[For the 2011 telecast go here.]
The Met’s HD transmission (February 7, 2009) of Donizetti’s romantic melodrama Lucia Di Lammermoor showed both the best and worst of what this medium (televised opera) offers. Both result from the audience seeing what’s happening on stage. Let’s get the worst over with right away. Mary Zimmerman directed this production. It was her first outing as an opera director. It’s not going to be her last. She’s got La Sonnambula coming up later in this Met season.
Ms Zimmerman moved the opera’s period from the 17th century to the 19th for the sole reason of ruining the opera’s great sextet. The action is supposed to stop during this ensemble as the characters express their emotional turmoil in a glorious set piece. Zimmerman had the brilliant idea of introducing a photographer who groups five of the six in a wedding portrait. These five are moved around while they’re singing the great ensemble. Edgardo, of course, is excluded. When the sextet ends a flash goes off. If the opera were set when it’s supposed to be we couldn’t have had this adventitious photographer. Zimmerman’s imposition was moronic, idiotic, stupid, fatuous, asinine, witless, screwy, inane, ditzy, absurd, nutty, loony, bizarre… Incompetent directors are the norm in opera, but they don’t often intrude on the music. There was laughter during the sextet.
Also muddle headed was having a physician complete with a black bag give Lucia an injection towards the end of the Mad Scene. The real blame for this intrusion on the score belongs to the conductors who allowed it – James Levine in 2007 and Marco Armiliato in this run. Can you imagine Arturo Toscanini allowing a nudnik like Zimmerman and her photographer anywhere near any of his Lucias? Capital punishment for this musical murder is not a stretch. Enough about the director. I’ll get another chance to kick her around next month.
What was good about this production was the attractiveness and dramatic intensity of it’s principals – all Slavs. Anna Netrebko back from maternity leave is still beautiful though, with about 20 more pounds than ante-partum, she looks more like a young matron than an ingénue. Her voice is richer than when I last heard her; maybe it’s all that oxytocin or the extra weight. Regardless, her fulsome sound dictates her approach to one of opera’s seminal roles. She accentuates the dramatic characteristics of the doomed Lucia. Her approach downplays the runs and high notes that typify the usual portrayal of this role. Her Lucia is most like Callas’s. Her vocal and physical beauty combined with her great strength as an actress made her a powerful and moving heroine. It was a great performance.
In the first act “Regnava nel silenzo” complete with a live “dead” girl and “Quando, rapito in estasi” gained much from seeing Netrebko as well as hearing her. Gary Halvorson’s video direction had so many really close close-ups that I feared he would bring out an electron microscope before the performance ended. Netrebko gave a sense of the vulnerability that would end in madness in this scene. “Verrano a te” (I’ll come to the tenor part in a moment) one of opera’s most inspired and beautiful melodies was so good that it required a curtain call instead of a cut to the backstage ant hill of a gigantic scene change that killed all suspension of disbelief. Spending an intermission looking at a factory is not appropriate for a visit to the opera even if it is in a remote location. The Met should rethink its intermissions.
The first scene of Act 2 where Enrico convinces Lucia to marry the rich but witless Arturo, soon the be the late Arturo, was also played for maximum dramatic effect. Lucia may be a bel canto opera, but it also has the most dramatic thrust and power of its genre. It’s no accident that Verdi’s Il Trovatore, which marked the end of this type of Italian opera had the same librettist. And even Verdi for all his genius and power couldn’t top Lucia though he could match it.
The Mad Scene was 20 minutes of dramatic tension, except for the medical intrusion. Netrebko, accompanied for part of the scene by a glass harmonica was riveting. As I said, this was not the Lucia of Melba or Tettrazini. There was not a basket of runs, trills, staccati, and vocal ornaments. Everything she sang was intended to draw you into the heroine’s awful descent to madness. I’ve been watching Lucia for more than 50 years and my reaction to most of the Mad Scenes I’ve seen (this doesn’t include the one time I saw Callas in the role as well as several others) has been impatience – let’s get it over so we can see what the tenor can do with opera’s moving last scene. Netrebko’s acting was as integral to her performance as her singing. If you were just listening you lost at least half of her riveting performance.
Roland Villazon was scheduled to sing Edgardo. He sang two performances in this run with Netrebko and then withdrew because of “illness.” He’s not ill his voice is broken. He hasn’t been right since he returned from his six month rest stop. If his voice can’t be fixed it will be a terrible loss for opera.
Piotr Beczala as the Duke in Rigoletto
He was replaced by the Polish tenor Piotr Beczala. Beczala made his Met debut as the Duke in Rigoletto at the end of 2006. He sang Edgardo with Diana Damrau in seven Lucias last October. This performance was his 13th with the company. A lucky number as things turned out. The 42 year old tenor (he looks 10 years younger) has a focused lyric tenor that is secure throughout its range. His singing was lovely and was well received. The opera’s concluding scene which is essentially one long solo for the tenor was well sung and moving. It was tough having to follow such an effective Mad Scene, yet he managed to capture the audience’s attention. Edgardo is about as demanding a role as he should sing. If he stays in the lyric repertoire he can have a major career.
Baritone Mariusz Kwiecien, another Pole, actually managed to make something out of Enrico. A second rank baritone usually gets this part and gets lost with all the attention focused on the doomed lovers. Kwiecien has a dark, but not hefty, baritone which he pushed a little too hard. He was a convincing villain. He wishes to take on newer roles. I assume that means Verdi roles. He has the sound for those roles, but he’ll need to produce his tone with a little less stress. He also held the high note too long at the end of his duet with Lucia. This is the note that caused Maria Callas to ruin Enzo Sordello’s Met career after she cracked on her high note and he held his (which follows the soprano’s).
Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov did as much as possible with Raimondo. He has a well controlled lyric voice. I’d like to hear him in a bigger part. Wearing a jeweled cross it’s difficult to tell what Christian denomination he represented – certainly not Scottish Presbyterian. He also held a high note too long – just before Lucia starts the Mad Scene.
This production opened the conventional cuts in Lucia – most notably the duet between Lucia and Raimundo in the second act and and the Wolf’s Crag scene at the beginning of the third act. While restoring this music is harmless it’s not up to the standard of the rest of the work. Opening the cuts does make the dramatic continuity clearer.
Marco Armiliato conducted with more vigor than he showed leading Adriana Lecouvreur the previous evening. Perhaps the geriatric context of that performance explains his stultifyingly soporific conducting. In Lucia he was his usual vigorous self. Even with the directorial missteps, this was one of the best HD broadcasts in this series.
I’m glad to find someone else who hates all those backstage bits as much as I do. Even worse is when they have the camera show the singers from behind–breaking the fourth wall so we see the audience, and totally destroying the suspension of disbelief.
The camera work for most of these HD operas has been awkward at best. Too often, we are slammed with close-ups (which you aptly describe above) and have no opportunity to see the interesting staging as it is meant to be seen, as a whole. La Damnation de Faust and Orfeo ed Euridice were both botched.
I enjoyed the vigor of the performances in Lucia, especially the scene in which Edgardo and Enrico are singing full force at each other expressing their intent to kill each other. These singers gave their all.
The last two songs of the opera are my favorites. Beczala did them justice. He may not have the ability to be tender while strong that Pavarotti did, but he was secure with all the notes, and sang his heart out.
The ghosts were silly, and I didn’t even recognize Netrebko as a ghost. Her character is dead then; that scene is supposed to be all about Edgardo, and the ghost was trying to usurp it, so I tried not to look at her.
Maybe syringes were in use in the late 19th century, but dosing Lucia with laudanum would have been more correct for the times.
Even so, the beauty and force of the singing in this HD opera performance made it a winner despite all the interference from the production.
I actually watched this performance live in the Met. I agree on all counts. The photographer intrusion during the sextet was at best irritating. This is one the best pieces of music in the entire opera, making a mockery out of it is unforgivable. On the other hand, Netrebko was absolutely fantastic. I was surprised to read several reviews, characterizing her performance as “disappointing” citing lack of “extreme coloratura fireworks”. Her performance conveyed the drama of the recent murderess losing her sanity like no other. Her pianissimo sounded incredibly reach filled with strength and tenderness. She didn’t show off her vocal power which only added to the drama and realism of the whole mad scene. Frankly, the story of Lucia is quite silly even for the opera standards. Netrebko’s singing was able to make the drama much more believable.
Piotr Beczala’s singing was solid and fine. Overall, I would give him a B+ for too much sliding up to the high notes, and artificially dramatizing passages in his last aria. Not bad, but not perfect. I was really surprised that audience gave a louder ovation to Beczala than to Netrebko who was beyond excellence! Thanks for the lovely review!
Loved back stage scenes and interviews as did everyone in the cinema I attended.
Hated irritating actions of photographer in the sextet – he almost ruined the whole performance for me.
I hate patronising up-dating. Young people and children love to see sets and costumes appropriate to the time of the drama.
For more on Lucia D Lammermoor go here:
https://medicine-opera.com/2009/02/10/more-on-lucia-di-lammermoor/
We have been watching the Met opera performances in a movie theaters. Lucia De Lammermoor is 3h and 20 minutes long. We went in at 7 PM and got out at 11:30+ PM. People seeing a live performance don’t have to watch more than an hour of unnecessary and non-contributing interviews nor how the stage is being set together with the carepentry noise and then trailers of future operas, Placido Domingo celebration etc etc. All this is in addition to 2 – 20 minutes intermissions.If you have to include these distractions, I suggest, you leave them for after the end of the opera. If one is interested, he/she can stay, if not, one is free to go home.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate and say that everyone who is criticising Zimmerman’s direction WHILST praising Netrebko is an idiot.
I thought the production itself was stunning, the update to the Victorian era worked perfectly, as indeed it was a time when inheritance was still a major social concern for the aristocratic classes. I think it made it more interesting in terms of being staged as a ‘ghost story’, given Victorian ideas about fallen women, insanity, mental health and the world of spirits.
As for the oft-savaged photographer in the sextet – pure genius. Absolute genius. Having seen it staged that way, I cannot possibly begin to imagine it being done any other way. Everything being sung in that sextet is the internal thought of the character (eg Enrico asking himself why he is so restrained from vengeance) and it makes PERFECT sense that whilst thinking these thoughts, they would be going through the motions of the wedding ceremony. How else do you stage that scene? I have seen it performed with characters just standing and singing to themselves – are we to believe that the action of the wedding just stopped while people became introspective for several minutes? Who cares if it raised laughter from the audience. I wasn’t laughing because it was necessarily funny, I laughed because I thought it was witty, clever and inspired.
Now, how DARE you criticise Mary Zimmerman for that and allow yourselves to praise Netrebko for what was, in reality, a very poor first act. Her singing in the first act was nearly as sharp as the knife she yielded in the third. SNAP!! Give me Natalie Dessay ANYTIME.
Lastly, how about we all get some perspective and stop criticising the way the HD broadcasts are filmed. If you want to see it the way you would see it as an audience member, why not get a god-damned ticket and sit in the audience. I personally LOVE the artistry of the filming, the different angles and perspectives, and the cinematic feeling. I am grateful for the opportunity to see them, I won’t criticise the cinema before I criticise the singers.
Rant completed.