60 years ago today, the Metropolitan Opera consecrated its new house at New York’s Lincoln Center with the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” Adapted from Shakespeare’s play, the libretto was fashioned by Franco Zeffirelli.
Zeffirelli could be a fine director, but in the opera house his lust for opulence and grandeur threatened to obscure the human drama. Here, his vision of “Cabiria”-style excess – with 22 principal singers, chorus, dancers (choreographed by Alvin Ailey), extras, and live camels – swelled the cast to 400 players. Many years later, I worked with Justino Diaz, who sang Antony, and he described the opulence of the production as being like Zeffirelli’s “Turandot” times 20.
There was only so much of this that Barber, or even Shakespeare, could take. The excess of steel, brass, and aluminum sets pushed the house’s state-of-the-art technology to the literal breaking point. The weight proved too much for the newly installed revolving stage, and Leontyne Price, who sang Cleopatra, was trapped inside a hydraulically-operated pyramid. Fortunately, that was during rehearsals, but the costumes continued to prove cumbersome, the technical workarounds awkward, and the spectacle soul-numbingly vulgar. Audience response to the overinflated production made for a cool night in the desert. As for the critics… you think Julius Caesar had it bad?
You can imagine how Barber, elegant and reserved two-time Pulitzer Prize winner (one for an earlier opera, “Vanessa,” introduced at the Old Met) and composer of the ubiquitous “Adagio for Strings,” would have taken it. In the years following the work’s brutal reception, he struggled with depression and alcoholism.
“Antony and Cleopatra” was extensively revised by Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti in an edition first performed in 1975. Barber also prepared a concert suite, “Two Scenes from ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’” for Price.
Barber provided two other works for the opening of Lincoln Center: the Piano Concerto, which earned him his second Pulitzer, and a piece for soprano and orchestra, “Andromache’s Farewell.” The former was performed by John Browning and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf. The latter was performed by Martina Arroyo and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Thomas Schippers.
Thankfully, the Met transcended the failure of its opening run. The cavernous, 3800-seat opera house – the largest in the world – has seen some magnificent performances over the decades, featuring many of the world’s – and history’s – greatest singers.
As you can imagine, you need stellar voices, compelling music, and solid productions to fill such a venue night after night, and in recent years, the Met has struggled. There are plenty of performances that sell out – a lot of the new operas make for good theater, even if the composers can’t compete with Puccini – but new productions of the classics that go dark and contemporary, in a bid for “relevance,” often misfire. Most crucially, voices and personalities that can whip audiences into the kinds of frenzies that greeted the greatest singers of the past are always rare.
Not all the challenges facing the Met are of the house’s creation. The industry and culture have shifted enormously since the ‘90s. The collapse of the record industry, the selling off or dumbing down of classical music radio stations, the lack of television, magazine, and newspaper exposure, cuts to music education, a shift in the priorities of the donor class, changes in the approaches to vocal training, and lack of interest in opera or classical music within the home have marginalized opera, as an art form, as an entertainment, and as an aspirational, inspirational pursuit with the power to lift us outside ourselves.
Still, there’s plenty of magic left in the Met. This season, I’m curious to see – and hear – what Missy Mazzoli makes of “Lincoln in the Bardo.”
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Documentary teasing “Antony and Cleopatra,” with Barber, Zeffirelli, Price, Thomas Schippers, Rudolf Bing, and Marc Chagall, who painted the Met’s iconic dual murals – which the organization has been trying to sell, with the provision that they continue to be displayed in the Met lobby.
Following the Sunday matinee of Gabriela Lena Frank’s “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” (“The Last Dream of Frida and Diego”) at the Metropolitan Opera, the composer and some of the principals joined general manager Peter Gelb onstage for a post-performance conversation.
Seeing Frank in the flesh set me thinking: how many Pulitzer Prize winners (for music) have I encountered in person? Alphabetically, I think this is a comprehensive list: William Bolcom, George Crumb, David Del Tredici, Jennifer Higdon, David Lang, Wynton Marsalis, Gian Carlo Menotti, Paul Moravec, Bernard Rands, Shulamit Ran, Ned Rorem, Caroline Shaw, Joan Tower, Melinda Wagner, George Walker, Richard Wernick, Julia Wolfe.
Some of these composers I saw more than once, a few were chance encounters, some I basically said hello to or had a quick exchange with, some of them I interviewed, a few I had actual, candid conversations with.
Those of you who are a little older or who had more mobility than I did as a teenager may have interacted with more of the legends I would have loved to have seen. Sadly, for all my precocity, I was somewhat of a provincial child and not very proactive about figuring out how to buy concert tickets and climb on a bus to New York or Philadelphia.
I would be delighted to read about any of your Pulitzer-winner encounters, if you care to share them in the comments below!
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PHOTO (left-to-right): librettist and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz, Pulitzer Prize winning 0composer Gabriela Lena Frank, countertenor Nils Wanderer (Leonardo), baritone Carlos Álvarez (Diego Rivera), mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (Frida Kahlo), general director Peter Gelb.
Gabriella Reyes (Catrina, Keeper of the Dead) was already backstage – Gelb explained that it takes an hour for her to remove her costume and make-up – and Yannick Nézet-Séguin was off to Germany to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic.
Since I was taken ill a few weeks ago, when I was hoping to get in to the Metropolitan Opera for a Saturday matinee of “Eugene Onegin,” my ticket was exchanged for a new opera by Gabriela Lena Frank, longtime composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra, whose stock has since skyrocketed, as she was recently awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music. I had intended to catch “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” anyway, at the movies, as part of the Met Live in HD series (on May 30 or June 3). That said, how lucky I was to actually experience it in the house!
The opera, a postscript to the tempestuous real-life love story of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is ingeniously set during El Día del Los Muertos – the Day of the Dead. Kahlo’s spirit returns in a kind of reverse Orpheus and Eurydice story to guide Rivera to the afterlife. A great many operas can be summed up in a line or two, but any such synopsis cannot do justice to the Met’s production design (by Jon Bausor) and choreography (by director Deborah Colker). Predictably, some of Kahlo’s most iconic paintings are recreated, and Diego perches on a scaffold before one of his murals in its early stages, but the eyepopping supernatural element brings a whole other element of interest.
As with this season’s immigrant experience/proto-superhero comic book “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” another Met debut, I was set to wondering how well the work succeeds as an opera, as opposed to a functional score elevated by all the superlative stagecraft. As I remarked about “Kavalier & Clay,” I’m not sure if the music in itself fits the bill, but I am unshakeable in my conviction that it’s one hell of a show. Frankly, comparing the two is kind of like comparing a corned beef sandwich and a tamale. Anyway, even a fabulous score can misalign on the opera stage, where words and music, conflict and emotion need to strike a perfect balance. There are plenty of great composers who have been unable to stick the landing.
My impression of “Frida y Diego,” on first hearing, is that the music is on an entirely different level than Mason Bates’ for “Kavalier & Clay,” perhaps less overtly melodic (“K&C” was almost like a movie in sound and execution), yet ultimately having greater resonance. The piece is marvelously orchestrated (although I can’t say I could really make out some of the more novel touches, such as when one of the percussionists ran bows along the keys of a marimba). But not all operas are driven by melody. It’s not that “Frida y Diego” is not “melodic” (it’s definitely tonal), it just doesn’t really have any big tunes. So don’t go into it expecting to luxuriate in bel canto.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have arias and even some showstopping moments. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, as always, is excellent as Frida – and my, did the make-up people transform her into the spitting image of Kahlo – even when she was called upon to lie down or execute certain pieces of choreography.
However, soprano Gabriella Reyes brought it big time as Catrina, Keeper of the Dead, transcending, rather than being swallowed up by, her incredible skull-and-bones costume. She positively owned the role.
It says something for countertenor Nils Wanderer that up against such a powerhouse that he would make such a strong impression as Leonardo, a Greta Garbo impersonator(!) dressed as Queen Christina. It’s hard to explain this element, but just go with it. It’s oddly moving, and it works. Also, watch “Queen Christina.” It’s a great movie.
It was good to see baritone Carlos Álvarez back on the Met stage, but especially in the scene where he’s standing on the scaffold, the acoustic did his voice no favors. It’s not that he sounded bad – he did not – it’s just that he didn’t carry as well as did his higher-voiced colleagues. With six levels and close to 4,000 seats, the Met is an enormous house. Speaking of enormous, I do hope that the costumers gave him a padded suit to play Rivera. I would hate to think that he let himself go to the point that he now has the physique of Fred Mertz. Since Rivera generally looked like Darius Milhaud on a bad day, I would think that it was an artistic transformation.
The skeletal dancers busted some very impressive moves. Some of them would not have been out of place in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Even more astonishing was the ability of the dancers to stay in sync with one another in situations where they were either in cumbersome-looking, sight-obstructing masks or otherwise blocked from one another’s view.
Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin was in the pit. In his other role, as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he’s had a wealth of experience conducting Frank’s music. He didn’t conduct with quite the brio he can sometimes bring, whether you want it or not, but here that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Really, it’s a more atmospheric piece. There was plenty of energy onstage, and Frank’s sound-world kept the ear engaged, with the character of Leonardo getting the most sensuous music. I confess, there were times, given the subject matter, that I wondered if I might be watching a dry run for Missy Mazzoli’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” set to make its Met debut next season.
Whether or not Frank’s opera will endure, no one can predict with any certainty, but experiencing it now at the Met is definitely worthwhile. You won’t leave the house (or the movie theater) whistling any of the tunes, but it is an absorbing magical realism experiment, and I think it works. I wouldn’t mind catching it again. Perhaps I will, at the movie theater.
Incredibly, it turned out to be a two-opera weekend for me, as Friday evening I drove down to Wilmington for OperaDelaware’s concluding performance of Umberto Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier.” This was a more traditional, blood-and-thunder operatic experience, composed during the height of the verismo craze (the libretto is by frequent Puccini collaborator Luigi Illica), though set during the French Revolution.
The work was sung with great passion by soprano Toni Marie Palmertree, tenor Dane Suarez, and baritone Gerald Moon. (Palmertree went for broke as Tosca at last year’s Princeton Festival; she’ll return to Princeton next month as Madama Butterfly – a role she sang this year at the Met!) Contralto Daryl Freedman deserves special mention for her poignant, showstopping aria as Madelon, a blind woman nearing the end of her days, who commits her grandson, the last of her line, to the cause of the Revolution.
The opera was presented with minimal props, a few tables and chairs, and some bleachers in the courtroom scene. Singers were in period costume. Stylized, bisected windows formed the backdrop throughout, but the mood was varied, in no small part through skillful lighting, whether supporting a garish party of willfully oblivious aristocrats or doomed lovers languishing in a prison cell. Most effective was a silhouetted guillotine, an imaginative touch toward the end, its blade dropping with shattering finality at the curtain. The chorus sang lustily, lending the performance a sense of grandeur and scope.
The experience was enhanced by the charmingly intimate and historic 1,140-seat Wilmington Grand Opera House. With its frescos and muraled ceilings, tiered wooden seats, and wraparound stalls and balcony, the theater embodies a kind of 19th century craftsmanship one rarely encounters these days. It’s practically a toy theater compared to the Met, more in line with what I imagine would have been the norm with many European houses, back in the day. Ingmar Bergman would have loved this place. Perhaps Wes Anderson too. What a great venue!
The orchestra played well, if not impeccably. The fact that it did play so well made the (very) occasional cracked note in the pit serve as a reminder that this was, after all, live music-making, not karaoke, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The dramatic sweep of the performance was authentic and all the more compelling for it. How many freelance musicians and singers are out there, playing regional houses, and making music of this quality?
Conductor Anthony Barrese directed a flowing, emotionally immediate performance. He generously offered the baton to an assistant for the opera’s eventful second act, citing the fact that he himself was only able to learn on the job and opportunities to do so in opera are scant. In the event – to my ears, anyway – the assistant acquitted himself beautifully. Barrese also provided one of the program booklet’s informative historical notes. He and outgoing general director Brendan Cooke, who share a rich history spanning decades and several opera companies, exchanged some poignant words before the evening’s performance. So not all the tears were on the stage!
I should mention that the stage director, Octavio Cardenas, also contributed to the booklet. His thought-provoking introduction brings into focus the dangerous – and innately human – factors that contributed to the tragedy and violence of a political movement that turned into one of history’s most horrific bloodbaths. (Keep in mind, the opera was written scarcely a hundred years after the period in which it is set.)
“This production of ‘Andrea Chénier’ is driven by a central question: what happens when idealism stops being a guiding principle and becomes a form of blindness? Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, the opera is not presented as a celebration of political awakening, but as an examination of how moral certainty can harden into cruelty. The Revolution in this reading is not simply an historical force, but a mirror of human nature itself, capable of both aspiration and destruction, often at the same time.”
And later…
“Ultimately the production emphasizes that human nature resists purity. Even the most noble ideas are filtered through fear, desire, and self-preservation. The opera’s final moments do not offer resolution in a political sense, but instead reveal a more intimate truth: that love and cruelty, clarity and blindness, idealism and violence can coexist in the same human heart.”
Bravo. And God help us all.
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Gabriella Reyes raises the dead as Catrina in “El último sueño de Frida y Diego”
Isabel Leonard as Frida
Skeletons in rehearsal
Five more performances of “Frida y Diego,” through June 5
Can’t make it to New York? The Met Live in HD will bring it to select movie theaters, May 30 & June 3 (search by clicking the red bar beneath the banner, at the right of the screen)
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” is the first opera I’ve seen that plays more like a movie. A triumph of production design, in some respects it realizes the Wagnerian ideal of Gesamkuntswerk, the synthesis of disparate elements into a “total work of art,” here employing technology of a sort Wagner couldn’t possibly have imagined. That’s not to say Mason Bates’ music is anywhere near the same exalted level, which probably, in this case, is not such a bad thing. As a piece of pop art, “Kavalier & Clay” works. Mostly.
The inspiring story of two Jewish cousins – one a Brooklyn native, the other a refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia – who channel their hopes, heartbreaks, and thirst for justice into the creation one of the comic’s bestselling superheroes – is back at New York’s Metropolitan Opera with all its whiz-bang dazzle. I caught it earlier in the season, in the fall, but The Met had a special on tickets around the holidays, so I’m going to see it again with a friend next month. The production will run through February 21.
Can’t make it to New York? You’ll have a chance to experience it at select movie theaters this Saturday, January 24, and next Wednesday, January 28, as part of “The Met: Live in HD” series, presented through Fathom Entertainment. (Look for the link below.)
As a fan of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, I knew going in that concessions would have to be made. Even at its most surfacy, Chabon’s book (which I read for a second time to prep for the opera) is simply too grand – even with the Met’s stagecraft being as wondrously vertiginous as it is – and too epic to be conveyed even on the boards of the world’s largest opera palace. It also happens to be beautifully and characterfully written. There is only so much of that (the story is told from a third person omniscient perspective) that is going to survive translation to the theater.
In the end, this panegyric to the power of comic books and the role of popular culture in the American Dream at an especially dynamic time in this nation’s history – while simultaneously exploring comics as an outlet through which the artists grapple with their personal demons and grasp for redemption – can never hope to serve as more than “Classics Illustrated.” So definitely read the book.
But the opera recreates a great escape from the bottom of the Moldau, a superhero, called The Escapist, punching out Nazis in the best Jack Kirby tradition, Salvador Dali in a diving suit, a thunderstorm over the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and a final act, with the stage in its full, mechanized glory, that departs significantly from the action of the book, but contains a touch of poetry and grace courtesy of another one of the cousin’s heroic creations. I do miss the business with the Golem, the World’s Fair, the entire Antarctica segment, the cameo by Orson Welles, and the recurring allusions to Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. Only Chabon could have written it. (Gene Scheer is the opera’s librettist.)
Opera as a genre rises and falls on its writing for voice, at its most powerful, arousing overwhelming emotions. At its most magnificent, there really is nothing else like it. From a purely musical standpoint, “Kavalier & Clay” never achieves that level of irrational grandeur, but as I indicated at the start, this may be the rare instance in which that’s okay. It would have been nice had it cracked the extraordinary, but the music does actually serve as but one component, and an equal one, in the three-hour entertainment. It’s almost like underscore, breezy in the New York street scenes and rhythmically driving in flights from the Nazis. There’s a spiritual kinship to film music. The emotional moments are lower-voltage than I would have liked – pretty, but hardly indelible – and the hard-driving action scenes and scenery changes sound like John Williams with a bit of a John Adams gloss.
Manhattan street and office scenes sport “jazz” inflections of a Gershwinesque variety, there’s a bawdy dance party that bristles with Bernstein, and at times in the European scenes, you could make out the inclusion of a mandolin – not necessarily the first instrument I associate with either Czechoslovakia or Jewry, but it is an instrument with a long folk tradition that reaches across the continent. I concede, this particular observation could simply reveal a blind spot in my own education.
Bates’ much-vaunted electronic additions (he experiments with electronica and even DJs on the side) really don’t add up to very much. That element of the score barely registers in the opera’s first act. In the second, it could just as easily not have been there. It’s just another element of seasoning.
The work’s real energy comes in its frequent, dizzying set changes and eyepopping set pieces, propelled by technical/technological wizardry. A great escape at the opera’s start prepares the audience for the synthesis of opera, movie, and even comic book, to come. There are entire montages that conjure the layout and dynamism of a comic’s page.
It’s insane to even consider that “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” could be made into an opera, and I’m not sure that it actually succeeds as one. But I am unshakeable in my conviction that it is a hell of a good show.
Born in Lynchburg, VA, and raised in Yellow Springs. OH, Alexander was a leading singer at the Metropolitan Opera from 1983 to 1991. In addition to her successes in the roles of Mozart’s heroines, she was an unusually well-rounded Mimi in “La bohème” and sang the title role in Janáček’s “Jenůfa.”
It’s interesting to note that she participated in the world premiere of Viktor Ullman’s concentration camp opera “The Emperor of Atlantis” (at Dutch National Opera), composed in Theresienstadt in 1943, but not performed until 1975. Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944. Alexander made her home in the Netherlands from the age of 23.
Her U.S. debut was in 1980 as Pamina in “The Magic Flute” at Houston Grand Opera. Her Met debut was as Zerlina in “Don Giovanni.” At her peak at the Met, she also appeared as Vitellia in Mozart’s “La clemenza di Tito,” Antonia in Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann,” Countess Almaviva in “The Marriage of Figaro,” Donna Elvira in “Don Giovanni,” and inevitably Bess in “Porgy and Bess.” In 2016, she returned to sing the Fifth Maid in Strauss’ “Elektra.” She also enjoyed notable successes at the opera houses of Berlin, Vienna, London, and Zurich. She performed with most of the major orchestras in Europe and the U.S. and virtually all the major conductors.
Alexander was married twice, to the conductor Edo de Waart (a union that ended in divorce) and orchestral manager Siebe Riedstra. Alexander died on Tuesday at the age of 76. R.I.P.
Samuel Barber’s “Solitary Hotel,” on a text from James Joyce’s “Ulysses”
