The first aria, with its treacherous "accendivi a regnar" sequencing up to high B-flat, sounded like child's play, and Voigt "took a vacation" on the several high Cs with disdainful ease. And then she grew from strength to strength through the night, shading down her majestic voice to an ominous whisper for the duetto with Macbeth (Justino Diaz) and then opening the floodgates in the Act One finale, rising to a thundering high C and even an interpolated high D-flat. More surprises awaited in the second act, when Voigt dropped into a sinfully rich chest voice for the low-lying phrases of "La luce langue," a disturbingly sexy sound reminiscent of vintage Crespin. She handled the tricky fioratura of the banquet scene handily (a moderate tempo helped here), and then went completely demented in the Act 3 vengeance duet, sailing to another ringing high C and then bursting into hysterical laughter as the curtain fell. 

Even all this splendor did not prepare me for the experience of the Sleepwalking Scene, taken at a majestically slow tempo with very free use of rubato. Voigt�s gamut of vocal color ranged from an eerie white tone in middle voice to a snarling chest register. She brought off the celebrated pianissimo high D-flat expertly, her back to the audience and silhouetted in candlelight. We need have no worries about Voigt's supposed "lack of temperament," for her acting and vocal attack in this performance were very much in the Birgit Nilsson mold of inner tension followed by lunging forward motion � on a couple of occasions, Voigt was in danger of going over the top with Tito Capobianco's lurid stage direction. With a good director, her Isolde should be a revelation, perhaps the greatest since Nilsson herself. 

After her Chrysothemis in New York, Voigt goes on the road with the Met Orchestra singing the Vier Letzte Lieder. She plans a more ambitious concert program next season: Andromache's Farewell of Samuel Barber, followed by the Schlusszene from Salome. In the future, well, she's "toying" with La fanciulla del West and seriously working on Norma, to be heard first in Toulouse in 2000. Miami will hear her first Tosca in 2001, followed (as we already know) by Isolde in Vienna in 2002. She will also log a few hours in the recording studio taping Ariadne, Liebe von Danäe and Friedenstag; her Aegyptische Helena is already in the can. 

Subscribe to parterre box!

Watching A Streetcar Named Desire, La Cieca was disappointed that everyone concerned: stage director Colin Graham, the principal singing artists, and especially composer Andre Previn, seemed to take an �easy� sentimental/melodramatic interpretation of Williams' drama, transforming a poetic tragedy into a sex-and-tears soap opera. It's not a play about a faded Southern belle brutalized by her Neanderthal brother-in-law: that's a gross oversimplification and coarsening of Williams' poetic intentions. It's a play about the contrast between Blanche and Stanley, between spirit and flesh, female and male, or, if you like, homosexual and heterosexual. Blanche and Stanley cannot coexist because they do not understand each other; each is frightened and repelled by this strange "otherness." As such, throwing too much sympathy to Blanche skews the meaning of the work: true opposites must be equal in order for the equation to make sense. 

The libretto to Streetcar necessarily must condense the verbiage of a very long play, but Phillip Littell's cutting seems to have shifted the emphasis considerably. Blanche's Act One speech about all the deaths in the family, for example, whizzes by in the play (or should, anyway): Blanche is on a talking jag. The real point of the speech is Blanche's barely-controlled panic. In the opera, the words are set slowly, with an Elektra-like horror in the orchestra: La Cieca kept expecting Elizabeth Futral to shriek, "Nicht, Schwester, nicht in diesem Hause!" Blanche already sounds half-unhinged and at the end of her rope, barely 15 minutes into the evening - so where else has she to go? Littell cuts a good deal of Stanley's humorous asides, like the putdown of the girl he once dated who kept insisting "I'm the glamorous type." ("So I said, 'So what?'") Not only does that make Stanley rather less of a villain, it goes a long way to explaining his impatience with Blanche's pretensions. Previn obviously put most of his effort into Blanche's role: it's even more prominent in the opera than in the play, and she gets all the big lush vocal moments, expertly written to exploit the most sensuously beautiful aspects of Renee Fleming's voice. But that's really the easy part, isn't it? The late-romantic and "conservative" American schools of opera provide more than enough models for this sort of sweet soprano anguish, from Manon Lescaut to Vanessa. 

Where Previn fails utterly is in delineating Stanley vocally. It's ordinary declamation thatcould have just as easily come from the lips of John Sorel or Marc Antony or Orin Mannon or Horace Tabor in their less focused moments; in short, it's generic. The words and the acting have to carry it all; fortunately, Rodney Gilfrey has both the look and the attitude to suggest at least the animal instinctiveness of Stanley, but without musical language, it's at best a flat representation, without the complexity of Stanley's sense of hurt pride or confused sexual approach-avoidance to Blanche. It's a mistake to interpret his great shouts of "Stella" as some roar of rage; in mood these cries are closer to "No, pazzo son! Guardate!" or Tristan's Act 3 outbursts, an outpouring of longing and heartbreak. It's the emotional high point of the second act, exactly the sort of inarticulate cri de coeur that opera is all about. To avoid setting those cries to music is, to my mind, a copout, an admission that the composer cannot handle the material. 

A lot of Blanche's wit has disappeared as well; Previn never delivers any sense of her manic aiming-to-please chatter in her scenes with the men of the show, her heartbreakingly giddy flirtatiousness. Everything she does is so damned portentous, like she already knows she's doomed. Part of the problem is that Ms. Fleming is not a naturally twinkly performer, but it seems to me that if Previn had assigned her a few allegro molto vivace passages (with little roulades and trills to suggest her breathless gabble), she would not have seemed such a downer and victim. (The scene with the newsboy I thought literally would never end; I have never seen this bit played more heavily and more sentimentally, with such serious intent. She's flirting, remember? And exciting herself with the prospect of being naughty. We're not talking "Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix" here.) 

I am particularly disturbed by the sentimentalized star-exit given Miss Fleming, a long wander off into the sunset floating a high pianissimo in the manner of "Enzo adorato" or the finale of La rondine. Even if we can overlook the absurdity of the Doctor and the Matron letting Blanche stroll calmly away from them, it's a clear distortion of Williams' play. The last line is not the "kindness of strangers" bit; the focus returns to the poker game, where Stanley gets the last word: "The name of this game is five-card stud." Bringing the curtain down on so prosiac and down-to- earth a moment suggests that Blanche's exit represents (at least in part) a return to normalcy, a restoration of the happy home life of the Kowalskis. Blanche comes and goes, but Stanley remains; he survives, and he makes Stella and his son happy. That's a much more balanced and interesting (even disturbing) finish than "Addio mio dolce Streetcar." 

Anyway, La Cieca thinks this is a real missed opportunity, a project doomed by its conservatism and lack of imagination. With a less charismatic (and golden-voiced) Blanche up their honking out all those outbursts, this is going to seem a very tedious evening indeed. Now, how about a real composer and an imaginative librettist teaming with Mr. Gilfrey and Ms. Futral for Cat On a Hot Tin Roof? 

The Met (if anyone in management is paying attention) have a new star on their hands: the debut of Ms. Futral on January 8 as Lucia inspired the loudest and longest ovations La Cieca has heard in the house all season. Futral's voice is a warm and youthful lyric-coloratura soprano with a sexy feminine quality, a bit reminiscent of Anna Moffo's, though without that singer's notorious "pop" mannerisms. La Cieca was particularly impressed with Futral's way of freely shaping the line while always maintaining an energetic sense of movement forward. Her variations and cadenzas included some bold innovations with very tricky-sounding wide intervallic leaps. 

The soprano is an artist who "gives" every moment on stage, with clear, bold movements alternating with poised stillness that left the Met audience breathless and silent in anticipation. I might also point out just in passing that Futral is a breathtakingly beautiful young woman, with delicate aristocratic features, flashing dark eyes and a mane of luxuriant sable hair. 

The presence of this artist seemed to catalyze the rest of the cast as well: Ramon Vargas sang even more gorgeously than on opening night and seemed to make a stronger emotional connection with the character of Edgardo: the excitement of his sustained high notes at the climax of the Curse Scene provided the sort of emotional wallop that opera used to deliver on a regular basis. Paul Plishka's wobbly tone did not detract from his authoritative Raimundo, a real dramatic force. Anthony Michaels-Moore was in small and woofy voice as Enrico: it appears this talented singer is in big trouble these days. Gregory Turay's sweet tenor made Arturo sound easy to sing, which, as we know, it�s not; after his solo, the chorus's attack on the reprise of "Per te d'immenso" sounded like 40 people vomiting. How can they sound so wonderful in Meistersinger and then fall apart this way? 

Christopher Alden's intensely political production of the Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein queer masterpiece The Mother of Us All was the highlight of last year's Glimmerglass Festival, with diva-of-the-future Joanna Johnston gloriously enraged in the title role. New York City Opera will bring the show intact into the State Theater in spring of 2000 with the one significant cast change being the substitution of Lauren Flanigan (big surprise, eh?) for Ms. Johnston. (More highlights of that season: Entführung and Falstaff from Glimmerglass, borrowed productions of Ariodante, Clemenza (Lorraine Hunt), Porgy and Bess and Platée (the smash-hit Mark Morris version); an opening- night Viaggio a Reims, and that Central Park triptych (is it true the Terrence McNally libretto is set in the Ramble?) 

More news of interest to friends and enemies of bel canto: Carol Vaness does her first Maria Stuarda for Santiago next year and June Anderson promises Anna Bolena for Pittsburgh in 2000. Elizabeth Futral's first Cleopatra in Los Angeles in 2001 will vamp a whole bevy of countertenors, including David Daniels, Brian Asawa and Bejun Mehta. San Francisco offers Jerry Hadley as Julien in the Renée Fleming-Sam Ramey Louise next summer. Thomas Hampson joins the soprano for Thais the following year. Denyce Graves breaks in her Amneris at Verona next summer. And the Alagnas will try their luck in Monte Carlo with L'amico Fritz.

A sudden surge of leaked plans from the Metropolitan Opera indicate that the busy Miss Fleming will play big sister to Barbara Bonney's Zdenka (2001) and (perhaps) sing her first Tatyana opposite Dmitri Hvorostovksy and Marcello Giordani (2002). Giordani stars in the Met's first ever Benvenuto Cellini in 2002, to be followed by Il pirata the following year (again with Miss Fleming) Hvorostovsky headlines War and Peace the same season. Aprile Millo introduces her Margherita in Mefistofele to New York in 1999-2000. Catherine Malfitano does her first Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the Met that season, then alternates Makropulos Case and Mahagonny there the following. 

What opera company's music director has been waving his baton in the wrong venue lately -- specifically, getting his big thick thing serviced in a notorious sex club? Sure, this town's known for it's wide-open gay life, but the rule around the opera house is "don't shit where you eat" -- as a former official with this company found out to his sorrow. 

Last month we witnessed the debut of the "new" Franco Zeffirelli, who has reinvented himself as a regional opera hack, the sort who claim they can do Traviata with only a week of rehearsal, and who can design an entire production that will fit into one trailer for easy transport. But, above all, it's cheap, largely recycled from his previous (failed) production here, with nothing to strain the Met's shoestring $170 million budget. The costumes by Anna Anni are sumptuous if not particularly characterful; the sets look paradoxically old and unlived-in. Violetta's parlor is too shallow and crowded; the chorus and supers were literally swarming over each other in the limited space provided. The country house was pure Pottery Barn, and Flora entertained in the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel, complete with chorus girls from The Will Rogers Follies. (Someone needs to tell Mr. Zeffirelli that the last thing the Met needs is more cows on stage.) The pointless and idiotic use of the stage elevator in the final act required Patricia Racette to gallop down a tricky spiral staircase in the dark just before singing "Parigi o cara." 

Ms. Racette, a relative newcomer to the role of Violetta, shows great potential and now needs to collaborate with a great producer and conductor to refine and polish her considerable dramatic and musical skills. A more famous artist who evoked higher expectations from the public (e.g., Angela Gheorghiu or Renee Fleming) might well have emerged from the opening night's fracas with a seriously damaged reputation. 

 Racette's attractive, pearly-toned voice is not capable of much variety of color. The solution to that problem (as lyric sopranos like Scotto and Soviero have demonstrated to us) is to compensate for lack of vocal weight with expressivity in use of the words and subtle rubato. Conductor James Levine did not allow Ms. Racette that freedom. Further, she sang flat at times when she tried to beef up and darken the sound for the "big" moments -- "Amami Alfredo" and the "Ah perche" phrases in the gambling scene. The problem would be easily fixable if anyone on the coaching staff were actually listening to the performance. This is something that conductors used to find time to help singers with, in the days before half-million dollar fees for stadium concerts. 

Is Levine ill? Is he perhaps on strong (euphoric?) pain medication for his inflamed shoulder? Or does he just not give a damn about anything except Moses und Aron? I have not ever heard so inflexible, harsh, shallow and hasty a performance under his baton. He sounded as if he had a bus to catch, driving forward in a style that one intermission commentator said made Toscanini sound languorous. What's worse, all that speed did not add up to excitement: there was no real pulse to the sound, just a mechanical rapidity, like clockwork running at the wrong speed. 

Marcelo Alvarez will find a niche at the Met in the roles Roberto Alagna has defaulted; one hope he will grow into a more stylish artist. At the moment, he uses his sweet lyric tenor rather generically, but I hear no incipient vocal problems, so that's good news. Haijing Fu sang the music, that's all, with no trace of distinction or vocal glamor.