Saturday October 25, 2008 matinee - Having enjoyed Piotr Beczala in his Met debut a couple of seasons ago, his return engagements as Edgardo in LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR and Lensky in EUGEN ONEGIN are high on my list of things to attend this season. [And I am also buying tickets for his single performance as the Duke in RIGOLETTO on February 12 - and I urge you to do likewise!] Above, a Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera photo of the tenor as Edgardo.
I'm not a fan of Diana Damrau. After she mugged, fluffed and giggled her way thru Zerbinetta's music I frankly didn't care if I ever saw or heard her again but inevitably in the opera world we have to put up with singers we don't care about to see operas or other singers we want to see. So I had her Pamina which was left me feeling neutral, and her Aithra in AEGYPTISCHE HELENA in which she was just about the only palatable thing in the whole evening. She has drawn raves from many quarters for her current run of Met Lucias and I figured she couldn't be any worse than Natalie Dessay.
LUCIA is an opera I've seen many times and I know it inside-out. Yesterday when I was hiking I sang thru the entire opera (aloud but to myself) and was able to recall about 90% of the words. While I try really hard not to compare singers with people I've previously heard in a given role, it is almost impossible to avoid mental comparisons while listening. This poses a difficulty in an opera I've seen so often with a variety of sensational interpreters: Beverly Sills, Renata Scotto, Patricia Brooks, Joan Sutherland, Patricia Wise, Gianna Rolandi, June Anderson, Rita Shane, Edita Gruberova. Even some second-tier interpreters remain in the memory for various moments in their portrayals. On radio, tapes and discs, more names crowd in: Callas, Zeani, Gencer, Peters, Moffo, Gail Robinson, Devia. So a singer stepping out in the role is up against a veritable flood of memories and all I can do is try to suppress them and give the current contender a fair shake. It's not easy. Last season Natalie Dessay was mostly unpleasant in the role, both vocally and in terms of hyper-activity.
For two acts today, Diana Damrau did nothing to change my opinion of her. She sounded dry and edgy to me, the voice lacking in colour (she merely alternates between loud and soft), her Italian well-schooled but un-poetic, her ability to sustain notes impressive but the sound itself unmemorable. To me the voice has an unpleasant metallic quality and overall she was on the same level as Dessay was last season (which is not a compliment).
But in the Mad Scene Damrau (above/Ken Howard photo) finally seemed fully warmed-up; the voice showed more beauty and there was more of a halo of sweetness around (most of) the notes. But whether by her decision or the director's she destroyed the scene by taking it in sections with pauses (sometimes even between individual phrases) that destroyed musical continuity. Technically she was impressive and the E-flats were secure and sustained. Her acting was erratic and it was hard to tell how much of it was her and how much was the direction. If she had sung the first two acts as well as she sang the Mad Scene I would have been happy.
Piotr Beczala on the other hand soared way up on my list of Edgardos (and of tenors in general) with his ardent, polished vocalism. That's why his photo tops this article, and is also seen directly above (photos: Ken Howard) . When he arrived onstage in the second scene today, the opera soared. Beczala is a tall, handsome man with an elegant but masculine presence. His voice is lyric in scope, clear and unforced, with uncanny breath control and feeling for the line, luscious enunciation of the Italian text, and traces of a sob in the delivery that just suits this unhappy character to perfection. As a stylist, Beczala reminds me very much of Nicolai Gedda though I find Beczala's sound more alluring. If I am not mistaken, Beczala follows in Gedda's footsteps at the Met by singing the great final aria in the original key. Aside from the quality of his singing, Beczala shows generosity of spirit and deep sense of musical commitment.
Damrau & Beczala in the Act I love duet (above/Ken Howard photo). This scene was spoilt by Darmau's snatching of the tenor's overcoat as he is about to take his leave and tossing it down emphatically. She was just a bit too emphatic. This provoked a ripple of laughter from the audience today. Very inappropriate during one of opera's most heart-rending love/farewell duets.
I must admit that I was strongly tempted to leave after Act I. Damrau simply wasn't doing it for me and I knew I'd have to endure two excruciatingly long intermissions. But I had come for Beczala and I was determined to stay. (Incidentally, I abandoned my score desk before the opera started; there were plenty of seats, and standing room was almost empty).
New to me was the baritone Vladimir Stoyanov as Enrico (seen above with Damrau/Ken Howard photo). His darkish, Met-filling sound was quite pleasant to hear and he used it with dramatic nuance while leaving off the shouting and barking some baritones resort to in this music. One or two stray flat notes did not bother me much. The Met now gives an almost-complete Wolfscrag Scene - a tremendous duet for tenor and baritone in which they agree to meet among the tombs of Ravenswood at dawn to fight a duel to the death. For years this scene was cut, but made a sensation when NYC Opera restored it for their super-complete LUCIA in 1969, staged for Beverly Sills.
In this duet the pride and the furious hatred of the two men, springing from an ancient blood-feud, flashes out like the lightning bolts that accompany the orchestral introduction. Enrico has just come from Lucia's wedding - the wedding that Edgardo had crashed in a desperate attempt to get Lucia back. With pointed cruelty Enrico reminds Edgardo that Lucia is at that very moment in her bridal bed with Arturo. The tormented Edgardo lashes back and as their fury rises, they agree to a dueling place: the graveyard of Edgardo's ill-fated family. "Be prepared to stay there...forever!" snarls Enrico. To which Edgardo simply says: "I will kill you there!" They then launch a stretta of tremendous virile energy. It's amazing to think generations of opera-goers never heard this spectacular scene. Beczala and Stoyanov sang it splendidly today.
Ildar Abdrazakov (above) was the Raimondo today. He sang with full-toned burnished magnificence, making every line count. He was compassionate in his duet with Lucia and fiery as he separated the jealous rivals who were about to cross swords at the wedding. Best of all was Ildar's deep-velvet-toned and dramatically shaded narrative of finding Lucia standing over the corpse of her murdered bridegroom. Ildar ended this monolog (which does not cadence) with a stunning diminuendo to a sustained piano. Then at the end of the great chorale that follows he did the reverse, swelling his climactic top note to perfection. Below, Abdrazakov as Raimondo in a Ken Howard photo.
Sean Pannikar (Arturo) and Damrau with Stoyanov and Abdrazakov in the background as Lucia is about to sign the wedding contract. Photo: Ken Howard. Mr. Pannikar's voice is a bit 'unfinished' though not unappealing. In the Sextette he made his mark: Arturo's lines were very powerfully sung. Michaela Martens was a vocally grand-scale Alisa and Ronald Naldi an incisive Normanno.
Marco Armiliato conducted LUCIA as if it were early Verdi. Which is not really a bad thing. He is always admirably supportive of his singers and knows that it is they who will make or break the perfomance, so he gives them every chance to shine. Dmitry and I were talking about how the Met doesn't really like ornamentation and basically Ms. Damrau did the 'usual' cadenzas and the other singers did not try to embellish at all. Apparently the 'no frills' rule does not apply to the instrumentalists for the harpist gave the most fanciful rendition of the Act I solo I ever heard. In the Mad Scene the glass armonica is better-amplified than last season and made its eerie effect.
One unbearable aspect of the afternoon was the interminable length of the two intermissions. Whatever dramatic impetus the opera was building in each scene was drained away as the breaks stretched out numbingly. LUCIA is not a long opera but it seemed like it was today as the afternoon crawled onward. I have written to the Met in the past to complain about long intermissions and they reply by trotting out the usual excuses. Today the audience were back in their seats well before the chimes signaled the end of the break. The crowd seemed eager for the opera to move forward but the Met seems to think differently.
This production of LUCIA is so bad. The sets are really perfectly fine - the outdoor Act I setting & sky are attractive, and I love the big moon. The ballroom with its 'wrong' era - you expect Lillie Langtry to sweep in on the arm of Edward VII - is at least spacious. But there are unforgivable aspects: the ghost is superfluous - Lucia can see her but the audience shouldn't...Lucia's sung description of her encounter with the spectre should make us feel the apparition without a physical presence. [Oddly, I do sort of like the ghost appearing and urging Edgardo to kill himself at the end...see the Ken Howard photo below]. Worst of all though is the ridiculous photographer at the wedding. This needs to be cut immediately. Watching the busybody antics of this 'character' as he sets up his shot ruins the dramatic tension of the sextette. He twice provoked ripples of laughter today. There is nothing funny about LUCIA.
So often these days at the Met I feel that Peter Gelb doesn't trust his singers to make the performances a success; he calls in directors to 'do something' with the operas. But the directors in turn don't seem to trust the composers and librettists, so they resort to gimmicks and visual cleverness. Some of these productions are OK to see once, but as standard versions to stay in the rep and serve for ever-changing casts they don't hold up so well. This production in particular seems to trivialize the romance and madness of Donizetti's bel canto masterpiece
But in the end, Piotr Beczala's singing (all afternoon, but most especially in the final scene) made it worthwhile. As he bade his farewell to life, Beczala - movingly accompanied by the cellist's luminous, weeping legato - sang with all the tenderness, beauty and passion that makes opera great.