If missing the president's address on Monday evening to attend the Metropolitan Opera smacked of fiddling while Rome burned, one could take some comfort in the topicality of the story. The title figure of Verdi's ''Nabucco'' is the crazy despotic ruler of Babylon -- a city that lay not far from present-day Baghdad -- who sacks Jerusalem and tries to elevate himself to the rank of god. There is a certain contemporary resonance.
''Nabucco'' is also good political music: it offers not profound subtleties but rousing popular entertainment. This opera is basically one crowd-pleasing moment after another, from the breathtaking vocal acrobatics of Abigaille, the soprano slave girl masquerading as Nabucco's daughter, to the famous chorus of the Hebrew prisoners, ''Va, pensiero,'' which in European productions often has the whole audience singing along. (Even at the Met, where encores are usually frowned on, James Levine gave this chorus its near-obligatory repeat.)
Helping along the visceral, lowbrow thrill was the way John Napier's unwieldy revolving set thrust the singers into the proscenium, blasting a wall of sound into the auditorium. Only Mr. Levine's polish and sometimes slow tempi lent some refinement to the circus atmosphere.
He seemed to communicate that all music is beautiful music worth savoring; he never went for the cheap thrill. Even the moment when lightning strikes Nabucco unfolded with a sense of deliberation, as if God gave thoughtful consideration before punishing the blasphemer. Another high point was Andrea Gruber's impressive Abigaille. This role is a killer, calling for a big range, coloratura and a huge sound; and Ms. Gruber had it all. Her voice grabbed the ear with its presence and solidity, from a deep, rich low to a generally secure and sizable top.
At her best -- and there was a lot of best on Monday, particularly in the first act -- her voice retained that character, generating an excitement that made you want to listen more. Ms. Gruber has done Turandot and Abigaille at the Met this season, two of the hardest roles in the repertory, and pulled both off with flair; and at 37 this kind of big voice is just coming into its own. Don't miss her.
The rest of the cast also sang loudly, with varying degrees of finesse. Wendy White turned in another professional performance as Fenena, Nabucco's real daughter; as her lover, Ismaele, Francisco Casanova made a fine tenor sound that was somehow not as exciting as it could be. Samuel Ramey as Zaccaria had a big wobble to his dry voice, but he was experienced enough, and musician enough, to sing through his shortcomings. A weak link was Frederick Burchinal, a muted Nabucco with rather approximate pitch.
Nabucco's music at the end of Act I in particular exposes a trait of much bel canto and early Verdi opera: the words speak of death and mass destruction, but the music seems to say that it's all a jolly dance. Given the tone of recent political war rhetoric, this may have been the most topical element of all.
Photos: ''Va, pensiero,'' the chorus of Hebrew prisoners, received an encore after ''Nabucco'' at the Met on Monday. (Jack Vartoogian for The New York Times)(pg. E5); Andrea Gruber and Frederick Burchinal in ''Nabucco.'' (Jack Vartoogian for The New York Times)(pg. E1)
When Franco Zeffirelli's production of Mozart's ''Don Giovanni'' was introduced at the Metropolitan Opera in 1990, the general assessment was that the sets were clunky and the staging clueless. Truth to tell, few officials at the company disagreed. Rather than tossing it out and staring over, the Met totally revamped the production to open the 2000-1 season.
Mr. Zeffirelli's sets, dominated by gigantic columns that awkwardly slid sideways and grim painted drops, were retained. But new lighting was devised, new costumes were designed, and the imaginative director Stephen Lawless, working with a superb cast headed by Bryn Terfel in the title role and Renée Fleming as Donna Anna, completely restaged the opera. With James Levine presiding from the pit, the revival was a triumph. It even looked great when broadcast later on public television.
When the Met concentrates talent and resources on a production so successfully, it's hard to recreate the achievement later with a different cast and conductor, however eminent. On Friday night the Met brought its ''Don Giovanni'' back, this time with the baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, an acclaimed Don, singing the role for the first time at the house. Though the cast, with one exception, was admirable and the overall performance was effective, the performance lacked the intensity and focus that made the restaged production so special two years ago.
Mr. Hvorostovsky was the most elegant Don Giovanni imaginable. With his flowing white mane, lanky agility and subdued charisma, he was an unflappably aristocratic seducer. The alluring qualities of his voice, one of the most distinctive in opera, were there to marvel at: the silken-smooth legato phrasing, the tonal richness, the dusky colorings of his middle and lower ranges. When he sang the Don's serenade below Donna Elvira's balcony in Act II, he forgot all about his intended victim (Elvira's young maid) and turned his subtle charms directly on the audience. It worked. His singing was disarmingly sensual.
Mr. Hvorostovsky doesn't have an enormous sound, and he wisely knows better than to force it. Yet at times there was a curiously covered, almost muffled quality to his singing.
In the end his performance had too much elegance and too little menace. The dynamic, robust-voiced bass-baritone Richard Bernstein brought more danger and volatility to the role of Leporello, the Don's hapless servant. Perhaps the impact of Mr. Hvorostovsky's Don Giovanni would be greater in a smaller house.
Barbara Frittoli was a radiant Donna Anna. In recent years this fine Italian lyric soprano has been singing vocally weightier roles like Verdi's Luisa Miller and Leonora in ''Il Trovatore.'' Perhaps that explains the slightly rougher quality that has crept into her sound. Still, her singing was full-bodied, clear and expressive.
The tenor Michael Schade was a lyrically ardent Don Ottavio. The sweet-voice soprano Rebecca Evans and the promising young bass-baritone Oren Gradus, who displayed a husky voice and hardy stage presence, were charming as Zerlina and Masetto. The bass Eric Halfvarson made an imposing Commendatore.
As Donna Elvira, Carol Vaness had a rough night. As always, she gave an impassioned and committed performance. You sensed a clear musical intention behind every phrase. But Ms. Vaness, who began her career as a lovely lyric soprano, has been pushing her voice hard for many years in roles like Salome and Lady Macbeth, and her singing was marred by shrill tone and wobbling vibrato.
The French conductor Sylvain Cambreling, a respected figure in European opera, led a finely textured and vividly colored performance. Still it just did not match the lithe, incisive and vibrant account of the score that the Met orchestra delivered under Mr. Levine two seasons ago for the revamped revival.
The Met's recent revival of Jürgen Flimm's powerful production of Beethoven's ''Fidelio,'' another highlight of the 2000-1 season, was a similar letdown. But revivals of great productions don't always have to be disappointments, as the Met's current presentation of Poulenc's ''Dialogues des Carmélites'' makes clear. With an excellent, involved and mostly young cast, and James Conlon's inspired conducting, John Dexter's 1977 production is more stunning and pertinent than ever. With this ''Don Giovanni,'' though, the company is competing with memories of itself at its best.
Photo: Dmitri Hvorostovsky, foreground, and Eric Halfvarson in ''Don Giovanni.'' (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
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A Rogue by Any Other Name
‘Don Giovanni’ at the Met Opera and in Two Other Stagings
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The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”CreditJulieta Cervantes for The New York Times
Lately, the news has been filled with reports of privileged men, from star athletes to venerated comedians, using their power, in some cases their physical power, to seduce and control women. So, by comparison, the sex-fiend side of the charming Don Giovanni, the title character of Mozart’s most complex opera, can seem not so threatening.
Giovanni’s licentiousness can get lost amid opera’s conventions, especially this work’s opera buffa trappings.
That is especially the case with the British director Michael Grandage’s2011 production for the Metropolitan Opera, which returned on Wednesday night, featuring the dynamic baritone Peter Mattei in the title role, and Alan Gilbert conducting. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who has staked his reputation on bringing contemporary theatrical thinking to the company, has delivered some fresh and compelling new productions. Mr. Grandage’s tame “Don Giovanni,” with its period costumes and static, sliding three-tiered set, is not one of them.
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The Paris National Opera’s less traditional production of “Don Giovanni.”CreditVincent Pontet/Paris National Opera
But two modern, some would say radical, productions slip “Don Giovanni” into grim contemporary contexts: one by the Austrian film director Michael Haneke for the Paris National Opera, which I saw last month; the other by the ingenious Russian theater director Dmitri Tcherniakov for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, which I saw last week. Though very different, these productions compel you to think about how society flounders over dealing with consequential men who menace women.
Mr. Grandage’s staging is fluid and clear. There are some striking visual effects: Giovanni is dispatched to hell amid a near-inferno of shooting flames. And the cast was impressive overall. Mr. Gilbert, who, it was just announced, will step aside as music director of the New York Philharmonic in the summer of 2017, drew a richly detailed and shapely performance from the great Met orchestra. Still, if Mr. Grandage had anything new to say about this Mozart masterpiece, it did not come through in his essentially traditional production.
Five nights earlier, I had attended the Canadian Opera Company’s “Don Giovanni,” the North American premiere run of Mr. Tcherniakov’s staging, a coproduction with the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Teatro Real in Madrid and Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Mr. Tcherniakov, who also designed the set and (with Elena Zaytseva) the costumes, presents “Don Giovanni” as the contemporary story of a rich, extended family living amid the baronial splendor of the Commendatore’s house. All of the action takes place in the wood-paneled sitting room of the mansion, its walls lined with books, and vases of flowers everywhere.
In a reading of the opera that some traditionalists may find a concept-driven distortion, Mr. Tcherniakov invents familial links between some of the characters, relationships made explicit in the program. In the libretto, Donna Elvira thinks herself Giovanni’s wife, asserting that he had “declared” her as such, only to abandon her cruelly. In this staging, Elvira is definitely his wife, an embittered woman who, while still obsessed with Giovanni, sees right through him.
And Donna Anna, the Commendatore’s daughter, who fights off the lecherous Giovanni in the opening scene, is here made Elvira’s cousin. Zerlina is no mere country lass, but Donna Anna’s impressionable daughter from a previous marriage, hence the Commendatore’s granddaughter. Donna Anna’s new fiancé, Don Ottavio, seems unsure of his place in this dysfunctional family. And Leporello? He’s a young relative of the Commendatore’s, living in the house, which lends ambiguity to his relationship with Giovanni, his supposed boss.
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Russell Braun as a rationalizing, contemporary Don Giovanni in the Canadian Opera Company production.CreditMichael Cooper/COC
In this production (running through Feb. 21), the muscular-voiced Canadian baritone Russell Braun plays Giovanni as middle-aged and wasted, someone trying to convince himself that by luring women into sex, he will liberate them from absurd codes of proper behavior and protocols of entitlement.
The current Paris National Opera production (through next Saturday), first presented there in 2006, also tries to make the power relationships and sexual intrigue in the opera more immediate by placing the story in the sleek headquarters of a corporate enterprise. All the action occurs on one floor of the building, with a row of offices opposite a curved wall of picture windows offering spectacular city views. Giovanni, sung by the dynamic bass-baritone Erwin Schrott, is the company’s self-made, rapacious chief executive; the Commendatore, its clueless patron. Mr. Tcherniakov, who triumphed at the Met last season with his production of Borodin’s “Prince Igor,” may go to extremes in his interpretation of “Giovanni.” Yet every element is based on what seems like an acute reading of the libretto and the music. He almost eliminates the opera’s supernatural strands. Giovanni is subject to chest pains. And he is not consumed by hellish furies, but frightened to near-death by family members, who summon him to a kind of intervention. It would appear that they have hired someone to portray the dead Commendatore and terrify Giovanni, who winds up reeling on the floor.
Mr. Tcherniakov elicits nuanced performances from a compelling cast, especially the bright-voiced soprano Jane Archibald as a restless, conflicted Donna Anna, and the veteran tenor Michael Schade as an intriguingly aloof Don Ottavio. The conductor Michael Hofstetter led a grave, ominous account of the score.
Though the Met’s production is timid, this performance was, overall, the best sung, conducted and played of the three. Mr. Mattei is a commanding Giovanni: tall, impetuous and charged with sexuality: He can bend a phrase with seductive legato.
Mr. Mattei is well matched with the Leporello of the vibrant bass-baritoneLuca Pisaroni. He conveys the character’s bungling awkwardness. Yet Mr. Pisaroni’s natural charm comes through, lending Leporello a touch of swagger. Elza van den Heever, following her outstanding Met debut in 2012 as Elizabeth in Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda,” is back as a vocally splendid and poignantly confused Donna Anna. Her singing is agile and focused, yet luminous and penetrating.
Making his Met debut, the Russian tenor Dmitry Korchak brings a warm and ardent though periodically insecure voice to Ottavio. It took me some time to warm up to the soprano Emma Bell as Donna Elvira. Now and then, she scooped up to high notes and sounded hard-edged. Still, she has a sizable voice and sang the demanding role fearlessly. The appealing Kate Lindsey as Zerlina, the husky-voiced Adam Plachetka (another Met debut) as Masetto, and the veteran James Morris as the Commendatore all did strong work.
For Mr. Gilbert, this Mozart run follows his impressive house debut in 2008 conducting John Adams’s “Doctor Atomic.” He conveyed the arc of Mozart’s score. Tempos were sometimes reined in, sometimes prodded. Yet an organic entity emerged: The orchestra played superbly.
I was reluctant to attend the Metropolitan Opera's revival of Beethoven's ''Fidelio'' on Saturday night. I didn't want to muddle my memories of Jürgen Flimm's gripping production, introduced two years ago, which also offered James Levine's magnificent account of the score and a peerless cast headed by Karita Mattila, Ben Heppner and René Pape. How would things fare with a different conductor, Peter Schneider, and a cast that, at least on paper, seemed not as strong?
Though the revival lacks the focus and punch of the original, the production is still remarkable, and the cast, headed by the soprano Waltraud Meier as Leonore and the tenor Johan Botha as Florestan, did honorable work. Mr. Flimm spent nearly two weeks in rehearsal with the singers, and it shows.
Though this opera pulsates with inspired music, its dramaturgy is so vague that the characters can easily seem two-dimensional. Florestan, a Spanish nobleman, referred to once as ''the hero who dared to speak the truth,'' though what truth this is we never learn, is being held as a political prisoner in the secret dungeon of a jail near Seville. His all-sacrificing wife, Leonore, suspecting his whereabouts, has disguised herself as a young man, called Fidelio, and taken a job at the prison as assistant to Rocco, the jailer.
Mr. Flimm makes a virtue of the opera's vagueness, placing the story in some emblematic, mid-20th-century country where a repressive military is gaining control in the face of a feckless aristocracy. To make the brutality of the opera real, Mr. Flimm; the set designer, Robert Israel; and the costume designer, Florence von Gerkan, fill the stage with powerfully specific imagery: a prison courtyard encircled by massive gray walls; three tiers of cells through which we see prisoners clad in eerie white uniforms, and a dank subterranean cellar where Florestan is kept in clanking chains.
Mr. Flimm has a risk-taking colleague in Ms. Meier, who plausibly conveys the body language of an awkward young man. Though she is a great and involving artist, years of tackling the dramatic Wagnerian soprano repertory have left some rough patches and stridency in her voice. Still, Ms. Meier's singing was noble and compelling.
Though Mr. Botha boasts an enormous voice with clarion high notes, he can be a stodgy singer, which must be partly attributable to his size. This Florestan does not look like someone who has been kept on starvation rations for two years. But Mr. Flimm drew surprising intensity out of him. The bass Matti Salminen brought his booming voice and hearty stage presence to his portrayal of Rocco. The soprano Hei-Kyung Hong sang radiantly and looked girlish as Marzelline, who unwittingly falls for Fidelio. The baritone Richard Paul Fink, though a little nasal-toned, was an oily Don Pizarro, the corrupt prison governor. The robust baritone Alan Held looked aptly clueless as Don Fernando, the minister of state, who arrives in a tailored suit just in time, thanks to Leonore's heroism, to right the wrongs.
Two years ago Mr. Levine's achievement was enhanced by the general excitement (and extra rehearsal time) attending a new production. Mr. Schneider, an eminent opera conductor in Europe, led an effectively paced and insightful performance that should gain some needed technical solidity as the run continues through Dec. 7. And the jubilant final scene, when the released prisoners are reunited with their motley-clothed families as the chorus sings Beethoven's heady music, is truly something to see.
Photo: Waltraud Meier, left, and Johan Botha in the Metropolitan's production of ''Fidelio.'' (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
