Opera Note: Met HD Simon Boccanegra

In an interview framing the Met HD presentation of Simon Boccanegra yesterday, I heard James Levine say that it is one of his favorite operas.

Really? Well, it will never have the popularity of Carmen or La Bohème; or even, come to think of it, La Traviata. Its plot is about as unintelligible as Key Largo or Syriana; or even, come to think of it, Il Trovatore (which drew on the same playwright). There's only one female role. The mood is somber throughout. Yet it does have a consistent atmosphere or tone, and it does provide a helpful transition from the tune-heavy crowd pleasers of Verdi's middle period to the more challenging masterpieces of his later life. I guess you can understand why a veteran, tired of the warhorses, would want to engage with this material.

Same goes, I suppose, for veterans like Placido Domingo and James Morris, who have chalked up something close to two thousand Met performances between them and must be desperate to find stuff that doesn't just bore them silly. Yet that seems to me to be the problem. For all their inarguable talent, and granting the rich fund of experience the bring to bear, it struck me that neither of them was quite right for his role. Morris' Jacopo Fiesco is a bass, and for my money he is supposed to be just a bit hair-raising, on the model of Don Carlos' grand inquisitor. Morris was polished, but contained to a fault; you could forget that he was there.

For his part Domingo, after a lifetime as a tenor, is trying to out himself as a baritone. Certainly everyone is rooting for one of the most enduringly likeable personalities in the whole opera universe. And it wouldn't be surprising if the 69-yer-old (!) Domingo, having lost a bit of his edge at the top, might be picking up a bit on the other end. Yet so far as I could hear, it didn't really happen. Domingo was smooth and disciplined, the total pro, yet still too much (dare one say it?) of a tenor.

One of ironic upshot of the disappointment with the principal roles is that it helped to shift attention to two characters often somewhat lost in the shadows of the piece--the not-so-young lovers, Marcello Giordani and Adrianne Pieczonka. Pieczonka (like Morris) was a bit too self-contained for my taste, but they both sang beautifully and you found yourself paying attention to them to an extent that in a more rounded production, you might not.

In the same vein: the chorus and the orchestra. You just can't get over being amazed at the depth of talent, the sheer institutional heft, the Met can bring to bear. On the worst day (and this was hardly the worst) they can make you forget your troubles. On a not-as-good-as-you-might-have-hoped day, you have to just kick back and admire.