Tuesday March 9, 2010 - Dmitry and I attended the first of a two-evening presentation of the monumental Hector Berlioz masterpiece LES TROYENS presented in concert by the visiting Mariinsky Opera with Valery Gergiev on the podium. Above: a portrait of the composer.
LE PRISE DE TROIE is a self-contained work even though, like RHEINGOLD, it serves as a prologue for things to come. It includes one of my very favorite stretches of music in all opera: Cassandra's monologue and the great duet for Cassandra and Chorebus. Maestro Gergiev and the Mariinsky forces were magnificent. From the poignantly mournful passage that accompanies the appearance of the widowed Andromache to the doom-tinged grandeur of the Trojan march, the Mariinsky orchestra seemed to revel in the harmonic and rhythmic intricacies of the wondrous Berlioz score. The chorus, rightly given an ovation at the end, sounded splendid and the healthy sound of the women's voices in the great 'Complices de sa gloire' before their mass suicide made me wish they were our 'home' chorus.
Ekaterina Gubanova, who was heard recently at the Met as Giulietta in CONTES D'HOFFMANN was here the Falcon role of Cassandra: a role which can be sung either by a soprano with a full-toned lower range, or a mezzo with a secure top-B. Ms. Gubanova falls into the latter category and while she has the role's top-most notes within reach they tended to spread a bit. But those two or three notes aside, she gave a very fine performance singing with her dark and slightly thick but expressive timbre, and she was able to tread the fine line between classic utterance and dramatic urgency.
Above: Ekaterina Gubanova in performance with Maestro Gergiev conducting, photo by Hiroyuki Ito.
Alexei Markov (Chorebus) showed a warm and sizable voice with a fine legato. He and Ms. Gubanova sounded very well together - his lyric calm to her desperation - and in his solo passages of their duet the baritone made me wish to hear him in many other roles.
Sergei Semishkur (above) sang Aeneas, the most difficult role to cast in TROYENS and - along with the full opera's length - probably the reason it doesn't get done often enough. Aeneas is only getting started in TROIE; his most arduous singing comes in CARTHAGE. The role calls for a very odd voice-type: a high French lirico-dramatic tenor. The finest account of this role I have heard comes from Nicolai Gedda on an RAI broadcast available on Opera d'Oro. Gedda manages to be both poetic and commanding; he has the desired beauty of tone and is unfazed by the ascents to the high register. Jon Vickers was famous for his Aeneas (his was my first experience with this music) and he manages everything skillfully and impressively and with a nice sense of the heroic. When Placido Domingo tackled the role at the Met admitted in a pre-role-debut article that he wasn't sure he was up to it. He managed - with some truly beautiful passages - but the top had to be carefully negotiated in places. Domingo only sang the role four times. Gary Lakes made a variable impression as Aeneas - with some very good moments - and when I saw Ben Heppner in the role, he was struggling.
Sergei Semishkur's tone is on the light side and his listed repertoire puts him into the Gedda category as opposed to the Vickers. By clarity of projection he made the music work (I wonder how he will fare in the greater demands of the second evening?) and he beautifully drew us in to the mystery of 'O lumiere de Troie!'
Sharing that scene with Mr. Semishkur was a very strong basso, Yuri Vorobiev (above) who sang the utterances of Hector's Ghost from a position near the back of the stage. His voice was deep and sombre; he should be a wonderful Narbal in the second evening.
There was a very long applause at the end, much longer than most evenings at the Met. It was interesting that Dmitry remarked to me that he felt solo voices in an orchestral setting are not well-served by Carnegie Hall's famed acoustics. I have often thought this over the years but believed it was just my imagination or that I was simply seated in an unflattering spot acoustically. As Dmitry noted, Mr. Vorobiev seemed to have found a congenial hot-spot from which to sing.
The audience was wonderfully quiet and attentive and seemed keenly absorbed in the performance - except for one person who of course was seated on my left. This young man coughed, squirmed, flipped thru his playbill, tapped his foot and continually shifted around in his seat throughout the performance. Both I and the Japanese couple to his left continually shot him dirty looks but he remained blissfully unaware. Finally I whispered "Sit still!" and he did - for about 30 seconds. I wish I'd had a cough drop to give him or - better yet - a very strong tranquilizer.
But for all that it was still one of the most stimulating operatic evenings in recent seasons. And this morning I was thinking: how would Cassandra fare in today's world? I imagine she would be ridiculed or ignored just as she was in ancient times. As we hurtle along tossed on waves of natural disasters, religious and political polarization which stifle our common humanity, indifference to Nature, mindless wars and myriad social injustices her words come back to us across the centuries:
"Unhappy King! Down to eternal night I see thee fall...thy reign is ended! Ah, wherefore are my words, by thee uncomprehended? Unhappy people! Unhappy land! Now thy last hour is come."
Dmitry covers Part II of the Mariinsky TROYENS here.
I agree.
It was interesting to see Gubanova so glued to the score, though. The second night all soloists sang from memory. The role might be new to Gubanova, I don't know.
It was also interesting to note that all singers' backs were turned to Gergiev. They sang without his cues. That's quite unusual, no?
And about the Carnegie Hall acoustics. Sorry, I'm not a fan. I don't understand why they're famous. The sound is extremely bright and echo-y. For big orchestras and choruses it's fine, but solo voices get lost in a haze of echo. It's like they're singing from a cave across the street. I've heard a number of singers at Carnegie that I also heard in other venues, like the Met and Avery Fisher - and at Carnegie they were lost. Even at Avery Fisher, with its famously hated acoustics, I never had problems hearing anyone. But at Carnegie - terrible.
Posted by: Dmitry | March 11, 2010 at 08:43 AM