Santa Fe Opera Note: Traviata

I had the great good fortune to see Natalie Dessay do Daughter of the Regiment a couple of years back, in what seemed at the time like a career-defining performance. In retrospect, I think it may have been az curse. It was a delight to see her in Daughter as she clowned, caterwauled and generally charmed her way across the stage, releasing her inner tomboy. But it turns out that tomboys once released are not easily put back. A few months after I saw her in Lucia di Lammermore, where she offered the oddest of opera spectacles an (almost) comic mad scene.

Last night as Violetta in Traviata at Santa Fe, the tomboy was back. She arrived in a carrot-top hairdo with a yelp. She spent the ballroom scene horsing around with her buddies in a manner that was fun to watch, but hardly Violetta. You got the sense that she didn't have a clue what her heroine was all about.

But perhaps surprisingly, a few minutes later "fors'è lui," she was wonderful: meditative, introspective, touched with pathos. Almost as much so a few minutes later in "sempre libera" she was almost as good, although this time, she could have used a bit more of her natural energy and tension (for a concert rendition, go here). I think the point may be that she is at her best alone. In the crowd, her natural self emerges, and a wonderful self it is, but not right for the role.

You could see the problem again in one of my favorite of all opera, her encounter with the elder Germond, when he tells her "don't you understand, sweetie, I have a daughter with a reputation to protect and you are a mere trollope." Anthony Michaels-Moore played papa with great poise and dignity and, perhaps out of character for Germonds, he actually inspired a good deal of sympathy. Here I think the point is that for the scene to work as planned, you need a Violetta who is vulnerable and pathetic: Dessay, god bless her, is neither of the above.

I suspect Dessay wasn't helped in any of this by her director, Laurent Pelly, who is a wonderfully inventive talent, but who certainly isn't going to be remembered for delicacy or restraint. She's still wonderful and so is he--I'd go along way to see either. But Traviata didn't show her at best advantage, and I'm looking forward to another day on which there may be more restraint.

Juan and Natalie, Together Again

Vinzenzo Bellini died at 33. Per Wiki, he actually completed 11 operas, though I don't think any more than half them can be counted as still in the canon. Giseppi Verdi made it to the age of 87; Wiki counts (only?) 28 finished operas, although that doesn't include a lot of multiple versions, reworkings, etc.

But here's the more interesting datum: Verdi didn't really hit his stride until #17—Rigoletto, produced when he was 36, i.e., three years after the age at which Bellini died. Question: what if Bellini had lived until 87, and Verdi had died at 33?

Okay, it's pointless. But it does help to reflect on the possibilities of a career so cruelly cut off so early. For the plain truth is that Bellini can be a disappointment: one of the most listenable composers ever, yet at the same time, one of the slackest. Whatever else you can say about Bellini operas, they lack sinews and a rib cage—in a word, drama, precisely the quality that makes Verdi so distinctive.

I mulled this point over in mind last Tuesday night at the Met—more precisely in the Director's Circle, that's two flights up--as I listened to Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez in La Sonnambula. That's our customary location and I will always remember my first visit in 1996 I heard Carol Vaness and Susanne Mentzer sing “Soave Sia Il Vento” in Cosi Fan Tutti (and here it is!).

Cosi was a magical moment. But here's the thing: watching La Sonnambula was the first time I've ever wished I were watching the movie-theater performance in HD. This isn't any kind of general rule: I don't intend to abandon the live performance, and some of the Hds have been just way too gimmicky. But for Bellini, a few of the in-your-face doodads would have been a help.

A second invidious comparison: Flórez and Dessay did a fine job here, but it was hard not to compare this presentation with their last Met outing, in Fille du Regiment a year ago (link). They may be singing just as well this time, but you couldn't quite tell because there isn't nearly as much to do

Fn: Looks like I will get my chance to see if it is better in HD, next Wednesday night. Now, if I can rejigger my schedule...

Dessay in Lucia:How do you Top Daughter?

Natalie Dessay has long since established herself as a first-tier coloratura, but she had a career-defining hit last season with her performance opposite Juan Diego Flórez in Daughter of the Regiment at the Met—about the most cheerful and engaging big-stage performance that ever I’ve seen Still, nothing comes without a price. In San Francisco this month with Lucia di Lammermoor, she found herself in competition with herself.

That is: in Daughter, Dessay does one memorable entrance dragging a rope line of laundry. The scene and, indeed, the performance as a whole, established that Dessay knows how to give good comedy. In Lucia, she seems still to be dragging the rope line of comedy behind her. But Lucia is a much more spookily serious than Daughter—funny weird if anything, and definitely not funny ha ha. Dessay sang it wonderful and acted it well. Still for so much of the stage business, she didn’t seem to know quite what to do except plan it for laughs. This was particularly true in the first act, where she has to establish that she is half over-the-edge already, so we will accept her later percipitious collapse. Some of her caterwauling came perilously close to clowing.

This isn’t a complaint, exactly. Her mad scene, with blood fingerpaint-smears on her face, was leisurely, slow, fully realized, yet never seemed to strain for effect. It’s certainly one I’ll remember, and this is not trivial—comparing notes after the show, we agreed that we’ve seen others that we can’t really remember at all. And in general, you can just take it as evidence of how performers gain texture from their own history.

Dessay’s backup in Lucia was creditable, but a bit disappointing. As Edgardo, Giuseppe Filianoti offered a lovely voice, but he seems to be a soloist, not up to drama. In their first-act encounter, Dessay kept flailing desperately about for some kind of human interaction, while Filianoti continued with his private cabaret turn In he second half where he was truly on his own he was less constrained, but he still brought to mind the old rule (Stanislavski?) that too many actors think about what they can bring to the character, not what the character can bring to them. Gabriele Viviani as Lucia’s brother Raimondo, understood his character and sang well, but his voice didn’t really conquer the space of the War Memorial (throwaway comment: has anyone noticed how the plot here parallels Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure—sister doesn’t want to traffick her virtue but brother, for whatever reason, thinks trafficking would be a pretty good idea--?).

On the whole, then, a fine performance, worth a detour; not up to Daughter, but hey, what is? Taking her bow as the mad Lucia, Dessay pointed her bottom at the ceiling and folded her hands above (it works; you’d have to see it)—a cute piece of playful clowning, utterly unmotivated by anything in the production. What matches Daughter? Evidently Dessay isn’t so sure herself.

Juan and Natalie Play Palookaville

Juan Diego Flórez took a near-unprecedented encore at the Met last week, in Daughter of the Regiment (nine high C’s). Mr. and Mrs. Buce caught up with the show today at the Palookaville multiplex and we can see what the excitement is about. Flórez indeed puts on a remarkable show, but it was also a good lesson in the unfortunate side effects of this kind of promotion. That is: the Met’s Daughter is a remarkable show all round, and the Flórez bravura number is only one, and maybe not the greatest, of its virtues.

I had heard about the encore, but I hadn’t read any of the reviews or commentary, so I didn’t know what a complete, fully-formed, well-intergrated morticed-at-the-joints production we have here. Also, how it succeeds in taking a big risk.

Daughter is, of course, a total war horse, but the production is nearly new. The most notable feature is a lot of new spoken dialogue—surely a tremendous risk with any classic, although perhaps a little less risky with a free-floating comedy than it would be with something solemn and marmoreal like, say Otello. Anyway, the dialogue works, and “works” not just in the sense of “not failing” but in the sense of actually adding something to the show. In its original form, Dialog is an extremely good-natured boy-meets-girl romance (if built on the silliest possible premise). The dialogue adds a layer of acerb comedy—comedy that is good enough in its own right, but also sufficient ot add a texture of complexity and irony to the whole stew. So, a much better opera (to my taste) with than without.

This is one of the operas that made Luciano Pavarotti famous, in company with Joan Sutherland (it’s also the opera that ended Kathleen Battle’s Met career when Joe Volpe canned her sorry soprano ass after some backstage misbehavior back in 1984). I’d say Flórez is at least a fit successor to Pavarotti—maybe not quite as marvelous a piece of machinery, but more thoughtful and reflective, with a more precise sense of what he is doing. And the guy is buff, equal to all kinds of acrobatics and capable of hoisting his leading lady into mid-air. Compare Pavarotti who you suspected of scarfing down an extra plate of pasta between scenes.

Thing is though, for all Flórez’ high C’s & stuff, Natalie Dessay as his lady is at once his match and a necessary complement. She didn’t sing so much as shout her way through the performance, with a lot of her own areobatic stage play—but with voice enough of her own to keep up with her co-star. Indeed, just after Flórez belts out his high notes in “Ah, Mes Ami,” Dessay presents herself as his foil with her farewell song, “Il faut partier,” made not a bit less touching by the fact that she’s wearing pants and an undershirt, and tugging a rope line of laundry. More: Flórez himself said that he found his second-act aria (which is less flashy) more difficult than the first, and he certainly did it credit. Dessay, by the way, comes across as just as physically fit in as her co-star. When we saw her at Santa Fe a couple of years ago, we remarked on how tiny she seemed. She is pretty small; but arms like those betray that she spends not much more time at the conservatory than she does at the gym.

And the encore: actually, Flórez didn’t do it for us, which was fine with me. He took a long, long ovation and you could see him working his throat; we actually thought he was going to. But just as well: this encore stuff shouldn’t get to be a habit. Indeed I have to say I suspect there was a good deal of marketing in it to begin with: I think I read somewhere that Peter Gelb, the major domo, asked him several weeks ago if he thought he might be up to it if, you know, the need arose. The need arose and so did Flórez rose to the need, and Gelb got one of those unbuyable rounds of pulibicity he seems to be good at.

Fn.: My friend Toni offers an Amazon review of the London version of this rendering here, and of an earlier Flórez performance here.