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New York, Magazine, April 29, 2011 |
By Justin Davidson |
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Wagner: Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera, 22. April 2011 |
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The Stars Who Don’t Sing
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Opera conductors can seem like vaguely superfluous figures, lurking below
the lip of the stage, desperately trying to coax a pit band, wayward divas,
and creaky sets into a semblance of synchronicity. Yet the maestro is the
divinity of these artificial worlds, armed with a bolt-throwing baton and
marking a life-giving beat. Riccardo Muti and James Levine each returned to
the podium recently after struggles with infirmity, and both demonstrated
that no matter how dazzlingly detailed or lackluster or even absent the
production, it is the conductor who unfolds each saga in sound. Muti, who
collapsed from a heart arrhythmia in February, has lately been expressing
doubts about his strange, wizardly profession. “What is it, really, I do?”
he wondered in a recent speech. “I’ve wasted my entire life doing … And he
waved an imaginary twig. Levine has voiced no such qualms, but persistent
back pain and other health problems have forced him to cancel performances
by the fistful, and each time the Met soldiers on, simultaneously declaring
its loyalty to Levine and its faith that the company can get by just fine
without him. But Muti’s concert performance of Verdi’s Otello with the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and Levine’s performance of Die
Walküre at the Metropolitan Opera made it clear that a conductor’s
personality is not a fungible commodity. It matters who’s waving the stick.
[Otello, left out]
In Die Walküre, Levine has to battle
Robert Lepage’s grimly industrial staging of the “Ring,” which began last
fall with Das Rheingold and will grind through the rest of the cycle next
season. In the current episode, Carl Fillion’s computer-controlled behemoth
of steel beams is back, providing the wrong sort of dramatic tension.
Whenever it moves, or when Wotan—the beefy Bryn Terfel—steps onto a slat,
the set groans and bobbles like a Cuban Chrysler. On opening night, Deborah
Voigt as Brünnhilde tried to sprint up a slope, tripped, and slid back down
on her stomach, causing her to grin sheepishly through her “Hojotoho!”
battle cries. In this production, engineering has merged with interpretive
idea, and the inadequacy of one exposes the shallowness of the other. The
singers exist to populate the scaffolding, and Lepage leaves them to muddle
through with their awkward poses and thrift-store breastplates.
Fortunately, the cast mostly ignores Lepage and focuses on Wagner and
Levine. Jonas Kaufmann sings the impetuous, incestuous Siegmund with
bracing urgency and warmth. Voigt gives Brünnhilde a steely joy,
Stephanie Blythe sings Fricka with ferocious splendor, and Eva Maria
Westbroek, who pleaded illness and bowed out midcourse on opening night,
hinted at a richly developed Sieglinde. Terfel’s Wotan finds the doubt and
terror lurking in his character’s might, especially when he can stop
bellowing over the roaring orchestra and savor the intimacy of a Wagner
pianissimo.
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