parterre box

50 comments

• louannd says:

  #9 – I agree with you about the Regie. Even when they don’t work so well they are at least new and interesting. I did see DG at Santa Fe — it was all done in red, apparently Hell was now and DG went to heaven at the end…via an armoire in the kitchen (unfortunately, I had to suppress a laugh). The women sang beautifully and Charles Workman’s Il Mio Tesoro was worth the entire week of opera.

  on November 2, 2009 at 9:46 PM
• Hans Lick says:

  I’ve only heard three first-rate Don Giovannis in my (very long, nearly endless, Dienen! Dienen!) life: Siepi, who was perfect for the Berman production but wouldn’t go over today; Mariusz (at Tanglewood and in Houston) and Peter Mattei. All very different. Alas, did not see Treigle do it. The others – who hires these guys? Schrott? Terfel? HAMPSON? Gimme a fuckin break. (The worst ever was Roger Soyer.)

  I have a picture from Houston, backstage, Mariusz astonished to see me in Texas (as well he might be) giving enthusiastic Halloween hug. (Costumed as a cowboy, shirt buttons open of course.) But really what was amazing was the trajectory between utterly charming rogue in Act I and gradually – then horribly – disintegrating personality in Act II. Death seemed to come to him as a relief. “The role he was born to play,” muttered one Houstonian. Well, yeah. Also the Count in Figaro and maybe Krol Roger.

  He sang Enrico quite quite badly at the Met – he should sing Donizetti the way he sings Mozart, but somehow goes for bombast. Calmer in Don Pasquale and L’Elisir. I wanted to hear his Sir Riccardo, but after the Lucias I thought, maybe not – maybe bel canto is not his fach – maybe somebody needs to talk to him, as Mamma Soprano would say.

  I always prefer him with facial hair, though in the Cosi at the Met with Polenzani (who sang like a god), he had long hair and no beard at all, and he (Mariusz) looked kind of angelic. The angel as corrupted by Lucifer to be sure. I don’t think anyone who was in the Met audience on the night he sang in Don Pasquale with Petrova has forgotten when she threw a pillow at him and missed, and he had to scissor kick it from the stage apron like a gymnast, his tight white trousers taut over glutes to die for. But I digress. The Marcello leaping when goosed in Act IV was something to treasure also.

  The Onegin on film – the dining room one from Paris was it? – also shows him to advantage. And the crazy Onegin from Munich, the one with the cowboys, is okay if you ignore the cowboys and focus on Mariusz doing Onegin going mad. Good actor, this guy.

  Someday, I have thought ever since the night I first heard him (his Met debut in Katya Kabanova in 1998; next day I met him in the grottoes below the house and said, “Hey, you’re good” which was the first time I’d spoken to him), someday Maestro Kwiecien will be the most sinister Pizarro ever. But not if he goes on singing Donizetti that badly.

  Peter Mattei was totally different. Peter Mattei was just so … natural … so … IT. He doesn’t work it. He just IS. Worship that man. There are still great singers among us.

  on November 2, 2009 at 10:54 PM
• Straussmonster says:

  Peter Mattei’s Don Giovanni was the most effortlessly sexy thing I think I’ve ever seen on stage.

  on November 2, 2009 at 11:03 PM
• Hans Lick says:

  Exactemente.

  on November 2, 2009 at 11:09 PM
• squirrel says:

  straussmonster
  he’s good. i knew him when!

  on November 2, 2009 at 11:29 PM
• Sanford says:

  Hans, are the grottoes beneath the Met like the grottoes beneath The Jewel Theater or the Unicorn?

  on November 3, 2009 at 12:31 AM
• Krunoslav says:

  Hans Lick

  I always leap at the chance to learn from those much, much older`than myself: what was so bad about Soyer’s Don Giovanni?

  Also, did you see Gerald Finley in the current Met staging? REALLY impressive, as was Mattei.

  on November 3, 2009 at 12:50 AM
• Doberdawg says:

  79CXR, your link to Roi Roger says “not available” in French, but there is an image of a shirtless Mariusz. Tease!

  on November 3, 2009 at 1:27 AM
• Oralia Concepcion says:

  I saw Marius’s Don Giovanni in SF last year. It was nothing to write home about–vocally or dramatically.

  He’s a short little guy who makes a pretty big sound.

  His idea of acting is to walk downstage center, plant both feet wide apart, put his hands on his hips and sing real loud.

  I’ve seen worse opera acting–but only from Paul Plishka.

  on November 3, 2009 at 1:44 AM
• CruzSF says:

  OC @ 19: by “SF” do you mean Santa Fe?

  on November 3, 2009 at 1:51 AM