5:00: The perfect metaphor for the metronomic Herr Haydn’s LA VERA COSTANZA would be an egg-timer. NPR affiliates, 2 F.K.

1:00-4:00: The ubiquitous Ferruccio Furlanetto is running competition with himself as BORIS GODUNOV. But whether it’s Vienna or Chicago, he still hasn’t found Poland. NRK Klassik, 2 F.K.

1:00-4:00: ORLANDO means orange juice, so Cecil Seuss Swanson has staged the Handel opera as an expose of working conditions in a Sunkist processing plant — but with really divine costuming. RADIO 4 NETHERLANDS, 3 F.K.

1:00-5:00: Schweitzer’s ROSAMUNDE. This is new to me, but the little I’ve heard (my copy just arrived today) suggests it will be no more boring than most of the other stuff on the docket. (We used to have a cook named Rosie Mundy, but I’m sure she’s dead now. Or maybe not.)

1:00-5:00. When you’re trying to revive a long-forgotten moribund miscarriage like Halevy’s LE MAGICIENNE, it’s a waste of time to stage it as a bloody rebellion in a broom closet, even though you dress them all like Swiffers. RTP ANTENNA 2, 4 F.K.

1:00-5:00: It will be no surprise that Sparkie McHannus has chosen to emphasize the sexual tensions in LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR by staging it on a huge condiment tray. Lucy is oil, Henry is vinegar, Edgar is mustard, and Raymond Bide-a-bent is catsup in one of those plastic dispensers that if you squeeze it in the middle, it squirts all over you. (I used to go with a guy like that.)

1:00-5:00: WRR will not be airing the commercial recording of PORGY AND BESS because someone leaked to The Gershwin Trust that Lorin Maazel is Caucasian. (You mean, nobody knew?)

1:00-6:00: Mary Zimmerbella draws on her sit-com roots for THE RETURN OF THE CORKSCREW with Peter Quint as the wacky neighbor who is always borrowing stuff — like your kid. LYRIC FM, 3 F.K.

2:00-5:30: RADIO STEPHANSDOM RUSLAN AND LUDMILA in a pretty good recording from the Mariinsky, 3 F.K. mainly because it has Netrebko. The plot features a scene with a giant head, which I guess puts us back in the bathroom again.

2:00-5:00: A Bach recital with Ian Bostridge. And when he’s done singing you can poke him down the drain to find that ring you lost.

2:00-6:00: Mercadante’s CARITEA, REGINA DI ESPAGNA. ESPACE 2. I don’t know this opera, but generally I like Mercadante. I also like Una Merkel. And Helmut Dantine. And Dentyne chewing gum. And I’ve reached Kevin Bacon in only five steps.

2:00-4:00: HR2 KULTUR. “Frau Luna und Ihre Verwandten.” Your guess is as good as mine, but I know she’s not going to last in Vegas unless she changes the name of her group.

2:00-4:30: LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES. Cecil Seuss Swanson has staged the Prokofiev opera as an expose of working conditions . . . wait a minute ! The sunuvabitch has used the same staging for two different operas. Seuss! You’re sued. You’re sued, Seuss!

2:00-5:00: MITRIDATE, RE DI PONTO. Not many people know that the historical Mithridatos was elevated to sainthood by Pope Pontilius III in 489 A.D. He is now employed as the Patron Saint of Light, so it is fitting that Bartlett Pear’s production consists in nothing more than a vast banque of blinding lights shining directly in the audience’s eyes. A brilliant achievement. RADIO TRE, 3 F.K.

4:00-6:00: NDR KULTUR ORPHEE AUX ENFERS, 2 F.K., in a recording which features Pluto giving head to Euridice, so we’re back in the bathroom again.

The chat, as always, is in La Casa della Cieca.

I could write a book about how I finally purchased these DVDs but no one would read it. Target initially couldn’t locate them in their own warehouse and kept summarily cancelling my orders. The two stores I called knew they had them in stock but couldn’t find them. Let me tell you, nobody knows opera like Target or, better yet, nobody at Target knows opera.

It must have taken me at least 15 minutes of searching their website to locate these DVDs because they haven’t been listed under their actual titles–that would be much too easy. So, respectively, they can be found as “Puccini Live at the Met – Only at Target” and “Verdi Live at the Met Opera – Only at Target.” Searching the names of the exalted participants brings up only the rest of their respective recordings.

I’ll spare you all the rest but here’s the really, really, great news. They’re both only $13.99 apiece and these are full bit-rate Deutsche Grammophon international releases with all the add-ons, i.e., not like the knock off copies burned on the cheap they sold last year of the Aida and Turandot. The Fanciulla is even spread over two-discs for optimum sound and picture. Sweet!

For those of you who may be concerned over my level of enthusiasm over a mere dvd release please keep in mind I live in an operatic wasteland, commonly referred to as L.A., and I’ve promised my friends and family I’ll enter into a 12-step program for opera fanatics the moment someone opens that clinic. So, here we go.

First, the Fanciulla. It’s always interesting how music affects the listener based on the how it’s being heard. I have enjoyed Fanciulla since my very first exposure to it with the most excellent recording from Covent Garden led by Zubin Mehta and it affords many, many pleasures musically and dramatically. I think it is Puccini’s most superb orchestrations and his tangible gift for melody wrapped in passion.

I adore this Met production with unbridled devotion, pardner. Gian Carlo del Monaco’s original 1991 playbook has been kept pretty much intact and the sets and costumes of Michael Scott are perfection. Gil Wechsler’s lighting is magnificent in catching the twilight to sunset of Act I and the dusk to dawn in Act III. It’s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer all the way. Sure the Act I saloon is huge beyond reason but I really love the way he solves the problem of Minnie’s cabin in Act II and not making that huge. The ghost town finale is especially resonant with the forced perspective street and the Sierras in the distance.

The only technical problem with this production, truthfully, is the snow. I saw these sets and costumes here in L.A. in 2002 borrowed from the Bonn Opera and during Act II LA Opera used a system that was some sort of flake or foam that fell in slow motion, behaved like real snow, and was mesmerizing. The Met is still dropping confetti from the flies, which, especially in high definition, looks ridiculous. Also, someone needs to get under the roof and insulate Minnie’s cabin because it’s snowing inside and that looks silly too.

Meanwhile, the performance itself is nearly glorious. Baritone Lucio Gallo apparently got his start acting in silent movies. He does have Jack Rance down, however, all greasy, self-absorbed and muy macho. Vocally, he starts out a little rough and stays there. I wouldn’t call him a perfect singer but this role is a ton of parlando and he certainly has the language down.

Marcello Giordani’s Dick Johnson seems like such a nice guy, downright unthreatening, in fact. I could never, ever, imagine him as the mastermind behind a ring of thieves. But, after all, his “other” aria is about how unhappy he was to inherit the family business and he’s determined, once he meets Minnie, to get out. This was Giordani’s role debut in 2010 and hopefully he’ll grow in the part. He sings well enough, especially his two big arias, and his interaction with Deborah Voigt’s Minnie is really charming at times.

You can tell that Voigt really enjoys this role because it’s written all over her face. I find her dramatically more involved here than anything I’ve ever seen her do. I wasn’t too impressed with her when I heard the radio broadcast but seeing her whole performance makes a huge difference and I have to change my opinion on her Minnie. Vocally, she isn’t perfect either– but, who ever has been in this role? Her tone isn’t what it was and there are times when pressure on the voice can make her sound a tad shrewish. It’s a treacherously written part but she’s meets the challenges and I appreciate her best efforts here. Our girl’s good with a rifle, I’ll give her that.

The finale of Act III has always been a little problematic for me, as most of the time it fails to rise to the level of the rest of the score, just missing the transformative moment that I think Puccini intended. That said, something was really happening on stage that day because after Ms. Voigt finishes her plea to the miners she throws down her gun, and in a new bit of staging, holds her Bible up in the air. The chorus and orchestra really let loose and I felt the emotional tug, honestly, for the first time. Dwayne Croft, pleasurably, overcast here as Sonora is particularly touching. The final,”Addio’s” lingering off stage always get me. Hanky, please.

There’s much to commend in Nicola Luisotti’s energized conducting. It’s a difficult score to bring off, especially the orchestral silences like the card game in Act II, but he has a firm grip on everything and the Met players really bring out this scores special American tinta. All this, plus Sondra Rodvanavsky interviews the horses at the intermission.

The performance of Il Trovatore is something else altogether. We’ve got insanity, blood, violence against women, copulation and the most harrowing soprano death scene since Maria Ewing got savaged with a meat hook by Luis Lima in the Covent Garden Carmen.

First off, magnificent production design by Charles Edwards in a kind of Goya meets Dali on a turntable in a shadowy castle graveyard. Trouble is with all the spider-cams whizzing about the proscenium edges it’s hard to tell when the stage is actually moving. Excellent costumes for the men by Brigitte Reiffenstuel include lots of embroidery and braid. She might have swung a little wider with the women and our poor Leonora is stuck in a empire shift all night. Not even a sash or ribbon, and Manrico has to lend her his coat at their wedding, poor thing.

I’ve always appreciated David McVicar’s work because I think he does respect the composer’s intentions while still trying for something a little untraditional. His work here is exemplary in developing the relationships between the characters, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen delineated as clearly in a Trovatore before. The drawback is that he seems to think singers have more sincerity on their knees.

Bass Stefan Kocan opens the evening with a vivid rendering of Ferrando’s scena replete with excellent fioratura.

Sondra Radvanovsky enters and fervently polishes off her cavatina and cabaletta, with repeats, thank you very much. It’s a nice-sized voice and she has all the requisite technique required by Verdi that is so often missing from voices too big for this role that still insist on singing it. She’s playing it like she’s a giggly, bi-polar, school girl and it isn’t necessarily age appropriate but she makes it work.

Then our Di Luna and Manrico, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Marcelo Álvarez, show up for the same date and it’s on. I love when Di Luna grabs Leonora’s hand and she bites him to get away and then he pushes her down on her back. Not the Sutherland and Pavarotti staging. High notes go flying at the end of Act I.

Excellent gypsy camp with a crucible-forge-anvil station manned by a bunch of half-naked  muscle guys. Good call, Mr. McVicar! I have a couple of problems with Dolora Zajick’s Azucena. First, she’s been singing this role for 24 years now, and very well, I might add. Why in the hell is she looking at the conductor so much then? It’s Trovatore, for God sake, she’s gotta know it backwards. None of these tempos took me by surprise. My second gripe is that there seems to be a lack of presence that is doubly frustrating since at this point in her career she should be ruling the earth with a voice like that. She has more than everything this role needs yet she appears almost timid at times. It’s a magnificently sung but slightly earthbound portrayal.

Then it’s time for the abduction from the convent and Hvorostovsky totally goes into the zone for “Il balen” and lays down the bel canto pipe. He’s working the come-hither melismas and cadenzas and even manages to outsing himself from the Covent Garden DVD from a decade earlier. (Those of you with good memories may recall when he won Cardiff Singer of the World in 1988 and the wags were predicting his voice’s early demise from singing too dark and heavy. He shouts a little on the top G but I forgive him.)

Now Álvarez comes under scrutiny because, after some excellent singing in the early part of the evening he starts displaying some bad habits. It’s a fine voice for Manrico and the things he does well are exceptional but, at points he’s exploding the notes above the staff and breaking the line completely. Color me surprised when he’s interviewed at the intermission and he actually talks the same way. Nerves? He doesn’t melisma at all in ‘Ah si ben mio’, when some tenors have actually rendered up honest-to-goodness trills but, he does give a muscular and very exciting rendition of ‘Di quella pira’ down a half-step and the crowd goes wild.

Now, you can keep all the rest of Trovatore and leave me with a good Act IV, Scene I. Radvanovsky proves herself to be a human breath machine here but it does seem at times that she vocalizes well more by accident than design. It’s a long sing at this point and her intonation can be suspect. Still, she’s attentive to Verdi’s markings and even performs the cabaletta ‘Tu vedrai’ instead of cutting it like the lazy sopranos do. She also takes a high option at ‘Lo guiro a Dio’ in her duet with Di Luna just to prove me right, brava. They both really catch fire here and it’s a pleasure to hear singers this passionate in performance. Dramatically she shows real revulsion over Hvorostosky’s advances (which couldn’t have been easy) brings a vividness to her portrayal that I really enjoy.

The final scene almost plays like an opera in itself. The anvils have been cleared away and we’re left with the scorched pit with Marico and Azucena tied to the stakes they’re scheduled to be burned at. They proceed to give one of the most delicate and beautiful accounts of “Ai nostri monti” I’ve ever heard and all is forgiven. Most of the audience doesn’t want to applaud and break the spell. The very best moment comes when our Leonora appears and begs Manrico to get away with his life. This isn’t your routine soprano death scene with a fluttering of eyelids and a delicate fainting away. Oh no, Radvanovsky starts losing control of her limbs and for once this really does seem dangerous and horrible. I won’t give away the end because it’s fabulous.

I would not have minded in the slightest if our evening’s conductor, Marco Armiliato, had taken a stronger hand here and there. I really love it when the double basses get muscular and lean hard into this music but that’s not part of his interpretation, he is definitely conducting Verdi and not Bellini which is the other side of that problem. There is real fire and excitement throughout with a cast that can’t be bettered and a staging that makes sense. I can hardly believe I even wrote that sentence about Trovatore. The audience cheers long and loud at the final calls.

Renée Fleming asks those hard-hitting questions at the intermission about why people find Trovatore so doggoned confusing.

Barbara Willis Sweete is the excellent video director for both of these performances and DTS Sound and picture are excellent plus, we get all the subtitle options. For $13.99 a piece, my friends, what have you got to lose?

Voting closes at midnight on May 30, 2012.

And now… a song dedicated to the star of yesterday’s news cycle.

EARLIER TODAY: Well, slap my face and call me Vox Populi, but “[i]n view of the outpouring of reaction from opera fans about the recent decision to discontinue Met performance reviews in Opera News, the Met has decided to reverse this new editorial policy. From their postings on the internet, it is abundantly clear that opera fans would miss reading reviews about the Met in Opera News. Ultimately, the Met is here to serve the opera-loving public and has changed its decision because of the passionate response of the fans.”

This in a press release from the Met less than 18 hours after the New York Times reported that ”Opera News, 76 years old and one of the leading classical music magazines in the country, said on Monday that it would stop reviewing the Metropolitan Opera, a policy prompted by the Met’s dissatisfaction over negative critiques.”

Or is this a sort of double-reverse version of the Streisand Effect?

MONDAY NIGHT: The situation at Opera News recalls similar friction in San Francisco in 1975 when critic Stephanie von Buchau “was ‘banned’ from the War Memorial by San Francisco Opera General Manager Kurt Herbert Adler. Adler, at least as prickly a personality as Buchau, took offense at one of her reviews, and ordered the publicity department not to make press tickets available to her.”

This latest move of suppression of healthy discussion of events at the Met is extremely discouraging; in fact, I don’t think it’s too much of an exaggeration to call the situation “horrifying.” As parterre.com doesn’t enjoy press credentials at the Met, your doyenne doesn’t see herself in any immediate danger; and, at the other end of the scale, first-tier media like the New York Times, the New Yorker and the Associated Press are unlikely to be shut out.

In between, though, there are dozens of more vulnerable small magazine and web reviewers who are right now feeling the chilling effect of this very high-profile move to quash dissent. The threat is now implicit: publish negative criticism of the Met, and the Met will silence you.

What action journalists and the opera public in general should take is hard to define precisely at the moment, but one thing is clear: this is not just about Opera News.

Bloggers weigh in:

The Classical Beat

Iron Tongue of Midnight

Alex Ross

Out West Arts

But, as Remnick notes in the same article, Russian television now, 22 years later, has been closing its doors on glasnost and once again structuring itself out of perestroika. Crowds have once again to fill Red Square, and whatever stability president Vladimir Putin has fostered over the last decade-and-change has begun to show cracks in its façade.

“The strengthening of our statehood is, at times, deliberately interpreted as authoritarianism,” Putin says as a catchall excuse for the increasing number of outspoken critics against his leadership, the blogs and websites and viral videos and Twitter accounts that speak out against him when the people in the streets are not. His reelection earlier this month has only caused more outrage and ire, culminating in a closed-off inauguration event—tinted windows, blocked off streets, closed metros.

A similar event took shape in New York this year. While it’s foolhardy to compare global politics with the inner workings of one opera house, even the biggest opera house in the country, a similar pallor was cast over the Metropolitan Opera this year when the company announced its 2012-13 season: No press conference, no room for questions and answers, merely a sterile, standard e-mail. It sent a message bigger than any press release could.

In many ways, Peter Gelb has preached a glasnost and a perestroika since he assumed the title of general manager of the Met in 2006. Certain aspects of the company’s operations were shifted—the absorption of the company’s in-house opera shop (previously run separately by the Metropolitan Opera Guild), clearance for singers on the company roster to perform at the annual Richard Tucker Gala—and a greater openness was fostered by introducing the Met Live in HD, a program that exposed the house’s guts and gears—in HD no less—to cinema-goers worldwide.

“I intend to honor [the Met’s] great traditions and its loyal audience while hopefully arriving at the right formula of exciting new artistic initiative that will fill its seats well into the future,” Gelb said at a company news conference (back when the company still had news conferences) prior to assuming directorship in 2006. (Similarly, President Putin promised in this month’s inauguration speech that “I will do everything to justify the trust that millions of our citizens have placed in me. I see the whole sense and purpose of my life as being to serve our country and serve our people, whose support gives me the inspiration and help I need to resolve the greatest and most complex tasks. . . . We are ready for the tests and accomplishments ahead. Russia has a great past and just as great a future. We will work with faith in our hearts and sincere and pure intention.”)

It turns out the greatest tradition Gelb has honored, however, is that of making the Met a continually closed edifice. The brilliantly lit corners we see of the house in simulcast are just that: Corners in a far larger institution. Nearly four years after his optimistic proclamation from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, Gelb sang a different tune. While he conceded in 2009 to the New York Post that opera fans “have every right to be” opinionated, he groused about the criticisms he had recently received in that time, primarily lobbed towards the company’s controversial Tosca. “I hope they will evaluate the Met in the context of a whole season. And if they still hate what we’re doing, I’m going to be trying my hardest to continue to do what I am doing, because I believe it’s the only way to go.”

The crossroads between criticism and public accountability have proven to be the toughest pills for Gelb to swallow. His rhetoric in what interviews he does give (and those have been fewer and fewer over the last six years) has become more defensive. Responses to questions are full of what he’s not doing: “My intention is not to try to slap the audience in the face. I’m not trying to do that,” he told the Washington Post in 2010, later adding in the same interview that “I’m not trying to reinvent anything.”

This defensiveness is where Gelb and Putin diverge. When asked about the hot-button topic of notorious Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya’s 2006 murder, the Russian president merely sniffed that she was “a person of no importance.” Such a dismissive response may not have squelched the rampant speculation that the politician did play some part in the journalist’s grizzly demise, but it certainly kept many outspoken voices mum.

Conversely, Gelb has been making headlines in recent months for his own clashes with journalists. Per a statement made to the New York Times earlier this month, he argued that a WQXR blog post critical of the Met’s new Ring Cycle and a subsequent Times profile on Gelb “was objectionable… an awful and nasty piece, which in my opinion was totally unjustified.” Less than 24 hours after it was published, the piece disappeared from WQXR’s website.

Similarly, news broke on Monday that Opera News,the in-house publication for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, would no longer run reviews of Met productions. The general director told the Times yesterday that he was not a fan of the publication “passing judgment” on productions put on by the same company the publication’s parent organization was created to support.

Whether or not that’s true (and certainly, the oft-quoted line from Brian Kellow’s May column in the magazine, “The public is becoming more dispirited each season by the pretentious and woefully misguided, misdirected productions foisted on them,” is indeed not helping anyone with the initials “PG”), the muzzling couldn’t have been more ill-timed, happening one month following the WQXR debacle and in a realm of memory still smarting from the disappearance of blogger Brad Wilber’s Met Futures page.

In fact, it’s the Wilber case that smarts the most, nine months later. Both WQXR and Opera News have business partnerships with the Met that create more shades of grey than an E.L. James page-turner. Wilber, however, was an independent blogger whose website culling repertory and casting information for upcoming Met seasons included a disclaimer that his information should be considered speculative and that neither the author nor the website was affiliated with the Metropolitan Opera. The website went uncontested for nearly 15 years until the company’s general counsel requested it be taken down last year. Wilber’s website offered no criticism or snide jabs, just the earnest support of an eager fan.

At the time, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told the New York Observer at that time that as “a general matter the Met has no legal right to control what is said about it unless the material published is libelous or written in a way to suggest falsely that the Met itself is the author. Material in the public domain may freely be described so long as the copyright laws are adhered to and non-defamatory material from sources may be published whether or not it was confirmed.” The Met has yet to take significant action against artists who list upcoming production dates on their personal websites, often preempting season announcements.

In the last few weeks, numerous people have across all manner of media mentioned Gelb and Putin in the same breath. Both deny significant problems in their respective purviews, both have strained relationships with the press (indeed, both would probably just prefer that the press didn’t exist), both are preaching a time of openness that is in truth becoming more silenced and stilted than it was in the 1970s and early 80s, both are folically challenged.

But here’s the big, glaring difference: Vladimir Putin runs one of the largest countries in the world. Peter Gelb runs an opera company. Yes, there are consequences should either of these ships sink under their respective captains, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s the difference between the sinking of the Titanic and the sinking of a family yacht. Which makes the current leadership crisis at the Met all the more deleterious. While James Levine slinks further and further into disability leave and an impending retirement, Gelb has made it clear that “I am making all artistic decisions here.”

And, to be fair, some of those artistic decisions have paid off most handsomely. Though it’s perhaps mordantly ironic that two of the Met’s greatest coups under Gelb—a new production of Shostakovich’s The Nose and an imported wonder of Janacek’s Siberia-set From the House of the Dead—reinforce the company’s soviet environment. And, curiously, when Rene Pape made his Met role debut as Boris Godunov, he did so for the first time not as a Putin-esque figure, but as a historical tsar. That production, crippled as it was by a last-minute artistic switchup after initial director Peter Stein felt that Gelb was being unsupportive in his request to get an American work visa to helm the show, fell flat without a definitive vision. It was, like so many supposedly “cutting-edge” productions of the New Met, buried and beholden to tradition.

In such instances, it’s tempting to paraphrase another Putin quote: “Whoever does not miss the Volpe era has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.”

Of course, applied in retrospect to the great white hope that washed over Lincoln Center in 2006, perhaps another Putin maxim is even more disturbing and apropos: “Nobody should pin their hopes on a miracle.”

“Lenny Abramov,” a journalist who writes frequently about the Met, has chosen to use a pen name on this occasion.

It’s a beautiful day for the races here at Parterre Park for the 55th Annual Swish Stakes, second leg of the world reknowned Triple Tiara. There’s an extraordinarily crowded field — 31 entrants — but by far the favorite is DON CARLO (1:00 RADIO 4 NETHERLANDS) despite earlier reports that he was brought up lame with the substitution of Massimo Giordano Marcelo Alvarez for Andrew Richards.

Strong contenders are ROMEO ET JULIETTE from Vancouver Opera (CBC TWO, at whatever time it happens to be in Canada) with Gordon Gietz as Romeo and Peter Volpe just standing around.; LA CLEMENZA DI TITO with Elina Garanca (DWOJKA POLSKIE at 1:00 and LATVIA RADIO KLASIKA at 2:00); and CYRANO DE BERGERAC from Madrid with Placido Domingo in the saddle (RADIO CLASICA DE ESPANA at 1:00)

A trio of yearlings are making their first appearance on any track. Judith Weir‘s MISS FORTUNE and Gerald Barry‘s THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST from BBC at 1:00; Nicola Porpora‘s SEMIRAMIS at 1:20 on DR P2; and de Marco Antonio Portugal’s LO SPAZZACAMINO PRINCIPE at 2:00 on ESPACE 2. Wait, that makes four, doesn’t it? Hey, ya want John Nash, call Russell Crowe. Which brings up another subject. Why would anybody name their kid “Portugal”? I don’t think we have any composers named ‘Fred Massachusetts’ or ‘Elsie Oklahoma.” And if you bring up Emma Nevada, you’re just going to make me mad. Or Paolo Washington. Or Joe Montana.

In the middle of the pack for the Run for the Forsythias are quite a few who come up lame in the stretch. WERTHER with Rolando Villazon (11:00, LRT KLASIKA); TALES OF HOFFMAN from Chicago (various stations, various time); LA GIOCONDA (1:30 CESKY ROZHLAS); LE COMTE ORY from Geneva (1:30 NPR); I VESPRI SICILIANI from Geneva ( 1:00 RTP Antena 2), EUGENE ONEGIN from Los Angeles (1:00 KUSC); MAHAGONNY (1:00 DEUTSCHLANDRADIO KULTUR), and LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR from Chicago (1:00 WFMT) despite the efforts of jockey Susanna Philips.

Some entries are from stables with good track records. NIXON IN CHINA from Canadian Opera (ESPACE MUSIQUE at noon); DIE WALKURE from Vienna (2:00 KLARA): ORLANDO from Brussells (1:00 NRK KLASSIK); LUISA MILLER from Florence (2:00 RADIO SLOVENIA TRETJI); and PETER GRIMES from La Scala (2:00 RADIO TRE), plus one thoroughbred, DIE WALKURE from Covent Garden, 1957, with Rudolf Kempe riding Birgit Nilsson hard. (2:00 RADIO STEPHANSDOM)

Rounding out the field:
Matthias Goerne sings “Winterreise” at 1:00 on BR KLASSIK
A fundraiser on KBYU at 1:00
Rene Jacobs‘ recording of COSI on WRR at 1:00
DIE ZAUBERFLOTE on BARTOK RADIO at 1:30
THE JACOBIN on RADIO OESTERREICH at 1:30
OBERTO on SVERIGES P2 at 1:30
IOLANTA and FRANCESCA DA RIMINI on LYRIC FM at 1:00
SWANWHITE and ALADDIN on RAI AUDITORIUM at 3:00
SAINT LUDMILA on CESKY ROZHLAS at 3:52

and . . . . . THEY’RE OFF !

However, opera houses and recording companies are more regularly exploring the Gluck beyond Orfeo, including numerous productions of his late French masterpiece Iphigénie en Tauride, this year’s Met/Juilliard Armide, and Alceste at the Vienna Staatsoper next season. Recently recordings of the much rarer Ezio and Il Trionfo di Clelia have been released providing fascinating insights into the “unknown” Gluck.

Like many itinerant composers of the time who traveled from city to city for commissions or church or court jobs, the protean German-born Gluck moved as a youngster to Bohemia and studied in both Prague and Italy, where he wrote his first opera for Milan in 1741 at the age of twenty-seven and later dominated the opera scene in Vienna, then Paris.

Of his first ten operas six were composed to texts by the ubiquitous Pietro Metastasio, the most popular librettist of the day, but only one of the ten—Ipermestra (Venice 1744)—has survived complete. Ezio, composed in 1750 for the Kotzentheater in Prague and Il Trionfo di Clelia commissioned for the opening of Bologna’s Teatro Communale in 1763 both feature Metastasian texts too. The irony, of course, is that it is precisely Metastasian opera that Gluck (and his librettist Ranieri de’Calzabigi) rebelled against with Orfeo and Alceste in the 1760s, forever changing the operatic world.

Those familiar with Gluck only from the later operas may be surprised at these earlier works which straddle the baroque and classical periods yet seem not to fully belong to either. The fame of the “reform” operas has overshadowed Gluck’s long and successful career composing opera seria—and he also wrote French opera-comiques for Vienna in the 1750s. His opera seria (like Ezio and Trionfo) continue to be dominated by arias (usually in variations of the da capo form) which tend to be longer and more elaborate than those of earlier baroque composers with often richer, more varied instrumentation.

Comparable examples of these later opera seria (both excellent) include Christophe Rousset’s Jommelli Armida abbandonata and Andrea Marcon’s Galuppi L’Olimpiade

If one has heard or seen Mozart’s earliest operas like Mitridate, re di Ponto or Lucio Silla, one will have a sense of what Gluck’s opera seria are like.

Astonishingly, the new Ezio conducted by Alan Curtis for Virgin Classics is that work’s third recording in the past few years although the Oehms features a revised score done for Vienna in 1763.

A complex drama focused on a fraught love triangle being manipulated from behind the scenes by the heroine’s father, Ezio was one of Metastasio’s most popular libretti, first set by Porpora, then Auletta in 1728, and later by others like Traetta and Myslivecek. Clearly Alan Curtis has a special interest in Ezio having performed (and, according to rumor, also recorded) one of Jommelli’s three versions as well as recorded Handel’s 1732 opera for Archiv several years ago, a CD which shares several cast members with his Gluck version: Ann Hallenberg, who sings the Handel hero, swaps sexes to Fulvia, Gluck’s heroine, whereas Sonia Prina, Ezio in the Gluck, reigns as Handel’s Emperor Valentiniano.

Metastasio didn’t appear to interest Handel much, and his Ezio is not generally considered one of his better operas. Curtis’s pleasant Archiv rendition won’t change many minds about that score. On the other hand, Poro, (also a Handel-Metastasio collaboration) proves to be one of Handel’s most unjustly neglected works.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case with Curtis, he fails to make a very compelling case for Gluck’s version either. In my experience live performances by Curtis tend to be more interesting than recordings; however Ezio, an amalgam of a concert (with a different tenor) from Poissy in 2008 and some extra sessions, is often disappointingly bland, although Gluck isn’t at his most inspired here either.  Despite the highly dramatic situations, the string of arias remains stubbornly sedate when one yearns instead for passion and fire; only the heroine Fulvia seems to have really moved the composer. Gluck does, however, add an explosive trio that doesn’t exist in Metastasio’s original text to end act II.

Sadly, mezzo Sonia Prina has been sounding pretty threadbare recently, and as Ezio her often harsh voice displays little beauty. Despite her idiomatic handling of the text, her effortful singing is particularly distressing at anything above mezzo forte. The Emperor’s sister unhappily in love with Ezio, Mayuko Karasawa’s wiry and wan Onoria is a bit of a trial too.

The scheming Massimo, Fulvia’s father, ironically gets some of the gentlest, loveliest music, particularly his long first act aria which was later reworked as Orfeo’s rapturous greeting to Elysium “Che puro ciel.” (Gluck was a champion self-borrower.)  By casting sweet-voiced Topi Lehtipuu, Curtis errs on the side of the music rather than the drama as the tenor sounds entirely too nice.  Max Emanuel Cencic’s Valentiniano isn’t as characterful as some of his more recent portrayals but there’s always a vibrant connection to the Emperor’s oddly mild music.

One of today’s best singers, Ann Hallenberg as Fulvia easily dominates the performance, her opulent high smoky mezzo at its peak. Passionately embodying Fulvia’s struggle between conflicting allegiances to father, lover and emperor, Hallenberg makes her act III scena “Misera dove son!” the enthralling climax to the opera (see below), while also inspiring Cencic and Lehtipuu to surpass themselves in that forceful trio.

However, as a follow-up to its very fine series of Handel operas conducted by George Petrou, MDG trumps Virgin in nearly every way with a smashing world premiere recording of Il Trionfo di Clelia, sure to be remembered as one of the best of 2012.

Conducting Armonia Atenea in an edition he recently unearthed, Giuseppe Sigismondi de Risio inspires his relatively unknown, at times uneven cast to make the best possible case for this heretofore obscure Gluck gem. Although written directly after Orfeo, Trionfo avoids the seismic advances of its predecessor returning to the safe haven of Metastasian opera seria, yet it’s clearly a work that fired Gluck to compose music more consistently exciting and involving than almost anything in Ezio.  Perhaps being commissioned to write for the opening of the current Bologna opera house spurred him to surpass himself, while at the same time Gluck played it safe giving the Italian public the kind of work it would be expecting rather than challenging it in the way he had just done in Vienna with Orfeo.

Like Ezio, Trionfo features a noble Roman heroine struggling to fend off the advances of an unwanted suitor while remaining true to her lover amid threatening political upheaval. Although there are still numerous flashy arias, there are also some subtle formal innovations. Act II contains a long sequence with no arias at all; instead several accompanied recitatives alternate with orchestral marches and sinfonias. After her two major arias in Act I, the heroine Clelia surprisingly gets only two very short arias for the remainder of the opera.

It has been said that the orchestral writing for Trionfo was so challenging that the Bologna orchestra (not nearly the equal of the group Gluck used in Vienna) came to grief in trying to play it.  De Riso’s excellent Greek original-instrument orchestra shines throughout doing fully justice to the richly varied accompaniments featuring extensive use of trumpets, horns and drums. Despite being recorded in the studio, the secco recitatives, here accompanied by George Petrou on the fortepiano, are much more vividly performed than on the (partially) live Ezio.

(only six of the seven recording session videos seem to have been uploaded)

Featured in the Petrou-Handel series as well as several Alan Curtis recordings, Mary-Ellen Nesi has quietly been developing into one of today’s best singers in this music. As the hero Orazio, she has the lion’s share of Trionfo’s most difficult music which her lean russet mezzo sails through with éclat. As accomplished as her singing of Orazia’s more ornate arias is, her rapt spinning out the lines of the very long “Saper ti basti, o cara” (one of those magical slow arias that makes time stand still that Gluck did so very well) makes it one of the opera’s high points.

She is beautifully partnered by Hélène Le Corre as the beleaguered Clelia in the work’s single duet “Si, ti fido al tuo gran core.”  On her own, Le Corre makes a moving heroine and despite a somewhat tight upper register brings a formidable coloratura technique to a dazzling performance of the fiendishly florid “Mille dubbi mi destano in petto” which brings act I to a spectacular close.

Turkish soprano Burçu Uyar charms as Larissa, however wildly erratic high notes (particularly in some ill-conceived repeat ornaments) unfortunately mars an otherwise effective portrayal. As bad guy Tarquinio, mezzo Irini Karaianni, also featured in the MDG Handel series, again, despite a rather ordinary timbre, proves tremendously appealing in her character’s superb music, particularly the showy “Non speri onusto il pino” which ends act II.  The young Romanian countertenor Florin Cezar Ouatu, so fine in a recent recording of Vivaldi’s Ottone in Villa, unfortunately has little to do as Mannio.

The exciting discovery here is the impressive young tenor Vassilis Kavayas as Porsenna, the king who holds Clelia prisoner. Only in his mid-20s, Kavayas still has a few rough edges but otherwise impressively tosses off Porsenna’s three demanding arias, particularly his bewitching first act showpiece appropriately accompanied by a vigorously churning orchestra and set to one of Metastasio’s most famous texts:

Sai, che piegar si vede
Il docile arboscello,
Che vince allor che cede
Dei turbini al furor.

Know that the slender shrub
which is seen to bend,
conquers when it yields
to the storm.

His strikingly vivid portrayal shows up the more experienced but too phlegmatic Lehtipuu in a similar role in Ezio.

One hopes that interest in Gluck’s lesser known works continues particularly as the 2014 tricentenary of his birth approaches.  Based on an interesting but uneven French broadcast from the 90s, a work worthy of consideration is La Clemenza di Tito, long inevitably overshadowed by Mozart’s. Also it would be fascinating to hear Cythère assiégée in the revision of the 1759 Viennese opera-comique he composed for Versailles in 1775. In the meantime, however, curious listeners will be amply rewarded by MDG’s triumphant Il Trionfo di Clelia, as well as Virgin’s Ezio.

Since the Metastasio phenomenon is unprecedented in opera history—“L’Olimpiade” alone was set more than 60 times—I’ve included this addendum featuring five different takes on the same text, one of Metastatasio’s most famous scenes, Fulvia’s recitative and aria “Misera dove son!” from act III of  “Ezio.”

Misera dove son! L’aure del Tebro
Son queste ch’io respiro?
Per le strade m’aggiro
Di Tebe e d’Argo? O dalle greche sponde
Di tragedie feconde
Le domestiche furie
Vennero a questi lidi
Della prole di Cadmo e degli’Atridi?
Là d’un monarco inguisto
L’ingrata crudeltà m’empie d’orrore;
D’un padre traditore
Qua la colpa m’agghiaccia;
E lo sposo innocente ho sempre in faccia.
Oh immagini funeste!
Oh memorie! Oh martiro!
Ed io parlo infelice, ed io respiro?
Ah, non son io che parlo,
E il barbaro dolore,
Ch me divide il core,
Che delirar mi fa.
Non cura il ciel tiranno
L’affanno in cui mi vedo:
Un fulmine gli chiedo,
E un fulmine non ha.

Karina Gauvin sings Porpora’s 1728 version

Netta Or sings Handel’s 1732 version

Ruth Rosique sings Conforto’s concert version (date unknown)

Ann Hallenberg sings Gluck’s 1750 version (unfortunately the aria only)

Gundula Janowitz sings Mozart’s concert aria K.369  (1781)

Gwyn Hughes-Jones will make his Met role debut as Manrico in Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the September 29 matinee and will also sing the role on October 4, 8, 12, 17, 20, and 25.

Carmen Giannattasio will replace Radvanovsky as Leonora in Il Trovatore on October 12, 17, 20, and 25. These performances are in addition to the previously announced dates when Giannattasio will sing the role.

Marcelo Álvarez will sing Gustavo III in Un Ballo in Maschera on November 27, replacing Roberto De Biasio. Álvarez will now sing all performances of the role in the 2012-13 season.

Dolora Zajick will replace Olga Borodina as Amneris in Verdi’s Aida on December 19, 22, and 28. As previously announced, Borodina will sing the role on November 23, 26, 29 and December 3, 7, 12, and 15 matinee.

Erwin Schrott will make his Met role debut as Doctor Dulcamara in Bartlett Sher’s new production of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore on January 30. He will also sing the role on February 2, 6, and 9 matinee.

Italian baritone Marco Vratogna will make his Met debut as Iago in Verdi’s Otello on March 27. He replaces Thomas Hampson, who will still sing the performances on March 11, 15, 20, 23, and 30.

Image based on a photo by Brigitte Lacombe/Metropolitan Opera.

Highlights from the October 4, 1968 performance of Tosca, with Nilsson, Franco Corelli and Gabriel Bacquier; Francesco Molinari-Pradelli conducting.

Birgit Nilsson as Tosca

The cher public are as always invited to share YouTube clips of favorite Nilssoniana.

Rebecca Taichman’s busy staging of Telemann’s 1726 opera Orpheus (or, Die wunderbare Beständigkeit der Liebe, The Wonderful Constancy of Love), for the New York City Opera, played in David Zinn’s spare sets and colorful costumes, tends to modern stage clichés but at least none of it gets in the way of, or unduly clutters, the familiar tale of the greatest musician of classical myth.  

Like most composers who on took the greatest musician of myth, Telemann did not find enough “story” in Orpheus’s attempt to regain his dead Eurydice, so he gussied it up with details: The lady is slain by a serpent sent by Orasia, the lovesick Queen of Thrace, who wants Orpheus for herself. When Orpheus, returning unsuccessful from his quest, still does not love her, Orasia sets the Maenads on him, then kills herself in maddened remorse. Plenty of opportunity for melodious reflection on love, hate, power and the whole damn thing.

Telemann doesn’t get nearly as much respect as his long and productive career merits (3000 works, dozens of genres). Fifty operas is not a vast number for the period (Handel composed forty, Alessandro Scarlatti eighty, Vivaldi said ninety), and only about nine of Telemann’s have survived in full score. But there is something of a flurry going on just now: friends I met at Orpheus on Tuesday had recently attended his operas in Hamburg, Magdeburg and at Yale.

Nor are they mere curiosities: Telemann was prolific because he was popular, and he was popular because he was good at his job, which included fifteen years running Hamburg’s Theater im Gänsemarkt, the largest and grandest public opera house in Northern Europe. (The rear wall of the theater backed on the River Elbe; at festival performances, the doors would open and a fireworks display would celebrate a lieto final. Eat your heart out, Robert Lepage.)

Orpheus, on first exposure, is full of melody and variety, not merely solo arias (and few those formal da capos, or perhaps most of the da capos were omitted), but extended scenes in which a character’s moods evolve from number to number until action is set moving. The libretto is in three languages—most German, some Italian, a soupçon of French—as copyright did not cover theater verse back then and Telemann (like Handel and Bach) stole from everybody. Orpheus includes duets and quartets, rare in Italian opera of the day, and there are canons of love and witty use of  the organ to evoke the solemn realm.

The City Opera presented this work in an out-of-the-way venue, the attractive and intimate 600-seat theater of the Museo del Barrio on Fifth Avenue, and gave it a cast of strong, young voices, though on the night I attended (May 15), the men took their sweet time to warm up.

Queen Orasia, the evening’s prima donna, was Jennifer Rowley, whose voice has the size and authority of a major spinto, as she demonstrated last month in the Verdi Requiem with the St. Cecilia Chorus at Carnegie Hall. Her instrument may seem a bit monochrome to some but it is a soprano of rare quality, full of power but never at the cost of beauty, surprising flexibility and great precision of ornament. Orasia is usually seething, and when she is flirtatious she’s usually lying; the contrast of mood suited Rowley very much better than, say, her rather glum Maria di Rohan at Caramoor.

Eurydice, who (as in all musical versions of the tale but Offenbach’s) has not nearly enough to do, was very prettily limned by Joélle Harvey, better at flirting before her death than at bemoaning afterwards. Michelle Areyzaga held her own as the queen’s confidante, whose arias might have gone unnoticed were Areyzaga not making vocal points. Meredith Lustig, as Cephisa, sang a luscious lover’s rejection; one hoped she’d change her mind just to secure another solo. Daryl Freedman gave a properly stern, “Notice this!” quality to the admonitions of a damned spirit.

Daniel Teadt looked handsome and acted agreeably as Orpheus, but his baritone seemed rather too light for the metaphorical weight the character must bear. One wanted a more certain technique, more immediate excitement. His anguished final scenes were rather more to the tragic point.

Victor Ryan Robertson sang Eurymedes with an ineffective tenor during the first act but redeemed himself with his supple sympathies in the last scenes, standing by his friend with grateful phrasing. Nicholas Pallesen had the build, the black hair, the witty delivery and the top-to-bottom security to suit Pluto, who is a bass of course. For all the corporate trappings, he didn’t make our ultimate destiny seem intolerable.

It was the producer’s conceit to have the Serpent who stings Eurydice incarnate Thanatos, Death, and have her take on many other duties, including succubus to Pluto (a role not devised by Telemann). Catherine Miller looked and moved attractively in this assignment, but I found her interpolations distracting at moments when the composer meant us to be paying closer attention to the music.

Indeed, throughout the evening there was an incompleteness of polish in the singing, a frequent breathlessness, fine scale passages that fell just sort of the proper top by nearly all the singers that I wondered not so much if these young, talented singers were up to the score as if the director had not overdone the demands of action, refusing to let anyone hold still and focus, create the drama there. Singing ought to come first. Had these singers done less, they might have performed better.

Gary Thor Wedow led the lengthy evening jauntily. Orpheus, given in two 80-minute acts, never felt long, and one heartily wished for further encounters in order to savor the score’s immediate delights.

The New York City Opera has won many laurels and a loyal audience over the decades with repertory “new” to New York; one can easily name a dozen works the Met undertook only after the “second” company had shown how rewardingly they could be produced, among them Makropoulos Case, Moses und Aron, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Capriccio, Anna Bolena, Doktor Faust, In the House of the Dead, Susannah, La Cenerentola, Idomeneo, La Clemenza di Tito and Giulio Cesare.

Cesare, indeed, was such a thundering hit that it led to a slew of City Opera Handel productions, eight I think (do I hear nine?). If the company hopes to renew itself, one obvious line surely is to hang on to that audience for Handel with new baroque explorations, and this they have done with Orpheus. Nothing else in this misbegotten NYCO season his impelled me to say, as I do now, Here’s to many more.

Photographs: Carol Rosegg

The story of a callow youth who rashly decides he can’t go on living without the young woman he loves in spite of the fact that she’s been betrothed, and then married, since they were first introduced. It brims over with some of the most romantic music ever scored and is shot through with a most exquisite melancholy.  

The plot creaks no more than most operas of its time. Still, it’s hard to keep a the snicker off your lips in the last act when our young hero asks to ‘borrow’ a pair of hunting pistols because he’s going on a ‘trip’. Someone hand this boy a cell phone and dial the number for the suicide hotline. Meanwhile, Massenet, having been dubbed Madamoiselle Wagner by his critics for his love of leitmotif, is brewing an emotional apocalypse in the pit so large, our hero’s true intention cannot be misconstrued.

Werther has to be the most extraordinarily adaptable opera in the repertoire. The leading role has been mastered by tenors sized all the way from Radames and Lohengrin to Nemorino. The noble Charlotte, who is the aforementioned unrequitee, has won triumphs for a range of voices adept at the roles of Amneris and Carmen all the way down to la petite Melisande. Mezzos and sopranos. The ever resourceful composer, with an eye on the box office reciepts, even rescored the lead for the charismatic baritone Mattia Battistini ten years after the initial premiere affording Thomas Hampson with a grateful vehicle in our own time.

This live Deutsche Grammophon recording is a vehicle of another sort as it documents the return to Covent Garden of Rolando Villazon after an absence of a number of years. More of that anon. I’m sure that the five-headed Hydra that is Universal Music/Decca/DG/Phillips would have preferred to have filmed and released a DVD if not for the fact that we already have Jonas Kaufmann in this same production from the Paris Opera. Not to be unkind but, with that sort of competition, our furry,uni-browed, Mexican tenor is much better off with the microphone.

Oddly, both presentations share the same Charlotte in mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch and I wish I could present a valid reason why this portrayal deserves a second immortalization barely two years after the first.  Being French, she, blessedly knows what the words mean but in a field crowded with some of the greatest singers of the last 80 years I’m stymied as to what warrants this extra attention. She has a middle-weight voice which, when kept quiet, shows some real beauty. When the volume gets turned up and she rises to the top of the staff, however, the tone can turn baleful. Luckily the role affords more opportunities for the cream than the curdle. It’s a lovely performance, on a small scale, that sadly pales by comparison with any of her more esteemed predecessors.

Charlotte’s husband, Albert, is a completely thankless role. A mere fractional side of a very lopsided love triangle. Norwegian bass-baritone Auden Iversen almost had me wishing we were getting the alternate version with his warm honeyed tones.  Japanese Soprano Eri Nakamura has all the requisite perkiness that the character of Charlotte’s younger sister, Sophie, requires and she betrays little accent in her French. As their father, the Bailiff, Alain Vernhes, provides plenty of character and the only true Gallic charisma of the lot.

Antonio Pappano leads his second recorded performance of this opera, following the 1998 entrant on EMI with the Alagnas as the unhappy couple. His experience with the score only benefits this performance and anyone would find the Orchestra of the Royal Opera far superior to the London Symphony. The score positively shimmers with the most delicious colorings in the orchestrations. You hear the iridescent moonlight at the end of Act One just as you feel the beginning of Fall in the hues of Act Two. Pappano brings all of this across beautifully while allowing the singers the necessary support.

The support of the evening’s tenor was surely Pappano’s primary concern. Villazon had not sung at Covent Garden since vocal difficulties had forced him to seek a doctor’s treatment for a node on his chords in April 2009. He resumed a light schedule starting in March of 2010 and this performance was May 2011. He had sung Werther previously so that was in his favor. It’s safe to point out that, in many circles, Villazon’s vocal production was cause for concern long before he started experiencing any adversities. I think it’s also common knowledge that Mr. Villazon has trouble,”getting out of his own way”, as the Irish say. He always favored a tight squillante, not only in the passaggio where it’s most attractive, but throughout his range. At its best his was an extraordinarily fluent lyric tenor and he was a gifted communicator. This recording, I’m afraid,does not show him to his best advantage.

The voice is a now shadow of what it was. The squillante remains on the top but it is only reached with effort. Pitch is insecure at the start and although he improves as the evening goes on he tires noticeably at the ends of both Act II and Act IV. The second act is a challenge for any tenor and he is swamped by the orchestra on more than once instance there. Doubly odd since DG is fiddling with the knobs, no?  For his many fans this won’t be a complete disappointment but there’s more than a whiff of ‘what if’ about this whole affair. The tremendous sense of freedom that was the hallmark of his performance style is nowhere to be heard here. It makes me very sad to say this.

So, hard to recommend unless you’re a hardcore fan of Villazon.  Here’s hoping that things improve.

Dallas, Texas
May 15, 1976
IL TRITTICO [26]

IL TABARRO {30}
Giorgetta……………Renata Scotto
Luigi……………….Harry Theyard
Michele……………..Cornell MacNeil
Frugola……………..Lili Chookasian
Talpa……………….Philip Booth
Tinca……………….Charles Anthony
Song Seller………….Abram Morales
Lover……………….Betsy Norden
Lover……………….Douglas Ahlstedt
Conductor……………Sixten Ehrling

SUOR ANGELICA {26}
Angelica…………….Renata Scotto
Princess…………….Lili Chookasian
Genovieffa…………..Betsy Norden
Osmina………………Mary Fercana
Dolcina……………..Ann Florio
Monitor……………..Marcia Baldwin
Abbess………………Jean Kraft
Head Mistress………..Batyah Godfrey Ben-David
Nurse……………….Cynthia Munzer
Lay Sister…………..Maureen Smith
Lay Sister…………..Joyce Olson
Novice………………Linda Mays
Novice………………Shinja Kwak
Alms Collector……….Alma Jean Smith
Alms Collector……….Elena Doria
Conductor……………Sixten Ehrling

GIANNI SCHICCHI {90}
Gianni Schicchi………Ezio Flagello
Lauretta…………….Renata Scotto
Rinuccio…………….Enrico Di Giuseppe
Nella……………….Betsy Norden
Ciesca………………Marcia Baldwin
Zita………………..Lili Chookasian
Gherardo…………….Charles Anthony
Betto……………….Russell Christopher
Marco……………….Gene Boucher
Simone………………Philip Booth
Gherardino…………..Lawrence Klein
Spinelloccio…………Richard Best
Amantio……………..Andrij Dobriansky
Pinellino……………Herman Marcus
Guccio………………Edmond Karlsrud
Buoso Donati…………Terry Allen
Conductor……………Sixten Ehrling

Vincent Boussard

Dimitri Pittas, as Tebaldo, remained from the premiere cast (heard March 27, 2011) and made a warmer impression than 14 months ago, with focused sound, requisite agility, and good Italian, though the tone quality veered slim. The rest of the cast had changed, and so had ticket prices. Eight categories ranging from €11 to €163 at the premiere had jumped to a range of €20 to €264 for no readily accessible stated reason.

Vesselina Kasarova, who recorded Romeo back in 1997, sang with enough expressiveness to propel the story and engage the audience all by herself, as well as unexpected freshness. That said, hers is a lyric instrument with slightly diminished firmness. She acted fluidly and struck masculine poses.

Her own experience with Giulietta dating back at least to 2002, in Philadelphia, Anna Netrebko sounded relaxed and confident. The largest voice onstage, even next to Croat bass Ante Jerkunica’s resonant Capellio, she sang with dependable pitch but could not articulate a genuine trill.

Giulietta in this staging starts in (maybe) a broom closet. She climbs onto a washbasin, wall-mounted a meter off the floor. Then she stands on one foot on the washbasin’s edge and reaches upward toward a suspended and too-distant sculpture, depicting love (maybe), with her free leg outstretched for balance. She does this to Bellini’s andante maestoso and while negotiating the cantilena and declamation of “Eccomi in lieta vesta… Oh! quante volte, oh quante, ti chiedo.”

Last year the lithe and pretty soprano Eri Nakamura fumbled both Boussard’s balletic-gymnastic maneuver and Bellini’s ornate lines. Netrebko, 40, and no longer so dainty, managed it all. At least on Saturday. Bavarian taxpayers will be praying for four secure repeats (through May 26) and an insurance policy to cover any leading-lady bone fracture or, Gott behüte, a cracked washbasin.

Paul Gay, as Lorenzo, strode set designer Vincent Lemaire’s darkly raked platforms and endless open-bleacher scalinata with an insinuator’s poise, while stressing sweet lyrical compassion over basso depth. The many steps, not incidentally, gave view to the garish women’s costumes of once-fashionable Christian Lacroix, mismatched by period to those of his men.

Yves Abel drew cultured playing from the Staatsorchester, notably from the woodwinds. Unlike Fabio Luisi on the 2008 Garanca/Netrebko commercial recording of this opera, he never lost the pulse. Sören Eckhoff’s Bayerischer Staatsopernchor, habitually the weak link in performances here, acquitted itself with musical precision but opaque Italian.

At curtain time and at several points during the performance, Netrebko’s esteem for her Bulgarian co-star was evident. Careful gauging of vocal balances in the duets, and of protocol at the curtain, handed the night genially to 47-year-old Kasarova.

The May 19 performance of this run will be streamed at www.staatsoper.de at 7 pm, Central European Summer Time.