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SEEN AND HEARD UK OPERA RELAY REVIEW
Met Opera Live - Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor: Metropolitan Opera’s HD transmission live to the Barbican Cinema, London. 19.3.2011 (JPr)
Sadly, I
left this live broadcast from the Met wishing I could reclaim the almost four
hours I had spent in the cinema. I usually enjoy these events so what was the
problem? Was it the fault of Donizetti’s opera which I have somehow managed to
avoid seeing after a memorable evening at Covent Garden with Bergonzi and
Sutherland in 1985? Not really, because the excellent Met Orchestra under
journeyman conductor Patrick Summers had a seamless early-Verdi approach that
gave us a lucid, fresh and energetic account of Donizetti’s neuroses-filled
score. Was it the singing? No, because for the most part this was of the
highest standards – as to be expected at The Met. Mostly I believe it was due
to this being the end of the run of performances in this latest revival of the
Mary Zimmerman production that opened the 2007/8 season when first put on:
Natalie Dessay as Lucia mentioned a ‘dry throat’ and that – as well as
probable tiredness – could have been one reason for her subdued performance.
Nor can it have helped her having to do an inconsequential backstage
interview minutes before her challenging ‘Mad Scene’.
Indeed the intervals seemed exceptionally drawn out, both because of the
complexity of the Daniel Ostling‘s sets and the fact that because this was the
last performance they were being removed from the theatre as this matinee
proceeded. One day, the Met might challenge their standard labour-intensive
union practices and cut down their costs: having such unwieldy sets that need,
it seems, some 90 people on stage to handle them is rather excessive in the
twenty-first century.
In Barbara Willis Sweete’s TV direction the stage pictures have a monochrome
bleakness that is rarely atmospheric. The production - that seems prematurely
aged - has clearly been updated to Victorian times and there is no tartan or
kilts to be seen anywhere. There is an Act I hunting scene in the woods that
seemed straight out of a James Whale 1930’s horror film. Act II takes place in
a large baronial hall that dwarfs the singers, particularly Ms Dessay. During
the famous Sextet, a fussy photographer assembles a marriage celebration and
the guests poise for a picture, while Edgardo stands detached from them a bit
like a party-crasher … ‘flash, bang, wallop what a picture, what a
photograph!’ Act III features a gallery and sweeping staircase and then clears
for the hint of a graveyard with a single tree and huge full moon backcloth.
Right from the start Lucia is clearly deserted – or believes she is deserted -
by everyone she believed she could trust and is on the verge of being married
against her will to save her family’s finances. Mary Zimmerman gives her a lot
of neurotic ‘baggage’ right from the beginning and makes it very clear that
she can see the spectral figure
in white
that roams the woods during Lucia’s first aria. This is mirrored in the final
scene, as the Lucia’s ghost appears to Edgardo, uniting with him to provide
the fatal stab wound for his suicide. Ms Dessay seems to take the daze she is
in a bit too far and her apparent detachment from the travails her character
is suffering leaves an emotional void at the centre of the opera. It is true
that
she gives us a nuanced, tensely eerie, blood-spattered ‘Mad Scene’ but by then
she has elicited too little sympathy for her plight.
Perversely it is the men who seem the more sympathetic characters doing what
they have to do for the family despite Lucia’s collateral damage, Mary
Zimmerman described this as the ‘spirit of masculine revenge and pride’. The
manipulative Enrico, Lucia’s brother, was sung and acted in a laid-back,
laconic Machiavellian style by Ludovic Tézier, who made his heartless demands
seems entirely reasonable. Kwangchul Youn displayed typical gravitas, calm and
reason, as well as, burnished rich tones as the chaplain Raimondo who seems to
mean well. Even Arturo, the husband Lucia is forced to marry and then murders
on their wedding day, was quite charmingly sung by Matthew Plenk. Only Philip
Webb as the huntsman Normanno didn’t seem to have a voice entirely fit for
purpose.
Clearly deserving the standing ovation he got from the audience he had sung to
at The Met was Joseph Calleja. His Edgardo showed that the opera’s final tomb
scene doesn’t have to be an anticlimax after Lucia’s mental unravelling. He
had been the ardent young suitor and suitably passionate and despairing about
his lost love. In fact because of the continuing imbalance of the
characterisation between the two leading roles, the tragedy seemed to be all
Edgardo’s and he deserved the final words of his two-part aria. His
still-maturing tenor voice is already a remarkable instrument and a throwback
to a golden age of vocalism.
Renée Fleming was our host again backstage and did not have one of her best
days. I think there was a lot more ‘padding’ required because of the extended
intervals and this could not have helped her. There were some classic moments
as she interviewed the handlers of the two Irish Wolf Hounds and revealed how
she responded to treats like they did and after a long nerdish account of
backstage activities by The Met’s technical director, John Sellars, her
dramatic abilities were cast into doubt as she barely feigned her real disinterest
with her ‘Thanks John, that’s really fascinating’ that got a huge laugh from
the Barbican Cinema audience. Elsewhere, Mary Jo Heath interviewed a dresser
who summed up her role concisely as ‘I take care of the offstage as long as
they chirp pretty onstage’. No more need be said.
Jim
Pritchard
The
Barbican Met Opera Live series continues on 9 April with Rossini’s Le Comte
Ory: for further details visit
www.barbican.org.uk/film.
It is sold out there but you can check the listings of your local cinemas.