Selective Listening

Sam Shirakawa heard the Met's first Götterdämmerung of the season, but he didn't see it. He explains:

WAGNER: GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG
METROPOLITAN OPERA
25 APRIL 2009 Season Premiere

Have you ever felt glad that you didn’t get into an opera performance you really wanted to attend?

Through quirks of fortune, I was unable get to the Metropolitan Opera’s first performance this season of Götterdämmerung--which happened to take place on last Saturday´s broadcast matinee. So I tuned in to the radio at home--late--just in time for the Brünnhilde-Siegfried Duet that caps off the Prologue.

Ugh!

In my recent report on the Met’s first Siegfried of the season, I said that Christian Franz in the eponymous role had learned to refrain from squawking out notes, an annoying proclivity that had marred his previous performances, when I had heard him elsewhere as Siegfried.

I spoke too soon.

Apart from barking out note-less words here, there, and a lot, Franz was also afflicted on this occasion with a nasty wobble that often straddled at least two semi-tones.
Incipient motion sickness I was beginning to experience from that wobble was little helped by Katerina Dalayman’s squally Brünnhilde. She hit the top C in the duet squarely on target, but her mid-size voice appeared to be laboring fruitlessly under the weight of the role.

What to do?

Listening via radio or computer allows you do other things at the same time or just tune out. So, I opted for the latter and went outside to enjoy a beautiful spring afternoon--pitying, from time to time, those sea-worthy Wagnerites consigned to stay afloat in their seats at the Met.

When I returned home, the live performance was over, but a delayed transmission of the third act was about to begin online by way of a European station [Editor: Ireland's Lyric FM]. The Rhine Maidens were in good shape. A good omen maybe? If it was, Franz’ pneumatic delivery of the Hunting Narrative fell short of it. Some tender moments, yes, but I nonetheless found myself craving Siegfried's demise.
The Funeral Music came as an ear-cleanser. Levine’s Spell held the Met Orchestra in thrall. Great playing.

The phone rang, so I didn’t hear much until Brünnhilde’s Big Moment.
Dalayman had the energy for her Immolation Scene but not the gravitas. Rarely have I been so grateful for Brünnhilde to catch fire; this is no role for a pleasant, pushed-up mezzo. Several years ago, I heard Dalayman as Lisa in Pique Dame in Munich, and she was wonderful. She should stick with roles in which she sounds wonderful.

Judging from snippets I heard, John Tomlinson as Hagen was a study in malevolence, Margaret Jane Wray was a good Gutrune and Iain Paterson, making his Met debut as Gunther, was a revelation--a singer on the threshold. Don’t be surprised if he soon becomes a star Amfortas, Dutchman, and, of course, Sachs.

I am told the Schenk/Schneider-Siemsen/Langenfass production is not being dismantled after this season. Is the Met hedging its bets on the new production of the Ring, set for 2010? No matter. If the news proves true: O tidings of comfort!

© Sam Shirakawa

DIE WÄLKURE - Season Premiere

Sam Shirakawa, peripatetic Wagnerian that he is, was at the opening night of Die Walküre at the Met on Monday night. His squib:

Season Premiere 6 April 2009
Metropolitan Opera

The Muses were in attendance at the Met on Monday night. I never thought “riveting” would be an appropriate way to describe James Levine’s reading of any score, but absent a lapse here and there, his umpteenth traversal of Wagner’s [who else’s?] Die Walküre was indeed riveting. The pacing seemed livelier, the dynamic thrust more propulsive than ever before.

After a briefly tentative start, James Morris sang possibly his finest Wotan at the Met to date. Few veteran singers get to show what they have learned over the years, because their voices give out before they get the chance. Morris is one of the lucky ones. Drawing from a wealth of acquired and innate reserves, he rendered a deeply moving account of an embattled god, forced to sacrifice two of his most beloved children. On Monday, though, his soft and heartbreaking farewell to his love child was overshadowed by the orchestra. Too loud, Jimmy!

The much anticipated curiosity of the evening was the debut of Iréne Theorin, a hastily recruited Brünnhilde, replacing the indisposed Christine Brewer. The Swedish soprano has an ample voice that’s evenly distributed from top to bottom, and she showed no signs of strain in scooping up to those treacherous Bs and Cs in the valkyrie’s signature war cry. What her voice lacks at this point in her young career is a personality that is distinctive and lingers in the ear. Withal, Theorin proved herself an effective actress on her first showing, and she needed no extra makeup to highlight her estimable comeliness.

The same can hardly be said of Jan Botha’s appearance. The stage lights may have been kept on extra low wattage to mask his corpulence. Ah, but the rotund sound of his Siegmund! Think Jon Vickers meets Franz Völker: seductive, sweet and potent. Too bad Wagner kills the Wälsung off at the end of the second act.

Too bad, too, that the composer also kills off Hunding almost at the same moment. Especially when the role is so deftly portrayed by John Tomlinson -- another veteran Wagnerian, who’s made a well-deserved name for himself as Wotan and Sachs over the years. As an acquaintance sagaciously commented during the first intermission, Tomlinson purveys a depth of understanding about the role that makes Hunding far more complex than a brutish cuckold. And it’s not all about the singing, about which: no complaints. The way he listens to Siegmund’s tale of woe and becomes aware that he’s giving hospitality to his arch-enemy; the way he makes his long-suffering trophy wife stand up so that he can sit down.

And speaking of that long-suffering wife, Waltraud Meyer is back again as Sieglinde. I’ve always liked her, but I don’t care for mezzo-Sieglindes. I long for that slightly girlish inflection that real sopranos bring to the role. But Meyer was in full possession of her dark powers on Monday night, and satisfied customers gave her huge ovations.
Yvonne Naef is a cooly bitchy Fricka in her Virginia Woolf encounter with Morris. When she quits the stage with no loss of perspiration, you know it’s Game Over.

The eight Valkyrie Sisters -- all in great shape.

Monday’s cast is set to appear on the broadcast matinee. Theorin will also appear in Siegfried, which is fortunate. But not, apparently, in the broadcast of Götterdämmerung, which is unfortunate.

A sidebar to Monday night’s performance: It was marred by the cacophony of cellphones beeping and jangling throughout the performance. The hall frequently sounded like an intensive care unit. Isn’t it time for a full-page ad opposite the cast listing in the program, telling patrons to shut off? Or maybe the security personnel at the entrances should make it mandatory. Even better, why not create a firewall around the building to prevent incoming calls? If Wotan could do it for Brühnnhilde way back in those pre-digital days of yore, certainly the Met management can do it for its public now.

© Sam Shirakawa

TOXIC ASSETS

Sam Shirakawa attended the Opening Night of this season's run of Das Rheingold at the Met on Wednesday evening. Here's his squib:

Das Rheingold

Season Premiere 25 March 2009
Metropolitan Opera

If Das Rheingold is on the boards, it must be springtime now and Ring time again at the Metropolitan Opera. Otto Schenk has returned to supervise the final incarnations of his grandly representational production dating from 1987. The new version of what one critic has called “the ultimate mini-series” is set for 2010 and promises to be something entirely different.

This year, there are extra performances of Rheingold and Walküre to supplement the usual three cycles beginning at today’s matineé broadcast and continuing through early May. Expect to hear a lot of Japanese, German, Brit-English and Russian spoken during intermissions. Even in these wretched economic times, the Met remains Mecca for financially intrepid Wagnerites.

The first performance of Rheingold this season turned out to be only the 150th time the company has mounted the work -- by far the least performed of the four Ring operas.

Many of the singers who appeared at the premiere of this production have long since retired, but in an age when change happens too fast and too often, it is comforting to many to have James Morris back once again as Wotan. The incursions of time have diminished his vocal powers, but he was able to summon the requisite strength at the most critical moments -- especially in “Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge” -- the god’s articulation of relief at the completion of Valhalla. The rest of the cast was about as fine as money can buy these days: Yvonne Naef (Fricka), Wendy Bryn Harmer (Freia), Jill Grove (Erda), John Tomlinson and Franz-Josef Selig respectively as Fafner and Fasolt -- all in fine form. In a cast of equals Kim Begley (Loge), Richard Paul Fink (Alberich) and the trio of Lisette Oropesa, Kate Lindsey and Tamara Mumford as the Rhine Maidens were incandescent.

The other holdover from the production’s premiere, of course, is James Levine. Of some 20 odd times I’ve been present to hear him conduct Rheingold in the house, Wednesday evening’s performance was arguably his finest to date -- primarily because he seems to have discovered, finally, the recondite magic and sad sense of wonder in the work, which he palpably missed in his previous excursions into Nibelheim.

All of which led me to reflect afterwards on what take-away the performance may have offered. If nothing else, Rheingold, indeed the entire Ring, is about the Grand-Daddy of all Toxic Assets. The forged ring ultimately ruins everybody in a cumulative tidal wave of devastating collateral. The dire warnings of this intermittently hummable tale, adumbrated so seductively in swathes of wicked harmonies, continue to go unheeded, as the world sucks itself into the Augean stables of fiduciary feculence.

Sooner or later, though, what may get even worse gets better: We are, it seems, living out the Shakespearean-Wagnerian Dialectic. But how long in really real time is the journey between that deceptive E flat pedal which begins the infelicitous tetralogy in whose midst we now find ourselves -- and our arrival enfin at the redemptive D-flat Major coda that only the love which transcends understanding can win?

© Sam H. Shirakawa

Damnation Redux - Friday, November 14, 2008

Some comments on Sam Shirakawa's squib on the Met's new production of The Damnation of Faust, based on my own observations at Friday evening's performance:

G and I sat near the back of the Family Circle, but off to one side. I was not aware of the whirring of the projectors from the lighting booth above the Family Circle, so I suspect Sam heard the racket because he was sitting closer to the center of the Family Circle. Since Opening Night, the Met may also have worked to dampen the noise.

I agree with Sam about the the two-dimensionality of the production. This was especially obvious in the dance sequences where the dancers all moved laterally to and fro across the stage, but the stretches of stage they had to work with amounted to wider than normal catwalks.

Some of the video effects were striking - one of the more arresting images came late in the second act: as Méphistophélès stalks Faust to seek his signature on the deed, one by one the trees with their fall foliage wither as Méphistophélès advances across the stage towards his quarry - chilling and effective.

As for the singing, Susan Graham was wonderful throughout, perhaps the best I had ever heard her, with warm and plangent tone, long-breathed phrasing and generally good diction. Patrick Carfizzi, as the drunkard, Brander, made the most of his aria, with admirably clear diction. I have always loved Carfizzi's voice and presence and wonder why he has not been given meatier roles (I suspect he could handle Méphistophélès with more panache than John Relyea did tonight).

Relyea looked smashing in his red leather suit and feathered cap, but I wish his singing had more of the French suavity required for the role. His serenade in Part III passed without note (or applause). After such a promising beginning as a young singer, his singing has become more throaty and constricted over the last few seasons. Marcello Giordani's singing was coarse and unstylish all evening, and his diction was unintelligible.

Sam is right about James Levine's conducting, and I also agree with Sam that it was distracting to watch the reflection of him conducting in the onstage screens all evening. I am sure no one in the production staff ever went upstairs to see if there would be reflection problems for those sitting in the gods....

Altogether a mixed bag - Berlioz's music and his orchestrations are constantly dazzling, and the ending was sublime, but the singing was more disappointing that one might wish. Still I wouldn't want to have missed this extraordinary event.