Just two weeks ago, Toronto
health officials were so convinced they had beaten SARS into submission that
they dismantled key elements of their containment team while lead members took
off on international tours to describe how the city defeated the disease. Ontario commissioner of
public security James Young, Toronto associate
medical officer of health Bonnie Henry and two other medical experts flew to
the SARS-embattled regions of Hong Kong, Beijing
and Taipei to share the Toronto experience. Mount SinaiHospital's chief microbiologist, Donald Low, jetted
off to give weekend lectures in Glasgow,
New York and Washington, as
Andrew Simor, head microbiologist at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health
Sciences Centre, left on a much-needed vacation. Toronto's
medical officer of health, Sheela Basrur, flew to Jamaica
for a rest before West Nile season hits. Meanwhile, epidemiologist Ian Johnson, who had been seconded
by Ontario's Ministry of Health from the University of Toronto to track the disease, returned
to the classroom: "I thought it was over," Dr. Johnson said.
"Everyone thought it was over."
But on Friday morning, Dr. Low found himself behind a table
at NorthYorkGeneralHospital, assessing file
after file of previously unrecognized cases, and he realized how wrong they had
been.
"Holy Christ," he thought.
Dr. Low and staff from Toronto
public health had expected to review patient files and identify the root of a
small new cluster within a couple of hours. Instead, they uncovered a trail of
deadly and serious cases dating back weeks.
"We were there until midnight," Dr. Low said.
How had they missed it? Was it inevitable that a sneaky
disease that looks like so many other pneumonias would go undetected in the
midst of a large outbreak? Had a low-grade chain of transmission simply slipped
beneath their radar?
Whatever the answers, a nagging suspicion remains that the
oversight was compounded by a dire, patriotic urge to prove to the rest of the
world that Toronto
was free of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Faced with the World Health Organization's costly
declaration on April 23 that Toronto was too dangerous to visit, politicians,
health officials and even the news media quickly banded together against a
common enemy - and it was not the virus but WHO, the United Nations agency,
that had effectively put Canada's largest city under quarantine. "That week, that advisory definitely changed our
psychology and the way we looked at this [outbreak]" Dr. Low said. "I
remember . . . we were putting such a positive spin on things, including myself
- everybody wanted to be clean of this." Now Toronto
is holding its collective breath through a crucial weekend once again, as
health officials cling to hopes of containment even as the numbers of cases and
people in quarantine climb. The WHO lifted its travel advisory on April 30. Two weeks
later, after the agency removed Toronto from its
list of SARS-affected areas, Ontario
lifted the provincial emergency status. Behind the scenes, the province
disbanded members of its epidemiology team and scaled back its
emergency-operations centre to a routine monitoring function.
With no known new cases after 20 days, the city had laid
down its gloves. On May 16, health staff in area hospitals were instructed that
they no longer needed to wear full protective gear. May 16 is emblazoned with regret in Dr. Low's mind: "As
soon as the masks and the gloves came off, you can see this dramatic spike in
the cases." He now heads the painstaking task of retracing steps and
searching for the specific link that would connect the troubling new cases of
SARS to the original outbreak cluster everyone thought had been conquered. Toronto public-health staff
called Dr. Low at his Mount Sinai office on
the evening of May 22, just as he was heading home. Earlier that day he had
returned from Ottawa, where he had given yet
another talk on Toronto's
successful battle against SARS.
There was a new cluster, they told him, centring on patients
who had spent time at St. John's Rehabilitation
Centre in the city's north end before being transferred to four other Toronto area hospitals. Contact tracing had turned up no epidemiological link to the
first outbreak. But a lab test confirmed that one of the four known patients
carried the SARS coronavirus deep in his bronchial tract. It was back. Dr. Low's head spun with disbelief. "You're hearing it
all and you're trying to minimize it. You're thinking, 'No this can't be right,
this can't be.' " Early indications suggested that the cluster originated with
a patient transferred from North York General or with a woman who had recently
travelled in South China, then visited her ailing son at St. John's. "When we first heard about this patient and her link to
China, we thought, 'Oh, okay, here it is,' " said Dr. Low, thinking back
to Kwan Sui-chu, who was infected with the virus at a Hong Kong hotel in late
February and who became Canada's first, or index, patient. But the woman had quarantined herself for 10 days after
returning from Asia and emerged disease-free
before visiting her son. She "was a fly in the ointment," who turned
the original index-case theory inside out, Dr. Low said. She had not been infected abroad, but here, in a Toronto hospital:
"She ended up getting SARS from her son." That Thursday night, however, health officials knew no such
details as they called a hasty news conference to reveal the new cases and to
instruct people who had been at St.
John's to put themselves into quarantine. The next day, as Dr. Low and Toronto public health staff plowed through
the troubling files at North York General, they counted more than 20 suspect
cases and reached a chilling conclusion: The SARS outbreak had not ended. And so they started from scratch once again, assembling a
new command centre in a cramped room at North York General. That hospital
looked like ground zero because the St.
John's cases could be traced back to April 28, when a
woman who turned out to have SARS was transferred to the rehabilitation centre
from the orthopedic ward at North York General. Reviewing the cases in North York General's orthopedic ward
back through May and April, public-health workers discovered the earliest known
suspicious patient to be a 96-year-old man.
The man had been admitted to North York General in early
April after fracturing his pelvis. He did not undergo surgery as was thought,
Dr. Low said, but was confined to his bed, first on a floor that would become
the hospital's SARS area, then in the orthopedic ward. On Easter weekend, April 19, the man developed pneumonia.
"People - doctors and nurses - did ask at the time," Dr. Low said,
'Could this be SARS?' " But since they could find nothing to link the man
to a known case, they chalked it up to a routine hospital-acquired pneumonia.
More than half of such infections cannot be traced to a particular pathogen. As Dr. Low reviewed the man's case, his mind darted back to
a possible connection. On April 28, he, Dr. Henry and Mount
Sinai microbiologist Tony Mazzulli had visited North York General
to assess health workers who had contracted SARS after treating patients with
the disease. On that visit, hospital staff asked the three to review the
cases of two psychiatric patients who had been granted Easter-weekend passes,
and who returned with mysterious pneumonias on April 21. "We were puzzled," Dr. Low said. "You don't
see people like this getting pneumonia for no reason." But with no known
connection to any SARS case, they chose to treat them as SARS patients without
reporting them as such. Yet Dr. Low believes there is a link between the psychiatric
patients and the 96-year-old man, through a shared ventilation system,
contaminated medical equipment or some other indirect contact. But his instinct tells him that both cases likely have some
connection to the hottest days of the original outbreak. During the week of
March 24 - when suspect SARS patients began to turn up at all the city's
hospitals - they were scrambling to set up SARS isolation wards. Dr. Low wonders whether during that week an unrecognized
SARS patient was inadvertently admitted to a regular ward, allowing the disease
to smoulder just before tight restrictions were imposed. The 96-year-old at North York General died on May 1. On May
2, his widow, who had visited her husband every day, developed symptoms of pneumonia
and died, though she had been wearing a mask at the hospital. Before her death,
she passed the disease to two of her children - who have recovered. The spread of SARS in North York General is concentrated to
half a dozen rooms of the orthopedic ward, including patients and health
workers. As health workers and their families turned up at emergency wards last
weekend, officials again traced contacts and charted new peaks in the outbreak. Last Saturday, Toronto
public health logged 36,000 calls on its SARS hotline in a single day -
equalling the number of calls during the entire first leg of the outbreak. By 2 a.m. Sunday, Dr. Low and his colleagues charted the new
cases and they asked, " 'How did this bush fire start burning?' It spread
because all of the precautions came down." Dr. Basrur was boarding her plane to fly home from Montego
Bay this week when she saw the headlines screaming that SARS had returned to Toronto. "Oh no, not again," she thought, "How could
this happen?" Allison McGeer, head of infection control at Mount SinaiHospital and a key member of the SARS
containment team, said, "It is very easy to see with hindsight that we
were tired; we wanted to believe it was over. And we thought that the
surveillance systems we had in place would function. They didn't." As well, some on the front lines were only too happy to be
free of the tough restrictions SARS had heralded - particularly masks that made
it tough to breathe. Others, however, were too frightened to take them off. Barb Wahl, president of the Ontario Nurses Association, said
some nursing homes told nurses to remove their masks because wearing them
"frightens" the elderly patients. The result was a patchwork system, and experts acknowledged
that SARS cases could slip easily through the cracks.
"It's like 100 Smarties, and one of them is white
chocolate on the inside, and you're supposed to be able to tell which one is
white chocolate by looking on the outside," Dr. McGeer said. The latest outbreak shows the need for "some system of
audit within hospitals," Dr. Young said. "We do need some way of
looking at every patient who develops a fever and respiratory symptoms. "We stumbled, and we've got to figure what to do to try
and not stumble again. Let's not kid ourselves that this is easy. So long as
there's SARS in many parts of the world, the risk of it getting into a hospital
anywhere remains. That's the reality."
Returning to the podium of the New York Philharmonic last week for the first time in 11 years, Gustavo Dudamel brought a jolt of bristling vitality to an overplayed staple: Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony.
On Thursday, for the second program in this two-week engagement, Mr. Dudamel began with Schubert’s Symphony No. 4, often taken for granted. Trying to jolt this charming, if modest, 30-minute score would be counterproductive. Instead, Mr. Dudamel showed taste and sensitivity in a lovely performance that stood out, even on a program dominated by Mahler’s great symphonic song cycle “Das Lied von der Erde.”
Schubert gave his Fourth Symphony the tagline “Tragic.” But other than in the grave introduction to the first movement, the piece doesn’t seem particular dark. I’ve always felt that the title could be Schubert’s dig at his own circumstances when he wrote the work. He was 19 and struggling to get his career off the ground, and assuming his music would be ignored. (Which it more or less was.)
Those hopeless feelings seeped into the Philharmonic’s weighty, restrained and elegant performance on Thursday. The somber slow introduction began with a forceful chord, played with gnarly sound and rattling timpani, and maintained that grim cast. In the main Allegro section, the tempo was insistent but held in check, giving the music a nervous, almost panicked feel. Mr. Dudamel and the players brought glowing warmth and grace to the wistful slow movement. The scherzo had the heartiness of a rustic dance.
The finale, the work’s weakest movement, needs a little juicing up. So here Mr. Dudamel went into his dynamo mode, leading a fleet, crackling account that put all tragic thoughts out of mind.
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The tenor Andrew Staples was a last-minute substitute in Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde.”Credit...Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
The tenor soloist in “Das Lied” was to have been Simon O’Neill, but he called in sick on Thursday morning. Luckily Andrew Staples, who had sung Andres in the Metropolitan Opera’s final performance of Berg’s “Wozzeck” on Wednesday, was still in town and came to the rescue.
Had I not known all this, I would never have suspected that Mr. Staples was performing this demanding music on less than a day’s notice: He sounded youthful and confident from the start, in the vocally punishing “Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde.” The first of six settings of Chinese poems that make up the 60-minute “Das Lied,” “Das Trinklied” is an eerily exuberant toast to the desolation of life. The soaring phrases keep taking a tenor into his high range as the orchestra blares away, and Mr. Staples mostly kept those high phrases light and clear, while bringing affecting warmth to the reflective passages that interrupt the boisterousness. The mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, a veteran Mahler singer, gave a subdued and dusky-toned account of the pensive second song, “Der Einsame im Herbst.”
I mean it as praise that Mr. Dudamel conveyed no overarching interpretive concept in this formidable work. Instead, he showed a keen ear for colorings, details, intricate textures and brassy blasts of delirium, while giving attentive support to the singers. Whole stretches of “Das Lied” are restrained and delicate, and those qualities came through in this fresh performance. Ms. De Young was at her soaring best when it mattered most, in the sublime, wistful, 30-minute final song, “Der Abschied.”
Aleksandra Kurzak stars as Violetta in the Metropolitan Opera production of Verdi’sLa Traviata.Photo: Marty Sohl
If one can say this about a veteran performer, a star was born Friday night at the Met, as soprano Aleksandra Kurzak ruled the stage for three hours as Violetta in Verdi’sLa Traviata.
No stranger to the house, Kurzak has appeared in half a dozen lyric roles over the past decade and a half, winning admiration for her exceptionally full, creamy tone, vocal agility, and sensitive expression.
But to carry the show in what is essentially a three-person drama revolving around her character, experiencing the highest of giddy highs and the darkest of despairing lows, is one of the great challenges in the opera repertoire.
Kurzak met it with sparkling coloratura in Act I and deeply affecting phrasing as her character’s fortunes and health declined. High range or low, in aching pianissimo or passionate forte, her voice filled the Met’s vast space without a hint of strain.
To be fair, her performance was more a musical triumph than a dramatic one. In the brilliance of Act I’s “Sempre libera,” one saw more the proud, vital vocal athlete than the heedless party-girl character, and in purely stage terms it was hard to buy the robustly healthy-looking, mature singer as a consumptive youngster. (Verdi, realist that he was, had similar reservations about the soprano who created the role in Venice in 1853.)
But if there have been more dramatically convincing Violettas, few have matched Kurzak for vocal opulence and expressive delivery. One could, literally, listen to her sing for hours.
Tenor Dmytro Popov was a sturdy Alfredo in a performance that emphasized rectitude over impulsivity. The devil-may-care fellow who won a reluctant Violetta’s heart with his mad passion was a little hard to find in Popov’s clear, polished delivery. One believed he was crazy about Violetta because he said he was.
A welcome return from the Michael Mayer production’s first staging last season was baritone Quinn Kelsey as Alfredo’s father Giorgio Germont. In one of Verdi’s most original characterizations, Germont comes on at first as the stern voice of social morals and respectability, but ends up admiring and even loving the courtesan he came to scold. In a vocally non-showy role, Kelsey more than held his own with impressive acting skills, a slightly gruff forward-placed voice, and impeccable diction.
The opera’s half-dozen other roles function mostly as foils to Violetta, but that didn’t prevent performers such as Maria Zifchak as the faithful maid Annina, Trevor Scheunemann as the haughty lover Baron Douphol, Megan Marino as best friend Flora, and Paul Corona as the sympathetic Doctor Grenvil from convincingly inhabiting their characters.
The sad, ethereal strings sounded a trifle scratchy in the opera’s opening bars, but conductor Karel Mark Chichon soon had the orchestra breathing with the singers and subtly weaving the drama’s moods from exuberant to tragic. The strings’ shuddering heartbeat under Act III sent chills.
Ironically, considering that Verdi wanted a contemporary drama but the Venetian censor insisted on a setting circa 1700, set designer Christine Jones gave this production a neoclassical look, with pillars, an open dome and stylized trellises that crowd in to make the lovers’ bower in Act II.
Kevin Adams’s mood lighting, with colors sometimes bordering on garish, sculpted the set in response to the character of the music and suggested the various interiors specified in Francesco Maria Piave’s libretto.
While Susan Hilferty’s handsome costumes appeared entirely realistic for 1853, the rest of the production design, and the dumb-show sequences during the preludes to Act I and Act III, seemed to echo Mayer’s Rat PackRigolettofor the Met. The Vegas-like (or Venetian?) fantasy seemed somewhat at odds with the contemporary urban social dilemmas confronting the three main characters.
But the Act II party dance of gypsies and matadors—choreographed by Lorin Latarro and miraculously executed by a dozen ballet performers on a stage already full of cast, chorus, and furniture—was a creature of Piave’s libretto, not a designer’s imagination.
La Traviatacontinues through March 19. Beginning February 26, Lisette Oropesa will appear as Violetta, Piero Pretti as Alfredo, and Luca Salsi as Giorgio Germont, and Bertrand de Billy will conduct.metopera.org; 212-362-2000.
2 Responses to “Kurzak triumphs in Met’s “Traviata””
I found the performance the most boring performance of Traviata I have ever attended at the Met (and I attended some in the last 35 years), with total lack of finesse, no real feeling or understanding of the role from Madame Kurzak (Alagna), supported by a cast which was as boring as she was. Ms Kurzak’s voice has serious pitch problems and some technique issues as her voice sounded very uneven throughout the performance. Zero personality, just focusing on the singing which was bad! This was my first time I left the opera house without being touched by a Traviata performance…. A triumph? A star? What a joke, made me laugh!
Kurzak gave a tremendously beautiful performance. Gorgeously sung with many unique interpretive choices.
Lisette Oropesa published publicly that she was so impressed with Kurzak’s performance.The audience was ecstatic and showed Resounding appreciation in their applause. I can’t wait to listen again to the broadcast. Quinn Kelsey was also wonderful. I however sorely missed Grigolo who would have put the performance over the top. That’s one of the great performances of Traviata.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to marvel about otherwise.
It Isn’t Better The Second Time Around…
In its first revival since last year, Michael Mayer’s production looked 30-years-older. The sets failed to illuminate and looked dark the entire evening, almost as if they were covered in dust. Interestingly enough the intrusiveness of the production when it opened seemed to fade into the distance. The distracting choreography in Act one was nowhere to be seen as the chorus members stood in their spots throughout the entire evening and costumes in Act one that resembled Beauty and Beast looked dim thanks to the lack of creative lighting choices.
There was, of course, the bed which remains a huge issue and that was most noticeable as supers picked up Kurzak in the first act awkwardly trying to avoid it. In Act two, scene two, the ballet dancers attempted to avoid it causing the choreography to look messy and disjointed. And the choreography continued to be a big distraction as it didn’t match the rhythm of the piece; at times the only thing one heard was stomping on the floor in lieu not Verdi’s incredible music. However, one has to give credit to the two lead dancers for their flexibility and their virtuosic movements.
Other distractions that continued to be detrimental to the viewing experience were Germont’s daughter who was on stage for about two minutes before exiting and Germont’s costume. As designed by Susan Hilferty, there is nothing in the elder Germont’s wardrobe that would indicate he is older than Alfredo; this becomes confusing to the storytelling when you have such a young baritone like Quinn Kelsey in the part. On this evening Kelsey looked like both Kurzak and Dmytro Popov’s brother, making it hard to believe the stakes and circumstances on stage. You shouldn’t have to be constantly working on your suspension of disbelief; great stagecraft is designed to immerse you in the story without making you remember that what you are watching is “fake.”
But overall, thefirst impressionof this production remained the same as last year with the second viewing seemingly a bit more tedious.
Credit: Mart Sohl/ Metropolitan Opera
A Radiant Star
While this performance was rather uneventful at major moments, it was never the result of Kurzak, who despite playing the dying Violetta, was full of energy and life; she was the lifeblood of this showcase. The Polish soprano was a triumph.
In the first act the soprano ran in with a bright smile and loads of energy. Her singing was filled with vocal fireworks and precise coloratura as well as a lighter timbre that emphasized the jovial aspects of the scene. Physically she was also quite active twirling around the stage and dancing freely. But even so, Kurzak did make it clear from her entrance that this was an ill Violetta, giving the character a slight cough that she ignored quickly.
In her first scenes with Alfredo her interactions were flirtatious, but once she got to the duet, she was overcome with so much emotion. The joy she felt once he left was emphasized in her rendition of “Ah forse lui.” The aria was sung with a fluid legato line that floated with gorgeous sound. Kurzak held out the phrases with precision and connected them with elegance and ardor. One could see that her Violetta had just fallen head over heels for Alfredo.
Yet as she ended the aria and went into the recitative “Follie, follie,” she sang them with assertion and conviction. That was emphasized in her “Sempre Libera” which was a tour de force. When she started the cabaletta she sang the coloratura with brightness as she twirled around the stage with a champagne glass emphasizing, she was a free woman, the text sung with an assertive quality.
But in the repetition after hearing Alfredo, Kurzak’s voice darkened and the voice obtained a weighty quality. That passion returned and while she still sang with precise coloratura, it was clear Kurzak was fighting Alfredo’s call. This time she gave slight accents to the dynamics and text and the “Sempre libera” seemed a bit forced. She threw her glass forcibly and her twirls didn’t seem as organic. One could feel this was a Violetta with conflicting thoughts. Kurzak beautifully conveyed that as she sang this cabaletta with such virtuosic power and topped it off with a rousing E Flat.
That conflicted nature in her singing was on full display throughout Act two. If Act one was about youthfulness, Act two was about dramatic power and rich tone. Her duet with Germont was filled with a wide range of emotional and vocal shifts as Verdi’s music requires. At the start of the duet as Quinn Kelsey sang “Pura siccome un angelo,” Kurzak listened with intent and gave her response “Ah, comprendo dovrò per alcun tempo” with a measured tone. But as the music quickly transitioned to more intensity, her tone grew and her following phrases “Ah, no giammai!” were given a defiant quality. This Violetta seemed to be fighting Germont’s request and unlike most interpretations, Kurzak’s “Non sapete quale affetto” was filled with tension and strength. But in the next musical shift, Kurzak brought out the fear in Violetta, singing with a softer tone; the lines flowed with more passion. Then in “Dite alla giovine – sì bella e pura,” Kurzak lightened her voice and sang with tenderness and heartbreak. One could hear how the lines were reminiscent of a cry for help.
That cry escalated in the “Amami Alfredo.” As Verdi’s music continuously crescendoed in this moment, Kurzak got on her knees and let out her full lyric power, singing the lines with heart-wrenching and raw emotion. If her voice thinned at the top, she made up for it with a creamy middle voice that resonated throughout the auditorium.
It’s hard to talk about the second scene in the act as it is an ensemble scene and no matter how much Violetta does to ignite it, it falls on the tension between Alfredo and Violetta and the surrounding chorus and comprimario roles. Kurzak attempted to show her fear and pain in the Card scene but that tension between them didn’t really read due to the lack of chemistry with Dmytro Popov and the chorus standing upstage, reacting to nothing.
However, her “Pietà di me, gran Dio!” was truly affecting and one did feel that conflict in Violetta as she saw her lover. That lack of chemistry was even more apparent in her subsequent scene with Alfredo.
As Violetta attempted to run from Popov’s Alfredo as he scolded her, one never really seemed to understand it. The one thing that did ring true in this entire scene was Kurzak’s “Ebben l’amo” as she emoted the words with vigor, trying to hurt this Alfredo. And in the concertante Kurzak’s voice rang through the massive ensemble, filling the auditorium. While Kurzak was truly compelling throughout the scene the one thing that did ring false was her Violetta running and throwing herself at Alfredo during the concertante. After seeing such fierce emotions and defiance throughout the evening, this approach just weakened the character and everything that Kurzak had created through the first two scenes. It was yet another of the “original” decisions by the directing team that didn’t work within the context of this story.
In Act three Kurzak continued to transform her voice, obtaining a grittier timbre. It was all about the crudeness of the moment as in this act Verdi gives the soprano many moments to emote which Kurzak relished. One instance came as she read her letter. She began reading with a soft tone that slightly crescendoed and obtained a nervousness that eventually ended in her shouting “È tardi!” with pain and terror. That was followed by a heartbreaking “Addio del passato.” The lines swelled with immaculate breath-control and one sensed that Kurzak was holding each phrase as long as she could. The voice continuously grew and the “Ah, della traviata sorridi al desio” soared with intensity. As the aria ended, the repeated “Tutto” were given slight pauses and staccato phrasing; when she sang the final “finì!,” she held out the note as long as she could, even though it slowly started losing brightness and accuracy of pitch. It was effective nonetheless, a visceral expression of Violetta losing her breath.
It must be noted that during this scene Kurzak’s Violetta seemed to be aware her impending death and consequently unlike most sopranos whose voices glow and brighten in “Parigi o caro” and “ora son forte,” Kurzak chose to maintain that grittiness and darkness in her sound. That was all the more emphasized in the lines “A niuno in terra salvarmi è dato,” which she emoted with potency before going on to sing “Gran Dio! morir sì giovane” with contrasting dynamics; the opening two lines were given an accented forte that was then brought down to a piano. That fear of death became most poignant during these phrases.
Kurzak’s turn was truly compelling and with such commitment one would have wanted the rest of the cast’s performances to be at the same level.
Credit: Marty Sohl/ Metropolitan Opera
Beauty Without Drama
In the role of Alfredo, Dmytro Popov had a mixed evening. The Ukrainian tenor has an elegant dark-hued voice that projects well into the Met auditorium. However, he tended to be stiff on stage, lacking chemistry and passion with his stage partners. In Act one, the duet “Un di Felice” was sung with precision and technical security but it lacked the passion and ardor of an Alfredo just having fallen in love. However, in the cadenza Popov’s voice did ignite with intensity. His demeanor also didn’t help the cause as he seemed reserved and looked like he was following blocking rather than engaging in organic movements. Perhaps he was portraying a timid man. However, that didn’t quite come through.
In Act two, Popov also seemed to be disengaged, often times singing out of tune and once again going through the motions. He did create some captivating phrases in the recitative “Lunge da lei” and phrased splendidly in “Dei Miei Bollenti,” particularly in the cadenza as he sang with an exquisite mezzopiano, the lines melting in his voice with ease. However, in the cabaletta “O Mio Rimorso,” Popov was overpowered by the orchestra with his sound getting muffled and uneven. The only bright spot was his potent and ringing High C.
In Act two, scene two, Alfredo is supposed to lose it and let loose emotionally. However “mi chiamaste? che bramate?,” was sung with finesse. It seemed overly safe, especially given the emotional context of the character. The high notes were bright and accurate, but did not immerse the listener viscerally. That was also evident in his static acting. After he threw money at Violetta, he looked to the audience calmly and as he turned to the chorus and a few chorus members grabbed him, he didn’t appear moved or attempt to let go. It was quite strange and it jarringly took one out of the scene.
Act three didn’t see much change, but it unfortunately did get more awkward. Just like last season as Violetta sings one dramatic line after the next, Popov stood by an ottoman with his head covered. It made for unrealistic staging and only emphasized a weak character with no growth, evolution or care for Violetta as she is dying.
The Supporting Cast
In the role of Germont, Quinn Kelsey reprised his turn from last season. When he premiered the production, Kelsey filled the Met auditorium with his plush baritone. There was also rigidity in his interpretation. Nothing seemed to change on this evening. His voice is large and has an impressive roundness, but throughout the evening his interpretation lacked gravitas. While his aria “Di Provenza” was sung with a gorgeous tone, the line never seemed to gain nuance or even suggest deeper emotional exploration and characterization.
His duet with Kurzak also lacked any type of suspense or drama. While Kurzak attempted to plea with Kelsey, he seemed quite stoic and didn’t react to her raw emotions even when she had intense outcries. The character came off as unsympathetic, something Germont isn’t. Instead the movements seemed to be mechanical. That was most evident in his “Piangi, piangi.” Kelsey sang with a booming sound that undercut the lament that “Dite alla giovane” could be.
Credit: Marty Sohl/ Metropolitan Opera
More thrilling was Megan Marino’s Flora. She was full of energy and one hoped she had more to do in the opera. Her Flora was defined with seductive power at the beginning of Act two, scene two, but was also at the same time an intermediary who tried to calm the impending conflict. Even in moments where she did not sing, she was engaged in the drama and created a personality for a character that is often lost in the masses.
Christopher Job, Brian Michael Moore, and Maria Zifchak also gave energetic performances that helped lift Kurzak’s stunning interpretation.
In the pit Karel Mark Chichon led a sturdy performance with Verdi’s score, but sometimes receded into the background far too much. It seemed more a proper reading than an incisive one. Chichon did have some great tempi, especially during the card game in Act two, scene two which moved the drama forward and also allowed for dramatic pull. The solos by concertmaster Benjamin Bowman were also exquisitely phrased giving a nice subtlety to the melancholic lines in Act three. The Act three prelude was also delicately textured and it conveyed the tragedy that was about to unfold. Chichon also held out the final notes of the score with such power that it was hard not to feel something as he emphasized the percussion.
There were two things however that disappointed in Chcihon’s reading. The first was the cut of Germont’s cabaletta which made for one of the most awkward transitions of the evening. Throughout the years that cut has been opened, allowing audiences to hear Verdi’s true intentions and on this evening, the composer’s score was let down by a routine cut that should be eliminated from modern standards. On this evening, the orchestra suddenly lost volume before crescendoing back to the dramatic conclusion of the scene.
And then there was the lack of a second verse in “Addio del Passato.” This is of course a soprano call and with Kurzak giving so much raw emotion in the aria, one wished to hear what else she could do with the second verse.
All in all this was Kurzak’s night and she sparkled in it. One hopes that the rest of the cast starts to shine brighter in order to bring to life Mayer’s sloppy production.
Ms Kurzak’s voice has serious pitch problems and some technique issues as her voice sounded very uneven throughout the performance. Zero personality, just focusing on the singing which was bad!
This was my first time I left the opera house without being touched by a Traviata performance…. A triumph? A star? What a joke, made me laugh!