Christmas is a great time to visit New York City because of all the opera available. You can have an operatic holiday—whichever one you are celebrating—very easily in Manhattan. The Metropolitan Opera livened up the holiday season with a group of tempting offerings.
Nicholas Joel’s beautifully traditional and realistic production of Lucia di Lammermoor offered a choice of two Lucias, both excellent. The cognoscenti were determined to hear both singers of course. Elizabeth Futral presented an angry and resentful Lucia, tired of being the pawn of her dominating brother. Youngok Shin gave us a very weak, passive, and panicky Lucia who was overwhelmed by all the demanding men in her life—both brother and boyfriend. Both approaches are valid, and both generated real interest in this fiendishly difficult coloratura role.
Giuseppe Filianoti’s captivating Edgardo was a constant in all these Lucias. He doesn’t have the most beautiful tenor voice in the world, but he makes dramatic use of the text and music, and has an exciting stage presence. Charles Taylor sang the villainous brother, Enrico, with a large, beautiful voice that bullied the other singers—totally appropriate for the role.
The hot ticket in December at the Met was certainly the Rigoletto with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón, which I approached with some suspicion because of all the hype this couple has been generating. But I have to admit to being utterly captivated by this exciting performance.
Netrebko and Villazón made this one of the most thrilling Rigolettos on record—Netrebko presented a Gilda who was very young and erotic, and Villazón’s Duke had a lovely baritonal tenor tone that was even more erotic and youthful. Carlo Guelfi’s fine Rigoletto, dramatically and sensitively sung, was overwhelmed by these two new powerhouses, both of whom were capable of wonderful coloratura flexibility.
The Met also staged a new production of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, which benefited mightily from Guy Joosten and Johannes Leiacker’s lovely production. The sets reflected the wooden mosaics of the studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio, on display at the Metropolitan Museum, with an added surreal decor. The results provided a visually arresting tribute to these Renaissance lovers—and while Gounod’s music did not always match the intensity of the action on stage, the production kept the audience’s interest.
Natalie Dessay became a captivating Juliette, acting with youthful innocence and handling the role’s coloratura challenges with aplomb. Her Romeo, Ramón Vargas, was a bit of a lump in terms of his wooden acting, but his dark tenor voice sang the role quite well—if only he could have been more ardent.
Frederick Burchinal was suitably authoritarian as Capulet, and Stéphane Degout was suitably comic and cynical as Mercutio. Bertrand de Billy conducted this score with both control and elegance, trying to make the music as pleasant as possible despite some longueurs.
The Met also premiered a new opera for the holiday season: Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy, which turned out to be a lovely and dramatic example of postmodernism. The music was tuneful and graceful to the voice, rather than torturously atonal. The orchestral music was especially lush and arresting, though the vocal line often seemed rather pedestrian. But the Met certainly provided a lovely three-tiered production by Francesca Zambello and a great cast.
Nathan Gunn captured the weak-willed but greedy core of his character, Clyde Griffiths, and Susan Graham sang Sondra Finchley’s music with excellent diction and exceptional beauty of tone. The audience favorite remained Dolora Zajick’s forceful Elvira Griffiths, the mother of Clyde, and she dominated every scene she was in. Patricia Racette moved the audience as Roberta Alden, the poor woman that Clyde impregnated and abandoned.
It was delightful to spend the Christmas season in the company of all these operatic characters and musical marvels—the Met put a song in my heart, in fact, several songs.
