Les Troyens, Metropolitan Opera live cinema relay, January 5, 2013

Where are the Trojans when we need them? They provided the Greeks with stories portraying a welcome incompetence, letting a wooden horse full of Greeks into their city, and having their great warrior Hector defeat someone he thought was Achilles, only to be killed by the real one.

MetOpera image/ Cory Weaver

But in this Met production the Trojans are strongly represented, and Deborah Voigt as Cassandra was spectacular, not only singing the part with great power but exhibiting a stage presence worthy of the world’s greatest actresses. The glorious costume helped show her to be the most beautiful woman in the world, desired by Apollo who gave her the gift of prophecy but took it away with the curse that no one would ever believe her.

Coroebus and Cassandra/ KenHoward

As the Trojan prince Aeneas, Bryan Hymel took over from Marcello Giordani, who was a puzzling choice for this role. Hymel sang it at Covent Garden last summer, and was once again magnificent. His Act V solo Inutiles regrets was terrific, and his chemistry with Susan Graham as Dido was excellent.

She really came into her own in Act V, so beautiful in her mauve dress earlier in that act, so convincing in her grief. In Acts III and IV she also sang gloriously but came over more as a suburban widow than a queen, though I blame director Francesca Zambello here. I’ve seen her render other vivacious heroines in an unattractive way, and what did all that choreography by Doug Varone achieve in Acts III and IV? It was naff. It was tiresome. Some people left the cinema after Act IV, and indeed the sugary atmosphere was so cloying that Aeneas must have wanted out too. But that’s not the way Virgil intended it, nor indeed Berlioz.

Aeneas and son/ KenHoward

The direction and setting in Acts III and IV was extraordinarily suburban and unregal. Dido, Aeneas and others sat around watching entertainment and looking like actors in a television sit-com, while the camera zoomed in as Dido rearranged her dress. Queens do not do this — indeed imagine Angela Merkel rearranging her dress at a semi-public entertainment, and she is a mere prime minister. Dido was the great queen who led her people from Tyre to found a new colony in North Africa, but Acts III and IV failed to exhibit this. And even in Act V when Dido committed suicide she thrust the short sword to the side of her waist and then turned away from the audience. She should turn first, particularly with camera close-ups, so we can’t see the pretence.

Directorial faults aside, Fabio Luisi in the orchestra pit gave a lyrical account of Berlioz’s score, and the singers and huge chorus were magnificent. Karen Cargill sang very strongly as Dido’s sister Anna, as did Kwangchul Youn as Dido’s Minister Narbal, showing the gravitas that befits a man who sang a wonderful Gurnemanz at Bayreuth last summer. The Met have assembled an excellent cast and among other soloists, Dwayne Croft sang with nobility as Cassandra’s fiancé Coroebus, and Paul Appleby gave a stirring performance of Hylas’s song at the start of Act V.

Dido in agony/ CoryWeaver

With David McVicar’s production at Covent Garden, La Scala, San Francisco and Vienna, and now this production at the Met, Les Troyens seems to be much in vogue, but it is long and with the tiresome choreography on display here some cuts to the dance sequences might be very welcome.

Iphegénie en Tauride, Metropolitan Opera live cinema relay, February 2011

The Trojan War informed Greek literature, which  then informed a European culture that read the great plays by Sophocles and Euripedes. They in turn inspired opera composers such as Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87) whose new form of opera used music and drama to support one another in a way hitherto unseen. Gluck inspired Wagner, Berlioz and others, and when Iphégenie en Tauride was produced in a German version two years after its premiere in Paris, Mozart attended almost all the rehearsals.

Graham, Domingo and Groves

This was Gluck’s penultimate opera, and the purity of its music endows the story with enormous clarity. The background is that when Agamemnon was ready to embark with the Greek forces  to Troy he was denied a fair wind, and demands were made that he sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia. He acceded and the ships set off. When he returned home ten years later his wife Klytemnestra killed him, and their daughter Elektra yearned for her brother Orestes to return and take vengeance on his mother. Orestes eventually made his return, committed the deed and was pursued by the furies. In the meantime, in a second version of the story by Euripedes, the goddess Artemis replaced the sacrificial Iphigeneia with a deer at the last moment, transporting the real one to the land of the Taurians, where it was her duty as a priestess to sacrifice any foreigners who landed on the shores of her new land.

In this excellent production by Stephen Wadsworth we see, just before the overture, Artemis intervene to save the life of the sacrificed Iphigeneia, and during the opera we also see the murder of Agamemnon by Klytemnestra, performed by two actors, appearing in a nightmare to Orestes. He was beautifully portrayed by Placido Domingo, well supported by Paul Groves as his comrade Pylades. With Susan Graham giving a wonderful performance as Iphigeneia, Domingo and Groves were superbly matched, and the stresses they suffer, as the two men vie for the honour of being sacrificed to let the other one go, were gloriously portrayed. All three were ably opposed by Gordon Hawkins as the wicked King Thoas of the Taurians.

Pylades and Orestes, all photos by Ken Howard

Gluck’s glorious opera, with its excellent libretto by Nicolas-François Guillard deserves a superb production, and it got it. The costumes by Martin Pakledinaz were excellent, and the choreography for the Taurian soldiers, by Daniel Pelzig, was forcefully danced. These are Scythians from the central Asian steppe, so the Russian-style dancing was entirely appropriate. Gluck is little performed these days, but what a great opportunity this was to see one of his greatest operas, and with fine conducting by Patrick Summers, along with Domingo, Groves and Graham in the main roles one could hardly do better. Susan Graham gave a convincing portrayal of Iphigeneia’s attempts to sacrifice Orestes, and for a moment it looked as if the curse of Atreus would succeed in having her unwittingly kill her own brother. Fortunately she could not manage it, so Pylades had time to bring in Greek warriors to rescue Orestes, enabling him to return and rule his native Mycenae. In Greek tradition the furies (erinyes) were replaced by the eumenides, and Orestes was redeemed.

Iphigeneia and Orestes

This opera by Gluck gives a peerless representation of the conflicting emotions and tensions in this story, and as Schiller wrote, “Never has music moved me so purely and so beautifully as this music has done, it is a world of harmony that penetrates the very soul and causes it to dissolve in sweet and lofty sadness”.

Der Rosenkavalier, Metropolitan Opera live relay, January 2010

Der Rosenkavalier, Metropolitan Opera live relay, January 2010. At the end of Ronald Harwood’s recent play Collaboration, on Richard Strauss’s ill-fated collaboration with Stefan Zweig, we find Strauss holed up in his villa awaiting the arrival of allied troops. When they enter he quickly tells them, “I am the composer of Rosenkavalier“. Indeed it is probably Strauss’s best-loved opera among all the wonderful gems that he produced, and this performance did it full justice.

I saw this opera less than three weeks ago at Covent Garden, so comparisons are inevitable, and I hope you will forgive me for making them. The Metropolitan Opera comes out ahead of Covent Garden, mainly because of Renée Fleming as the Marschallin, and Susan Graham as Octavian. In the Royal Opera’s recent revival we had Soile Isokoski and Sophie Koch in these two roles, with Lucy Crowe as Sophie, and Peter Rose as Ochs. Thomas Allen was Faninal, just as he was here, though he came over better in this production at the Met. I want to write that Renée Fleming is a diva, but that word is debased by its association with attention-seeking sopranos of unpredictable disposition, so I prefer to call Ms. Fleming a goddess. She may be the best Marschallin currently available, giving the role great depth of feeling and emotion. She also looks terrific, and her glorious costume in Act III matched the drama of her entrance to resolve the mess in the tavern. This is a high point of the opera, and the only comparison in the last four Rosenkavalier productions I’ve seen was Anne Schwanewilms a few years ago in Chicago, again in a stunning dress, worn with superb poise. But Renée Fleming is far more than just an elegant lady, and her soliloquy on the passing of time in Act I was done with immense sensitivity and feeling. What a performer! She was well-matched by Susan Graham as Octavian, who transmuted so well from a feisty young man to a pretty young chamber maid that one could understand Ochs’s desire and confusion. His role was very charmingly portrayed by Icelandic baritone Kristinn Sigmundsson, a huge man who showed himself a cultivated boor, but never a clown, and his lyrical singing was a joy to witness. Sophie was performed by the attractive Christine Schäfer, who looked a little too mature for the part of this ingénue, though her voice contrasted well with Fleming and Graham. I must say I preferred Lucy Crowe at Covent Garden, arguably the best Sophie I’ve ever seen, and when it comes to comparisons, Graham Clark at Covent Garden was a superb Valzacchi. The Met hired Thomas Allen, so why not Clark too? Their Valzacchi here, whose name was not in the cinema cast list, was miscast. He was too young to sing of Annina as his niece, and too small to restrain Octavian in Act II, making that little scene appear too contrived.

Overall, however, this was a great cast, and the conducting by Edo de Waart was sensitive to the singers, well-paced and never over the top. In this respect it was quite different from the recent performances at Covent Garden, where Kirill Petrenko used the musical dissonances in the score to create a marked shrillness in some scenes, such as the levée in Act I. This performance was noticeably smoother, but both interpretations are valid. The stage sets by Robert O’Hearn were excellent, and his costumes were very good, but I did prefer the Covent Garden ones for Sophie, and for the Rosenkavalier in Act II. Altogether this production by Nathaniel Merrill is very effective, but as Domingo said in his interval address, and as they say every time in these wonderful Met broadcasts, a cinema screening is no substitute for the real thing on stage, and that is particularly true for this opera with its multitude of stage action. You really have to see it in the opera house, even if you don’t get Renée Fleming — it’s a stage drama, and a glorious one too.