Doing Our Best to Make Things Jolly

I went to see the live matinee HD broadcast of Renee Fleming and Dmitry Hvorostovsky in the Met’s Eugene Onegin at my local movie theater.

It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.  If I hadn’t already decided earlier this year that I was pretty interested in opera, this definitely would have made it happen.  Hvorostovsky has been, only through recordings, my favorite singer and vocal idol, and I was excited for a chance to see him actually perform a role.  Various reviews I’ve read say things like, “this is the role he was born to play,” which sounds pretty plausible to me.  He was vocally as incredible as I would have hoped (and wow, he really just does have some ridiculously amazing breath support), but I didn’t know he would be as dramatically phenomenal as he was.  There’s a stereotype of opera singers as unable to act, and sometimes I can see why — the Met Puritani (Netrebko excepted) comes to mind — but this production exhibited truly phenomenal acting as well as singing.  As in, literally among the best acting I’ve ever seen in any medium.  I don’t know how you’d make it better.

I know (barely) enough about the opera world at this point to know that Renee Fleming is something of a controversial performer, and that at least a significant minority (maybe more?) of fans and critics don’t care for her.  This was my first time seeing her (assuming television Mormon Christmas specials don’t count), but I thought she was superb.  I took a little while to warm up to her, and there was a minute about halfway through her letter-wring aria when I was bored.  I’m surprised at myself for that minute now, in retrospect — I suspect my mind just wandered.  By the end of the aria I realized that it was amazing.  Her final scene with Onegin seemed to me to be perfection.
The other thing that really struck me about this Onegin was just how powerful a story it is.  I didn’t feel at all like what seems to be the prototype in non-comic opera.  People aren’t killing lovers in fits of rage, or slowly and inevitably dying while savoring last moments of love.  This was just a realistic and sad and excellent love story, where we relate to all the characters, and all the decisions, and see how they lead to the very sad, but not tragic, ending.  Tchaikovsky (I spelled it right on my first try!  Rule!) adapted the opera from a verse novel, which I’m sure was superb.

At this moment, Eugene Onegin is my favorite opera. But I know that I was lucky enough to see a phenomenal production of it, and also that there is so very, very much left for me to explore and discover.

My friend Lauren is a musicology student at Yale; she invited me to see the Yale Opera production of Puccini’s La Boheme. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

I was surprised when I looked at the cast list and saw Sara Jakubiak’s name for Mimi. I knew Sara back in Midland; we were in a production of H.M.S. Pinafore together in 2000. (Once I have that particular bit of archive up I’ll link to it here!) She was excellent back then; I’m pleased to see that her singing career is taking off. Sadly, I didn’t see her in this production, which was dual-cast; I saw the other Mimi.

Caroline, my friend from college, was playing the violin in the pit.
Here are pictures from the program. I particularly like the program cover.

EDIT: My scanner is being tempermental; here is just the cover and my ticket stub; I’ll include a few more pages, including the cast list, later.

The second of what I hope will be many, many lifetime trips to the Met was to see Verdi’s La Traviata. It was conducted by Carlo Rizzi, and featured soprano Mary Dunleavy and tenor Wookyung Kim. I found it to be an awesome experience. The world of opera is still very new to me, and I don’t yet feel expert enough to offer much by way of useful opinion, either about the productions themselves or about the singers. I think I can feel my taste gradually cultivating, but I’m not there yet. I hope that eventually, I’ll come home from the opera and write in-depth reviews, the way I do when I come home from seeing some Gilbert & Sullivan. There is so much to learn and know! It is exciting.

But I meant to be talking about this production of La Traviata. Like most Americans, I’ve been peripherally exposed to many of the famous opera themes in various out-of-contexts, including television commercials and Bugs Bunny cartoons. I didn’t realize how many of the familiar tunes come from Traviata.

I knew that Moulin Rouge was based on Traviata, but I didn’t realize how closely it remained; I pretty much recognized scene by scene.

I feel like I should have more to say about this, but nothing’s coming out right now. Maybe later. In the meantime, here are some pictures.

I went to see the Met’s I Puritani at my local movie theater. However, there were weird technical difficulties, and my friend and I ended up leaving late in the first Act and getting a refund. The screen blanked on us for ten minutes or so, and they had to start it up about half an hour earlier from where we’d been, and we just didn’t want to sit through that duplicate material to wait for the rest of the opera; it was a long evening anyway.

In the 45 minutes or so that I saw, though, I did get a few impressions. Anna Netrebko, singing Elvira, pretty much ruled. I thought she was phenomenal. She also appeared to be the only member of the cast who was doing any acting; that was weird. I felt bad for her; she was emoting like crazy to her tenor, who never even made eye contact with her. I guess you can get away with that when you’re performing at the Met; people can’t see your eyes. But when you’re being broadcast around the world in hi-def, it’s pretty glaringly noticable.

God, some of the staging was horrific. Slow, stationary, and unmotivated. I get the idea of the music being the highest priority, but still. There’s a reason this is a staged opera; I can listen to it on my ipod at home. Which, incidentally, I’m doing right now. Some of the music is very fine.

I am sorry I missed the rest of it; the last thing I saw was the duel between Riccardo and Talbot. But seriously: how cool is it that you can tell just by the names which one is the heroic tenor and which one is the dastardly baritone?

I saw the NYGASP Yeomen of the Guard at City Center. I loved it. My full review is here.
Here’s the cast page from the program (click for full size):

Andi gave me a backstage tour before the show, which was highly awesome.

Stephen Quint, who gave a very fine Jack Point, links to reviews here and here.

The opening night of this production of Yeomen, Shana Farr stepped in for Laurelyn Watson-Chase’s Elsie — everyone I’ve spoken to said she was excellent.  In the production I saw, we had Laurelyn for real; I know first-hand that she was excellent.  Among the best I’ve ever seen.

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