Making the Transition

If ever he grows tired of his several careers as opera singer, pop singer, recording artist, impresario (several times over) and conductor, Placido Domingo might consider writing a self-help book on easing one's way through the difficult transitions of life. This season, more than thirty years into his Met career, the superstar tenor is teaching a lesson on growing older gracefully, through a more careful choice of roles and (rather more controversially) some musical compromises.

For months before Domingo's recent run of Otello at the Metropolitan Opera (heard October 12), the internet was abuzz with scandal about the tenor's planned transposition of a largish section of Act Two of the opera. Of course it's true we hear the big tenor arias in La boheme and Il trovatore more often in lowered keys than in the original. But traditional-minded operalovers, who are willing to put up with anything that has been done before, and nothing that is new, were fulminating mightily about "desecration" of Verdi's masterpiece.

Verdi survived. The key change slipped by unheralded in a line of unaccompanied recitative, and the lowered tessitura if anything raised the emotional level of Domingo's "Ora per sempre" and the grueling duet-finale. Freed from worry about fatigue and cracked high notes, the tenor could concentrate on simply making exciting music. He is far more moving and thrilling in this part now than he was ten or fifteen years ago, when, frankly he often had this look in his eyes that he would rather be flying somewhere else on the Concorde which, an hour after the performance, he usually was. But in the last years of the '90s, as he approaches the endof his career, Domingo seems to have become a demented artist, one who lives and dies for his art.

If this is indeed the tenor's last Otello over, he could not have asked for more lavish support. This opera will go down in history as James Levine's conducting masterpiece, rich and fulfilling thoughout the emotional and musical gamut. In Strauss and Wagner, Levine is occasionally mannered, sometimes even ponderous, but in Otello, everything rings true: he put his enormous gifts to the service of a masterpiece. James Morris sounded dry and scratchy and miscast as Iago, but he compensated with an aggressively physical performance, full of the hyperbutch, edgy swagger familiar from his Claggart.

The new Desdemona, Barbara Frittoli, was almost too good to be true. A radiantly beautiful brunette with an alabaster Madonna-like face, the young soprano phrases with the instinctive elegance of a born Verdi soprano. One might have wished for a little more focus or sheer tonal roundness in the crucial upper-middle register, true, but she rewarded us with a rich chest register and a haunting high pianissimo. From her very first entrance, Frittoli's immaculate posture and elegant movement convinced absolutely that Desdemona was the daughter of one of the very best Venetian families, a real lady.

That quality of understated dignity made the character's cruel humiliation all the more moving. At "a terra e piangi," Domingo struck her full in the face, and Frittoli slowly twisted away, injured infinitely more in spirit than in flesh. Crumpled on the floor for the first statement of her great melody, Frittoli slowly rose to her feet as the ensemble took over, and finally "sold" the big tune with a stately walk downstage to the footlights while riding the vocal line up to a ringing high B-flat.

A more familiar soprano suddenly seems to have hit her stride: on October 16, Veronica Villaroel's Nedda in Pagliacci was the best I have heard since Diana Soviero departed the Met. Hers is a curiously dark, metallic voice, not always completely reliable, but the soprano knows her verismo, shaping the lines with an authentic but never contrived sense of rubato. As the emotional temperature and vocal line ascended, Villaroel's tone took on a sensual vibrato ideally suited to Nedda's passionate nature.

The soprano's gift for comedy is strongly reminiscent of Giulietta Masina's, an ability to break an audience's heart with cheap slapstick. In the final moments of the opera, Domingo suddenly seemed to become the enraged actor, knocking the prop wig off the soprano's head, and bulldozing over a table on the comedy stage. But Villaroel "played" every bit of it, hastily improvising a funny face as she repinned her hair, then gathering the scattered props -- all the time keeping a wary and fearful eye on her demented "husband." At the denoument, I recoiled with a cold chill as I saw Canio draw his switchblade -- this moment was truly as real as life.

As I've just implied, Domingo outdid himself as Canio, creating a portrait of a man whose life is destroyed by blind jealousy. The voice rang out brilliantly if not exactly freely on top (he took another, rather less advisable transposition early in this opera to lower an unwitten high B in "ventitre ore"), but otherwise, the only sign of age one could hear was a tendency to rush the beat. Conductor Carlo Rizzi took his sweet time adjusting his rhythm to Domingo's, which meant that the first section of "Vesti la giubba" sounded like a canon for voice and strings.

If Rizzi's Pagliacci was uneven, his Cavalleria Rusticana was downright disastrous. Every tempo was farcically rushed, leaving the gifted Dolora Zajick glaring into the pit and grabbing breaths seemingly at random. The mezzo might as well have left her fabled top notes in the dressing room as Rizzi cranked up the orchestra to jet-takeoff decibel levels. Never the most natural actress in the world, in these adverse circumstances Zajick played Santuzza like a suburban housewife suffering an anxiety attack. Dennis O'Neill sang Turridu with a plausible spinto tenor, but his provincial musical style and his tubby physical appearance suggested a Marx Brothers film.

Maestro Rizzi (one wants to put ironic quotes around that title) royally screwed up Aida as well (October 15). Was he offered a bonus for finishing the performance before midnight? Or is he simply another example of the modern "my way or the highway" musical director? Rizzi's mannerism of speeding up at the ends of phrases flummoxed his leading ladies (Deborah Voigt and Olga Borodina), both of whose voices need breathing room. Eventually, it seemed, Ms. Voigt cleverly readjusted her phrasing to allow a bit more time before the bar line; Borodina stood her ground and sang behind the beat.

More's the pity, because these ladies boast two of the most sumptuous voices on the operatic stage today; besides that, they are both ultra-feminine and warm personalities. Voigt's instrument, it's true, is rather cool for Italian opera, with a fast, fluffy vibrato that can throw a soft focus over rhythmically intense lines. Like her illustrious predecessor, Birgit Nilsson, she takes a while to warm up. But once everything is in line, Voigt's innate glamour of tone and richly Italianate sense of style suggest she may be the leading interpreter of this role in the world today. The top opens like an enormous flower, and the lower register takes on a sinfully chesty tinge without ever a hint of vulgarity. She floated magically flutelike pianissimi in the Tomb Scene, although earlier her ascent to the infamous high C in "O patria mia" sounded uncertain and rushed. (I wish Ms. Voigt would consider simply singing the top note in a sweet mezzo-forte instead of attempting it so quietly. Even Milanov herself usually sang this note full-voice in the theater.) Voigt is admittedly a large woman, but she moves with restraint and grace and a quiet but smoldering sensuality. Her face is lovely and expressive in repose, but her eyes flash with theater-filling fire in the big emotional moments.

In contrast to the lyrical attitude of the dramatic Miss Voigt, Olga Borodina brought demented demeanor to what is essentially a medium-sized if magnificently produced voice. (What a Charlotte she would make!) So many mezzos view the role of Amneris as an opportunity for simply pumping out the decibels, roaring out line after line in a growling chest register. Borodina's training and taste seem to point her in a different direction: she emphasized the sinuous line in Amneris's music, painting a portrait of a sexually infatuated teenager. She is a dignified, if old-fashioned actress; occasional sidelong glances and superior smirks garnished her portrayal with a delightful dash of camp. In line with the rest of her performance, Borodina played the Judgement Scene not for paint-peeling volume but rather for dignity and vulnerability, as a princess with a broken heart. In her final pages, the high notes rang out secure and rich, and she lurched off that stage as if she had been coached by Fiorenza Cossotto herself.

Fabio Armiliato has the raw material to be the greatest tenor in the world, and this night he came very close to getting it all together, most of the time not only parading rich tone, but offering a real feeling for the line of the music. Nikolai Putilin was the immensely powerful if frequently off-pitch Amonasro. And, as usual, the most applause all night long was for the moving sets; what can you do?

James Jorden