Wednesday March 26, 2008 - Dmitry and I settled in for this performance of ERNANI with varied expectations. I had heard some of the season premiere last week over the Sirius network; Sondra Radvanovsky (Elvira) was announced as being ill and while she sang acceptably and sometimes excitingly she was having serious pitch problems in the middle register. Thomas Hampson (Carlo) managed fairly well in an unsuitable role which calls for a broader expanse of tone and more sheer vocal heft than he can muster. Ferruccio Furlanetto was a powerful Silva; his voice has aged well and is still very strong and suffused with that type of generosity of expression that marked singers of earlier eras but seems rarer today. Marcello Giordani was vocally awful in the first scene on the prima netcast, and Roberto Abbado was a very routine conductor. {Hampson & Radvanovsky in a Marty Sohl photo from the Met website}.
At the second performance - which Dmitry heard over the air - Angela Meade replaced Sondra and seemed to have had a good success. There were varying reports of the size and scope of her instrument but most notices I read indicated that she acquitted herself honorably.
Ferruccio Furlanetto {Mary Sohl photo} walked off with the vocal honors tonight; he was the only one of the principals who completely right for his role and even though there were a couple of husky moments, his big sound and intense delivery were really exciting. Giordani seemed to sing the first scene just a fraction sharp most of the time; he was better in the restored Act II scena "Odi il voto". Thomas Hampson sang very well but more vocal amplitude and grandeur of utterance were sometimes desired. Sondra worried me somewhat with a tendency to sing flat in the middle register; she seems to be pushing the lower register at times and over-darkening it while the top sounds clear and bright. She easily soared over the ensembles. Remnants of her recent illness may have caused her to be a little below her very best; she looked superb.
The opera actually is not very interesting: so much rum-ti-tum. The characters don't really engage us emotionally and the story veers from one improbable situation to another. The Met's production is large-scale and visually sluggish; the costumes are attractive. Dmitry and I survived two acts and then packed up and left.
It's a ridiculous opera, with some of Verdi's worst writing. There are tunes, sure, but - as Philip says - an entire opera of "rum-ti-tum" is absurd. Furlanetto was the only person on stage who knew what he was doing and sounded like right. (Let's give kudos to Wendy White, too!) But Furnaletto can't save an opera that needs 4 first-rate singers at the top of their game and a conductor - not a monkey - in the pit.
Posted by: Dmitry | March 27, 2008 at 02:10 PM
Yes, Wendy White always makes her mark in any performance...she was a fine Emilia in OTELLO this season, too.
Posted by: Philip | March 27, 2008 at 02:13 PM