New York offered a real panoply of
opera this April: Cosi fan Tutte, Lucia di Lammermoor, Turandot, Romeo and
Juliette, Luisa Miller, Cendrillon and Tosca at the Met along with Bernstein’s Candide
at Carnegie Hall. Ms Netrebko’s Tosca
was a high point and the only time we saw the Met actually sold out. Her very fine tenor husband Yusif Eyvazov
played Cavaradossi since Marcelo Alvarez had pulled out. We also heard Exteminating Angel, Lucia and
Luisa Miller on the Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts while we were in the
city.
Our Cosi fan tutte matinee was spoiled by jet-lag so we were fortunate
to get ‘rush’ seats a couple of weeks later, getting much more out of the
brilliant up-dating to 1960s Coney Island fun fair and adjacent ‘Skyline Motel’
in Brooklyn. The sometimes problematic
story line became slightly MORE believable - the girls not recognising their
own lovers … some of the audience might have been in the same boat, such was
the transformation of handsome uniformed naval officers into boyish Brooklyn
denim dandies. Broadway star Kelli
O’Hara played the scheming maid Despina while accomplished baritone Christopher
Maltman played Don Alfonso, patron to the four lovers.
The final season performance of
Turandot may well spell the end of the wonderful grand production set in the
forbidden city of Beijing. Many of the
old productions have been replaced into the ‘close-up’ world of HD telecasts, Aida
and La Boheme remaining from the previous Met dynasties. Martina Serafin was stunning at Turadot but
Marcelo Alvarez has been having vocal problems after losing some weight, or so
we were told, and his Calaf was under-par.
Liu was Hei-Kyung Hong a stalwart of the Met for decades and she did not
disappoint with a most touching legato display of vocal and dramatic
skills.
We attended the first (ever)
performance of Massenet’s Cendrillon (Cinderella) at the Met. It had three of the world’s top
mezzo-sopranos, Alice Coote, Joyce deDonato and Stephanie Blythe in an
absolutely brilliant production … yet the opera fell flat for me just as Don
Quichotte and Thais had recently. Perhaps
I am not a Massenet person. I just can’t
imagine why he chose to put neither a baritone nor a tenor into a serious opera. Others have substituted a male for Prince
Charming since, but not at The Met where ‘come
scritto’ is the rule. The hen-pecked
father was excellent French bass Laurent Nouri.
He also plays old Capulet in Gounod’s Romeo and Juliette.
Cendrillon dragged on for 4 long
acts, each a dream of the following one.
All I could think of was Rossini’s Cenerentola which had more glorious
melodic invention in its overture than Massenet’s entire piece. A singer friend told me afterwards that it is
more a ballet-person’s opera than a singer’s.
Are there any well known arias from Cendrillon?
A New York Times critique of Placido
Domingo aged about 80 in Luisa Miller is worth reading on its own https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/arts/music/review-placido-domingo-met-opera-luisa-miller.html
. This brilliant piece of writing likens
Domingo’s feat to Federer winning a grand slam ten years hence. As well as performing the father in Luisa
Miller, Domingo was also conducting Romeo and Juliette! A phenomenon of operatic history. We enjoyed the performance greatly having first heard Aprile Millo in Rome as Luisa
Miller with Alberto Cupido playing the tenor role about 25 years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d92LLNchYc )
A fraction of balance was added to
our grand opera schedule was Bernstein’s Candide at Carnegie Hall where Erin Morley was a
magnificent Gunegonde … she will sing Woodbird next year in the Ring I
believe. Her Glitter and Be Gay was like the Queen of the Night on
steroids. It was an unexpected privilege
by chance to meet sopranos Pretty Yende and Camilla Nyland (quite separately)
each in relaxed circumstances far from their costumes, roles, critics, agents,
etc in the Met foyers. Only in New
York. 
