Thursday, April 5, 2012

Norma 11/30/2007

Hasmik Papian (Norma) and Franco Farina (Pollione) [Photo: Beatriz Schiller]
19 Nov 2007

Norma returns to the Met

The bel canto era, insofar as the contemporary public considers it at all, is usually thought of as the golden age of vocal beauty for its own sake.
Vincenzo Bellini: Norma
Metropolitan Opera, 12 and 16 November 2007
Hasmik Papian (Norma), Dolora Zajick (Adalgisa), Franco Farina (Pollione), Vitalij Kowaljow (Oroveso). Conducted by Maurizio Benini. Production by John Copley

Above: Hasmik Papian (Norma) and Franco Farina (Pollione)
All photos by Beatriz Schiller courtesy of Metropolitan Opera
 
It was certainly an era when the artist’s use of the voice to create character and drama were of the highest value, but the operas that survive (very few half a century ago, quite a few now), though the melodies are ravishing, call for singers who can bring them to life emotionally — they are never just vocal exercises for songbirds.
In the midst of that era, in 1831, Bellini’s Normawas created — by Giuditta Pasta, one of the most renowned singing actresses of her time, who had created Donizetti’s raging Anna Bolena and Bellini’s pathetic Sonnambula in the two years before Norma. And Norma is a curiosity in its era (more apparently now than at the time, when classical tragedies were often being turned into operas), calling as it does on the outsize character and emotional spectrum of a classical heroine: a Medea not just angry but deeply in love, a Phaedra who must also be a hypocritical politician and an edgy friend, a Clytemnestra wracked by jealousy and maternal misgiving.
Sopranos used to have a hearty respect for Norma — they didn’t take it on unless they were sure. Canny divas like Flagstad, Tebaldi and Price turned it down when management offered. Fewer ladies sang the role in eighty years at the Old Met than have attempted it in a mere forty at the New Met — the reason being that Callas made it sound supremely worth trying (it was her favorite role), while Sutherland and Caballe made it sound easy to sing; so that all kinds of singers took it on who had no business doing so. It’s a killer, demanding not only effortless floating tones and stunning coloratura on her first appearance (plus the ability to blend with the other soprano’s coloratura later on), but the dramatic capacity to hold an audience through the solo scene of attempted infanticide, the power to lead the war chorus, the concentrated fury of the duet with Pollione, and the authority to carry the superb finale.
The Met revives it nowadays, one gets the feeling, because audiences know the many Callas recordings (or Sutherland’s, or Caballe’s spectacular video from Orange), not because they have a real exemplar of the role to sing it. And without a Norma, you have pretty tunes but you haven’t really got aNorma.
The current revival began with Hasmik Papian in the role and is slated to continue with Maria Guleghina. After her Lady Macbeth — exciting and loud and flamboyantly acted, but with the ornaments fudged or flubbed — I have my doubts that Guleghina can handle this. Still, she will certainly play it; it will be a necessary event for all opera lovers sorry they weren’t in Lakehurst the night the Hindenburg landed. The casting of Papian, who has sung Norma to some acclaim in Washington and Toronto and whose Met Aidawas impressive, spinning controlled pianissimi better than any Met Aida has in twenty years, gave one hope for her Norma, in spite of deficiencies those performances revealed in her dramatic imagination.
Such deficiencies necessarily undermine any well-sung Norma, but if the director is aware of them, appreciates a singer’s talents and weaknesses, they need not kill it. Papian is a handsome woman with a good figure; she can move on stage; and her tendency to fall back on the sort of antique dramatic gestures one sees in nineteenth-century engravings (Giuditta Pasta would recognize all of them, probably invented some of them) is not necessarily wrong for this role. Sutherland had little stage instinct, heaven knows, but she was a distinct diva presence in the part: no one wanted to tangle with this woman, and the vocalism was sublime enough to pull it off. Papian needs someone to walk her through the role, someone who really gets both Papian and Norma — she gives sympathetic performances on well-directed DVDs — but left to her own devices, she does not know how to join these attitudes into a woman torn by the requirements of priestess, lover, mother, friend, patriot, heroine: Papian only portrays a singer in search of a good spot on the stage.
Her vocalism, at least on the first two nights, did not justify her choice for this role either. Bereft of brilliant high notes, she took the lower choices — which are valid if one makes something of them — and she made pleasing use of grace notes in the “Vieni a me ritorna,” without, however, ornamenting the repeat. (What’s the point of repeating a cabaletta if you don’t vary it, make it individual?) She grew steadily more in command as the evening progressed, but she showed no sign of becoming Norma, the person Bellini invented, until the final furious duet with Pollione when gleaming metal furled from her throat, displaying a high register and a command that had no precedent all evening. Norma is not an opera for a diva who takes an act and a half to warm up to it, and if Papian ever truly was one, that time seems to have passed. (The only soprano of this generation whose Norma — she has never sung it — would arouse my real interest based on her evident abilities would be Krassimira Stoyanova: a fine actress and, based on her Anna Bolena, one able to sing brilliant coloratura expressing genuine rage.)
The Adalgisa of the evening was Dolora Zajick, who would make an interesting Norma. She, too, would sing it low, but she would sing it with the style and personality the part calls for — she would eat her Adalgisa alive, which no Norma would ever manage with Zajick’s Adalgisa. Well known and well loved for her powerhouse mezzo, a fiery Amneris who sadly has not been able to persuade the Met to trust her with such operas as Tchaikovsky’s Maid of Orleans (which she has sung in many venues, always triumphantly) or Donizetti’s La Favorite (which she could easily bring off, with the right tenor), Zajick scales her big voice down for the demands of bel canto style. Indeed, her grasp of that style, of the evenness and delicacy required, were lessons Papian could study with profit. (Zajick had similarly shown up a caterwauling Jane Eaglen when the production was new.)
Scene_with_Papian_as_Norma_.pngScene with Hasmik Papian as Norma
Pollione was Franco Farina, a handsome burly figure but an uneven singer. In fact, he gave more pleasure in this role than he has in others — either Bellini suits him or he’s growing up. There were honeyed phrases in his first aria, and when a line lay too high for him (this varied from night to night, apparently as he gauged his chances of reaching a C), he interpolated an attractive variation on Bellini’s melody instead — a practice the bel canto era would certainly have regarded with approval. He matched Papian’s passion in their final duet and looked genuinely thunderstruck when she proclaimed her guilt to her people. If the money notes come more easily and he continues to focus on flowing line, he could be a real asset in roles like Radames and Riccardo; he has power, and he doesn’t bark.
Vitalij Kowaljow made gorgeous sounds in the thankless part of Oroveso; one day, when he is the house’s reigning King Philip, we will remember his long apprenticeship. The tension I always feel at any performance of Norma — am I going to want to murder the children before she gets around to it? — kept me on pins till the final scene, when the already annoying tots appeared quite gratuitously. Dammi il ferro. (I don’t advise them to stick around when Guleghina arrives.)
Maurizio Benini led a swift-paced, bang-up account of the score. There were places that might have been more sensitive to emotional movement, and balances in the orchestra that favored the oom-pah-pah bass line over melodic flavor, but there was little chance of anyone going to sleep. John Conklin’s sets, with their profusion of coffee tables and an opening scene set in what appeared to be a glossy-floored Druidic art gallery displaying a show of overfed Giacomettis, generally managed to stay out of everyone’s way. Now if only a Pasta or Callas or Ponselle had cared to grab the center stage.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

La Traviata 10/29/2003


Review: ‘La Traviata’



The phrase "E strano..." recurs at key moments in "La Traviata," and the striking achievement of the Metropolitan Opera's season-opening revival of Verdi's opera was to make this familiar tale seem strano -- strange -- again, even amid the stuffy, overupholstered trappings of Franco Zeffirelli's much-maligned 1998 production.



The phrase “E strano…” recurs at key moments in “La Traviata,” and the striking achievement of the Metropolitan Opera’s season-opening revival of Verdi’s opera was to make this familiar tale seem strano – strange — again, even amid the stuffy, overupholstered trappings of Franco Zeffirelli’s much-maligned 1998 production.
The saga of the courtesan with a bad cough has been recycled endlessly in the century and a half since Alexandre Dumas fils gave immortal life to her in his novel “La Dame aux Camelias.” She has long since ceased to resemble a plausible human being — if ever she did — and entered the pantheon of theatrical cliches. She’s most often seen these days on opera stages, in the form of Violetta Valery. So it was strange, moving, even unsettling to witness Renee Fleming breathing unforgettable humanity into the character, in a performance of great psychological fluency and emotional clarity. Had she not been spinning out one gorgeous phrase after another, you might almost have forgotten that she was singing.
The story of Fleming’s withdrawal from the production’s premiere back in ’98 has entered opera lore. At the time she seemed to get better notices for withdrawing than her replacement did for singing. Some critics felt that this celebrated Mozart and Strauss singer would risk damaging her voice by undertaking this famously challenging role, which requires not just the kind of smooth legato singing that Fleming was renowned for but also dazzling coloratura.
Whether Fleming would have received back then the rapturous notices for her singing that greeted her last week is obviously impossible to say. But she surely couldn’t have delivered the theatrical performance she is giving now: In its delicacy and intricacy, it was clearly the work of a woman who had lived with the role in her heart, if not in her voice, for many years.
That daunting first act, for instance, is often just a showcase for exciting vocalizing, but Fleming swiftly brought the audience into the conflicted soul of Violetta, revealing moment by moment the shifting sensations behind the singing. Amused but eventually unsettled by the slightly gauche ardency of Ramon Vargas’ Alfredo (sung with bright, pure tone), the sensitive, yearning Violetta gradually emerged from behind the flashing eyes and flirting gestures. The coloratura runs of “Sempre libera,” in which Violetta vows to resist the allure of romance and dedicate herself to a life of sensual pleasure, were not just a display of giddy bravado but the desperation-tinged effusions of a woman trying to convince herself of something she knows to be a lie. Violetta’s fear of being drawn into emotional engagement with life, which she knows to be slipping out of her grasp, was made touchingly clear.
The second act, in which Alfredo’s father Giorgio, played by the redoubtable Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovksy, impores Violetta to leave Alfredo to save the family from disgrace, was still more affecting. Fleming and Hvorostovksy may well possess the two most purely beautiful voices in opera today, and they blended together gorgeously in the aching, long-lined duet in which Violetta promises to give up Alfredo and gently implores Germont to let her sacrifice be known to the more fortunate girl, Alfredo’s sister, for whom she is making it. The conducting of Valery Gergiev, perhaps too propulsive at times in the first act, was attentive to his singers in this musically rich scene, and for the remainder of the evening.
The price Violetta has paid for her selflessness was signaled with eerie simplicity at the top of the final act, when she lies dying in her musty boudoir. (Musty but bi-level, in the most outlandishly unnecessary touch of Zeffirelli’s production.) Fleming scaled back the plushness of her voice, adding a hollow inflection that made clear how much energy disease and disappointment had drained out of Violetta. Tonal richness slowly returned as Violetta bid farewell to life in an exquisitely sung “Addio del passato,” but with haunting gasps sometimes punctuating the pianissimo phrases as the character seemed to close in on herself permanently.
Most piteous of all was Violetta’s last, delusional lunge toward life, as the voice surged upward with sudden vibrancy again and she hurried excitedly between Alfredo and Giorgio. Here was yet another Violetta, one we’d never seen before: a hopeful, eager, uncalculating young girl. Her subsequent collapse seemed all the more shocking. It brought home with painful force the sad inevitability — thestrange inevitability — of life ceasing to exist, of the song of experience being suddenly stilled.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Nabucco Met 3/17/2003

OPERA REVIEW; A Tyrant In Babylon Makes War Amid Love

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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)

Monday, April 2, 2012

Don Giovanni Met 1/1/2003

MET OPERA REVIEW

MET OPERA REVIEW; A Seducer In a Revival Of a Revival

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Correction Appended
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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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 fiancĂ©, 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.