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Capital, November 9, 2011 |
By James Jorden |
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Ciléa: Adriana Lecouvreur, New York, Carnegie Hall, November 8, 2011 |
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The Opera Orchestra of New York pulls itself out of a funk with diva-driven B-movie opera 'Adriana Lecouvreur,' starring Angela Gheorghiu
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The Opera Orchestra of New York pulls itself out of a funk with diva-driven
B-movie opera 'Adriana Lecouvreur,' starring Angela Gheorghiu
In the
40-year history of Opera Orchestra of New York, the concert company hasn’t
presented a huge number of evenings of high art. Its forte has been fringe
repertoire of the bel canto, grand opera and verismo schools featuring divos
and especially divas in their unfamiliar aspects, which translates
essentially to “stuff they couldn’t talk the Met into.”
Thus, over
the years, the OONY audience has heard Placido Domingo in Massenet’s Le Cid,
Renée Fleming in stuff like La Dame Blanche and La Straniera, and, more
recently, old-school favorites Aprile Millo and Marcello Giordani paired for
red-sauce potboiler La Gioconda.
And yet, despite and perhaps because
of these limitations, OONY has until recently enjoyed the reputation of a
place you have to be. Even handicapped by music director Eve Queler’s
desultory conducting and shoddy casting (a star or two surrounded by
has-beens and never-will-bes), lightning struck often enough that you didn’t
dare miss even the least promising programs.
That reputation took a
hit as the company entered the 21st century. By that time, Queler wasn’t
attracting the biggest names, who were either getting better offers from the
Met or else bigger fees in Europe. The administration of the company always
had a mom-and-pop feel: During last season’s concert of the massive
Meyerbeer grand opera L’africaine, nobody could tell where the intermission
was supposed to fall, and the program was no help, so midway through the
show half the audience headed for the exits of Avery Fisher Hall as ushers
screamed, “No, no, go back! Go back!” It was like attending a concert on the
Titanic.
And, in fact, OONY did strike an iceberg. The 2008-2009
season collapsed into a single presentation and the following season never
materialized. A reorganized company, with Queler kicked upstairs to Laureate
status and Alberto Veronesi, a much-recorded Italian maestro, replacing her
as music director, launched last fall.
Now, it seems, OONY is
returning to its star-driven roots, opening its season last night at
Carnegie Hall with superstars Angela Gheorghiu and Jonas Kaufmann in Cilea’s
sentimental diva vehicle Adriana Lecouvreur. The have to be there quotient
was boosted to the roof by the fact that this performance would be
Gheorghiu’s only New York appearance of the season since she chose not to
participate in the Met’s new production of Gounod’s Faust. (It’s in
rehearsal now, with Kaufmann in the title role.)
Adriana is a sort of
B-movie opera, with one of those plots that it’s more fun to retell than to
sit through in the first place. It’s taken from a stage melodrama of the
19th century that was very loosely suggested by the life of the French
actress Adrienne Lecouvreur. In typically pre-feminist terms, play and opera
make it clear that the successful woman artist must necessarily fail
miserably where it really matters, i.e., in relationships with men.
Adriana is secretly dating this simple soldier (as she thinks!) serving
under the command of the dashing Count Maurizio of Saxony, who is financing
his military adventures in eastern Europe by playing the gigolo with wealthy
French ladies of a certain age. Of course it turns out that Adriana’s lover
is actually Count Maurizio himself, and, what’s more, he is also involved
with the jealous Princess of Bouillon. Anyway, the two women (rivals!) meet
briefly in a darkened room as Adriana helps the Princess to avoid being
caught in adultery by the Prince.
The Princess repays this favor by
mocking the actress at a gala party, ordering her to perform a scene from
her repertoire. Adriana recites a scene from Racine’s Phaedra about an
unfaithful wife, breaking character like a rococo Patti LuPone and pointing
directly to the Princess—oh, it’s a scandal, all right, and the Princess
gets her revenge by sending the diva a poisoned bouquet, triggering an
act-long death scene complete with hallucinations. (“Away, mortals! I am the
Muse of Tragedy!” Adriana cries; even for a diva, some pretty extravagant
last words.)
What was great stuff for a play was even better stuff
for an opera, even though Francesco Cilea, setting the piece in 1902,
chopped up the plot and omitted vital details of exposition to make more
room for arias. But the arias are certainly worth the trip, gorgeous in the
voice: Tender and wistful for Adriana, passionately molten for Maurizio,
smoldering and witchy for the Princess.
In fact, the obscurity and
downright absurdity of the plot ups the piece’s camp value, endearing the
work to generations of opera queens. So does the tradition that the role of
Adriana is generally cast with an over-the-hill diva whose vocal
deficiencies have to be papered over by the audience’s memory and good will.
However, this last tradition was not observed last night, because La
Gheorghiu is hardly over the hill. In her mid-40s now, she's exotically
pretty, with the figure to show off a couple of spectacular concert gowns: A
slinky column of iridescent black sequins and a billowy white silk caftan
very like Elizabeth Taylor’s wardrobe in Boom! More to the point, perhaps,
the voice is in firm fettle for a lyrical soprano who’s been singing for a
quarter century.
She never has been a sensitive stylist; her phrasing
seems mostly to be made up on the fly based on how big a breath she just
took and how a high note sounds when she attacks it. But she does have a
different set of virtues. The voice is in itself fascinating, not as
intrinsically sweet as, say, Fleming’s or Leontyne Price’s, but more
complex, with a smoky quality on the soft high notes that somehow evokes a
Proustian sense of regret.
There’s a tiny moment in the second act,
when Maurizio has begged Adriana to help an “unknown woman” (the Princess,
of course) to escape. The actress hesitates, but her head is no match for
her heart. “Sull'onor suo giurò... Egli non sa mentire... La promessa
terrò,” she murmurs: “He swore… He would never lie… I will keep my promise.”
Her phrase ends on a G-sharp, not a particularly high note, and musically
the line is simplicity itself. But Gheorghiu’s singing of that fragment of
melody, so delicate and yet complex, seemed to open a window into Adriana’s
soul.
This was not a perfect performance. Some of Gheorghiu’s loud
high notes were a little flat; but fortunately the score doesn’t call for
many. Other times, particularly in the first act, the veiled quality of her
voice got so extreme that we got more breath than tone, which meant a lot of
people in Carnegie Hall couldn’t hear her at all. She hardly needs direction
or even a production to embody the high-strung, headstrong diva; in fact,
she was so jittery, constantly flipping the pages of her music and
rearranging stray bits of chiffon, it was sometimes hard to concentrate on
what she was doing vocally.
Tenor Kaufmann complemented
Gheorghiu superbly, perhaps because he is her artistic antithesis:
Intellectual to a fault in his musicianship, crafting every phrase with
subtle variations of dynamics and tone color. It’s fascinating but I think a
misplaced effort in the role of Maurizio, which is not really what you’d
call deep, emotionally or musically. He really has two speeds only:
Trumpeting in triumph (to which challenge Kaufmann rose magnificently,
setting the auditorium ringing with his high notes) and murmuring in
self-pity. This second mood tempted Kaufmann to croon with a dark, hooded
tone perhaps more appropriate for reporting a sighting of the Erlkönig. When
the heroine finally expires, Maurizio’s reaction is hardly nuanced: He cries
“Morta! Morta!” on a high B natural. Kaufmann chose to decrescendo this
note, an astounding technical feat that rang false dramatically, trying to
find a depth that doesn’t exist.
This is all
relatively small stuff: Gheorghiu and Kaufmann both are A-list singers and
they gave world-class performances last night, definitely value for money.
Also well above recent OONY standard were Anita Rachvelishvili’s sinfully
sumptuous mezzo as the Princess and especially Ambrogio Maestri’s easy,
soaring baritone as Michonnet. (Given the generally mediocre level of
singers of Scarpia, Amonasro and even Rigoletto at the Met, that company
should start knocking on Maestri’s door immediately.)
The real
problem with this performance, to be perfectly frank, was Veronesi’s
leadership. Queler’s conducting was square and dull, but at least it was
mostly straightforward. Veronesi diddles with every phrase, a little faster
here, a little slower there, and he indulges that favorite stunt of the
pretentious hack, the absurdly attenuated adagio that leaves singers gasping
for breath. Even so foolproof a section as the introduction to the final
act, a string-dominated instrumental version of Adriana’s aria “Poveri
fiori,” Veronesi somehow managed to reduce to the wheezing noise of a cheap
squeezebox.
OONY has returned to firm ground, then, but it may not be
long before audiences start yelling “Bring back Eve!”
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