On Saturday morning, I opened the Arts and Leisure to find that all remaining performances at the Met for the rest of the season were sold-out. I wasn’t that surprised to see their splashy Turandot, or their well-publicized new productions of Trittico and Barbiere, on the list: but finding Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in their company came as a surprise. Granted, the opera’s appeal has, no doubt, been bolstered by the creative team behind the new production - Mark Morris, Isaac Mizrahi and James Levine. Still, a 100-minute opera seria with a title role written for castrato isn’t the type of thing people usually get excited about. In fact, this production lost its intended Orpheus when the radiant soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died last year of cancer. Her replacement, the countertenor David Daniels, is a singer with less star-power but has the advantage (and novelty) of being one of the few countertenors performing regularly in opera houses today.

Mr. Daniels recently appeared in the revival of Handel’s Guilio Cesare, where he became the first man to ever sing the role at the Met. Despite this news-flash, forever, the revival did not sell-out. One of the most severe problems with the recent Cesare, the other Baroque opera at the Met this season, was a dull and unimaginative staging that all but sapped the drama out of Handel’s beautiful music.

Orfeo, which is only half as long as Cesare, unfolds at a brisk pace. Gluck eschews narrative complexity for the sake of clarity and to heighten the character’s psychology and the fateful urgency of the universally known plot. Very much a chamber work, Orfeo has three principles - in addition to dancers and a chorus - and the modesty and refinement of the vocal writing makes it a work that hypnotically lulls you into a mytho-musical space that is beautifully sad. One can imagine the challenges that face a director who tries to recreate this sense of lyrically poignant intimacy at the Metropolitan Opera House. Director Mark Morris’ solution is an arresting yet simple conceit - amphitheater-style seating for a colorfully-costumed chorus of historical figures ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Henry VIII (?) and Liberace. Additionally, he literally reduces the dimensions of the stage for the Act III ascent from the underworld by having Orpheus and Euricide appear through a jagged letterbox, and treats the ample dance music as an excuse for earthy and energetic modern dance numbers. Costume designer Isaac Mizrahi clothes Orpheus in a tight-fitting black suit with a guitar slung over his shoulder, like a pop-troubadour. Eurydice wears a virginally white funeral shroud and Love has on a pink tank top and a small pair of wings. The dizzying assortment of historical costumes for the chorus span all epochs and ethnicities.

Unlike other Met productions that reply on the star-power of its creative team (e.g. Taymor’s Magic Flute), this slick and sophisticated production never feels like eye-candy. The design, dance and musical elements never compete for your interest, but rather compliment each other. The heavily costumed chorus is an omnipresent mass of spectators compassionately bearing witness to Orpheus’ grief. The young and energetic dancers, garbed in urbane and modern dress, react with abstract sympathy to the timeless tragedy of the story and the measured pathos of Gluck’s music.

The successful integration of the production’s various elements became apparent with in the dimly-lit opening scene, at Mr. Daniel’s first high anguished cry of “Euridice!” Mr. Daniels sang with robustness and poignant sorrow and made Orpheus’ despair vocally palpable and physically plausible. His every note rang out with bell-like clarity and rich expressiveness. He made Orpheus’ extreme emotional range - from sorrow to defiance to joy to suspicion to resignation - compelling and transitioned from one state to another without a hitch. In particular, his account of the hero driven by love, doubt and despair to turn around and lose Eurydice forever was thoroughly believable. He sang the famous “Che faro senza Euridice” with voice full more of defeat than sorrow, a suitably restrained account of an understated aria. The aria won him a lengthy and impassioned ovation.

The other two principle characters, Eurydice and Amor, have much less to do than Orpheus. Amor provides comic relief (an element heightened by her costume in this production) and sings a couple of pleasantly inspiring arias. Heidi Grant Murphy did a credible job without taking the role too seriously. Her why mischievousness helped lighten the atmosphere of unbearable heartbreak, but her serviceable singing failed to distinguish itself over that of Mr. Daniels and the Eurydice of the radiant Maija Kovalevska, a soprano who made her debut just this season singing Mimi in La Bohème. A native of Latvia, Kovalsvska is an vocally bold and lusciously beautiful singer. Her looks and talent should make her a regular at the house for many years to come.

In the pit, Maestro Levine and the orchestra delivered a mournfully elegant account of the brisk and through-composed-sounding score. Levine was guilty, ever so briefly of drowning out Mr. Daniels towards the end of the performance. He quickly lowered the dynamic levels and brought the opera – with its unexpected Act III twist – to a triumphant close.

I recently ended my tenure as the Classical Music / Opera critic of the Columbia Spectator. The following is a farewell column wherein I argue the case of Classical Music and offer some reflections of the meaning and use of arts criticism.

This column is in defense of what I’ve been doing for these past four years-arts criticism at a college paper.

My beat has generally been the arts and has included reviews of films, art, music, and books. More specifically, I’ve been writing the classical music and opera criticism for this paper for the past four years. If the dearth of attention given to classical music this semester is any indication, it would seem that classical music coverage is being phased out of the Spectator. This is a shame because classical music is thriving on campus.

This year especially, Columbia is increasingly at the center of the New York classical music scene. The Miller Theater has given us a particularly strong season and has made it into the mainstream press on several occasions, including the Oberlin Conservatory of Music’s performance of Olga Neuwirth’s Lost Highway and its programs of works by Frank Zappa and Edgar Varèse. Additionally, Columbia retains good relations with Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music. The CU Arts Initiative and Music Humanities have helped out by bringing the New York City Opera to campus. The Spectator should stop underestimating its readers and commit itself to covering more of these and other classical events throughout the city.

I’ve come under attack from editors for writing articles directed toward a select audience about topics that don’t really interest the rest of the Columbia community. But I’d like to think that my editors are simply underestimating my classmates. I think everyone would benefit from thinking seriously about arts criticism in general and the task of the critic.

A critic must not only be able to tell his reader whether or not to see performance “X,” but a reviewer must also convince the reader that performance “X” is worth thinking about and why. I’m not recommending that critics keep their own subjective judgments in check, but rather, I suggest that they realize that praise and blame are only two elements of a good review.

I suspect that many, like myself, who choose to contribute to the arts pages do so out a deep love for the subjects they write about and out of the conviction that art satisfies a deep and existential craving. As such, I’d like to think that many are compelled to write about the arts out of more than an indulgent desire to flaunt their knowledge. Rather, I hope that many arts critics use writing as an opportunity to apply their deep love and respect for art, to try and communicate that conviction to others, and, at the same time, to refine their own understanding of what art means to them.

Criticism at a college paper-and indeed everywhere-should be more than a simple thumbs-up or a one-to-five star-review. It should strive to elucidate and analyze. It should argue the case for art. Art is meaningful to us. This is both the premise of all good criticism and a belief that criticism needs to constantly reaffirm in order to stay alive and remain relevant. I hope that future arts journalists at the Spectator will understand that the arts page is more than a forum to air their own opinions and judgments. I hope that they realize that in their writing, they have a responsibility to communicate to their readers the worth of a particular work of art and of art in general. This is, and ought to be, the goal of all great criticism.

Recently up on “Scholarshit,” my pseudo-academic blog is a piece that explores the various attempts to turn opera into film. Productions discussed include Bergman’s “Magic Flute,” Syberberg’s “Parsifal,” Zeffirelli’s “Otelllo,” Powell and Pressburger’s “Tales of Hoffmann,” Rosi’s “Carmen” and Friedrich’s “Elektra.”

Since the birth of cinema, filmmakers have been irresistibly drawn to opera. From Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 silent version of Carmen to Kenneth Brannagh’s forthcoming film of The Magic Flute, the impulse to blend these composite art forms has tempted and frustrated an array of film artists. This is hardly surprising, as both art forms are mass spectacles that use a variety of media to communicate dramatic and emotional content.
Yet, opera rarely translates well to the screen without the feeling that something has been lost. There are many challenges to creating a successful Film-Opera. A director has to find his own solutions to issues of theatricality, spectatorship and ways to deal with what is basically a struggle for supremacy between music (in opera) and image (in film)… READ MORE