"Prima inter pares" - parterre box

Martin Mayer in Opera:

Aa rather empty production, staged in a matter-of-fact manner by John Copley and wasting in a sort of random fussiness several of the magical moments of the piece (most notably the Mount Parnassus scene). But it did come to life on the half-dozen occasions when Tatiana Troyanos took centre stage as Caesar and created the bravest of brave heroes (and of course the wiliest of hunters). Troyanos still has [first]-night jitters, but the voice did not coarsen on October 3, when her every moment on stage was a musical and dramatic joy.

Kathleen Battle’s Cleopatra was more problematic, partly because the voice is inescapably small for the house (‘a wonderful Cleopatra’, a colleague said, ‘for Drottningholm’), partly because she projects a well-schooled musicality and pert manners-and so little more. There are also, one regrets to report, a few incipient vocal problems, which Peter Davis described as ‘cooing’, a sound produced with lower jaw pulled back, lower lip over teeth, and throat stretched. Still, she remains for the public “prima inter pares” in our astonishing collection of young light lyrics, and the soaring purity of the voice outside the coo range gives great pleasure.

Sarah Walker was a dull Cornelia, but it’s a dull role. Martine Dupuy was a sensational Sextus, energizing the stage for both her arias. The evening was remarked for its advertised introduction of the counter-tenor voice to the Met stage. Jeffrey Gall acquitted himself admirably as Ptolemy, with a whiny but not unmusical sound and mastery of the style. Derek Ragin was a little more strained as Nirenus. Trevor Pinnock in the pit escaped rum-tum-tum monotony, which can plague this very beautiful piece, and the orchestra mostly played very well for him, sometimes spectacularly (especially in the obbligatos, the hunting horns of `Va, tacito’ and the joyous valveless trumpets of the final scene).

On this day in 1958 the Met opening night boasted a revival of Tosca.