On Saturday October 7, Berlin’s opera lovers had a tough choice to make.  It was between Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges, at the Komische Oper, Puccini’s Tosca at the Staatsoper unter den Linden and a new staging of the Johannes Strauss operetta A Night in Venice when up at the alternative theater HAU 1. A final option was to head over to the CineStar at the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz to catch the live HD broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s matinee of Richard Strauss’s Salome.
 
The Metropolitan Opera began its Live in HD series two years ago at the initiative of house’s then-new general manager Peter Gelb, and was an unexpected success. This season, 11 productions will be beamed into over 800 cinemas across America and in over 20 counties.

Opera is a medium that demands to be enjoyed live. Its sheer physicality cannot be grasped on a movie of TV screen. For this reason, filmed operas rarely – if ever – succeed as anything more than a compromised record. But I was keen to see what all the fuss was about, especially the crisp HD technology. Would the HD cameras add texture and depth to the picture, or would it look as flat and washed-out as the PBS Great Performances broadcasts I grew up with?

And then there was the opera itself, which I saw at the Met in 2004, when this production by Jürgen Flimm was new and the soprano Karita Mattila was being praised as the greatest Salome of a generation. That heart-stopping performance had left an deep impression, which was nursed by repeated listening to a bootleg recording that was circulating the Internet. When I heard that Mattila would be reviving Salome this season, I seriously considered booking a flight.

Adapted verbatim from a German translation of Oscar Wilde’s play, Salome scandalized audiences with its brutality and perversity when it premiered in 1905. Over a century later, it still packs a punch. The opera’s climax is a ten-minute-long striptease that Salome performs for her stepfather (and uncle) King Herod in exchange for the head of John the Baptist, with whom the girl has developed a feverish obsession.

 I was skeptical when the “Met Live in HD” program was announced. Where’s the audience, I wondered. Besides, who would be willing to pay 25 dollars (or Euros, as the case is in Berlin) for a movie ticket? Still, Mattila’s Salome is dynamite and 25 Euros is a far cry from a roundtrip ticket to New York.

At the CineStar, one of the city’s grandest multiplexes, “patrons” milled about in an elegantly decorated champagne bar with live piano music playing. There was even a complimentary coat check.  But despite the cinema’s preparations (including an impressive amount of advertising), the theater was less than half full.

My impressions of the broadcast were mixed. The sound was stellar and the HD projection was indeed as sharp as hoped for, and fared much better as capturing the thrill of live performance more fully (and consistently) that most of what I’ve come across on video. A tight zoom-in of an opera singer on a 30-foot screen is an odd perspective. At moments, viewers were welcome to details better left unseen, like saliva foam forming on Mattila’s lips during an impassioned moment. The cinema audience let out a few chuckles when Mattila praised Jochanaan’s beauty, for the bass portraying the Baptist was Juha Uusitalo, a riveting but rotund singer. The sound, also, was a bit too good at times: it picked up the prompter’s voice on at least one occasion.  

The most striking detail about the transmission, however, was that the notorious Dance of the Seven Veils was censored. On the Met’s stage, Mattila went for the full monty. Inside the CineStar however, the camera cut to Herodias’ face for the two-seconds of full-frontal nudity. According to the L.A. Times blog, the decision came from Mr. Gelb himself, who wanted to keep the rating below an “R” to appeal to families. Apparently, seeing a naked soprano is more damaging to kids than the grim spectacle of Matilla making out with a severed head, while blood trickled down her chin. Censoring Salome was an error in judgment, but it was hardly a deal breaker. Despite this wrongheaded decision, the broadcast made it possible to enjoy the performance halfway round the world.

Berlin enjoys a position of prominence when it comes to opera. No other city can lay claim to three full time opera houses. There were astonished gasps from the audience as the camera panned across the Met’s cavernous interior during the curtain calls. Even in this opera-rich city, it was a thrill to spend a night at the Met.

Don Carlo
The Metropolitan Opera
Conductor: James Levine
Cast: John Botha, René Pape, Olga Borodina, Dimitri Hvorostovky, Patricia Racette, Samuel Ramey
Performances through December 23rd

Verdi’s Don Carlo returned to the Metropolitan Opera last week in the classic John Dexter production. The house has presented this production several times in recent memory, but not with a cast this strong. The crown in the jewel that is this current revival is the German bass René Pape, who sang King Phillip for the first time at the Met . It’s a role he’s presented all over Europe, including in a controversial and bloody 2004 production at the Berlin Staatsoper and he triumphed in this star-studded production. Almost his equal was the bright-voiced and clarion Johan Botha singing the title role. Botha, a South Aftrican tenor, was also debuting the role at the Met. He certainly had the strength and accuracy to carry the role and performed credibly better that the most recent Met incarnation, Richard Margison, who sang in last season’s revival and back in 2001. But despite a big and seemingly inexhaustible voice, Botha gave a performance that would certainly seem too bright and sweet for some tastes. But it works, since Carlo is somewhat of a neurotic and indecisive would-be-hero in the tradition of Hamlet. Judging by this performance, we have much to look forward to in Botha’s Walther in Die Meistersinger this spring.

Don Carlo is an ensemble piece, which means that the burden of a great performance is placed pretty much equally on all of the five leads. Two of them took the entire first act to warm up, but eventually did stunning work in the four – yes, four – subsequent acts. The Russian baritone Dimitri Hvoroskovsky and Patricia Racette both struggled to hold their own against Botha in the first act. In Racette’s case, the chemistry with Carlo seemed off. There seemed to be lack of communication in the first scene, where princess Elizabeth of France (Racette) – who is engaged to Don Carlo – comes upon him unawares in the forests of Fontainebleau. Racette also took deep breaths and just seemed generally out of sorts. Hvorostovsky – who stars in next month’s revival of Onegin – co-starring as the revolutionary Marquis of Posa, got off to a wobbly start in his first scene with Carlo as well. It was only in his lower range that the full richness of his voice could be discerned. In contrast, Olga Borodina, in the scene-chewing role of Princess Eboli, stared off on the right foot and stayed there all evening. Rounding out the cast was the inexhaustible Samuel Ramey as the Grand Inquisitor.
With such an impressive array of vocal talent, the evening proved a rich if uneven treasure trove of stunning musical moments. Borodina’s sassy and inspired interpretation of “Nei gardin” was assured and aristocratic. The pompous climax of the act two auto-da-fé, complete with a massive chorus (as well as heretics) looked and sounded terrific. Pape’s finest hour came in his deeply moving Study Scene aria “Ella giammai m’amo.” His deep, velvety and lulling voice underscored his character’s tragic sensibility. The subsequent confrontation with the Grand Inquisitor was a Don Giovanni-esque symbiosis of two darkly powerful voices. Borodina’s “O don fatale” was powerful and nuanced, while Hvoroskovsky bade Carlo farewell with his heroic “Per me giunto” and equally elegant death.
Few of the Met’s monumental stagings have stood the test of time as well as the 1979 John Dexter production, which is historically faithful without being overstuffed: a perfect companion to the sublime music. James Levine did full justice to Verdi’s best score with a deeply expressive and detailed interpretation.

In the 15 years that Ben Heppner has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, the Canadian heldentenor’s career has come full circle with the current revival of “Idomeneo,” the role with which he made his company debut in 1991.
Since then, he’s tackled some of the most demanding tenor roles in the repertoire, making a name for himself as the leading Wagnerian tenor of our time. He performed a now-legendary Tristan in 1999 alongside Jane Eaglin. After taking time off in 2002-2003 to lose 100 pounds, he was back at the Met, sounding as good as ever, first as Aeneas in the company premiere of Berlioz’s “Les Troyens” and then reprising Tristan. Just last year, he delivered wonderful accounts of Logenhrin, Florestan and his first-ever Parsifal.
A vocal force to be reckoned with, Heppner is the key reason to catch the Met’s current revival of Jean-Pierrre Ponnelle’s 1982 production (which is looking a little dusty these days), although James Levine’s exacting and intricate reading of the tuneful Mozart score and a few standout supporting performances don’t hurt.
Idomeneo, the earliest of Mozart’s seven mature operas, was the slowest to gain acceptance in the modern repertoire (Ponnelle’s production marked the Met’s premiere). It tells of the King of Crete, Idomeneo, who returns home after many years fighting in the Trojan Wars. In return for the king’s safe homecoming, however, Neptune exacts an oath from Idomeneo, who vows to sacrifice the first man he encounters once on soil. Sure enough, who but the king’s son, Idamante, should stumble upon his washed-up father? In the remaining two acts, Idomeneo must come to terms with his paternal duty, on the one hand, and religious obligation, on the other. But don’t worry – everyone turns out fine in the end (except for the conniving love-interest Elettra who goes mad and dies rather excitingly).
A few months ago, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin came under attack for its controversial production of Idomeneo, which featured severed heads of Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed alongside Neptune’s. Don’t expect any such provocation from Ponnelle’s production, where a massive stone head of Neptune vies with the singers for domination of the stage. The singers usually won. Heppner started out curiously understated. Singing with ease and agility, he needed some time to warm up to the role. Once he had, though, he sang with undeniable power and clarion pitch. It was a performance only enhanced by his naturalistic and unmannered acting. Singing Idamante was the formidable American mezzo Kristine Jepson. She sang with enough force and determination to communicate her character’s despair and disbelief on a down-to-earth, unsentimental level. Still, she was a little shaky upstairs and didn’t always clip the end of her phrases. The Greek princess Ilia, beloved of Idamante, was sung by soprano Nicole Heaston. She was best in her middle range and often produced shrill high notes. With her intense quiver and overacting, her performance often had the trappings of caricature. Her doomed rival Elettra, sung by Olga Makarina, was far more satisfying. Though guilty as well of over-acting, she sang with a colorful, honeyed voice that could modulated from dark to rich to sparkling. Making his debut as Arbace, the king’s advisor, was a sturdy and dependable Jeffrey Francis, though he began to show some strain in act two.
Mozart’s music is wonderfully lush and ornamental, and surprisingly through-composed for an opera seria. Taken as a whole, the work is full of surprising harmonic and melodic continuities that anticipate subsequent masterpieces, like Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. In the pit, James Levine – a long-time champion of the work – conducted a supple yet dramatic account. The overture sounded jaunty, in a breathless fashion that stripped away any sense of pomposity. Throughout, Levine highlighted the athletic woodwinds while ensuring that the singers were audible at all times.

Idomeneo runs for two more performances at the Metropolitan Opera, through December 9, 2006 with Kobie van Rensburg (Idomeneo), Magdalena Kozena (Idamante), Dorthea Röschmann (Ilia) and Alexandra Deshorties (Elettra). James Levine conducts.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia
The Metropolitan Opera

The main reason to catch the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Rossini’s beloved “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” can be boiled down to three words: Figaro, Figaro, Figaro. The electrifying Peter Mattei sings the titular barber in Barlett Sher’s (“The Light in the Piazza”) elegant if evanescent staging. The Swedish baritone brought heft, brilliant colorings and gravity to a light, breezy atmosphere of farce and folly. From the show-stopping entrance aria “Largo al factorum” to his more removed position in the final scene, Mattei was pitch-perfect and dramatically exciting. He cut a dashing figure as the clever barber and his charisma seemed to hold both his audience and costars spellbound. As he presided over the orchestrated chaos that his character sets into motion, Mattei’s presence was so magnetic that he seemed to dominate the show even while silently observing from upstage.

There are many other first raters surrounding Mattei, including the much-lauded Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez as the amorous Count Almaviva. Diego Flórez’s crisp, flexible voice and good looks have made him a recent favorite at the Met and around the world.  The Met’s website has him billed as “the greatest Rossini tenor of out time.” To be sure, his supple, agile voice makes him an ideal choice for Rossini’s dizzying coloratura fireworks. However, his voice often lacks the requisite power for filling up a house like the Met. And while he can command emotional force at key moments, too often his technically flawless singing sounds breezy and bubbly. He made a strong first impression with his opening love serenade “Ecco ridente” but was upstaged by Mattei’s Figaro. His performance also often fell victim to exaggeration and overacting. Throughout the second act, Diego Flórez seemed to be holding back, saving it all for the final scene, where his ludicrously ornate “Cessa di piu resistere” was rewarded with a well-deserved (if over-long) ovation. I would just warn Diego Flórez against thinking he’s reached the top of his game. The tenor still has a lot to learn, if he ever wants to sing beyond light Rossini and Donizetti roles.  

As the love interest Rosina, Diana Damrau was a constant delight. She was very in control of her big and boisterous voice and sang with dynamic consistency and dramatic prowess. Her quicksilver “Una voce poco fa” was one of the evening’s high points, and she coupled magnificently (and suggestively) with Mattei in “Dunque io son.”

John Del Carlo was her guardian/captor, the ridiculous Dr. Bartolo. A booming bass, he turned out a sympathetic performance of this particularly challenging role. While he had the vocal strength to last the entire evening, he was wanting in flexibility and often had difficulty in his tongue-twisting rapid runs. Rounding out the impressive cast were the estimable Samuel Ramey and Wendy White as Don Basilio and Berta respectively. Ramey resembled Fu Manchu in his flowing robe and preposterously broad hat (imagine a wearable writing desk), while his gripping voice helped make his character less preposterous. White took a break from sneezing and blowing her nose for her poignant “Il vechiotto certa moglie,” which sounded suitable melancholy.      

The singers were hardly aided by the minimal yet chaotic production, which featured plenty of orange trees, a donkey to pull Figaro’s factotum, backless sets, and an anvil crushing a cart of Styrofoam pumpkins that contributed to the totally incoherent act one finale. More successful was the springy account of the tuneful bel canto score led by Maurizio Benini. Maestro Benini’s enthusiasm helps ensure that the catchy yet irritating songs will stay with you for days on end.