Wednesday March 5, 2008 - I held off seeing the Met's new production of LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR until now so that I could hear tenor Giuseppe Filianoti in the role of Edgardo. Filianoti has been highly praised by many fans for his earlier Met performances. Otherwise the cast was basically the same as the production's premiere. (Ken Howard photo of the wedding scene).
It turned out to be a very disappointing night on so many fronts. I had hoped that Wei, who had liked the music on some recordings, would enjoy seeing it 'live' but one thing after another prevented the evening from being a success - or even moderately interesting.
Maestro Levine withdrew and Joseph Colaneri conducted; this was not a problem at all since Joe is a first-rate conductor in my book and he had been involved in the musical preparation. One or two very minor blips in stage/pit coordination were irrelevant in view of the other problems besetting the opera last night.
The production is just lame; gimmicks piled on gimmicks. The main theme seemed to be distraction: let's distract the audience however and whenever we can. Let's start by updating it to the 19th century because Natalie Dessay will look so fetching in costumes from that era - and she did: the riding habit with its veil-tied top-hat (Ken Howard photo) and her red pre-nuptial gown were striking. But overall the production seemed better suited to THE BALLAD OF BABY DOE where the wedding might have been set in the ballroom of the Clarendon Hotel.
The sets in themselves are neither here nor there but the changeovers seemed to take forever. Kudos to the Met for offering an almost complete Wolfscrag Scene - but what a poor excuse for a stage setting! Both intermissions dragged on interminably. LUCIA is not a long opera but tonight it felt like PARSIFAL. Whatever weak threads of dramatic continuity might have been established were broken by the prolonged intervals; and I can't recall ever hearing such pounding, thudding and yelling from the stagehands behind the lowered scrim. So much for the magic of the theatre.
Natalie Dessay has - as everyone probably knows - undergone a radical vocal alteration over the past few years. The high-flying free and easy voice we knew in her Met Fiakermilli, Olympia and early Zerbinettas was reportedly beset by nodes on the cords necessitating a long hiatus. She returns with a lowered range and an altered technique, as witness her Juliette. Yet the Met is casting her in LUCIA, FILLE and SONNAMBULA. What to do? Distract, distract. Fill the production with stage business so that the plucky, petite actress has a built-in excuse for any vocal falterings. As her act I cabaletta rushes towards its climactic top D, Dessay and Michaela Martens as Alisa chase one another all over the stage. If the D isn't clear and stable, well - after all - she was probably winded from her game of tag. Top D at the end of the sextette wasn't perfect? Well, she was falling out of her chair for chrissake. Easy to omit the first E-flat of the Mad Scene; for the second one we'll have her backing away quickly and falling into the arms of her brother and tutor and being lifted so if the note isn't perfect...well, she was being jostled.
In Act I Dessay sounded like a Broadway soubrette; no colour or amplitude and her higher fiorature were sketchy. She could not produce a trill. She seemed to need the entire scena just to warm up. Her lower range now sounds much better than her higher and in between flatness can creep in. She was OK in the love duet. In Act II, at 'Soffriva nel pianto', she actually showed that her canto can still be bel. The Mad Scene was fairly well sung - by now the voice was pretty clear and better controlled - but the non-cadenza (with the weak glass armonica not really adding anything) was lacklustre. The scream as she confronts her brother was inexcusable - this isn't verismo - and the final aria was 'enhanced' by another distraction: the physician who gives her an injection. Perhaps it was vitamins so she could tackle the final E-flat. Much of the evening Dessay seemed physically unwilling to let well enough alone; rather than simply allowing the words and music to speak to us, she seemed to always feel the need to be DOING something.
After reading glowing reports of Mr. Filianoti I was expecting a golden-voiced stylist on a par with Bjorling, Gedda or Bergonzi. Filianoti is a handsome man with an ardent and appealing presence. His voice is clear but not large nor of particularly memorable timbre. The top does not bloom but rather tends to recede. He sang perfectly well almost all evening but seemed a little pressed by the demands of the role and he couldn't summon the extra juice for the big denunciation in Act II. At the very end of the opera the distraction of Lucia's ghost provided him cover for what was a virtually inaudible final phrase: he simply ran out of steam.
Mariusz Kwiecien looks wonderfully cruel and his acting was solid if a touch overdone; in the scene with his sister he physically beats her into submitting to his plan to marry her off to Arturo. Kwiecien seemed bent on forcing his basically lyrical voice all evening which was successful on the surface but caused some hoarseness in the sextette. His approach does not bode well for vocal longevity. Stephen Costello, darling of opera queens everywhere, is a nice-looking dude for sure but he seems sort of lost onstage; even during the curtain calls he just didn't seem to know what to do with himself. However, his timbre and style, even in Arturo's brief solo, seemed more intrinsically beautiful and dramatically potent than Flianoti's. Michaela Martens was a strong Alisa and Michael Myers was a weak Normanno.
John Relyea as Raimondo (at left, in a Ken Howard photo) provided the evening's most secure and satisfying singing, his tone steady and expressive and quite at ease at either end of the range. He also looks very fine and comports himself with dignity; a sure sense of dramatic urgency outlined his announcement of the murder. Earlier, his finely sung duet with Lucia in which he convinces her to marry Arturo was spoilt by - guess what? - a distraction: the maids and butlers enter the room where this intensely private discussion is taking place and with Masterpiece Theatre efficiency tear down the moth-eaten curtains, clear the desk, remove the dust covers, hoist the chandeliers (which will sway distractingly during the wedding), place the potted palms and tidy up the room for the coming fete.
Of course the king of distractions occurs during the sextette when, no sooner has this ultimate operatic stand-and-deliver ensemble been launched, a photographer starts fussily manouvering people into place for a wedding picture. Edgardo stands to the side, glowering and muttering to himself, as the photo op builds throughout this famous number (see photo at top of this entry). Dessay's climactic top note is less than perfect? Well, what do you expect when the camera flash goes off and she falls from her chair? Clearly she was distracted.
Minor distractions abound: the ghost in Act I who wanders down the path; the tug-o-war with his overcoat in which Edgardo and Lucia engage during the love duet; when Lucia and Arturo are headed for the bridal chamber where she will soon murder him, Dessay has blood already applied to her right breast...did they think no one would notice?; after her collapse Lucia is carried up a stairway to nowhere which is eventually pushed offstage.
The Met website indicated a sell-out but there were empty seats on every level. The website's continued use of the 'sold out' sign might discourage potential buyers from even TRYING at the box office.
The night limped on and on but we stuck to the end. Another addition to the catalog of unmemorable recent productions: the grey, clunky MACBETH; the heavy-handed, murky HANSEL; the overblown TRITTICO; the ludicrous EGYPTIAN HELEN; the reportedly silly ORFEO. I just heard that a planned revival of the latest production miscalculation, PETER GRIMES, has been scrapped. It must be nice to have all this money to throw away on experiments. But we have our STARS...we have Dessay and Guleghina and Netrebko and Voigt and Gallardo-Domas and Frittoli and Mattila and Gheorghiu. And we will churn things out for them, like it or not.
Glowing exception to the spate of recent duds: IPHIGENIE EN TAURIDE is a magnificent production AND opera. The BUTTERFLY is striking once, but beyond that it might be unrewarding unless it is superbly sung & acted; Racette & Alagna were vastly preferable to the horrid Gallardo-Domas and vocally loutish Giordano of the first season.
Final note: what soprano involved in a major upcoming Met revival doesn't know her role?
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