La Traviata @ the Met

(La Traviata - Met Opera House, Dezembro de 2010)

Esta encenação de La Traviata foi estreada em Salzburgo, em 2005. Anna Netrebko interpretou uma Violetta absolutamente extraordinária, capaz de rivalizar com a da Callas. Onde a da grega era sofrida e vítima, a da Russa foi lasciva e lânguida.

À época em que tomei contacto com a Violetta de Netrebko, ensandeci. Contudo, a minha loucura passageira não invadiu a minha capacidade critica! Como referi, conheço dezenas de Violetta, sendo que duas sobressaem: a da Callas e a de Netrebko. Sim, eu sei, a da Cotrubas era muito lírica, como a da Gheorghiu; a da Sutherland (a primeira) era pirotécnica, como a da Caballé, etc. Mas, reitero: há duas imensas!

Peter Gelb, que limpa a poeira e o bafio do seu Met, decidiu – e bem – destronar a encenação de Zeffirelli. Por uma única vez, devo saltar em defesa do insuportável italiano... Assisti, em Abril de 2010, no Met, à sua proposta e não me desagradou, apesar da megalomania e hiper-realismo costumeiros. Já a sua Tosca merecia ter sido destruída, logo após a primeira récita!

Enfim, Gelb recuperou a mise-en-scène de Salzburgo (de Willy Decker) e eis o resultado...

«Even die-hard fans of the director Franco Zeffirelli’s productions for the Metropolitan Opera have to concede that his 1998 staging of Verdi’s “Traviata” was terrible. With its opulently garish sets and knee-jerk realism, the production dwarfed the cast, no matter what stars were singing. So the time has long since come for something different. And the intriguing production by the German director Willy Decker that the Met introduced on New Year’s Eve could not be more different.

The entire story is played within the confines of a tall, curved grayish-white wall, as if the action were taking place in an arena under clinically bright lights. And during crucial scenes groups of choristers lean over the wall like voyeurs, watching the deteriorating relationship between the dying, defiant courtesan Violetta and her smitten lover Alfredo, here played by the glamorous Russian soprano Marina Poplavskaya and the sweet-voiced American tenor Matthew Polenzani.

The costumes are modern. Violetta appears at the party in the opening scene in a short blazing red dress, and all the guests, male and female choristers alike, wear black tuxedos, making the crowd look androgynous and threatening. This “Traviata,” which originated at theSalzburg Festival in 2005 and was the hottest ticket of that summer, lives on as a popular DVD starring Anna Netrebkoand Rolando Villazón.

No doubt many opera buffs will dismiss it as just another high-concept Eurotrash outrage, though there was surprisingly little booing when Mr. Decker and the production team, in their Met debuts, took curtain calls on Friday night. This was in contrast to the opening night of last season, when the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, replaced the popular Zeffirelli “Tosca” with Luc Bondy’s gratuitously modern and lame staging.

In some scenes Mr. Decker’s reconceptions of “La Traviata” are as heavy-handed as the melodramatic clichés he abhors in traditional productions. And though the look here is bare and timelessly modern, the symbolism is forced, especially the ever-present giant clock to indicate the passage of time and the ticking-away of the terminally ill Violetta’s life.

Still, this is an involving and theatrically daring production that belongs at the Met. And unlike the suffocating Zeffirelli staging it replaces, it is a showcase for courageous singers. Mr. Decker clearly worked with his leads here to develop vulnerable, revealing portrayals.

With her long blond hair, slender physique and square-jawed face, the lovely Ms. Poplavskaya looks like a young Meryl Streep and exudes charisma. In traditional productions Violetta’s popularity with the Parisian set can give a false impression. She flouts societal codes, and Ms. Poplavskaya’s portrayal restores the character’s danger. There is something seedy about the opening party scene, when the guests lift up the red leather couch on which Violetta blithely strides, having kicked off her high heels.

Like many sopranos who have taken on this demanding role Ms. Poplavskaya, so splendid as Elisabeth in the Met’s recent production of Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” was less comfortable vocally in the coloratura flights of Act I than in the lyrical effusions and dramatic outbursts of the later scenes. She handled the runs of “Sempre libera” ably but was at her best earlier in this great solo scene, when, curled into a fetal position on the couch, she sang the rueful, aching phrases of “Ah, fors’è lui.”

From Act II through Act III Mr. Decker’s staging moves without a break. This forward momentum makes Violetta’s downfall and death dramatically inexorable but places enormous vocal burdens on Ms. Poplavskaya. In her farewell to dreams of a happy life with Alfredo, “Addio, del passato,” she sounded tired and took what seemed extra breaths where she could find them in the phrases. Still, her voice had a cool, earthy beauty; her sound was penetrating and vibrant. Even when fatigued, she floated some beautiful high pianissimo notes.

Mr. Polenzani, a fine lyric tenor, was an uncommonly elegant Alfredo. His sound, though not large, carried well, and the integrity and supple phrasing of his singing were special. That he looked so youthful and wholesome gave a startling charge to the moments in which Alfredo can barely contain his passion for Violetta. It was clear what keeps this reckless relationship going.

And after Alfredo’s father, Germont (the Polish baritone Andrzej Dobber, who had an imposing presence but sang with a leathery sound), persuades Violetta to give up Alfredo for the sake of the Germont family honor, the father-son confrontation was viscerally staged. Germont literally slapped sense into his son, which sent Mr. Polenzani to the floor, seething with humiliation and anger.

Sometimes Mr. Decker goes too far in exposing what he sees as the subtext of the opera. For example, Act II, as written, opens in a country house near Paris, where Alfredo and Violetta have been living for three months. Fresh from a hunt, Alfredo sings about how joyless life is when Violetta is away, then expresses his ardor in the aria “De’ miei bollenti spiriti.”

In this staging Alfredo is not alone but romantically entwined with Violetta, as they roll off a couch (one of five), she in a slip, he in his underwear, both loosely wearing flower-patterned bathrobes that match the fabric draped over the couches. The clock is also draped to show that for a while, at least, time has stopped for the lovers.

Even as Alfredo sings about how he misses Violetta, we see them playing a lover’s game of hide and seek among the couches. And during his aria, as Alfredo recalls the day Violetta declared her faithfulness and love, when Mr. Polenzani’s voice sent this romantic phrase soaring, Ms. Poplavskaya pretended to be singing along with sweeping arm gestures and fake-operatic intensity.

Is Violetta mocking Alfredo for his overheated feelings? What Mr. Decker means to come through, I think, is that Alfredo and Violetta are almost afraid to acknowledge the implications of their emotions, since she is clearly ill. So she mimics him to defuse his sincerity.

You really have to go with the concept to interpret the staging touch this way. I mostly did and found it fascinating. Still, some in the audience laughed as Ms. Poplavskaya imitated her lover. This is a big price to pay to lend a traditionally romantic Verdi aria a modern psychological twist.

Though the conductor Gianandrea Noseda led a performance that balanced passion with refinement, there were many moments of inexact coordination with the singers. The problem may have been that Mr. Decker was asking for the operatic equivalent of Method acting from his cast, and that the singers were too absorbed in their performances to pay close attention to the conductor.

This production is part of Mr. Gelb’s campaign to make the Met more theatrically innovative. He deserves credit for taking risks with the bread-and-butter staples of the repertory. The question is whether the Decker “Traviata” is the kind of reconceived production that will last for seasons into the future. Perhaps the Met will become a house where productions are rotated more often, which would be an interesting departure, though an expensive one.»

Sellars, Gelb & Myself ;-)

(Peter Sellars)

Insidiosamente, Peter Gelb vai limpando a poeira que, no que à encenação concerne, vinha conspurcando a grande Met Opera House, desde há décadas. O megalómano e insuportável hiper - realista Franco Zeffirelli, de uma vez por todas, é remetido à insignificância. Para meu gáudio - e de muitos, muitos mais -, Peter Sellars conquista terreno!

«The Metropolitan Opera, which announced its plans for the 2010-11 season on Monday, said Mr. Sellars would make his directing debut at the house with “Nixon in China,” John Adams’s 1987 opera.

Meanwhile, a Zeffirelli production — “La Traviata” — will bite the dust.

The “Traviata” news is no big surprise. The Met has slowly been phasing out the lavish spectacles of Italian operas directed by Mr. Zeffirelli, which have been around for decades, to the outrage of his supporters and other traditional opera fans. This season, new versions replaced his longstanding “Tosca” and “Carmen” productions.

After condemnation of the new “Tosca” directed by Luc Bondy, the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, had said there was a “strong possibility” that the Zeffirelli production would reappear next spring because of technical issues related to a simultaneously running “Ring,” a new production of the Wagner cycle directed by Robert Lepage. That idea is now off the table.

“We were able to figure out a way of technically reconfiguring slightly the way in which we set the ‘Tosca’ on the stage,” Mr. Gelb said, “so we can make it work.” He added, “It was always our intention to bring it back if we could,” referring to the Bondy “Tosca.”»

Long live Peter Gelb!!!

Da Era Gelb

(Peter Gelb, director-geral do Met)

A Era Gelb parace marcada pela ousadia e primazia da teatralidade, como segue:

«In his office a couple of weeks ago Mr. Gelb said the decision to open the new season this way, with a brand-new, pared-down production of an opera that was a trademark of the old Met, was “not an accident.” His self-proclaimed mission from the beginning has been to revivify an institution whose core audience he thinks is rapidly aging itself to extinction, by re-emphasizing opera’s theatricality.

(...)

To that end he has commissioned new productions, some of works seldom seen in New York; signed up new singers, who don’t just “park and bark,” as he puts it, but actually act; and recruited directors from Broadway, like Bartlett Sher, and the movies, like Anthony Minghella, who died last year. Mr. Bondy is a Swiss director of opera and theater, and though Mr. Zeffirelli recently called him “third rate,” his productions have a reputation for braininess and for stripping away clutter. James Levine, the music director of the Met, likened his new “Tosca” to a Hitchcock movie

Mr. Gelb’s program was initially greeted with skepticism, if not hostility, by many opera buffs. In his last job, as president of Sony’s classical record division, where he recorded an album of arias by the soft-rocker Michael Bolton and where his greatest hit was the soundtrack for “Titanic,” purists saw him as a shameless panderer. Mr. Gelb, who likes to point out that classical music used to be pop music, is unrepentant. “I haven’t really changed,” he said. “The only thing that changed was the world I was working in. I’ve always tried to popularize classical music, and I’m still doing it, only I don’t work for a classical record company anymore.”

And whatever his record at Sony, Mr. Gelb’s Met career has by most reckonings been an almost immediate success. The audience has both grown and become more youthful. He has reached out to contemporary visual artists and begun a promising collaboration with André Bishop, the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, to develop new work. His program of showing selected operas on live high-definition television broadcasts has been tremendously popular, filling movie theaters both here and abroad.

There have been artistic misfires, like Mary Zimmerman’s production last year of “La Sonnambula,” which set the opera as a play-within-a-play and was also hooted at on opening night. But for the most part the Gelb vision has so won over the opera world that it’s hard now to find anyone with something critical to say — at least on the record. Most of the grumbling one hears these days is not about the merits of the new Met productions but about how expensive they are. Since Mr. Gelb took over, the Met budget has increased by about $60 million. The box office is up, but meanwhile personal and corporate donations, which the Met depends on to balance its budget, are down, thanks to the economy, and so is the value of its endowment. The Met’s projected deficit for next year is about $4 million.

(...)

At the Met, Mr. Gelb’s style is quiet and diplomatic. His spine appears to be made of bendable zirconium, instead of the traditional steel, except that he’s such a master of detail that he almost always gets his way. He’s a tall, soft-spoken man, charming and awkward in about equal measure. During interviews you can watch him edit himself as he speaks.

Unusual for the director of a major opera company, he spends much of his time not in his office but in the opera house itself. He has a temporary desk, with a laptop, set up between Rows Q and R on the left side of the orchestra, and from there he keeps an eye on everything that takes place onstage or in the pit, dashing out every now and then for a phone call or a meeting. He is there to put out fires before they happen, or, as he said, to “resolve any artistic issues that come up.”

At the first run-through of the new “Tosca,” for example, he consulted with Mr. Bondy and Max Keller, the lighting director, about the lighting in Act I; he did not fail to notice that in Scarpia’s death scene Scarpia’s wig fell off, causing the singer to fling it aside like a diseased rodent; he debated with Mr. Bondy the merits of two stunt doubles who had been hired to undertake Tosca’s famous Act III leap. (In keeping with Mr. Gelb’s emphasis on realism and theatricality, this production provides no offstage mattress for her to land on; Tosca takes the plunge in full view of everyone.)

(...)

It’s not true that you have to be skinny to sing for Peter Gelb, but it doesn’t hurt. “There’s no doubt that expectations are much higher now,” said the soprano Renée Fleming, a Gelb mainstay and enthusiastic supporter. “Before, you didn’t have to be so fit, or move with such athleticism. Peter has put much more focus on the theatrical side, and the audience is happy about it.” She added: “I haven’t seen yet that an extraordinary talent has been dismissed. The line is moving somewhere in the middle when you have to decide between an attractive performer and someone who has a little better instrument.”

(...)

But Mr. Gelb has been unusually adept at filling vacancies with talent of almost equal measure, not just backup singers, and instead of waiting for singers to become stars elsewhere, he has been aggressive about signing them up early. We can expect to see a great deal of people like Natalie Dessay and Diana Damrau, who are excellent actors as well as great singers and whom he clearly regards as the future of the new Met.

Ms. Damrau, a soprano, was a big deal in Europe but hardly known here when Mr. Gelb signed her up as Rosina in “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” and has since become an audience favorite. She said of Mr. Gelb: “He’s a fantastic man. It’s a wonderful working relationship. He has his eyes and ears open all the time, and you can always go and talk to him. That’s what I appreciate most. At a lot of opera houses in Europe there’s a distance.” She added: “There must be stars, and Peter knows that stars are popular with the audience. But he isn’t a populist. He connects the stars with nontraditional roles. O.K., you need ‘Traviata,’ but he also thinks in different directions.”

Mr. Gelb is married to the conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson and has two children from a previous marriage. His day sometimes begins as early as 4 or 5 a.m., when he checks his e-mail and gets on the phone to Europe. On Monday he was on the job until well after midnight. Wearing a black shirt and velvet tuxedo jacket, he held between-act receptions in his office for friends, family, people from the art and the theater worlds and even the president of Finland. (Karita Mattila, who played Tosca, wearing brown contact lenses, is a Finn.) After the second act he and Mr. Bondy also fussed backstage over the timing and light cues for Tosca’s leap.

And then he presided over a dinner for high-rolling Met donors under a tent in Damrosch Park. If he was smarting over the opera’s reception, he didn’t show it. Referring to the Zeffirelli version, he said to the guests, “After 25 years we must move forward by offering new productions that will startle our imaginations and will demonstrate that our art is not locked in the past.”»