Monday March 16, 2009 - The big allure of this performance was the chance to hear the (only?) great Italian mezzo-soprano of our time, Luciana D'Intino (above) as Azucena.
The evening turned out to be one of the most exciting and satisfying nights of Italian opera I have experienced in the past decade, and a huge triumph for the soprano Sondra Radvanovsky (above, right, with Maria Zifchak as Inez in a Ken Howard photo). Miss D'Intino upheld the high reputation earned by her Eboli and Amneris here, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky was magnificent to hear and to watch. Substituting for Marcelo Alvarez, tenor Philip Webb was a successful Manrico, Kwangchul Youn was a grandly-voiced Ferrando and conductor Gianandrea Noseda led a vividly dramatic and often thrilling reading of the score, well-supporting his singers. Adding an extra touch of class was Ms. Zifchak who actually made something out of the brief role of Inez. Eduardo Valdes was an affectingly loyal Ruiz.
I know every note of TROVATORE and 90% of the words; the opera is a splendid tapestry of melodic and rhythmic richness and it contains my all-time favorite Verdi aria, Leonora's Act I "Tacea la notte placida".
The Met's new production is darkly suitable to the work, with an almost primitive feel mixing in with an 19th century look for the costuming: military uniforms for di Luna's men and decorative harlots to keep them company. The gypsies are rag-tag, the Anvil Chorus (above) a glorious weltering of noise. The scene of di Luna's attempted seizure of Leonora at the convent was intense as the opposing forces froze in a stand-off, weapons drawn, while Leonora sings of her rapture at finding Manrico alive. Hvorostovsky's seething 'captive lion' here was vividly portrayed; Manrico slashes his rival's face with a blade. Outside the prison, Sondra/Leonora played up her false 'surrender' to the Count by turning on a sultry air - after having already swallowed the poison. The only letdown to the evening was the drama-numbing length of the intermission which destroys the impetus of the opera.
Kwangchul Youn as Ferrando (above, a Ken Howard photo) set the opera off on its powerful course with his voluminous basso rendering the old commander's tale of witchcraft, rich both in sound and in dramatic detail. Following up on his splendid Marke in TRISTAN earlier this season, Youn proves his value to the Company. Let's have more of him, please.
Due to the indisposition of Marcelo Alvarez, Philip Webb (above) sang Manrico. I had heard Philip on two prior occasions, both times as Calaf in TURANDOT at NYCO. Last Friday he had stepped in for Mr. Alvarez mid-opera and tonight he sang his first full Met Manrico. He began with a very nicely phrased offstage serenade, rising to a sustained climactic top note that piqued curiosity as to how his evening would go. A big man, Philip moves well onstage and threw himself into the physicality of the production. He paced himself wisely (what an arduous role, when you think of it) with some fine singing in the gypsy camp scene. In a few spots more power could have spiced things up, but he steered clear of forcing and so made it thru to a clear-toned, well-phrased "Ah so ben mio" and he had a good go at "Di quella pira". His plaintive tones in the offstage phrases of the Miserere were very appealing and the entire final scene - his most relaxed and persuasive singing of the evening - went very well with a fine blending of his voice with D'Intino in "Ai nostri monti" as they let their final harmonized note linger on the air.
Luciana D'Intino's Met performances remind us of the great Italian mezzos of the not-too-distant past: Simionato, Cossotto, Bianca Berini. Italy sadly seems to no longer produce great voices, but Ms. D'Intino is the exception and aside from everything else that she has to offer, it is always a pleasure to hear the language sung by a native. She knows the role and what she can do with it to perfection, using her voice with consummate technical control to make the most of her vividly Italianate chest voice while skillfully managing a top-C into the bargain. Her passion and frenzy were always chanelled into the music, never lacquered on. All evening phrase after expressive phrase rolled out, and for all the excitement of her earlier scene, it was in the lyric simplicity of her softly-intoned "Si, la stanchezza" and the mellow, melodious beauty of her "Ai nostri monti" that left me in a state of deep admiration.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Count di Luna held at bay in a G. Paul Burnett rehearsal photo. Dima was the di Luna of one's dreams tonight. I do not feel that di Luna is an evil person: he is in love, he is hot-blooded, he sees his rival as a threat to his happiness (as well as to his politics) and he does what men have always done: he follows his instincts while clinging to his honor. How gorgeously, right from note one, Hvorostovsky created this character both physically and in his vocalism. How beautifully sustained and contemplative his opening recitative, and how furious when he felt betrayed. The physicality of his acting seemed to put Sondra Radvanovsky in peril in a few places, but she was just as compelling in her resistance.
Dima's "Il balen" was so suavely phrased on the breath, such tenderness of expression...a real love song. You could not help but being seduced by the sheer tonal beauty, underpinned by his miraculous breath control. In the great climactic scene where the cornered di Luna lashes out helplessly as he watches his rival (who he thought he'd killed) about to carry off the woman he loves, one was tempted to side with di Luna. After having his face slashed, di Luna is subjected to a severe beating until his men intervene. His wounded pride makes him all the more haughty and vindictive when he finds out he has Manrico's mother in his clutches.
Outside the prison, after Sondra had set the Met afire with her spectacular scena, Dima wrapped up his fantastic evening with a duet of smouldering passion: he furiously degrades Leonora and sneers at her pleadings. But when she offers herself to save Manrico's life, Dima turns lustful and underlines the ardency of his desires with impassioned but superbly musical phrasing.
Hvorostovsky's di Luna is a revelation; his voice 'speaks' so clearly to me - more, maybe, than any voice I have ever heard. I'm always anticipating his next portrayal and while I understand his present addiction to Verdi, I was thinking what a glorious portrayal of Werther in the baritone version of the Massenet opera he could render. Tonight, Dima was truly superb.
Sondra Radvanovsky and Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Ken Howard/Met Opera photo) in the duet which crowned their joint success in the performance. Sondra's utterly distinctive voice has captured my imagination ever since I first heard her. It is highly individual in timbre, projected as no other soprano of the lirico-spinto class has ever projected, masterful in its dynamic control, spanning a vast range with beauty and vari-coloured demi-tints, flexible in fiorature and - most importantly - hauntingly expressive and always hot-wired to the emotional situation. Whatever misgivings I sometimes have about her (to do with pitch) are overcome by the sheer sweep and intensity of her vocalism. Tonight there were a couple passing flat notes but they were swept away on a tide of fascinating vocalism.
Sondra's voice has such immediacy of utterance as she spins it out into the big House. Her phrasing and dynamics in "Tacea la notte" were tantalizing but it's her under-lying poetry of romantic expression, the urgency of desire that colours the whole thing and makes it so transporting. All evening, she kept Leonora's music so alive with her sustained phrasing, tapered diminuendi, the rhapsodic expansiveness of her vocal line. For all her power, there's a remarkable streak of vulnerability in her voice which is so moving. Sondra's singing of "D'amor sull'ali rosee" was thrilling in not only sound but in the intensity of expression that made it seem personal as she made us feel the character's devotion and despair. She won her second major ovation of the evening. Then the funereal bell sounds, the monks begin the death chant. Here - as all evening - her fevered acting and passionate commitment to the production pushed her nearly over the edge as she suffered the pangs of hearing her imprisoned lover bidding her farewell during the Miserere. Steeling herself, she reveled in the death-wish fireworks of "Tu vedrai she amor" with its scalework and descents into the lower range showing off the Radvanovsky voice while expressing the darkest desires: "I will pay the price with my own life to save his; for him, I will go down into my own tomb" peaking it off with a searing high-C. Hvorostovsky then appears, the bargain is struck; how greedily she emptied the vial of poison. Lust and passion were then unleashed as they soared thru the stretta of the duet, each with something very different in mind.
Sondra's incredibly sustained and powerfully wrought farewell to her beloved was so moving as she repeated the phrase "Pria che d'altre vivere"...first forte, then piano. "Rather than live as another's, I want to die...yours..."
Then the opera races to its end: Leonora dies, Manrico is executed, Azucena awakes and tells di Luna he has murdered his own brother. di Luna staggers to Leonora's corpse and stares down at her in mystified despair. Everyone in this opera has lost everything.
Big ovations for all and a grand atmopshere in the House.