Speranza
By tradition, the gala opening night of the New York Metropolitan Opera
season is a social affair.
But opera house manager Gelb has also made it
artistic, as it was this Monday when the Met began the season with Tchaikovsky’s
“Eugene Onegin”.
The production by Deborah Warner was directed by
Fiona Shaw and starred baritone M. Kwiecien (in the title role) and soprano Anna
Netrebko (as Tatiana).
Gelb has raised the stakes for every new
production at the Met by talking up how essential it is for opera to bring in
today’s liveliest and most innovative designers.
Some of the productions
on his watch have met that standard. Some have been curiously bland, or nothing
special.
This “Eugene Onegin” belongs, some think, among the roster of
also-rans.
It replaces the production by Robert Carsen that was visually
arresting, with an almost abstract look, full of autumnal colors and a stage
floor covered with fallen leaves.
There was one problem.
The set
had no real walls or ceiling to help project the voices into the house.
Warner’s staging, with sets by Tom Pye, is a co-production with the
English National Opera.
It shifts the story’s setting from the 1820s to
roughly the late 1870s, contemporaneous with the years Tchaikovsky wrote the
piece.
Handsome costumes of the period are designed by Chloe Obolensky.
The opening scene is typically set, as per the stage directions, in a
garden of the Larin estate in the country, where we meet the sisters Tatiana and
Olga and their fretful mother, Madame Teatro La Scalarina.
In this
production the action takes place in what looks like a sun-room that opens to a
grove.
Dingy curtains cover wall-size windows.
Lots of work
takes place on a country estate and this drab room looks like a real work-place,
which is the problem: you can get tired of it.
Olga (mezzo-soprano
Oksana Volkova) and Tatiana sing a duet.
Tatiana lives in a world of
books.
Olga has a fiancé, Lenski, a poet (the excellent tenor P.
Beczala, in bright, ringing voice).
Lenski arrives with Onegin, who has
inherited a neighbouring estate from his uncle, though he has no interest in
running it.
Flirting with Tatiana amuses Onegin.
This is all it
takes to unleash pent-up fantasies of romantic love in Tatiana.
In the
remarkable Letter Scene, Tatiana rashly stays up half the night writing a letter
to Onegin declaring her love.
Here, instead of taking place in the
privacy of her bedroom, a writing table is set up in the drab sun-room from the
previous scene.
This makes no sense.
The dramatic tension of the
performance in Act I seemed unfocused and tentative, which may be a result of
the crisis that arose in this production.
In early August Warner pulled
out as director to undergo surgery.
Her friend Shaw, the acclaimed
actress and director, took over.
Shaw has directed several opera
productions, but never at the Met--.
Moreover, Shaw was already directing
a production of Britten’s “Rape of Lucretia” for the Glyndebourne Festival’s
fall tour, which overlapped with “Onegin” at the Met-----.
So, with the
exception of one hectic day, Shaw has NOT been at the Met in more than two
weeks, including Monday’s opening night.
We resented that.
Deeply.
Gelb said in an interview that Warner’s staging was already
blocked in detail and that Shaw left copious notes.
But what about the
last-minute changes that typically take place during dress rehearsals?
It seemed as if the cast, and even the usually exemplary Met Chorus, was
feeling its way during the first act.
By the second act, the focus and
sweep picked up.
Netrebko knows what she thinks of this character and
the music, and how to savour the words in her native Russian.
During the
opening scenes she conveys Tatiana’s mousy demeanour.
But the plummy
richness and shimmering sensuality of her voice reveal inner feelings in this
young woman waiting to be tapped by a man like Onegin.
In the Letter
Scene she went from hushed expressions of insecurity and longing to
full-throated bursts of desire and soaring lyricism.
Beczala’s muscular
tenor voice is ideal for Lenski.
He brings out the charming goofiness of
this man’s love for the smitten Olga, until he turns hot-head when he sees
Onegin dancing seductively with her and challenges him to a duel.
Kwiecien’s Onegin is a handsome and entitled man who takes all that for
granted.
His voice, while dark and virile, did not on this night have as
much innate vocal charisma as Netrebko’s or Beczala’s. But he was good.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
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