Faust, Metropolitan Opera live relay, December 2011

The huge power of this performance was the work of the devil.

René Pape as Faust, all images Met Opera Ken Howard

And as Mephistopheles, René Pape was not just vocally superb, but had a stage presence oozing power and devilment. An immensely smooth operator of huge gravitas who could nevertheless move across the stage while lifting a leg as if in a grand jeté, in this well choreographed production by Des McAnuff, which even included some pirouettes in Act II as the chorus sings Et Satan conduit le bal!

After the interval, as Act III starts, Siébel’s soliloquy was beautifully sung by Michèle Losier, both she and Pape repeating their wonderful performances from a different production of Faust this past September in London at the Royal Opera House. Here at the Met they were joined by the incomparable Jonas Kaufmann as Faust, his high notes and diminuendos superbly sung, and his Quel trouble inconnu … in early Act III strongly emotional.

Marguerite and Faust

In Act IV Marina Poplavskaya finally came into her own as Marguerite. In the first interval when interviewed by Joyce Di Donato — an excellent host — she gave the impression that she too had suffered loss. Perhaps this is why she came over so emotionally in Acts IV and V, though I found her less convincing as a simple young girl fascinated by the jewels appearing in Act III. Her singing was beautiful but it was in the later part of the opera that she really convinced me, and her performance was riveting.

Marguerite with the dying Valentin as Siébel looks on

As Act IV came to its conclusion, Russell Braun came through with great effect as Valentin, fighting and losing against Faust, and cursing his sister Marguerite. He sang so strongly, while looking so seriously wounded, you wondered how he did it. Moving into Act V as the chorus sings S’allume et passé un feu qui luit! we see an atomic explosion projected on the backdrop, all part of the production idea that Faust works in a mid-twentieth century laboratory where the nuclear bomb was being designed.

It’s the same production I saw at the English National Opera in September 2010, but with a few tweaks. Care had been given to details and I liked the way a young woman ran across the stage at the start of the big scene in Act III, somehow managing to move in time to the music. Then as the male chorus roared into action it felt as if we were suddenly in a powerful French rendering of the Marseillaise.

Conducting by Yannick Nézet-Séguin was terrific. He brought out the drama in music that can sometimes sound too beautiful and melodramatic, and with an all-star cast this was a glorious performance.

Filming by Barbara Willis Sweete, by the way, was excellent, incorporating occasional full views of the stage with the right amount of detail of the singers.

Performances at the Met continue until January 19 — for details click here.

Nixon in China, Metropolitan Opera live relay, cinema, February 2011

In February 1972, Richard Nixon made a dramatic break to previous US foreign policy by opening up to China, visiting Beijing and meeting Mao Tse-tung and his foreign secretary Chou En-lai. Ten years later, Peter Sellars had the idea for turning this visit into an opera, and he put together a team, with John Adams as the composer, Alice Goodman as librettist, and Mark Morris as choreographer. The opera was first produced in Houston in 1987, and though each of the team claimed it was a joint effort, Adams’s music is surely the key feature, and has achieved well-deserved acclaim. This is the first time the Met has put it on, and English audiences may recall the same production at the English National Opera ten years ago. As before, Peter Sellars is the director, with Mark Morris in charge of the choreography, and on this occasion John Adams himself was in the orchestra pit.

Richard and Pat Nixon land at Beijing, all images Ken Howard

The story starts with the landing of the presidential aircraft, followed by a welcome ceremony for the visitors in which Chou En-lai enquires whether Nixon had a good flight. He says it was smooth, though the music conveys a different opinion. Meanwhile the chorus sings a repeated refrain of The people are the heroes now/ Behemoth pulls the peasant’s plow. When Nixon meets Mao and comments on foreign issues in relation to other countries in East Asia, Mao waves this away as the business of others — his business is philosophy. As Adams said in one of the intermission interviews, Mao is portrayed as either brilliantly philosophical or just senile., and within its six tableaux this opera allows the participants to express their world-views in a series of conversations or soliloquies.

Mao and Nixon

One of the most dramatic scenes occurs in Act II when Nixon and his wife Pat, Chou, Mao and his wife Chiang Ch’ing come together to watch a Chinese ballet in which an abusive landowner, played by Henry Kissinger, is thwarted by the courageous women soldiers of the State. The Nixons get emotionally involved in the action, and at the end, Chiang Ch’ing expresses her view of the cultural revolution. Her lines are shrill, including We’ll teach these motherfuckers how to dance, her music that of a coloratura soprano, and she is the only character portrayed unsympathetically.

The opera ends with Chou En-lai’s soliloquy “I am old . . .”, beautifully delivered by Russell Braun who gave a wonderful performance, holding his hand to his body as if in pain — only later was it known that Chou was suffering from undiagnosed pancreatic cancer. Kathleen Kim gave an excellent portrayal of Chiang Ch’ing, and Janis Kelly sang with sympathy and affection as Pat Nixon, a role she also performed at the English National Opera in a previous version of this production. Robert Brubaker performed well as Mao, and James Maddalena, who was the original Richard Nixon in 1987, repeated the role here though his voice may have faded a little with time. Richard Paul Fink sang the oafish role of Kissinger, and gave a fine performance in the Act II ballet.

The end of the ballet

The intermission interviews are a wonderful aspect of these Met broadcasts, and Thomas Hampson did a great job of letting the interviewees speak for themselves. Peter Sellars exuded enthusiasm from his toes to the end of his extraordinary hair-do, extolling Adams’s music and saying “it builds and has tension . . . rather like Mozart”. Janis Kelly was equally laudatory, calling it a “twentieth century masterpiece”. The sets by Adrianne Lobel were based on original photos of the trip, but it’s always difficult in these broadcasts to fully appreciate the sets since very few images show the whole stage, and the lighting seemed rather dark.

All in all this is a great piece of music theatre and I congratulate the Met for broadcasting it.

Manon, Royal Opera, Covent Garden, June 2010

If you want an opera about a femme fatale, this is it, based on Prévost’s L’histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. It is probably Massenet’s most popular work, though oddly it hasn’t been performed at Covent Garden since 1994. I love it and was thoroughly looking forward to this new production, with Anna Netrebko as Manon and Vittorio Grigolo as Des Grieux, making his debut with The Royal Opera. He performed superbly — his voice is extremely strong — and she sang and acted wonderfully as usual. But the whole thing left me cold — why?

Act I, Royal Opera photo by Bill Cooper

Certainly Act I was a great disappointment. The sets placed the inn on the stage level, but with the houses so high above it that the performers at street level could not all be fully seen from the front row of the Amphitheatre, and apparently from further back could not be seen at all. This ‘sight-line’ problem seems to plague Covent Garden, and if the directors won’t fix it then someone from the management has to step in — you simply can’t have almost the whole Amphitheatre as an area of ‘restricted view’. But it wasn’t just the sets in Act I; the singing and speaking boomed out far too loudly, and from a beginning like that there is nowhere to go. Evidently the director, Laurent Pelly intended that Christophe Mortagne play Monsieur GM as a loud-mouthed boor. But he seemed more like an angry tradesman than a powerful cabinet minister, and it was only when Anna Netrebko entered, portraying an ingénue that things improved. Her acting here, and when she dies in Act V, was convincing, and she interacted well with Vittorio Grigolo throughout the opera. Their singing was extremely powerful, though I would have preferred more gentleness at times, perhaps a hint of greater introspection. William Shimell had excellent stage presence as De Brétigny, with Russell Braun as Manon’s cousin Lescaut, and Christof Fischesser was excellent as Des Grieux’s father.

Laurent Pelly’s current Covent Garden production of La Fille du Régiment is wonderful, but I don’t think this opera should be played with the comic touch that he is so good at. The pantomime aspects of Act I returned in Act III, particularly with the superfluous ballet interlude, which led to the dancers being carried off by the ‘gentlemen’. Massenet’s music demands more emotional sincerity than was evident here. The plaintively coquettish pleading in Act III “N’est-ce plus ma voix? N’ai-je plus mon nom? N’est-ce plus Manon?” was strongly sung, but failed to bring out the pathos. Despite Antonio Pappano being at the helm in the orchestra pit, I felt a lack of sensitivity between orchestra and singers, and this opera should have a quiet side that seemed to be absent here. Manon herself has a dual nature, wanting to live simply with Des Grieux, yet still wanting the parties and jewels that money can bring, and at the end when Des Grieux urges her to wake up, as night is falling and he sees the first star, she sings “Ah! le beau diamant! Tu vois, je suis encore coquette“. There should be a pull at the heart strings, but it wasn’t there, and the audience seemed unmoved, though there was deservedly strong applause at the end for Anna Netrebko and Vittorio Grigolo.

Sets by Chantal Thomas, with costumes by Laurent Pelly, were modern, and there were some colourful touches. Manon’s costumes in Acts I and V were excellent, and her Act IV dress in shocking pink contrasted dramatically with the green of the gambling den, but her dress in the second scene of Act III, when she persuades Des Grieux to go with her and abandon his commitment to take holy vows, seemed out of place and unflattering. The black suits for the men were all a bit too much, and what was that vast orange balloon doing in the first scene of Act III? It looked like something out of the old 1960s television series The Prisoner.

Act III scene 1, Royal Opera photo by Bill Cooper

At the end, Manon’s final words are “Il le faut! Il le faut! Et c’est là, l’histoire de Manon Lescaut“, but if that was the story I missed it. I can admire the cold beauty of this production, but despite the powerful singing and orchestral playing, I was left unmoved.