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The New York Times, March 22, 2019 |
By Zachary Woolfe |
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Verdi: La forza del destino, London, ab 21. März 2019 |
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Review: Netrebko and Kaufmann Is as Good as Opera Gets
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LONDON — “I like it very much,” Verdi wrote of “La Forza del Destino” a few
months before his opera was to open. “I don’t know if the public will feel
the same, but it is certainly something quite out of the ordinary.”
The public, it turns out, often hasn’t felt the same. Even today, “Forza”
struggles for affection more than practically any of Verdi’s mature works.
It’s unwieldy and weird, with creaky plot twists and jarring shifts of mood.
Yet when it is taken seriously, staged intelligently, cast carefully,
and conducted with energy and polish, it can indeed be something quite out
of the ordinary. And at the Royal Opera here, in a production that opened on
Thursday, it is fully extraordinary.
The central draw is the starry,
comet-rare pairing of the soprano Anna Netrebko, 47, and the tenor Jonas
Kaufmann, 49, the major singers of their generation. They have come together
in a staged opera only once before: “La Traviata” here in London, 11 years
ago.
Since then, both have dived into darker, heavier roles,
occasionally overlapping in repertoire but never on the same stage. Until
now. And it feels like the meeting of two veterans at the top of their game,
their chemistry comfortable and their combined effect galvanizing.
Ms. Netrebko, in particular, gives one of the performances of her career.
Singing Leonora for the first time, her voice is startlingly voluptuous and
generous in the middle and lower registers. It’s down there where this
pitifully persecuted character — violently separated from her lover, who in
turn has aroused the eternal ire of her brother by accidentally killing
their father — really lives.
Her Leonora sounds death-hounded from
the start, while also vibrating with the immense fervor — from love, from
faith — that drives her forward. Ms. Netrebko sings with both relish and
precision, having clearly internalized the bel canto lessons of earlier
Verdi — like the other Leonora, in “Il Trovatore” — but now with an earthier
flavor.
Compared with her other recent parts, it is a more
spontaneous creation than Ms. Netrebko’s serene Aida or her stilted Tosca,
with the grandeur and sorrow of her Adriana Lecouvreur and a febrility that
recalls her Lady Macbeth.
Ms. Netrebko’s stage presence has grown
more confident in recent years, and, paradoxically, more modest: She’s less
busy in her acting, and more meaningful. The singer who might have once
boiled over in exaggerated frenzy in “Pace, pace, mio dio” is now as focused
in that climactic aria as the slow burn of a candle’s wick.
In her
duets with Mr. Kaufmann, his voice’s duskiness unsettles into stormy
passion. His sound shadowy and haunted, with tears at its core, he is adept
at playing outsiders like Don Alvaro, but occasionally he can seem muted on
stage, merely grumpy. While the exciting bit of strain and hint of wear in
his tone can conjure thoughts of Mario del Monaco, Mr. Kaufmann doesn’t go
for del Monaco-type Italianate recklessness; sometimes he seems too
obviously to be pacing himself.
But he gets Alvaro’s wounded dignity
and wariness, and he feeds off other singers, whether Ms. Netrebko or the
robust baritone Ludovic Tézier. As Leonora’s brother, Mr. Tézier shows both
Don Carlo’s implacability and the utter exhaustion of a life spent in
single-minded pursuit of vengeance. He sings “Urna fatale” with the
sustained patience and intensity that define the character.
Antonio
Pappano, the Royal Opera’s music director, isn’t one to force vigor out of
extremes of fast and slow, loud and soft. Nothing in the score rushes, and
nothing lags: You’re simply aware of the action moving forward at a pace
that feels natural — propelled but never harassed.
There are details
that shine: I’m thinking, for one, of the shivery frost of strings as Padre
Guardiano leads Leonora to the cross in the second act. But listening to Mr.
Pappano and his committed orchestra is less about piecing together the
moments than appreciating the flow. And to have that effect of a unified
vision in “Forza,” notorious for its disjointedness, is an achievement,
indeed.
The company could have sold out this run with its luxurious
stars alone, but it recognized that this work, as much as any in opera,
needs to be solid throughout its cast. Ferruccio Furlanetto is a booming,
sensitive Padre Guardiano, a moral anchor in a world of restlessness and
rootlessness. Alessandro Corbelli is a piquant Fra Melitone, and smaller
parts are gifts from two still-vital old hands, Robert Lloyd and Roberta
Alexander.
Veronica Simeoni is an agile voice and presence as
Preziosilla, the eerie energizing spirit of the opera’s battle encampment
scenes. Christof Loy, the director of this more or less modern-dress
production, which first played in 2017 in Amsterdam, renders her a kind of
demon in a society driven half-mad by war.
The comic and tragic are
in this staging cut from the same abrasive cloth, with crowd scenes that
quickly turn threatening and characters who lurk moodily on the edges.
Carnival-like sequences take on genuine mania and menace.
Mr. Loy’s
work here is sensible and intelligent; he treats “Forza” not as caricature
but as fodder for clear, specific drama. He appreciates opera’s
extroversion, its heightening of reality, but never abandons subtlety. It’s
an ultimately straightforward approach that gives the work’s delirious
strangeness its due while insisting “Forza” can be appreciated earnestly.
The production is not exactly staged on a single set, but there is
nevertheless the sense, as there should be, that these characters have never
managed really to escape the room in which their troubles began. The killing
of Leonora and Carlo’s father also periodically returns as fragments of a
black-and-white film projected on the wall, its style reminiscent of Italian
neorealist cinema.
That genre’s vividness, honesty and compassion
also come to life in Ms. Netrebko’s crushing yet rapturous performance.
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