Great Voices Sing John Denver

Placido Domingo & John Denver, ca. 1980

I associate John Denver with road trips: rolled down windows, long ribbons of asphalt, and a carful of untrained singers happily caroling "Take me home, country roads." I think of his singing as characterized by a simplicity redeeming a sentimentality that might otherwise seem oppressively earnest. The project of having opera singers interpret these open-air ballads was one I viewed with intense if somewhat skeptical curiosity. The undertaking was the brainchild of Denver's arrangers, and facilitated by the considerable influence of Placido Domingo (more details here.) I couldn't resist the opportunity to review the resulting album, especially since I'm currently staying with my mother, whose adolescence coincided with Denver's heyday, and who therefore led Denver sing-alongs on road trips. Her enthusiasm for the project was great; and so I undertook my critical listening with her helpfully at hand as a one-woman control group for my bias towards loved singers and potential indifference to Denver's lyrics. The album's attempt to find a meeting ground for Denver's music and operatic voices met with decidedly mixed results. Too many of the arrangements were dominated by sentimental strings wallowing in the predictable harmonies common to many classical crossover or pseudo-classical albums. I thought that allowing the participating artists to cross further over into Denver's musical language--or, indeed, simply a greater variety in the arrangements--would have been, on the whole, more felicitous. On the whole, I'm inclined to regard the disc more as a curious conversation piece than anything else, but my mother enjoyed listening to it enormously (including the heckling of misfires), leading me to the conclusion that it may be more successful with John Denver fans than diehard opera lovers, for situations where those two categories don't overlap.

Maria Stuarda: La vittima regia

A tale of two queens: Van den Heever and DiDonato in Maria Stuarda

Donizetti's Maria Stuarda is unabashedly a one-issue opera. The lineaments of the drama are clear (slimmed down from Schiller's play, with a libretto by Giuseppe Badari), but Donizetti is more interested in providing emotional confrontations than developing context for the political anxieties of Cecil and Elisabetta, or the ambitions of Leicester and Talbot. Even the fraught (and entirely fabricated) romantic triangle between Maria, her ardent lover Leicester, and his ex-lover Elisabetta (!) is presented without explanation, and practically without comment. The opera has the strengths of its selective focus: its tension is derived almost entirely from the uncertain fate of its titular protagonist, prisoner and political liability for the queen of England. As in the case of Anna Bolena, the complexities and obscurities of historical drama have been transmuted to create the ingredients of good Romantic drama: the wronged Maria suffers while the factions of the English court (represented by the sympathetic Talbot and the hostile Cecil) attempt to persuade the hesitating Elisabetta to determine her rival's fate once and for all. The work is well-structured, and the music often exciting, if predictable in the techniques it uses to generate excitement. The Met has given Maria Stuarda a sleek new production and a starry cast, showcasing it in this year's New Year's Eve gala. While I found the performance engaging, I suspect the piece might have been better served by a more irreverent approach to its Romantic conventions.

È bordo, non elisir

Act I: everyone laments unwise choices

Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore is a charming opera: it is coherently and elegantly constructed; it is witty and winsome; its comedic scenarios are laced with a poignancy that makes the development of its characters satisfying. These are all virtues which Bartlett Sher's new production conspicuously lacks. Sher claimed to be inspired by the political upheavals of Italy in the 1830s, but his production resembled nothing so much as a second-rate landscape painting of the same period (with the possible exception of a second-rate opera production of a century later.) Men and women of all ages and walks of life crowd into the square to see Dulcamara's coach, but it is unclear why. Nemorino, who is mocked as being semi-literate, enters the stage reading a book. Adina eats fruit to establish her sensuality. Dulcamara is apparently supplying rifles to the anti-Austrian faction, but his air of bonhomie never alters, and the soldiers are deterred from investigation by a wave of the hand. Belcore and his implausibly immaculate soldiery harass the citizenry in an absent, halfhearted way, interrupting these efforts whenever it comes time to sing a chorus. Nemorino, perhaps for the sake of Romanticism, sings "Una furtiva lagrima" on a heath at dawn. Against this picturesque and pointless backdrop, a fine cast did their best to do the opera justice.

Della traviata sorridi al desio

Willy Decker's Traviata--intelligent, elegant, and brutally direct--is, to my mind, one of the most satisfying productions I've seen at the Met. The rigidity of social convention against which Violetta and Alfredo are pitted was particularly apparent in this iteration, but more on that anon. I was very pleased to note positive reactions to the production from older opera-goers around me, as well. The indefatigable Fabio Luisi led the orchestra in an account which was admirably responsive to the singers. The prelude to Act I was leisurely, but tempi quickened thereafter. This rapidity served the ensembles well, working with the tone of the production to give a sense of unresting activity, if not of inexorable fate. The feverishly intense gambling scene was an orchestral highlight. In Act III, both for "Largo al quadrupedo" and "Prendi, quest'è l'immagine," the orchestra was forcefully ominous, almost to a fault. The woodwinds distinguished themselves, with the oboe part in "Addio del passato" beautifully done. The clarinet solo in Act II as Violetta is writing her letter to Alfredo actually made me tear up. A quibble would be that I could have wished a greater sense of dramatic continuity from the orchestra, but  the effect of this vignette-oriented approach is one I am still mulling.

Among the heartless party guests, Kyle Pfortmiller distinguished himself as the Marchese d'Obigny, with a distinctive, richly-colored sound. Luigi Roni's Grenvil had forceful presence, and nuanced the tone of his silent interactions with Dessay well; it caused a shiver when he finally sang. Maria Zifchak was a vocally solid and sympathetic Annina. Dmitri Hvorostovsky did not seem to be at his effortless-sounding best but still sang a charismatic, vocally rich and dramatically nuanced Germont père. His interpretation offered chilling insights. A question begged by the libretto is, if Papa Germont knows how great the sacrifice he asks of Violetta is, if his opinion of her is transformed, what keeps him from reconsidering? Hvorostovsky answers this question: he really doesn't believe her. All Violetta's utterances are interpreted through what he "knows" about her already. He laughs at her--laughs!--when she says she's dying; for him, speaking of her sacrifice is a charade of good manners, helping her maintain a polite fiction of virtue. It is only at the very end--"Addio"--that his confidence is shaken, as he turns for an instant to regard her, his hat already in his hand. His scene with Alfredo I found very moving. Hvorostovsky's pause at the threshold, contemplating the stripped furniture, raised the possibility that he had come back to stop Violetta; at the least, he's surprised to find her already gone. "Di Provenza il mar il suol" was luxuriant, with the radiant sun of Alfredo's native soil in his father's voice. Not without reason, Germont is convinced that his plea to his son cannot fail. This aristocratic assurance was equally apparent in the finale of Act II, and aptly shaken in Act III, although the dignity of his bearing and authority of his sound were undimmed.

Va là, che sei il grand'uom: Don Giovanni

In the three times I've seen Michael Grandage's new Don Giovanni for the Met, I've progressed from disappointment, to frustration, to outright resentment of its lack of substance. (Is there a modified Kübler-Ross model for coping with bad opera productions?) Its visual clichés I find increasingly reminiscent of Phantom of the Opera: red velvet, ostentatious chandeliers, torch-bearing crowds with pitchforks, and, not least, theatrical blasts of flame. For the sake of Gerald Finley's Don, and Bryn Terfel's Leporello, however, I went. Both gave vivid vocal performances of great beauty... and both had, apparently, decided to fill the dramaturgical vacuum with bass-baritonal hijinks. They were supported by very fine singing from the rest of the cast. Andrew Davis' conducting was fleet and energized, but alert to the dark undercurrents in the music. The dramatic propulsion provided by the orchestra (which could also be slyly insinuating, when such was called for) was most welcome.

Bravo, bravo, Don Pasquale, la morale è molto bella

John del Carlo in the title role
(c) Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

Had I been actively seeking an antidote to late winter doldrums, I could have done no better than the final afternoon of Donizetti's Don Pasquale at the Met.  In the hands of the delightful cast, it becomes a gentle, affectionate send-up of Italian operatic conventions, as I suspect Donizetti intended in 1849.  In support of my thesis that Donizetti meant the joke, I cite the dramatis personae, which after listing the four principals says merely - A Notary.  All you need to know is that there will be a notary.  He is, of course, not a notary at all, but Malatesta's cousin, and I suspect he wore Danielle de Niese's notary outfit from Così fan tutte.  Typically demure soprano virtues are catalogued and then parodied wildly in the person of the feisty Norina, the tenor is not the most intelligent young man in the world but takes himself very seriously, the baritone is suave, and the bass doesn't know what's going on.  I am not entirely sure that Otto Schenk's production, an Italian idyll awash in Mediterranean pinks and golds and shabby charm, is in on the joke.  But it works as part of it.

I presumed that the ominous front-of-curtain appearance of a man in a suit was merely to echo the slips in our programs which said Anna Netrebko was indisposed.  No: Joseph Colaneri would be conducting; James Levine was ill.  Colaneri's reading of the score was bright and sprightly; there were a few issues of balance at the outset, but the orchestra was allowed to shine, and they performed with their customary excellence (I love you, cellos!)  The chorus didn't have a great deal to do, but they milled, tidied, and pronounced dolefully on the topsy-turvy household with great aplomb.  Regarding the principals, I have to add my voice to the universal acclaim they've garnered.

L'uomo implacabile per lei sarà

The current run of Traviata at the Met is very well served by its principals, gifted and expressive singers all.  Moreover, Willy Decker's sleek, striking 2005 Salzburg production restores to the opera what Verdi wanted it to have: shock value.  Dress rehearsal pictures here; lots of opening night photos here.  Decker's production uses simple visual language for a straightforward, if not literalistic, reading of the Verdi/Piave drama, relentlessly emphasizing the voyeuristic, greedy nature of the chorus (male-dominated society), the artificiality of Violetta's pompose feste, and the tragedy of the disease which haunts her.  Update: Gentle Reader asperias notes that the 15 Jan. performance will be available for listening online from the BBC at 18:00 GMT.  Update II: the BBC does not, in fact, have the performance available for repeat listening; sorry about that.  Gentle Reader S. has a list of other options in the comments section.