Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Monitoring the Metropolitan Opera’s Vital Signs

In news reports over the past year, the Metropolitan Opera has come across as an ailing patient, its costs and revenues spiraling in opposite directions. While many observers agree that the company’s financial model is unsustainable, at least in the long term, there’s far more disagreement about the quality of its performances. At the beginning of the 2014-15 season, which ends on Saturday, I resolved to take the Met’s artistic temperature by attending, as I never had before, all of the operas it presented — 26 this year — at least once each and often more. I tried to catch notable newcomers and cast changes, to move beyond the premieres and big stars to see how things are faring on those ordinary nights that are an opera house’s lifeblood.

So how’s the company’s health? Let’s go through it anatomically.

Brain

Image
Alan Opie and Michaela Martens in “The Death of Klinghoffer.”Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

The Met still isn’t a place for deep thoughts. Its much-debated staging of John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer” was dully literal-minded, replacing the dreamlike ambiguities of the 1991 work with corny CNN-style realism. Otto Schenk’s slack, storybook-simple 1993 production of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” had its last revival, and not a minute too soon: Only the baritone Michael Volle, who stepped in for two performances as Hans Sachs, gave the opera grit and intelligence.

The director Mariusz Trelinski’s ingenious pairing, new to the Met, of Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” and Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” at least had a point of view. Otherwise it was up to revivals of Verdi’s “La Traviata” (in Willy Decker’s stark staging) and Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel” (macabre as directed by Richard Jones) to inspire fresh thoughts about classic works. And at the end of the season, three rare performances of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” made a welcome cameo.

Hands

Image
Diana Damrau and Vittorio Grigolo in “Manon.”Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Conducting six operas after a long period of illness and injury, James Levine, the company’s music director, was back in business, but less consistent, keeping alive the notion that his tenure really shouldn’t linger too much longer. Thankfully, the Met is cultivating other talents. Yannick Nézet-Séguin did astonishing work in a revival of Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” richer and deeper than his last take on the opera here, in 2010. The young bel canto specialist Michele Mariotti kept up the energy in Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” and teased out delicate lyricism in his “La Donna del Lago.”

Emmanuel Villaume gave Massenet’s “Manon” lithe agility, while James Conlon milked Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” for every drop of savage energy. And Fabio Luisi, the Met’s principal conductor, who I’ve long associated with polished but sedate performances, finally hit his stride with a hurtling “Macbeth,” a detailed double bill of “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” and suave leadership of the second cast of “The Merry Widow.”

Heart

Image
Brandon Jovanovich and Eva-Maria Westbroek in “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk."Credit...Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

Mr. Levine was not long ago notoriously prone to cancellations. But he missed just one performance (out of 36) this year, and I happened to be there: Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” on April 28. The cast, led by Sondra Radvanovsky and Piotr Beczala, found out just minutes before curtain that John Keenan, a talented veteran staff conductor, would be on the podium, and they responded with performances of verve and nerve, old-fashioned in the best sense but also natural fits with David Alden’s creepily surreal 2012 production.

That wasn’t the only evening when fires raged at the Met. The revival of Graham Vick’s raucous 1994 staging of “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” was a valuable reminder that vibrant, relevant theater existed at the Met long before Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager since 2006. “Manon” starred Diana Damrau and Vittorio Grigolo, showing the kind of chemistry difficult to find on an opera stage. Roberto Alagna gave his all in “Carmen” — as did Nadja Michael in “Bluebeard’s Castle.”

Blood

Image
Sonya Yoncheva in “La Traviata.”Credit...Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

New blood, that is. Sonya Yoncheva combined subtle, specific acting and artful vocalism in unplanned star turns in “La Bohème” and “La Traviata.” Making her Met debut, Ailyn Pérez brought focus and purpose to Micaëla in “Carmen,” a character too often limply passive. Tamara Wilson, joining a run of “Aida” in the title role, made a far more passionate pair with the mezzo Violeta Urmana than Liudmyla Monastyrska and Olga Borodina had earlier in the run, and the young tenor Paul Appleby was a bright spot as David in “Die Meistersinger” and Tom Rakewell in “The Rake’s Progress.” (Even seeing everything, you can’t see everything: Among many regretful omissions, I missed the tenor Michael Fabiano’s much-praised last-minute performances in “La Bohème” and “Lucia di Lammermoor.”)

Vocal Cords

Oh, right, those. The most glamorous singing of the year came from a cast that couldn’t have been bettered anywhere in the world: Verdi’s “Macbeth” with Anna Netrebko, Zeljko Lucic, Joseph Calleja and René Pape. Mr. Calleja’s bronze-color tenor is distinctive enough that he was the best part of a revival of “Lucia di Lammermoor,” even while audibly recovering from the flu.

Verdi’s “Ernani” was fatally marred by one of the more ill-considered and rough-toned of Plácido Domingo’s recent forays into the baritone repertory. And two tenors with similar first names had very different impacts: Marcello Giordani sounded tattered in “Aida” while Marcelo Álvarez was plangent in the double bill dubbed “Cav/Pag.” Mr. Álvarez’s leading ladies fared worse. Eva-Maria Westbroek, powerful in “Lady Macbeth,” was a sour Santuzza in “Cavalleria Rusticana,” and Patricia Racette, a likable actress, sounded squally in “Pagliacci.”

Eyes

In a theater the size of the Met, the most important nonmusical quality might be visual flair. A production can be traditional or contemporary, spare or elaborate, so long as it pops past that immense proscenium and over the gaping orchestra pit. Memorable sights this season included the mirrored, sloping walls of “Un Ballo in Maschera” and the spooky forest of “Iolanta” and “Bluebeard’s Castle.” But the other new sets were uniformly flawed: a dark, leaden “Le Nozze di Figaro” on opening night; a ship’s deck in “The Death of Klinghoffer” marooned between realism and stylization; staid flats for “The Merry Widow”; a dimly lit, stage-filling turntable in “Cavalleria Rusticana”; and, worst of all, almost nothing to evoke the natural world so integral to “La Donna del Lago.”

Speech Development

Image
Renée Fleming in “The Merry Widow.”Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

What sunk the Met’s new production of Lehar’s “The Merry Widow,” unveiled on New Year’s Eve was the script, an English-language version of the classic operetta by Jeremy Sams, who also recently had key roles translating Johann Strauss II’s “Die Fledermaus” and developing the Baroque pastiche “The Enchanted Island.” Long scenes of spoken dialogue fall flat in the vast Met, especially when the jokes are as lame as these.

Rigor Mozartis

A small handful of performances were dead on arrival, and they were disproportionately in Mozart. Grim and awkwardly staged, the Michael Grandage production of “Don Giovanni” is, after a few revivals, demonstrably unsalvageable, and the Met keeps casting it weakly. The final matinee of “Die Zauberflöte” was similarly uninspired, dotted with young singers who seemed out of their league. Along with the new bland “Figaro,” this track record doesn’t fill me with hope for next season’s revival of “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” or for a future “Così Fan Tutte,” a challenging opera in desperate need of a new Met production.

Existing Prescriptions

After seeing dozens of performances over the past seven months, it’s clear that Mr. Gelb has put the Met on Xanax. While the highest highs, the most memorable nights, might be rarer now than they were in the so-called golden age of 40 or 50 years ago, you’re also less likely than you were then to stumble across a truly unacceptable, even laughable performance. Unlike, say, the Vienna State Opera, the only major company to exceed the Met in sheer volume and where certain operas still make it onstage in decidedly amateurish condition, the Met has achieved a steady, dependable level of professionalism, anchored by the orchestra and chorus.

Prognosis

Mixed. Next season’s lineup looks hopeful, with well-cast new productions of Verdi’s “Otello,” Berg’s “Lulu” and Strauss’s “Elektra,” and runs of all three of Donizetti’s Tudor trilogy operas among the offerings. And the past months have brought exciting evenings, some predictable and some unexpected: “Macbeth,” “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” “Manon,” Ms. Yoncheva’s performances, “Ballo,” the dazzling way Mr. Nézet-Séguin lightened the orchestral textures in the Elisabetta-Carlo duet in “Don Carlo” to evoke past happiness, “The Rake’s Progress.”

But it says a lot that Mr. Levine was on the podium for just one of these performances and that none of the six new productions were among them. Something isn’t right at the Met if the marquee offerings of its leadership aren’t among the season’s highlights. Mr. Gelb, who has made the Met stronger and livelier still needs help developing new stagings and new works. He is not an artistic director or a director of productions, and the Met sorely needs someone in that role. When the patient is ailing, sometimes a team shake-up is just what the doctor ordered.

A correction was made on 
May 24, 2015

An article on May 10 about the Metropolitan Opera’s 2014-15 season misstated how many performances the conductor James Levine was scheduled for during the season. It was 36, not 28.

How we handle corrections

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section AR, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Open Wide and Sing ‘Aahhh!’ . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT