NEW YORK - My dance card for the week of February 14 was a giddy whirl: Ren�e Fleming in Lucrezia Borgia with OONY, a Thomas Hampson all-Mahler recital, the Met’s first Merry Widow, and an Emily Dickinson themed extravaganza entitled My Business is to Love. While it might read like non-stop Sternstunden, it was more like an serial Schadenfreude, a vocal Tetralogy of Terror.

Heard in conjunction with her much-debated Marschallin last month, the two events featuring Ren�e Fleming provided an unusual chance to evaluate a singer’s voice and artistry in depth. Her instrument is a marvelous one, full and luscious, yet flexible and agile. Why then must she squander this gift by performing with such meretricious style? She approaches everything like a sentimental bluesy ballad, mauling the music with the hootchy-kootchy stylings of a second-rate lounge singer. Her stage demeanor is that of a fourth Designing Woman, reacting to everything with a disengaged pout or a smug smirk. The "Com’� bello" in Lucrezia was embarrassing. A symbolist Italian film (or a Robert Wilson show) might feature a slatternly, drunken soprano wandering around warbling Donizetti in this manner, but a purportedly serious attempt at Donizetti’s masterpiece shouldn’t. I cannot comprehend La Fleming’s plunge into bathos, for, as recently as two years ago, she was giving performances that were unmatched in their involvement, taste, and exquisite vocalism.

Among Borgia's assemblage of toughs, despots, and bastards, the standout was Stephanie Blythe as Orsini. Her voice just continues to grow in size and richness while her interpretations take on new dramatic power. Her stunning rendition of the Brindisi made one wish that Donizetti had foregone dramatic continuity to give us time to applaud. Marcello Giordani (Gennaro) sang with security and passion and little of the throatiness that can sometimes afflict his performances. Dean Peterson pushed much too hard as Duke Alfonso. The OONY crowd brayed their approval for his ugly forced shouting. The couple next to me clutched each other and moaned at each high note. Justin Vickers displayed a pleasant lyric tenor voice as Rustighello but he might want to tone down the mincing unless he is seeking lifetime employment as Monsieur Triquet. By now, it seems pointless to criticize Eve Queler’s conducting (what’s OONY going to do, hire a different maestro?). She got everyone from point A to point B at pretty much the same time with more than the usual quota of incidental pleasures along the way.

Ms. Fleming, Charles Nelson Reilly and Julie Harris (doesn't that sound like a Match Game lineup?) came together for an uneven afternoon devoted to the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Miss Harris reprised her celebrated Belle of Amherst stage portrayal opposite Fleming as Dickinson’s dowdy sister Lavinia, given to bursting out in cries of "Botheration!" or twentieth century songs. Apparently Fleming was so taken with the idea that she ransacked the music libraries of the world and went cold calling on today’s trendiest composers in search of Dickinson song settings Her tireless efforts resulted in several New York premieres and the rediscovery of two gorgeous numbers by Ernst Bacon.

The resulting m�lange was jarring. The book by William Luce had no dramatic shape and just lurched around, while the songs seemed interjected at random moments. Furthermore, the two stars’ approaches to Dickinson’s words were very different. Julie Harris’s Emily Dickinson was trenchant, yearning, confrontational, and radiant. The Emily Dickinson revealed by Fleming’s singing was self-pitying, maudlin, spineless, and cutesy. Only in Aaron Copland’s passionate setting of "Sleep is Supposed to Be" did Fleming allow herself to show some defiance. Some blame surely lies with the composers (particularly Michael Tilson Thomas), but I doubt they intended their works to be performed quite so mawkishly as they were here. Charles Nelson Reilly tried to keep things moving along, but the show, interminable as a James Levine concert, might have been better named Will There Ever Be a Morning? Also, did Reilly really have to take his bow wearing a microphone? Helen Yorke, the accompanist, deftly coped with the many musical styles on the program, but she too willingly followed where Fleming unwisely led.

We should be grateful to the Met for finally getting around to The Merry Widow, if only for providing an alternative to all those dreary Fledermice. A strong ensemble, featuring the too-rarely-seen Frederica von Stade as Hanna Glawari and the unsinkable Placido Domingo as Danilo, was assembled for the premiere. However, in its first performance, the expected souffl� arrived undercooked and eggy. Von Stade was charming and sang a haunting, if subdued Vilja. Domingo clearly had worked hard on the dialogue without complete success. He coasted effortlessly through the music. Andrew Davis drew lovely, idiomatic, though somewhat sedate, playing from the orchestra. As is all too common for the Met nowadays, the production was small-scale and underwhelming. Wasn’t notable Broadway director Gerald Gutierrez originally supposed to be in charge of the production? Did he too run afoul of the Met’s penny-pinching tyrant?

By far the highlight of the week was Hampson’s Mahler recital, devoted primarily to songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. His renditions were full of feeling, sincerity, color and a beautiful sense of line. One can quibble with interpretative details: the minor songs on the program were smothered in affectation and Hampson can’t really convey female characters effectively. Still, I have not heard a more searing version of Revelge or a more spiritual account of Urlicht. Unfortunately, his stage deportment is regrettable; one can’t help but imagine Elisabeth Schwarzkopf hiding in the wings working the remote control ("Pay no attention to the Nazi behind the curtain!"). His musicality was well matched by that of pianist Wolfram Rieger, who played with symphonic intensity. I regretted that I was unable to hear their second recital as I had a ticket for The Merry Widow, but my husband, the Omniscient Musselboy, assures me that the second recital was even better than the first. And who can dispute someone with the foresight to forego Ferenc for Gustav?

Dawn Fatale

It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Met’s latest new productions to hear that The Merry Widow, which premiered on February 17, is yet another underdesigned, underrehearsed, miscast bore. The frivolity and sparkle of the score was done a great disservice by Antony McDonald, whose sets seemed inspired by bus-and-truck productions of Hello Dolly and Triumph of Love. Act One reminded me of the bleak set for the crumbling mansion in the Met’s Cenerentola, except with antlers. For Hanna’s entrance, the semicircular set opened up the center and out slid a red staircase for Frederica von Stade and les boys to parade down. The blatant Gower Champion ripoff drew uneasy titters from the audience, and Flicka’s light mezzo-soprano turned wispy so far upstage. I wish someone could explain to me what the choreography in Act Two was about. After the traditional Pontevedrian native dances, the male corps proceeded to stoop, roll, and stumble distractingly as Hanna sang her Vilja-lied.

The low point of the evening was the unveiling of Act 3, usually set in the lavish Maxim’s. Mr. McDonald chose instead to present the grisettes in a "cabaret" setting inside Hanna Glawari’s mansion, tatty red flats with a cheesy cutout of a large top hat as the performing area

Domingo sang securely and looked dashing in his evening wear. His spoken dialogue was at times difficult to understand due to his accent, but he could always be heard. Emily Pulley as Valencienne sang sweetly, but much of the role just didn’t bloom in her voice. She got pretty raunchy in her can-can number but her attempts at belting were not always audible. Once a great hope of the Met, Paul Groves now cannot sing anything softly or above the staff with any kind of ease or beauty of tone. His attempts at piano singing were painfully spread and lacking tonal body, and high notes, when they made it up to the right pitch, were shaky and wide open.

Frederica von Stade was shimmering as usual onstage, though it did take her a full act to warm up vocally and physically. For the Vilja-lied her voice was warm and she turned on the charm, receiving the evening’s biggest applause. It must be said, though, that much of the role misfired in her voice, even with a small orchestra and sympathetic leadership from Andrew Davis.

Little Stevie

Who’s that man in the gray suit, that strawberry blond prowling on the edge of events like a novice anthropologist? Once in a while he blurts personal details out to no one in particular, which those around him are polite enough to brush aside. An experienced observer of the human comedy like Indiana Loiterer III would certainly know better than to announce that today was her birthday right after witnessing a violent domestic quarrel, as this gentleman does. No wonder he seems nervous and stiff on the dance floor!

And who is this man that he should hold forth at such length at the end of the show about going back to the Midwest and the like, after having had so little to say for himself for the past two hours? He does have a good tailor, judging from how well that suit sets off his tall trim figure; very Jazz Age. If his forehead and chin didn't recede so, he'd be Arrow Collar material. He also has a good low-lying baritone; Ms. Loiterer would classify him as a bass-baritone if that term didn't generally imply a much weightier voice. It's a small but well-focused voice, dark but heady in color like a well-played bassoon, capable of rising to a comfortable high G as long as he doesn't remain too long above the staff.

The man in question was Dwayne Croft as Nick Carraway, as seen on December 29, 1999 in the Met's production of John Harbison's new opera The Great Gatsby. That Ms. Loiterer found herself asking such questions about such a talented performer speaks volumes about her disappointment with the evening.

Not that she dislikes Harbison's music; far from it. She liked the period pastiche, which for once was as good as the real thing — but just about everybody liked that. She also liked the vocal writing — flexible, mildly angular and slightly florid in the early-Baroque manner. The duets between Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker, fading in and out of the surrounding conversation, were an especially lovely touch. She really enjoyed how Harbison could sculpt vocal gestures expressive enough to convey character even without words. Tom Buchanan's blunt common chords conveyed his bluff, tactless nature, Daisy Buchanan's gazelle-like leaps and occasional trills could subside to a wistful waltz as her giddy frivolity succumbed to the nostalgic regret of one thoroughly over her head, and Myrtle Wilson's casual conversation with Nick could escalate to scornful dismissal of Daisy's charms with the contempt of Carmen mocking the bugles that call Don Jose back to camp. And she admired the way Harbison's period pastiche melded without fuss with the surrounding score, relating to the former rather the way post-bop jazz elaborates on Tin Pan Alley tunes. It's the music of a man who is among the last generation of composers to be brought up on the changes of jazz standards — as he's described himself in the pages of Perspectives of New Music, where you don't impress anyone with that kind of talk. Almost an original, in his unostentatious way.

Yes, there were the usual grumblings about Harbison's being derivative. Our editor, who didn’t much care for Gatsby, went so far as to accuse Harbison of cribbing the climax of his first-act love duet from West Side Story. If Ms. Loiterer were into one-upmanship, she could claim that Harbison's "green light" Leitmotiv was swiped from the "time chord" in Nicholas Maw's Odyssey. But finding such resemblances is too easy a game to play to be more than a cheap shot, even at Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Why, Ms. Loiterer wonders, after three scenes that went by as swiftly and enjoyably as in any new or newish opera within living memory, did the fourth scene seem to bog down so? And why, in the next act, could not even the powerful passacaglia-blues duet of Myrtle and George Wilson reinstate momentum? Well, that fourth scene is where things got Serious. Daisy and Gatsby finally meet again, and, this being an official Great American Opera, they are required to sing an official Great American Love Duet in Harbison's loftiest style. Their emotions don’t deserve such solemnity; these are people whose native language is Irving Berlin, not Eugenio Montale.

The contrast of splashy public scenes, like Gatsby's parties, set to straightforward song and dance, with intimate private scenes set to more intense and elaborate arias and ensembles is a time-honored expressive device of grand opera. Generally, as in Les Huguenots and Don Carlos, but even to some extent in Wozzeck and Peter Grimes, this contrast expresses a conflict between social convention and private desire. But just how much is Gatsby torn between social convention and private desire? It's his party. And is that what the story is really about? Fitzgerald's original novel is essentially a memory piece; the emotional impact it packs comes as much from Nick's memories of Gatsby's glamorous world as from anything that takes place in it. If Daisy longs for Gatsby, it's as much because of his glamour as anything else; his parties are the outward expression of that glamour, here deliciously represented by Harbison's pastiche. Straightening out the story line, as Harbison does, displaces the emotional center of the work, putting respect for the letter of the text above the spirit of the book.

If any opera called for flashbacks, with Nick addressing the audience with at least as much voyeuristic passion as Aschenbach in Death in Venice, this one did. It would certainly have given the talented Dwayne Croft more to do before the end of the opera. As it was, when Nick blurted out to Gatsby that he was "worth more than the rest of the lot all put together", Ms. Loiterer couldn't figure out from what she had seen and heard that evening whether it was Gatsby's world that had inspired such affection, or whether in some sort of homoerotic way it wasn't Gatsby himself.

It wasn't the fault of the performers that the first-act love duet fell flat. There has been a lot of fuss about how Gatsby should have been a baritone. Granted, baritones are more likely than tenors to have the physique du r�le; and Jerry Hadley, who played Gatsby, is no Arrow Collar ad. But Harbison's conception of Gatsby as a romantic lead is clearly tenorial; and even a Gatsby with more twenties panache than Harbison's would have benefited from a tenor voice, given that twenties crooners (reasonably well evoked by Matthew Polenzani) were closer in sound to tenors or at least baritenors than to baritones. Hadley seemed to have gotten his first-night vocal problems mostly under control by the time I saw him. It's remarkable to see how he has been transforming himself from Stimm- to Kunstdiva (or the tenorial equivalent thereof).

Dawn Upshaw, as Daisy Buchanan, was as ever right on top of the music, trills and all, and the most charming of frivolous would-be flappers. Her desperately chirpy "Let's go to town," interrupting the summertime languor of the second act, still makes Ms. Loiterer smile. Susan Graham, as Jordan Baker, blended beautifully with Upshaw in their duets and dances a mean Charleston; if only Harbison had given her more to do! Mark Baker's Tom Buchanan was solidly sung and appropriately stolid.

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, whose middle register is warmer than ever, stunned and delighted everyone as Myrtle Wilson. The woman who sat next to me wants to see Hunt Lieberson as Carmen, but doubts that any current Don Jose could match her. Sometimes virtue is indeed rewarded in the end. Keep that in mind when you dream of a better world, in which Harbison could have gained the operatic experience commensurate with his talent to work out the kinks in Gatsby and its successors, and in which the better-informed opera queens, as accustomed to Harbison's idiom as they have become by now to Benjamin Britten's, look forward to his next Met commission — say, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? for the 2009-2010 season, with Upshaw and Hunt Lieberson as the Hudson sisters. And don’t forget the flashbacks.

Indiana Loiterer III

The opening of Pittsburgh Opera's 61^st season began the final months of Tito Capobianco 17-year tenure with the company as General and Artistic Director. As a farewell to the company, Tito offered a revised version of his 1957 Tosca, set in an "unnamed" South American country. More conservative in its updating than a Peter Sellars show, this production offered a thoughtful rendering of political and human-rights issues, for the most part successfully. Only the intrusion of historical detail (e.g., the Battle of Marengo) marred the effect.

Albert Filoti designed a unit set of panels finished in bas-relief portraits of famous dictators, including Hitler, Amin, and of course Evita. Interior settings and projections fleshed out a chilling atmosphere of hate, greed and torture. The "Te Deum" crowds of worshippers, altar boys, priests and an imposing archbishop ended in tidal wave of fog, depicting Scarpia's evil musings.

Daniela Longhi's Tosca was acceptable, though not exciting. She looked uncomfortable in her black pantsuit and spike heels and her singing never quite caught fire. Cesar Hernandez (Cavaradossi) lacked the brilliance of tone we expect in American theaters; he would seem better suited to smaller European houses. The veteran of the cast, Justino Diaz, seemed to revel in this opportunity to swagger around in his Nazi-like uniform, mirrored aviators and riding crop, as if he were prowling a leather bar. Vocally he is past the point when Scarpia is comfortable for him; the top is ragged and his once seamless legato is now hit-or-miss. There's life in the voice yet, though, and his vast experience carried him through.

Il trovatore, the second production of the fall, was a more stand-and-deliver affair. The sets from New Orleans looked stylish enough, when they were visible in the gloomy lighting. The singing was wild and unpredictable but, after all, that's what Trovatore is about!

Roberto Servile's Count di Luna, underpowered by Warren or Milnes standards, offered stylish phrasing and some attractive pianissimi other baritones do not attempt in this role. Sondra Radvanovsky’s big sound may be well suited to singing the Priestess in A�da from offstage, but up close her mid-range wobble is annoying. Pittsburgh native Marianne Cornetti, has graduated from small roles to a world-class Azucena. Her big dark rich voice and crazy-mama persona mean just one thing: Dolora had better watch her back!

Once in a great while a singer comes along with the sheer chutzpah to give your heart a jump-start. Little Dario Volante, making his American debut on short notice, has personality up the wazoo, and his shaved head and tight little bod got me all wound up. True, the singing was sometimes raw and unfocused, but all the notes were there, including a force-of-nature high C erupting at the end of "Di quella pira." I'll bet he had to change his 2Xist's during the intermission. This is what we wait for in the opera house, that spark that scorches away all those memories of mediocre performances we endure year after year.

Dick Johnson

Peter Hunter and Richard Breath's resolution for the new millennium was to cut back on the opera trips, but they cheated immediately by trekking to Houston for the seemingly clever pairing of L'elisir d'amore and Tristan und Isolde. Better HGO should have spent less time marketing and more time casting. Ramon Vargas starred in the Donizetti, looking short of stature and not what you would call handsome, but the voice is sweetness itself. Perfect, in other words, for Nemorino. Ana Maria Martinez gave too much, sounding more like Violetta Val�ry than a simple village maid. Second-cast Dale Travis jumped in for an ailing Alfonso Antoniozzi as Dulcamara. Earle Patriarco as Belcore mugged like Nathan Lane and sounded -- well, like Dale Travis. One clever touch: when Isotta was mentioned in the recitatives, conductor Patrick Summers interpolated a phrase from Tristan, to the amusement of the cognoscenti. He cut too many stretta repeats, trimming the opera down to barely two hours.

Tristan could have used a few cuts, coming in at a butt-numbing 5 hours and 15 minutes. Richard thinks they interpolated an extra 20 minutes or so of death-throe ravings for poor Tristan. With the whole world jacking off to Eaglen and Heppner, Houston made do with two lesser lights. Renate Behle clucked like a chicken in Act One and imitated Hildegard Behrens with laryngitis for the rest of the night. Stig Andersen, mostly inaudible in Act One, warmed up later and surely deserves a Purple Heart for surviving all that ranting he had to do in the last act. He is booked for Siegfried in the Met's upcoming Ring -- if he doesn't shout his voice into tatters by then. During the first intermission, the big topic of discussion was "do you think the singers are miked?" The standard answer was, "Probably not, or else we could hear them."

Florence Quivar scored a triumph as Brang�ne, proving that it's a good idea to get away from the Met now and then. Christoph Eschenbach is worshipped by Texans as a god, and received the biggest ovation ever heard for a conductor here. It did seem at times that the orchestra was making the score up as they went along. The once-sensational David Hockney L.A. sets now look pretty tame. Act One had a comic book vitality, but Act Two was just nothing in the dark, and the final act consisted of rotting Astroturf and a couple of boulders. As at any Opera Event, the audience was a peculiar mix: snarling Wagner queens in leather, bourgeois Europeans in black tie, and fat women in sweatpants and Nikes. But they all sat quietly and stared reverentially at the black scrim until the bitter end, when they erupted in cheers.

Richard and Peter