MET - Rossini: Armida (Met premiere). Rare must-see gem of masterpiece faithfully played, blandly produced. Triumph for Larry Brownlee. 01.5.10

Regardless how it may turn out, a production of Rossini’s Armida is a great event.

Long before the World Cup, Rossini experimentally wrote a trio for three tenors that the world cup trio, to best of my recollection, never touched. What revivals of Rossini’s Armida there have been have been rare. There was the famous 1952 Firenze revival with Maria Callas, also featuring Mario Filippeschi as Gernando and Ubaldo and a young Gianni Raimondi (in Act 3) as Carlo. Tulsa Opera, of all companies, put it on in 1992, for very unique observation, I recall reading, of Rossini bicentennial that year.

Armida marks Rossini’s only thorough engagement of the supernatural in one of his operas. Third among his Neapolitan opera seria, it served to reopen (after bad fire) the San Carlo in Naples. For this, Rossini expanded upon significantly what he could thus far make an orchestra do. Of the story of a sorceress’s seduction of a Crusades knight, Rossini capitalizes most of all on making this a love story between Armida and Rinaldo. As enhanced by his employ of exotic harmony and color, at peak thus far of intellectual acumen mixed with his passion for Isabella Colbran, who created the part, Rossini crafted this narrative with commanding subtle complexity. Its simplicity of design also becomes arresting to anyone who becomes intimately familiar with this work.

Rossini left open the option of a company having only to hire four tenors instead of six for Armida, by having two tenors double up on available parts. Three of the tenor parts are fiercely difficult, those of Rinaldo, leader of the paladins Goffredo and the jealous Gernando. The Met opted for hiring six tenors and for two earlier performances in the run, had found them. Two cancellations however unfortunately ensued, those of Bruce Ford as Goffredo and then Jose Manuel Zapata as Gernando. John Osborn, here last fall in Houston for other than vocally disastrous Elixir of Love, replaced Ford, cleanly so. Barry Banks added Gernando to being cast as Carlo.

Mary Zimmerman, of last-season La Sonnambula notoriety (for which Natalie Dessay, unqualified, joined her as co-producer) staged this, the Met’s first Armida. Only hinted at, fortunately, was silly post-modern feeling of play within play of Armida, compared with Sonnambula staged as rehearsal thereof. An always mute, cherubic figure in pink, Amor, was first to enter the stage (with sign proclaiming E allora fu), cloyingly becoming annoying right away. Zimmerman gratefully made mostly more deft use of this mute part past the first half hour or so of Armida. Put however two sofas on stage for Act One, set during first Crusade at camp outside Jerusalem, and the set design in light tan with motif of palm trees would be easy to mistake for lobby of a large La Quinta Inn. Deflating so well indeed was the costuming for the maitre-d’ and waiters, oh the knights, to make up Act Onemen’s chorus. The costumes resembled so much quasi plastic thin metal for tank top breastplate over teletubby approximating red flannel. Fortunately solid-with-trim costuming of lead characters, simple along Napoleonic era lines, worked very well, apart from the all slightly loud and coy light magenta among three gowns Fleming wore

Riccardo Frizza, on Met podium with Rigoletto last season, made his Met in HD debut with Armida. Rossini, with very fine orchestra at his disposal in Naples, wrote in much infusion of often exotic color into his scoring to just both good extent for him personally and a little beyond what could be expected at the time, where best serving his purposes both musically and dramatically. It is all by now so subtle to our ears as we hear what was so innovative of him at the time, thus the only sufficient way to listen to Rossini is as though, best we can, with good approximation of how people heard things during his day. Facing what little Frizza saw on stage here, it may have become easy to settle for casual minimum in bringing out the fine color in Rossini’s orchestration.

Frizza led the Met orchestra through this with optimum rhythmic and stylistic clarity for most of it, plus good support for his singers, but often unimaginatively. What he is capable of accomplishing can be heard on recordings of Matilde di Shabran and Fille du regiment (that he also conducted in Houston in 2007). His orchestra in Genoa on Fille du regiment, with horns of Tyrolean flavor, brings out more color than one normally suspects that score calls for.

There were such highlights here as well, particularly with the ballet music in Act 2, with incisive spring and charm to its rhythms and colors, and atmospherically idyllic introduction to open Act 3 Frizza characterized equally well. Solo winds and jousting antiphony of solo horns (in the Sinfonia) gave always of their very best. Rafael Figueroa got pushed for whatever reason through his Act 2 Rinaldo/Armida duet cello solo introduction, for playing proving anything but sensuous or demure. David Chan was hardly more subtle for parallel concertmaster solo in Act Three. Choral work for the men lacked heft for Rossini’s proto-Trovatore writing assigned them. Good handful among nymphs looked the aging butter-and-eggs variety, sounding it as well If these be nymphs, I divert mine eyes from how the used up may appear. With better than streamlined rehearsal time for drawing out the color in Rossini’s scoring, thereby to infuse this music with consistently driving passion, Frizza could have given it his all.

John Osborn delivered first vocal splendors as Goffredo. He managed to find good vocal placement, showing fine rhythm and rhetorical sense for the brilliant writing in front of him. A hint of steel in his voice fit very well too, with no loss of agility. Rossini with this religiously zealous leader of the paladins subtly reveals in Goffredo’s writing what chinks are in his armor in ability or not to resist Armida’s charms. He also had in Giuseppe Cicimarra a singer who was, according to Richard Osborne, dramatically weak. Rossini had had to compose Iago for him and did so in a way widely considered low-key, with exception of several pages therein. Osborne, however, added in perhaps one or two pieces of ornamentation too many, such that took him through a squeal of a high C – little more sign of weakness than Rossini had in mind. Donald Kaasch, from Pesaro (1992), is still less considerably capable of so much embellishment as he throws in. He and Daniele Gatti are also both too lavish about embellishing Rossini’s rhythms.

Yeghishe Manucharyan made an ideally Mozartean Eustazio. As weak a character Eustazio is – as balance to his brother Goffredo and the furious Gernando – he brought fine measure of dignity to the simple part. Barry Banks, stepping in for Jose Zapata, was the new Gernando, proving two-dimensional at it. For numerous lines that start on low notes and also cover a wide range, Banks invested more snarl than tone. A mildly cracked tone emerged for most of this. When he returned, well rested, for his originally scheduled part of Carlo, Banks then emerged at his lyrical best - good and firm too in showing outrage at Rinaldo; he supported Brownlee very capably for centerpiece of Act 3 - an only now on cusp of familiar trio for three tenors. Filling out the rest of that equation was Kobie van Rensburg, quoted in interview of Ubaldo (like Gernando) having been composed for bari-tenor Claudio Bonoldi, proved musically sensitive, adept, but tonally weak, even slightly cracked for ability to provide optimum support during the trio.

Renee Fleming pleasantly proved still capable of singing the title role, apart from several high notes by now a little tight. As said elsewhere, this was a sorceress on low ebb or smolder - denying even of fully open sensual allure to have debauched more than the most impressionable knight. Together with plethora of glottal stops, light guttural attacks, there was an incipient split-second hesitation before taking on many dauntingly virtuosic lines in this part, including during Act One quartet - moment at which we need Armida to make the strong Circe-like impression with which she should indulge us. Such should ring true also for the mesmerizing theme and variations of Act Two, with which to set down pat a complete seduction of Rinaldo. So many aspirates in coloratura only hint at folly the amount of time Fleming has committed to singing bel canto.

Fleming’s acting of Armida also raised questions. Taken with somewhat verismo vocal means, there is a postmodern glib irony to it all. Even conventionally, Armida makes use of irony in a conniving, manipulative way toward both getting her way and gaining as much control possible over the knights. This however is something a little different. Rossini’s infatuation with Isabella Colbran comes through in the great allure of his writing for the sorceress. As part however of Armida being a star vehicle for Renee Fleming, here is way of playing the sorceress as victim to lace the part with irony as device for merely artistic ingenuity’s sake – to portray being on the defensive. Those evil, plundering Christian knights, it is easy to see why.

The creamy, warm sound, good depth in lower register and bright top, it is good to report still are intact, even for Rossini. The glottal stops, guttural business, though still there, get applied less broadly than how she went about things in Pesaro, but with voice now slightly less free, flexible than surely it had been at time of doing that. Though still in mildly generic verismo manner, Fleming did manage to put her all well into the final scene of the opera to play jilted lover incisively as we expect - except that in her way with Armida, Fleming makes the outcome feel anticipated from considerably earlier in the opera than has Rossini. Curious indeed was the blues bend, blend she and too easily allured head-voiced Lawrence Brownlee gave their brief Act 3 duet ‘Soavi cateni’ – not to mention how much more cute Larry and Renee looked together on stage for this than they had already. ‘Soavi cateni’ now might make newest crossover hit for Captain and Tenneille – might they still be up to it. It is great how Fleming still encourages, promotes careers of young singers so much - singers from such a diversity of backgrounds as highly gifted Tianjin born bass Shenyang to previously, as suggested, Youngstown, Ohio boy Lawrence Brownlee.

I have almost already had to stop myself short of calling the opera Rinaldo for what Brownlee contributed to this. His manner of phrasing, tone color is what one might call little less typical for Rossini than that of Juan Diego Florez, except that Rossini was so diverse in branching out to find color with which to infuse his parts, even outside of bel canto convention - in many instances far from purely so. At 37 years old, nothing is too effortful for Brownlee in this part that, like Pirro, Agorante, Otello, Rodrigo (Donna del Lago) was composed for Andrea Nozzari. Tenore di forza aspects of Rinaldo here might, in comparison with a Bruce Ford or Chris Merritt before, be understated, but Brownlee’s stance in being authoritative with so many lines was still secure. He communicated a wealth of acting, stage savvy to back himself up on too - should variety of tone color not be quite complete for subtly complex assignment as this.

There was nobody on stage who sounded more lyrical Saturday, with sufficient bloom to enhance so well the lilt and ardor that characterizes Rinaldo, over indeed very treacherous terrain, covering a very wide range, with leaps occurring of well over an octave. His manner of embellishing the line was the most subtle, judiciously applied of the entire cast. He made all this happen with fine agility and judiciously again with opening out of much with which one should endow Rinaldo Peter Volpe filled in as drily voiced Idraote - Keith Miller the physically agile and vocally sufficiently even Astarotte.

Producer Mary Zimmerman did intermittently contribute several clever touches. Slow motion swordplay anticipation of Rinaldo and Gernando really having it out worked very well. Though distracting from overall dramatic flow and attention getting for its own sake, the choreography (Graciela Daniele) for the Act Two ballet was incisive, beguilingly complex in pattern for well striped tailed demons creating havoc across the stage. As for the mute parts of Amor and Vendetta - too much diva props during final scene of the opera, Vendetta played by bare chested walking ad for Mens’ Health or Gold’s Gym - the less seen the better. It is better to opt for the good lighting design available here to accentuate Armida’s even willfully quick vacillations between two conflicting emotions so beautifully and dramatically delineated by Rossini than for so much leaning back and forth between two such silly figures on stage. Deflating too is having a wall cut off most of the Met stage behind Fleming for the final scene, as doing so cuts off so much perspective. There is this great uncertainty at which Rossini leaves things, concerning which direction his sorceress will turn to next.

Intermission features for this in-HD Armida turned out dreadful. Lawrence Brownlee walked in, chaperoned arm in arm with Renee Fleming over to Deborah Voigt. For neither any man nor woman is Brownlee house boy in the least. Fleming had already appeared solo before Deborah Voigt. It could have been a bright idea to have entire time taken up by conversation with Phil Gossett - apparently on board for musical preparation here - in company with all three,. What, could have Met staff feared that Gossett might again pull out a funny quote, such as obscenity Rossini inscribed on one page of Otello? Instead we got one big worship-LaRenee-fest for good half of everything. No mention of the San Carlo, Isabella Colbran, Andrea Nozzari, orchestra in Naples, Rossini’s multicultural emphases in his scoring, traditions of ornamentation was made - except for La Renee to compare the latter with blues or gospel improvisation.

All the talk of being a great team player also got annoying fast - scripted partly by the little Napoleon who behind scenes runs everything at the Met. One might think the U.S. now enters its own phase of the old and rightly so heavily derided social realism of forty-plus years ago. What is good for the corporate welfare state is what we should expect as best for the arts we patronize - standard by which the arts should now always comply. That included Saturday promo of the new production of the Ring at the Met that as Debbie explains, just simply tells the story.

All art, theater, recreation of it, is representational. Especially in our day and age, there is really no such thing anymore as just simply telling the story – just so much horseshit – and with the paltry way in which things get rehearsed so often. The Met’s show of playing Armida, sets and costumes wise, on the cheap, was deflating. At least as planned, the casting for this new production however was indeed luxurious.

This was still Rossini’s Armida. One, if not yet, still absolutely must go see it. In the end, all the parody of diva conniption with the small wand that Fleming carries around with her as Armida between her and Voigt was cute, but ultimately just so silly. Fact of the matter, neither one of them has one.

It appeared as though few of the men on Met stage for this Armida had one either.

HGO 2009-2010: Dull opener - Donizetti., but Hawks and Sparrows or Elixir of Love, ... or new more ratings suitable I racconti di Canterbury?

This could easily have been predicted to be best opener to an HGO season in three years, with the HGO debut of Ekaterina Siurina, the return of Alessandro Corbelli, a conductor known for long experience in bel canto and the casting of what press has reported is a promising tenor for the same repertoire. Hugh Canning’s convincingly positive review of this production by Annabel Arden two years ago described it as a naturally acted, realistic, modern day Pagliaaci type Elisir d’amore. Arden’s Gianni Schicchi, which I just saw for the first time yesterday on dvd, also stars Corbelli.

Ekaterina Siurina, in her HGO debut as Adina and first major character active on stage, though looking dull wearing beige dockers, immediately gave the lie t that this production was just as described. Her teasing of Nemorino had the saucy wit one expects from a good Adina, and also betrayed a girlish compassion for her weaker-minded peasant friend. Her confused reaction to Nemorino’s flighty changes of mood was palpable. Adina’s compassion eventually came to the fore, leading all to the expected very happy ending. Her ease in coloratura, secure intonation and evenness across a reasonably wide range Adina covers were all exemplary. Her command of line and of breath control during long aria toward end of Act Two was equally fine, but I found therein just slight shortcoming of not filling out the line as completely as she could have. Given the flat-line accompanying from the pit, it may have been more than we could expect from her.

Siurina’s Gilda at the Met in 2006, conducted by Frierdirch Halder (Gruberova’s husband) provided high expectations – many still met. This marked a very significant HGO debut. One had to regret how so much from Siurina got shortchanged.

John Osborn joined her in what ultimately turned out - replacing Eric Cutler two weeks back - to be a lesser HGO debut, though still with merit. He has a good youthful appearance and sound for Nemorino, and though acting the part a bit stiffly, still well brought out the naivete but only partly the simplicity of the peasant. Though matters improved as the afternoon wore on, the way he approached singing his opening aria proved a liability. Osborn will bear down when in the passaggio (break); when doing so, his vowels, at least in Italian go left and right, up and down, vice versa from where they should remain. It all resembles hunt in the dark for on which vowel good placement may occur - while forcing his instrument, also tastelessly up to long held unwritten high D at one point he came close to losing - one or two other high notes the same way.

Pitch occasionally suffered too. While singing duets with Siurina and Corbelli especially, though, he lightened both his sound and phrasing matching well with his partners on stage to optimum effect. There then is available for him more a mezza voce approach to the break – toward making his acuti more mellifluous especially on repertoire in which he specializes. These two duets early on perhaps belied more than anywhere else that staging of this Elisir might continue unaffected, responsibly so for a good while. Until several technical issues get resolved, Osborn is best advised to steer clear of parts requiring much ring, spinto, as for instance Arturo Talbot and Arnold (William Tell).

Liam Bonner, former HGO studio artist, well known here for doing supporting baritone roles, looked dapper in military uniform as Belcore. He sang with alternatively good diction and tone, and bluster. What might have been the allure about Belcore to Adina in the first place wound up seemed a mystery. Belcore hardly winds up winning the girl anyway. Catherine Martin sang much of Gianetta under pitch.


That leaves mostly Alessandro Corbelli. Though sounding slightly thin at the edges by now, he revealed again his mastery at parlando, spinning out Donizetti’s lines with fine if this time inhibited swagger. There was of course more than hint of his plentifully clear mastery of text, nuance thereof, but the good news ends just about there.

I have yet to run across a staging conceit more asinine than addition of a mime part (Dulcamara’s assistant), as acted by former U of Houston theater major Adam Von Wagoner. If one came downtown expecting Corbelli’s command of the stage, one seldom got it. He stiffly, only halfway engagingly moved across it - as to anything that might wittily enhance his portrayal of the quack in a real way. It became perplexing as to how so much could be lost; now it remains that Dale Travis, a regular here, will have made at least as strong an impression as Dulcamara as Corbelli just has here. A Dulcamara as dour, poker-faced, merely fuddy-duddy as Corbeli proved this time just will not do - on the street, could not hope to make ends meet.

Corbelli has proven many times before the very gifted basso buffo he is, how then he could believe being in on a good thing to combine efforts with Annabel Arden, who produced this, should confound us all. Should he ever want ample comparison we have read of him with Baccaloni, Corena, Capecchi, Dara, to persist at all, it is time, even since Gianni Schicchi, he abandon ship. Unfortunately he has not done so yet.

What denatured things so, that most conspicuously affected was the lone Italian member of the cast? One must blame a combination of two factors, all enhanced by drab set design good to suit Hawks and Sparrows (1966 Pasolini flick). Elisir is now indeed a work one can no longer consider entirely fail-proof, oddly enough. Most obvious was the stage direction of Annabel Arden, as for Glyndebourne. Members of the chorus entered before the orchestral intro was over, to affect a performance beginning so spontaneously as such, but with tree-hedgers coming on stage immediately assuming a freeze on stage, until the brief prelude was over. Siurina’s smile was certainly could have won everyone over, but her removal of top to reveal tank top underneath was simply crude, even more so than her filling a large pail full of water to help herself to a foot bath.

Things mostly coasted along until Dulcamara’s entrance - completely undercut by androgynous monkey-shaped tattooed youth climbing electrical pole by ladder to short out the factory light used to illuminate most of the stage and provide excuse for spotlight. Such crudely applied cliché also got used in the Glyndebourne Schicchi (for trio of women putting ‘Donati’ to bed). For once that Dulcamara made it to the rapid parlando section of his big opening number, as though much ado about nothing. The very opening of the aria should at once feel grandiose, text and music make clear while here the whole cause became lost, fell flat. Nothing was clever enough here to be construed as deconstructionist. Instead, it was just simply crude, as was the damnable failure of this boy to sit still for any longer than twenty seconds for about all the rest of Act One.

Arden’s supposedly dark view of Schicchi is half-conceived to extent that all, including layered on stock humor also therein just falls flat. Arden has some craft for moving chorus members across the stage, even in dance step, but feels it pressing to put such a personal stamp on every turn of phrase or whatever at her disposal, that it then is all just hers and nothing else. It is all so busy that it does not show so much technique other than to look very stiff. Stamping about on stage, that Miss Siurina did once early in Act Two to underline fit of agitation, is so clichéd, it is already only too familiar to HGO audiences from other productions of comedy - no less irritating than before.

’Fascist blackshirt’ police restraining Nemorino looked so fey, it could have instead been Village People (every pun intended); one had to fear a little extra for the poor bloke. We can not be sure Adina’s ass remains virgin, with so much flailing about going on. Dulcamara’s boy(-toy) comes on in goose looking costume drag for what should have sufficed – bumping ass, but nudge, nudge, wink, wink, as though we might fail to get the joke already. You know how unfunny when someone makes a joke he has to explain it, but then come to think of it how unintentionally funny things become if the joke starts getting xplained several times. Other than clichéd – effusive embraces at the end– there was minimal evidence of more than generic investment in any love interest here.

Up until Dulcamara’s entrance, Edoardo Muller seemed to own the light touch, even hint of suavity we expect for accompanying Donizetti, but tas matters became more complex than the simple ideas, tunes to start Act One, a kind of wooden beating time took over. Osborn got left in quite a vacuum for ‘Adina, credimi,’ as did Ramon Vargas under a less experienced Summers nine years ago. There was both times little yielding from the podium for ample rubato, shading of the line, to give it true shape. It was, as though to find the true bel canto style or that of doing Donizetti, one must look to Glyndebourne, Little comes to mind more pandering than how Muller just about exactly held forth so.

Muller apparently could not either put in word to contradict any of the stage direction - constant noise and clutter distracting from the music, not helping characterize it. Not any of such could bring out the true comedy of the piece, even toward introducing any real frisson into the mix. The latter could happen as some real emphasis on a social theme of interest, but the touch for applying such was simply not there.

While Osborn adequately shaped ‘Una furtive lagirma’, Muller would only stop a moderate metronomic pace for the crests of the line – not to level of self-parody, but enough to leave Osborn once again in a vacuum, noting also sour intonation from obbligato bassoon and other winds. I have heard as much Donizettian with Danses suisses from Baiser du Fee conducted well as I did Sunday in detachment to pass for swagger during festivities that opened Act Two. Skill, conducting Donizetti, may be adequate, but sense of charm for conducting Elisir was not.

What makes the British beholden to praise such a pretentious Elsiir and the Schicchi gain confounds one. If there be any chance to rescue Glyndebourne tradition from impression of being somewhat fraudulent, this Elisir d’amore failed to provide any help. Neither did the Schicchi, in which British members of the cast, even including Felicity Palmer, who knows better, do some of the worst mugging and blithering in what can only pass as acting for second tier varsity opera studio. By comparison, the Met Schicchi (O’Brien) looks now very close to definitive, while certainly just competent,

Call it untoward bias on my part if you like; it probably will not matter who gets cast in something like this again, as to paraphrase James Camner here (concerning Met in HD Aida last Saturday). I am likely most happy to put this type of production, perhaps anything from Glyndebourne on DNR status for what to attend from now on. Such at least should happen for repertoire with halfway such openly warm character as this. So much character got denied here in as an obtrusive handling of Elisir as conceptually possible - with little to compensate in return.