Opera’s Brightest New Stars on Bringing L’Elisir d’Amore to the Met
“The crowd goes wild” isn’t an expression typically associated with opera, but at the premiere of the Met’s production of the Gaetano Donizetti classic L’Elisir d’Amore, the audience did exactly that. The comedy moved viewers to a standing ovation, uproarious laughter, and more than a few postshow Instagrams. That a 183-year-old story can captivate a contemporary audience is a testament to the timelessness of Donizetti’s work and to the talent of L’Elisir’s stars. The production hinges on the rapport between its leads: Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo and Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak. Dynamic onstage, with a spark that resonates in every scene, the pair shine as lovers Nemorino and Adina. And as faces of opera’s new generation, Grigolo and Kurzak defy preconceived notions of what it is to be an opera singer.
With his charismatic swagger and love of Formula 1 racing, it would be easy to mistake Grigolo for a matinee idol in the mold of Marcello Mastroianni, but the moment he begins to sing, his calling is clear. Few have had their voices dubbed national treasures, and in Italy, Grigolo is part of an elite group of performers that includes legends like Luciano Pavarotti, who served as an early mentor. For Grigolo, stepping out onstage each night is a gamble not unlike getting behind the wheel of a sports car. “There is a similarity between singing and racing: a powerful voice and an orchestra, a powerful engine and the orchestra of the engine,” says Grigolo. “It might not seem like you’re risking your life with opera, because every move is calculated, but there is a risk every night. It’s live and there’s no faking it.”
Grigolo’s connection with the character of Nemorino dates back to childhood. Growing up with parents passionate about opera, and on the cusp of an era when arias were as popular as pop songs, he fell in love with L’Elisir’s signature, “Una Furtiva Lagrima.” “I have to say that this is one of my favorite roles,” Grigolo says. “Ever since I was a little kid, I loved ‘Una Furtiva Lagrima.’ I didn’t know where it came from, but I connected to it.” The lighthearted nature of the story also had its appeal: After years of playing tragic heroes, a touch of levity was in order. “I was drawn to the incredible, beautiful arias, but I like stories with a happy ending and there aren’t too many of those in opera,” he says. “This is one story that at the end you can feel enjoyment. It is a light repertoire opera for a light voice. If you have this soft kindness in your voice and still have a soft approach to the bel canto request, you have a chance, even if your voice is more lyrical or more powerful.”
For Kurzak, who has played Adina at London’s Royal Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, and the Gran Teatre del Liceu, her latest turn offers an opportunity to reinvent the role she’s perfected. Classically trained at the conservatories of Wroclaw and Hamburg, Kurzak isn’t just a singer; she’s a doctor with a Ph.D. in music. And she is convinced the genre isn’t going anywhere. “Opera has been alive for hundreds of years. There is always this fear because of modern art, cinema, or other art forms, but nothing compares to a live show. It’s nice to have a recording, but there’s nothing like seeing it live and experiencing the gift of the human voice.”
Coming from a musical family—her mother, Jolanta Zmurko, is a respected soprano—Kurzak has been immersed in the world of opera since birth. “Opera has always been what drives me,” says Kurzak. “I grew up watching all the shows backstage. My father used to play in the orchestra and my mother is a singer and was my teacher, so at home I listened to a lot of opera, even as a child.” Now a mother herself, Kurzak admits her playlist has changed a bit in the past few months: “Now I’m listening to ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes’ or ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’!”
Like any good romantic-comedy pair, Kurzak and Grigolo display palpable chemistry, trading coy looks in between arias and making each joke land perfectly. Pulling off the humor is no small feat. “To play comedy is a very difficult thing. It’s much easier to make people cry sometimes,” says Kurzak. “You hear the beautiful music and you just start to tear up. I cry whenever I see Madame Butterfly, but to make the people laugh, everything has to be precise.”
Though the libretto is loaded with wit, much of the onstage fun is the result of improvisation. While theater actors frequently elevate their performances with impromptu add-ons, opera isn’t always as malleable. But the free-form approach suits both performers. “It’s good that both of us like this style of working,” Kurzak says, smiling. “There are people who want things to always be the same, but we don’t mind improvising a little bit.” For Grigolo, the added spontaneity is what keeps things exciting. “I’m not against rehearsal, but sometimes a little less makes things fresher. You don’t want to discover too much about your partner and then in the end it gets boring. You want to keep a fresh attitude and way of interacting with each other.”
Their spark onstage carries over into their real-life relationship as collaborators. “I enjoy his presence—what can I say, he’s just Vittorio, you have to love him,” says Kurzak of her costar. “He’s honest, which is an important quality when you’re creating something together—that and the belief that you have a partner that you can count on.” For his part, Grigolo credits Kurzak with helping him appreciate a new side of the opera’s leading lady. “I think working with Aleksandra made me rediscover this character. I was never so much in love with Adina,” says Grigolo. “It’s beautiful, and I think it would be fun to do many roles together in the future.”
For the moment, Grigolo and Kurzak are content to deliver their very best at the Met. “The real judge is the public,” says Grigolo. “When you see them happy, you feel happy. There is no fee that can fill this gap between being an artist and receiving what you’ve worked and sacrificed for. You can’t put a dollar sign on that. All you can do is make yourself proud of what you’re doing and make people enjoy that moment.”
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Vittorio Grigolo is undeniably one of the big superstars of the opera world. The Italian tenor, with his movie star looks and passionate singing, has captured the world's stage with an inimitable stage presence and sparkling spontaneity that makes every performance of his quite the fascinating adventure.
Those best qualities have been rather apparent in his recent
run of performances of Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore" at the Metropolitan,
where he has worked alongside an overall A-team to bring the comedy to life.
Unfortunately that has not been enough to overcome what has become, over the
years, a confounding production by one of the Met's most inconsistent mainstay
directors.
Bartlett
Sher's Production - A Tale of Two Incongruent Stories
Bartlett Sher's "Barber of Seville" remains his
Met masterpiece, and even that production, with its extended stage can be
somewhat problematic for the Met orchestra's sound. Nonetheless, Sher's
productions since have been rather haphazard and inconsistent with his most
disappointing work in Verdi's glorious "Otello" coming earlier this
season. The "Elisir" is right there with it in terms of the confusion
it induces. A rather "traditional" interpretation of the comedy, the
production ultimately has not justified its right to exist. Sher tries out a
concept in the first half of the opera before utterly abandoning it in the
second, likely having realized that it simply does not work within the frames
of this intimate opera. The end result? Two seemingly incongruent operas.
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Equally confounding is the all-important diary that Nemorino
carries around with him for half an opera. A prop that the audiences sees as
crucial for the character ultimately tells us nothing about him and likely
could have. Also, how is Nemorino able to write pages and pages in a diary but
then struggles to sign his name for Belcore? Sher sidesteps the issue by
ignoring the diary altogether after a while, likely hoping the audience forgets
about it as well.
Though Adina's sense of power might be Sher's most
thought-provoking idea, it also makes the character far more fickle and
undeserving of Nemorino's love by the end of the night.
Sher's abundance for visual distraction is also on full
display here with the stage's arc curtain having no real motivation for being
there in the first place. One scene transition is ever-annoying, with people
carrying out blades of grass while singers are performing a delightful scene in
front of them. Try as they might, viewers are stimulated by any kind of new
movement and this area is no exception. The decision to stage the wedding in
the barn might be a funny touch, but it does not really make much sense. This
set is so bare in its use of mis-en-scene that it might as well not exist once
the wedding party is gone.
The wardrobe of course looks like every other Sher opera to
date, which is either a brilliant way of making everyone feel like his operas
live in the same universe or simply a lack of creativity or interest in
differentiating one character from another across different works.
But enough with Sher's production, which is now a few years
old and seemingly here to stay for some time. The singers are where the real
value is.
Albeit, they all seem to be in a different show.
The Italian Superstar Delivers Vocal Nuance Amid Confused
Portrayal
Grigolo's Nemorino, with his leather jacket, looks more like
James Dean than a simpleton that is too innocent to see that others are using
and abusing him. Hence his attempts to get close to Adina in the early going
look less innocent than they probably should be. In fact, Nemorino's behavior
as he tries to cuddle up to the reading Adina come off as distracting and quite
frankly annoying. Anyone wondering why Adina is put off initially by Nemorino
only needs to watch this scene. The result is that Grigolo's Nemorino jumped
between being too self-knowing and too stupid throughout the opera, making him
ultimately difficult to truly get behind. During the duet "Una parola, o
Adina," his Nemorino responded to Adina's first poet metaphor with a
rather forward rendition of his own metaphor, grabbing her and sitting her on
his lap, the confidence oozing out of his voice and body language. A few
moments earlier he was sitting around with a book in his lap, not seemingly
bothered by Adina telling him why he was rejecting her.
In the scenes with Dulcamara, his Nemorino was the innocent
"idiot" he is often called throughout, his puppy eyes wondering from
the bottle of Bordeaux
to the con-man Dulcamara. His boyish enthusiasm at drinking the Elixir was in
stark contrast to his character from the first scene, but certainly came off
rather believable in the new context. His drunkenness however was undeniably
fantastic to watch, his movement and his voice slowly losing its balance and
edge. When he re-entered the stage in the second act to find himself ambushed
by the chorus of women, Grigolo sang with a nasal quality, the phrasing short
and muffled. It was a winning moment, one of the few instances where a singer
uses his full vocal powers to create said effect and really drive home the
sense and feel of vocal drunkenness.
Speaking of vocal powers, Grigolo's were at their best here
and undeniably transcended an inconsistent character portrayal (though it must
be emphasized that he is a compelling actor through and through). If bel canto
is defined by singing with a wide palette of colors, then few tenors could
claim to possess the arsenal that Grigolo has in this respect. His voice can
move from a rather pointed spinto-like quality to the most delicate of vocal
threads to something rather granular and coarse. It is all there and it is used
with tremendous precision that still feels fresh and unpredictable. Few phrase
like Grigolo does, singing pianissimo during the Act 3 ensemble that features
chorus, Adina and Dulcamara while risking being overpowered. And yet through it
all, his sudden shaping pulls the audience in deeper into his vocal portrayal.
The same happened during the second half of the duet with Dulcamara. In the
duet with Belcore, Grigolo's singing had a rather heavy feel to it, the tenor
giving the singing more desperation than one might come to expect from Nemorino
at this point, but also highlighting just how low he has come.
Of course the question of the day will be the famed
"Una Furtiva Lagrima," the touchstone of the work for any tenor.
Grigolo sang it here with tremendous introspection, his voice mezzo voce
throughout the early portions, the phrasing crescendoing subtly, but then being
reigned in. Finally at the change of the key from minor to major on "Cielo
si puo morir!" making the transition from Nemorino's guilt toward his
exultation all the more potent. That he chose to prostrate himself at this
point only added to the emotional resonance. The choice to singing the second
"Si puo morir" at the end of the aria as an utterly sublime
pianississimo brought back the emotions of the opening of the aria once more,
giving us the sense that Nemorino still carries his mixed emotions about seeing
Adina suffer for him. To punctuate it the final phrase with a gloriously
suspenseful swell was the final masterstroke on Grigolo's vocally prolific
rendition. As an added bonus, his final celebratory vocal embellishments upon
finally being given the love he has so desperately sought, added to the
character's charm and elation.
Aleksandra Kursak Comes Into Her Own in Second Act
Aleksandra Kursak's Adina was likely the most grounded in
Sher's production throughout Act 1, her emphasis on being the woman in power
apparent from the forefront in Act 1. But that also meant that her character
was rather confusing to the viewer, Adina alternating from giving Nemorino
demeaning looks at some instances and then frustrated ones when she ignored
her. One never truly got the sense that Adina truly loved him, but simply
pitied him and her final actions as the first curtain drew to a close seemed to
come from an egotistical need rather than true love. This might seem all well
and done if it is in fact the ultimate interpretation of the production, but it
threatened to contradict the effusive cries of "t'amo" that Adina
professes four or five times with increasing ardency at the climax of the work.
Kurzak's portrayal in the second act told a very different story.
It told the story of a woman that was interested in flirting with Nemorino
throughout and found herself suddenly frustrated by his not returning her
interest. It told the story of a woman who was on some level used to getting
her way, but still rather emotionally connected to those around her. It told
the story of a character, which finally faced with coming to terms with owning
up to her feelings, is actually rather vulnerable and possibly at a loss as to
what to do. This all made for a credible delivery on many fronts, even if it
sometimes came into conflict with the what Sher's staging demanded in Act 1.
Kurzak's finest moments of the night came in the second act when the bare
staging meant that she was allowed free reign to control the scenery and play
her own Adina on her own terms. And in this regard it was a far more fluid and
likeable character. From her comic flourishes and flirtatious vocal intonations
during the duet with Dulcamara to the interpolated crying after the final note
of the duet's first section, this was a character alive with emotion.
During the aria "Prendi, per me sei libero,"
Kurzak sang rather quietly, her voice drawing the listener in, casting a
hypnotic spell. Every phrase was sculpted elegantly, every ebb and flow of her
voice capturing the listener. Her coloratura during the jubilant cabaletta was
refined, hammering home the sense of excitement over Adina's newfound emotional
freedom.
Different Operas for Corbelli and Plachetka
Alessandro Corbelli was as hilarious as ever, but his
Dulcamara seemed to be fixed in a more farcical staging of "Elisir."
His accented body language and facial expressions seemed more in line with a
more relaxed portrayal, which certainly came into grave dissonance with Sher's
more serious tone.
As with Kurzak and Grigolo's performances, it seemed to come
into its own during the second half of the opera when the scenery and staging
demands allowed more freedom to the actors. He had a lot of fun with Kurzak
during their duet.
Baritone Adam Plachetka seemed like his character was stuck
in a tragic opera the entire time, making his narcissistic Belcore come off as
tyrannical and needlessly aggressive.
In the pit conductor Enrique Mazzola provided his singers
with solid support, though he seemed in a bit of a rush early on in "Una
furtiva lagrima," running ahead of Grigolo while the tenor extended a long
note.
If great singing is of great interest to you, then this
"Elisir d'Amore" will provide that in spade. But if dramatic cohesion
and comedy is what you crave, this "Elisir," as directed by Sher, is
simply not structured for such a job.
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