back to the future
La Cieca hears that the Man of Steel‘s spring 2010 season will go something like this:Â
 March 18 L’etoile
 March 19 Butterfly
 March 20 (e) L’étoile
 March 21 (m) Butterfly
 March 23 L’étoile (school)*
 March 24 L’étoile (school)
 March 25 Butterfly
 March 26 L’étoile
 March 27 (e) Butterfly
 March 28 (m) L’étoile
April 1 L’étoile
April 2Â Butterfly
April 3 (m) L’étoile (school)
April 3 (e)Â Partenope
April 4 (m)Â Butterfly
April 8Â Butterfly
April 9Â Partenope
April 10 (m)Â Butterfly
April 11 (m)Â Partenope
April 13Â Partenope
April 15Â Partenope
April 16Â Butterfly
April 17 (m)Â Partenope
April 18 (m) Butterfly
* L’étoile will be presented in two versions: full-length and in a one-hour reduction for school audiences.
wouldn’t you agree that it’s not always WHAT you do with an opera, it is HOW you do it
There’s a difference here between presenting a great star personality who basically can step into any production and make it fascinating (a Renata Scotto or a Karita Mattila) and really having a well thought through production in which a variety of performers can succeed. I would say the Zeffirelli Boheme as presented at the Met is an example of the latter: such disparate artists as Teresa Stratas and Luciano Pavarotti (separately) evoked great pathos in this production.
Now, compare this to the Jürgen Flimm Salome which works well enough as a vehicle for Mattila’s performance, but which would fall completely flat with anyone who lacked Mattila’s particular personality. There is no room in this production, for example, for a Salome whose strength would be in stillness, or a demure Salome, or even for a more buxom soprano than Mattila. It’s not really Salome in my opinion, it’s The Karita Show.
Compare that to, say, Mary Zimmerman’s Lucia, which is not by any stretch of the imagination a great staging, but it does have a basis of emotional honesty that is strong enough to support the very different Lucias of Dessay, Massis, Damrau and Netrebko. It’s possible to imagine even Joan Sutherland in this production if a few scenes were reblocked to avoid tricky stairs.
And, as I say, the Zimmerman is not a great production, merely a good and competent one, which I think the Salome is not. A great production would be something like the Konwitschny Lohengrin or the Chéreau Tristan. These productions are based on solid intellectual and emotional truths, and the execution of the ideas is done consistently. The stagings manage both to tell the surface story and to challenge our assumptions about what we think the works mean. And (this is also important) the strength of these stagings is not totally dependent upon the star personality of the performer.
Of course, Chéreau is blessed to have Waltraud Meier as his Isolde, not only for her intelligence and experience, but for her willingness to experiment, to find new things in a role that to her by now surely is familiar. But then look at Chéreau’s Tristan, Ian Storey. His career up until now suggests that he is a solid singer but hardly a performing genius like Meier. And yet, working with Chéreau he gives a brilliant and subtle acting performance, unsentimental and never falling into cliché.
So that, I think, defines by example what a great opera production is supposed to do, which is to communicate the director’s profound vision through inspiring the performers to surpass themselves. It’s a tall order, but I think not impossible to find at least from time to time.
That Salome, though, ain’t it.
I see your excellent and intelligent point, about this general difference in star-driven and more solidly built stagings, and I agree wholeheartedly.
My feeling too after the Flimm Salome was that it was to a large degree the “Karita Show”. I didn’t have those words for it, but you hit the nail on the head. I was very frustrated with the directing of the other characters in the work besides Salome, Herod, and Herodias, and I think you are right that it would be hard to sell the production with any other Salome in the role. And Lucia is an example of a work that succeeds in this malleability.
I’m very surprised you have such regard for the Zeffirelli Boheme, though! Wow. Not here, I’m afraid. Though the end of Act 2 always comes off spectacularly and warms my heart.
what a fascinating thread. best reading i’ve gotten to do in quite a while.
re #51 — i have no problem at all with a “salome” built around karita mattila’s considerable gifts. given a wonderful singer and skilled actress who is also an attractive woman, any director would be mad to do anything else. (and i wouldn’t say that no other soprano would work in flimm’s production; i can imagine malfitano ca. 1990 in it quite easily.)
reality check: was mattila’s salome a sensation? are people going to talk about it in 20 years the way they talk about welitsch’s now? will we all go out and buy the inevitable dvd? and would richard strauss, a practical theater man, have thrown up his hands in horror at any of this?
#54
Good point – Malfitano is not my idea of a great Salome, and is way past her prime, but another commanding presence could have also sold this production.
But I think cieca’s point stands, that is to say that the work is not great because of any director’s caring for it; it is great because it has a magnetic soprano in the lead role. (Karita just happens to be one of the very few, or the only, with such versatility and abilities right now).
A lot of acclaimed productions do not succeed because of the director’s work – often its the set designer who comes away with the prize. I felt this way about McVickar’s Trovatore. I saw none of McVickar’s work in the piece. A vague concept, maybe, and lots of good lighting and OK, if slightly hokey, sets.
Malfitano way past her prime? I think that’s being kind. Does she sing anymore at all?
Maybe I let time get away from me? I saw Carmen in Cincinnati a few years ago and it was a painful experience. I guess that was in 200..4?
Anybody want to submit finalists for the award of Best New Production at the Met 2008-2009? I know it’s hard, there’s just SO many wonderful ones to choose from!
Tony awards time for the Met!
Hard to come up with nominations for best new production. Damnation? Rondine? Dr. Atomic?
On the other hand, I can think of a few, just a few, nomination-worthy singers.
Females in roles for the first time at the Met:
Podles in Gioconda
Damrau in Lucia
Blythe in Orfeo and Rusalka
Harteros in Traviata ??
Leonard in Don Giovanni ??
Males in roles for the first time at the Met:
Florez in Sonnambula
Beczala in Lucia /Onegin
Brenciu in Rondine
Giordani in Damnation ??
Calleja in Rigoletto ??